[Kagezuno]

Decided to take a break and watch Kamen Rider Blade: Missing Ace today.

Yes, well. The fights were pretty cool, and the wonderful thing about Kamen Rider is that, like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good, but, uhm . . .thinking about the plot for this movie makes my skull hurt.

It really seems like a lot of the problems that happen in this movie could have been solved by BOARD having a better HR department, or failing that, having a vetting process for Riders that goes a bit further than "If we ask you if you're a Joker and you say "no," you're hired!"

But I guess Tachibana needed that part of the budget for his bitchin' sunglasses.

[Locke]

OOOs Nine:

I guess a big part of the reason I can't get into OOO is Kuuga. In Fourze the villain of the week plots work in their light heartedness because of the setting and the people that populate it. OOO however isn't set in a high school and isn't about a bunch of hormonal children, so there is no excuse for why everything in this show feels so watered down and censored.

When a Kuuga villain had a taste for destruction, many would die and we'd be reminded repeatedly of it and as much as I hate the way Kuuga rubbed my face in it, it was easier to get invested in that, than caring that one of the Yummy is setting off explosions seemingly with no one getting hurt in them.

That said, episode nine was not a bad one. Now I know what is behind Eiji's convictions, I have heaps more respect for him as a Rider, and the new combo form was really awesome, especially after how lacklustre the first one was. Although the first one had the flashier Scanning Charge.

Dr. Maki is fucking CREEPY though.

[SPLIT LIP]

Just wait until you learn Dr. Maki's backstory. O-O

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPLIT LIP

Just wait until you learn Dr. Maki's backstory. O-O

Oh God I am not gonna like this am I...

[SPLIT LIP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

Oh God I am not gonna like this am I...

Let's just say once his cat's out of the bag you wo't be calling OOO "watered down" or "censored."

On that note, I don't consider it "censoring" to not show widespread death in these shows. It's having taste. It's so cheap and easy to just have the villains kill people to show that they're "fo serious, yo." It reminds me how fanfic writers take stuff like Transformers and put tons of human death in them so they can be "edgy" and "mature." It's just tacky and ill-fitting. I'm not saying death shouldn't be present, because it can have a lot of narrative weight, (OOO had those Ridevendor guys all killed in the first ep, too) but showing civilians cut down in droves just makes me roll my eyes and say "Oh alright you have you're fun, I'm going to go watch the grown-ups tell their story now with characters and conflict instead of shock value." Granted this is mostly from the last Ryuki ep where the guy got eaten by his monster with gross sound effects that was utterly ridiculous and laughably forced. It's the same way people say a series is mature because once in a while the main character will have some jam on their lip.

Also from a narrative standpoint this widespread death also deminishes the effectiveness of the hero if he only saves a few of teh victims, liek in Agito where at leats one, sometimes two people always die before Agito even gets off his ass to help. Granted this could make for an interesting story of the rider feeling remorse for not being able to save everyone even though they couldn't possibly, but they hardly ever do. Agito never once even showed a bit of sympathy or even acknowledged the dozens of dead people. It made him seem really cold and incompetant. The only person who died that he was upset over was his sister, and she committed suicide. Meanwhile innocent people are being bumped off and he's planting his stupid tomatos. Why even botehr killing all these people if it does nothing but make the bad guy look bad... which was already apparent.

I think I still have some pent-up Agito "the masterpiece rider series" rage left.

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPLIT LIP

Let's just say once his cat's out of the bag you wo't be calling OOO "watered down" or "censored."

On that note, I don't consider it "censoring" to not show widespread death in these shows. It's having taste. It's so cheap and easy to just have the villains kill people to show that they're "fo serious, yo." It reminds me how fanfic writers take stuff like Transformers and put tons of human death in them so they can be "edgy" and "mature." It's just tacky and ill-fitting. I'm not saying death shouldn't be present, because it can have a lot of narrative weight, (OOO had those Ridevendor guys all killed in the first ep, too) but showing civilians cut down in droves just makes me roll my eyes and say "Oh alright you have you're fun, I'm going to go watch the grown-ups tell their story now with characters and conflict instead of shock value." Granted this is mostly from the last Ryuki ep where the guy got eaten by his monster with gross sound effects that was utterly ridiculous and laughably forced. It's the same way people say a series is mature because once in a while the main character will have some jam on their lip.

Oh I agree 100% edgy and grimdark is balls and most of the time Kuuga was too damn depressing for its own good. Super Sentai is better than Power Rangers apparently because they put a bit of jam on the characters lips and the translators embellish swear words into the dialogue.

Plus the fact that Godai had thousands of people die under his watch over the course of the series kinda undermined his whole characters point and only made him look like a callous asshole that he only showed maybe three or four times over the course of the series any kind of response to how much he was failing.

BUT

There is something to be said for threatening villains who prove just how damn threatening they are. There was no hyperbole about the villains in Kuuga, they really did kill off thousands of people.

Crappy fight sequences aside I always felt a sense of intensity and danger in the battles because the villains had really proven how powerful and evil they were and the unrelenting nature of the brutality gave me a sense that no one was ever safe.

I never really feel like Os is going to lose because the villains have yet to establish themselves as any kind of threat. That and the fact that the show basically says Os is the most powerful thing in the universe and Eiji seems to be able to pick up his powers almost immediately.

If anything Happy Birthday has functioned as a better villain so far than the Greed have.

[Matrixbeast]

The problem with showing the villains performing mass killings is that the hero feels completely unsympathetic when he only starts to react with anger/sadness when the one person dies in front of him.

Show off a hundred people dying? Hero shrugs and keeps fighting.
One cute lady dies in his arms? NOW IT'S SUPER SERIAL TIME!

[SPLIT LIP]

^Exactly. The super-serious kill all the people mentality breaks the realism by making the hero seem in denial when he finally responds to death or mortality.

The Greed are not my favourite villains, but I understand the position their put in when you consider that they are meant to be a bit more... I dunno if the word is sympathetic, but more like how Transformers has the Decepticons be characters who overcome their own kind of adversity but still fight the heros and be villains. The Greed are meant to be characters, not just hooded villains cackling in the dark.

If I can say one good thing about the musical medals bit, it made the villains much more interesting as they started bending the rules.

[Locke]

So Fourze 14 was the first episode I was sorta disappointed with.

Scorpio was pretty badass but the choice to do the Supernova thing entirely in CGI was a really bad choice, all of its fights looked like the climactic battle at the end a Syfy Original movie and no one wants to intentionally make their fight look like that. Plus, it did the Kuuga thing of 'if your finishing move doesn't work, just do it again' style of send off which is epic in how underwhelming it is. I guess at least she isn't dead, so she has the chance for a cooler send off in the future.

Plus, although she managed to take down three members of the team, including Fourze himself, it then just pulled the medical Switch out of its ass and that was the end of that. Couldn't they have paced this out better? Because in the end it just felt cheap.

Oh well, at least Libra seems cool.

[ZeoRangerV]

I think you really need to get over this CGI thing dude. Toku has nowhere near the budget of Western productions and every so often something is gonna be done in CGI that would be nearly impossible otherwise. Its unfortunate that it doesn't look better but all things considered they do the best with what they do.

Hell the 20th Century Boys trilogy was/is the most expensive film project in Japanese history and their CGI isn't much better.