[GoldenXtreme]

No one was around to stop me this weekend so I ended up binge watching Garo: Makai Senki in only 2 days. This one did it for me. I went in thinking Garo as a series was a little lame and boring and by the time I finished it I thought Makai Senki was just AWESOME. I think there's several factors at work here that made this particular entry finally, truly work for me.

I think the CGI finally reached a point where I didn't mind it much. There was enough cool actual choreography to satisfy me, and they tended to go really heavy on the CGI when doing frankly ridiculously awesome things, so it felt more charmingly fake than anything. I think in terms of characterization and lore things really started to come together satisfyingly. Kouga, while still extremely emotionally constipated, has lots of moments where you get to see how much he cares for other now. Kaoru, in spite of generally getting less attention than the original Garo, feels more like an actual character than just a horror heroine. Rei doesn't have random, weirdly psychotic moments anymore. I really enjoyed all the emphasis on Makai Priests in this one too, the tensions between them and the knights made for an interesting story and it was nice to see the priests really get to show their stuff in all the fights. Nice to see Jabi and Rekka really show off. I also enjoyed Leo as a new addition, it was nice to have a Makai Priest more consistently help Kouga. The mystery surrounding whether he was a traitor was interesting too, I ended up correctly guessing that he was a red herring pretty early on but I still enjoyed seeing how it all played out.

I think the episodes were also generally better quality. The one where it's all a game of poker was awesome. I loved the stage play episode, which had lots of entertaining meta elements referencing tokusatsu's theatrical roots. It was genuinely fun seeing so many characters come back and the entire climax felt like they were just slamming together every stupid awesome thing they could think of. I had SO much fun and am actually really looking forward to what else the series has in store now. Two thumbs up!