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Thread
:
Fish Sandwich rewatches Kamen Rider Kuuga
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04-06-2020, 04:31 PM
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Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
EPISODE 1: "Revival"
Let's start off by talking about episode titles for a second. It's easy to underestimate the importance of having good ones. It's a chance to define a central theme to your stories upfront. To give them a clear and unique identity. Having some kind of formula or gimmick to the names can also be a great way to add to the identity of the series as a whole. I used to not care about this all that much myself, but Kuuga got me to start paying attention with how superb a job it does at all of this. Every episode. Two kanji. One word. Zero fluff. How succinct do they get?
The series opens with a hero from an bygone era battling the forces of evil, before being placed into a long slumber. Despite moments of clarity, most of the shots have a grainy filter placed over them which makes them appear...
almost like an old TV show.
So there you have it. In just under 50 seconds, Kuuga has already gotten you up to speed on both its premise, and the real-world significance of its existence, all without saying a word. Immediately, it's apparent how seriously the people making this show were taking things. I'd imagine the director, Hidenori Ishida, deserves credit for the genius use of the filter. Granted, he'll also use it for the monster attack that opens the very next episode, which takes place in the present, so it's possible I'm reading too much into that specific part. Still, I know Ishida pays a lot of attention to how his visuals enhance the story, and that he has a talent for finding creative ways to shoot scenes to that end, so I think there's a very good chance this was intentional. Kuuga's main writer, Naruhisa Arakawa, actually specifically recommended him for the job in part because of an incident the first time they worked together where Ishida apparently questioned Arakawa intensely on a line in the script to get a better idea of how to shoot the scene. Again, the show's staff wasn't messing around.
That goes for Arakawa himself, too. After a brief scene establishing a research team has found Kuuga's tomb, we get to meet our hero for the next 49 episodes, and let me tell you, it's
perfect
. Yuusuke is introduced leaning against a bike (!), and tells a story, directly into the camera, about an experience he had on one of his many globe-trotting adventures that convinced him there's nothing cooler than someone who can still smile even when times are tough. As soon as he finishes, the camera cuts to reveal he's actually telling this story to cheer up a small child who got separated from his parents. The story doesn't help that much, but his followup juggling act is a huge hit with the kid. The amount this fairly short scene accomplishes is staggering. It endears the audience to Yuusuke right away with a heroic act, and the talking to the audience thing. (Thanks again, Ishida!) It also fills you in on a bit of his backstory and life philosophy, shows off his carefree personality with the juggling bit, introduces his signature thumbs up gesture, and even gets to work building some of the series' central themes. To this day, this is still my absolute favorite introduction of a protagonist in all of Kamen Rider. It's
beautiful
in how understated it is.
Of course, if I go in-depth on every scene like this, we'll be here all day, so I'll skip out on talking about Sakurako and Ichijou's introductions, and save them for later. Suffice it to say, a whole bunch of monsters show up to ruin the research team's day, Yuusuke gets caught up in it, and after a series of visions of a mysterious warrior triggered by an equally mysterious belt recovered from the tomb, he makes a fateful choice. Kuuga goes to child-scaringly great lengths to show how destructive the Grongi are, and that scene where Yuusuke, witnessing the carnage around him as the sound fades out, replaced with a heartbeat to emphasize the tension, it's great stuff. Yuusuke's mostly been a pretty goofy dude the whole episode, so giving him that big moment where he decides to take action, it starts to demonstrate why he's deserving of being the show's hero.
The rest of the episode from that point on is just him throwing down with Zu-Gumun-Ba. Uh... you might know him better as "The Spider One", but I think I'm going with this way, more to see if
I
can remember this stuff by the end than if you can. Please bear with me. Anyway, Gumun is just a great monster. Starting off this new era of Rider by directly paralleling the motif of the original series' first baddie is a touch of respect towards the classics I love, plus, his design is cool, and the episode makes great use of his spidery abilities. He's really got Kuuga on the ropes here. In what will prove to be merely one of a long series of bold choices the show makes, Yuusuke is
barely
scraping by in his first fight, and wearing the wrong costume, to boot. Kuuga's white Growing Form is strong enough to push a police van around without trouble, and tough enough to take several hits without getting turned to paste, but compared to even a low-level Grongi like Gumun, it's just not a lot of power.
The best Yuusuke can manage when all is said and done is fending him off with some help from Ichijou. It's a fun climax to the fight, with Kuuga and Gumun popping in and out of either side of a helicopter while poor Ichijou is caught in the middle, trying to make sense of what's even happening. Despite taking the gamble of having an incomplete Kuuga fail to finish off the villain, the episode still makes the ending feel triumphant, with Kuuga flashing a thumbs up to Ichijou before departing against the sunset, all set to an epic remix of the theme song. It's part one of two, but unlike the rest of the series, it gives you a good sense of closure by itself, which is a smart decision for a premiere. It doesn't
demand
you come back the next week to see what happens. It's confident that you
want
to already anyway. This is a crazy tight first episode, and it's easy to see from it why Kuuga would go on to be such a huge success.
THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER
Oh, yeah, and this is an idea I had for something fun. I'm sure somebody somewhere has already done this, but I figure there's no better way to show my love for Kuuga than to keep a running tally of every single thumbs up in the entire series, episode-to-episode. It's kind of an iconic part of the show that way. This is the premiere, too, so naturally, it goes hard in that department.
