[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I don?t care about two CGI robots punching each other! And I probably never will!

Die, considering all the discussion we've had in this thread about how your toku merch spending habits have evolved well beyond what you expected, you'll have to forgive me if I find it somewhat incredulous anytime you suggest it's unlikely you'll ever be into something toku-related. You didn't care for Inoue until you did; you didn't care for Sentai until it had Inoue; and for all any of us know, you don't care about the robots until you end up buying a Don Onitaijin whenever you get around to catching up on Donbrothers.

But then, maybe I'm just getting defensive about this because I happen to like mecha stuff in tokusatsu. Granted, I'm hardly the biggest fan of these CG robot throwdowns in Rider either (although I recall liking this one better than most of the Time Mazine stuff at least?), but you know, that's no reason to go and diss Breaking Mammoth as a concept! It's clearly just too awesome for the show to do justice to!

I'm genuinely fond of that design though. I like how even though its whole thing is being a mammoth (it's whole torso is just a mammoth's face, even), it's also mostly just Big Zero-One? Plenty of neon yellow, it's got Rising Hopper's antennae, it's literally wearing an oversized Zero-One Driver... It's a charming design all around, and there's something fun about it technically just being a form, specifically, rather than a machine counted separately from the rest.

And while the actual fight scene with it isn't particularly impressive, it leaves a good enough impression anyway thanks to how well this two-parter builds up to that climax. I'm kind of struggling to think of what to really say about these episodes beyond that I like them a whole lot. They have a sort of mid-season-finale feel going on, with a (sometimes quite literal!) big scale, and a lot of different characters all taking steps forward in their development. The show also did take a week off after episode 9, so I think it might've genuinely been written with that intent. Which is a really polite way to do that? Waiting two weeks after a cliffhanger like Fuwa blowing up for example, that's fun, but it's also agonizing, right? Knowing you're going to have to take time off and deliberately parking the show is this really satisfying place for a bit, that's a nice gesture on Yuuya Takahashi's part. (And these episodes were by him again. Again, not that it makes a huge difference from Kakehi, but you know, for the record and all.)