[Locke]

I finished season one of Amazons.

Am I like crazy to say that season one of Amazons might be my new favourite Rider… anything? Feeling like the antidote to modern Rider, and the more logical evolution of the early 00s Rider than much of what we have gotten over the last decade. Amazons is a reminder of how things used to be, and just how awesome toku can be.

It is dark, it is violent, it is practical. It all feels appropriately scoped and scaled to make sure its ambitions and budget mostly meet in the middle, avoiding creating too much jarring friction with the audience as one clashes into the other (like in some other modern Rider shows). Its shift as well into two season blocks, with longer episodes, seems to do immeasurable work in improving the overall pace of the show, and feeling like it sustains constant momentum.


It is nice that huge parts of the action scenes aren’t entirely done with CG (like many modern Rider shows). Even if it may create smaller scale, less polished, fight sequences, but again, it feels like the logical evolution of the kind of action we used to get back in the early 00s in Rider. Our hero isn’t some sort of trained fighter and he isn’t using magic Bruce Lee powers, he is literally turning into a monster and fighting for his life, scratching and clawing to survive, with no real understanding of what his monster form can even do. It is immediate, visceral and violent.

I also like that it tackles the moral grey conflict slightly differently, this isn’t about two sides that both believe they are the good guys, the Bugs are effectively just animals, running on their most primal of instincts, they consume humans to live, they don’t want to destroy humanity due to some masterplan, they don’t even really want to destroy humanity at all.

We are shown Bugs throughout the series that want to just live as humans and be peaceful, but eventually the hunger just consumes them and we’re shown humans in the season that are as monstrous, if not moreso, than the Bugs. I thought this was really inspired and well handled by the show.

And I get the criticism of my criticism with a lot of this, maybe I’m just too old for toku, which is largely made for children. But like I say, it didn’t used to always be this way, I would say it is really only in the last decade or so where it really felt like Rider became a brand that was a toy advert first, with a show packed around it as a secondary consideration. It isn’t like I am asking for something unreasonable or for it to be something it hasn’t ever been, I just kinda want it to dial it back a little and maybe meet us in the middle.

And that is basically what Amazons is, the perfect toku show for the kind of person in my life I am right now and I loved it.