Total thumbs up count:
0+5 = 5
EPISODE 2: "Transformation"
This one is the real deal. Everything great about the premiere goes double for the second episode. Starting with the cold open that cuts to the chase. 41 seconds. A bat monster is killing people. Done. I love it.
From there we get the fallout of Yuusuke's first outing as Kuuga. Surely, such a life-changing encounter, such a terrifying experience, would leave Yuusuke with a lot to think about. And maybe it does, but first things first, he's waking up from a nice nap and having a good breakfast. Yuusuke's laid-back nature and underplayed reactions are a huge part of what makes his character such a delight, and another aspect of Kuuga that was treading some new ground at the time. The trick is that the show also knows how far to go with it. Sakurako is here to bring up the normal questions and concerns you'd expect, so Yuusuke isn't really allowed to ever be willfully ignorant. Even more than that,
he's not ignorant
, and this scene provides a great glimpse into that. Yuusuke casually mentions how he didn't like the "feeling" of being Kuuga, and when Sakurako asks what feeling he means, the show provides a sharp answer.
Just having Yuusuke respond by looking at his fist is the kind of subtle storytelling I love about Kuuga. It's a show that realizes that, sometimes, the best way to speak is to not talk at all. Yuusuke can have fun scenes with Ichijou where he immediately makes it clear he's not bothering with the secret identity shtick, and seems more concerned with the sound the belt made when it merged with him than all the danger he's in, because we know from moments like this there's more to him than that.
Although he's definitely not leaving a great impression on Ichijou! This episode hinges on their conflicting outlooks. Ichijou is the ideal super-cop who believes in the sworn,
serious
duty of the police to protect the people, so super-powers or no, letting this goofball of a civilian with no real motivation get involved is out of the question. Ichijou can be too stubborn for his own good, but it's hard to blame him for feeling that way. Yuusuke likes helping people, that's for sure. But throughout the episode, he has to grapple with whether or not he has it within himself to commit to becoming a warrior to do that. Even in his initial fight with Zu-Gooma-Gu (the bat guy!), he hesitates after landing a blow. A later conversation with Sakurako hammers home what Yuusuke's problem is, in case it wasn't clear yet. He
hates
violence. The action itself is disgusting to him, even if the end result is preventing further violence. But the only thing he hates
more
than violence is seeing people suffer, and he finds the resolve to put those feelings aside after witnessing the daughter of the professor who led the research team at the ruins crying over his untimely death at the hands of the Grongi.
All this, plus Ichijou tracking the mysterious monster attacks down to a church gets us to one of the greatest scenes in Rider history. Ichijou gets more than he bargained for facing down Gooma when the whole church starts going up in flames, and just when it seems like he's done for, Yuusuke charges through the doors,
on his bike
, to save the day, dramatically proclaiming his newfound determination to a still skeptical Ichijou. What do you even want me to say about this scene? It's a masterpiece. Grade-A hero stuff. You'd have to be dead inside not to find some excitement in Yuusuke declaring he won't let these monsters take away anyone's smiles. It's the ultimate possible hero motivation, and those iconic words to Ichijou, "watch my transformation", you know, they aren't just aimed at him. That's talking right to the audience, too. We aren't just watching Kuuga's first transformation into his proper red Mighty Form, and we aren't even just watching Yuusuke's transformation into a hero who won't ever turn his back. This is a transformation for the franchise as a whole. There's a meta dimension to that line. What was running the risk of becoming an antiquated series in the public eye was suddenly the most fresh, original hero show on TV, and this was a culmination of two weeks of slower, more thoughtful pacing, all getting us to this point. It's in that moment, in the middle of a blazing inferno, that Kuuga was truly reborn, and without any doubt, Kamen Rider was
back
.
The rest of the episode is pretty much gravy after that. The fight moves out of the church and into um, I think it's a broken down roller coaster or something? I've honestly never been sure. Whatever it is, it's another unique and interesting location for the ending showdown to happen, especially with Gumun getting in on the fun for a brief tag team, before the fight changes yet again, with the sun coming up (we know from the handy timestamps Ichijou got to the church right before morning), scaring away Gooma, and leaving Kuuga to make up for last week by finally finishing his first monster. With kind of a weak kick sort of move? And for some reason, his foot is smoking afterwards? It's probably nothing. If I could be the tiniest bit critical, the digital effect of Gumun exploding looks ~not great~, to say the least, but on the other hand, not doing practical explosions means the fights don't all have to end in a quarry, and they can put severed bits of the body flying through the air, so, you know, all I'm saying is this approach came with some
benefits
, too. There's also another great bit of subtle boundary pushing I'd like to point out with Kuuga breaking toku hero etiquette and flinching when it happens. This episode may show that Yuusuke has what it takes to fight evil, but he's still
Yuusuke
. On which note, this episode has a pretty memorable ending that I feel obligated to mention, but it's so brilliant there's kinda nothing I could add. I'll take a page from the show's book and just let the pictures do the talking for me.
THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER
Kuuga famously spent a lot of budget on that church set, but what's less well known is that the premiere ate up a lot of the budget too... the budget for thumbs!
Total thumbs up count:
5+1 = 6
__________________
誰かの笑顔のためだろ?
Last edited by Fish Sandwich; 04-06-2023 at
05:30 PM
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