[Kamen Rider Die]

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR THE THREAD: Please list as many things as possible that Yomogi and Yume could've had in their backpacks on a weekend, when they were investigating the potential creep from Kano's past, knowing that their Dyna Stuff and phones would easily fit in their pockets.

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR THE THREAD: Please list as many things as possible that Yomogi and Yume could've had in their backpacks on a weekend, when they were investigating the potential creep from Kano's past, knowing that their Dyna Stuff and phones would easily fit in their pockets.

Portable charger, some snacks, and probably their usual school stuff that they forgot to take out.

[DreamSword]

The only part of this episode I really cared about was that bit with Koyomi at the beginning. It didn't exactly go anywhere, but it was still a nice moment with him and his struggling emotions.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

Hey, maybe that's it! Both of them are actually swamped with schoolwork at all times and they always carry those backpacks around because they're constantly chipping away at it offscreen.

[Androzani84]

So in keeping with the theme of the characters being designed to look like actual suits, this week’s Kaiju is designed to look like whoever drew it didn’t consider a) the available materials to realise it and b) that someone would have to wear it, given the arms are too small for human arms to fit in. In real life, it was an amalgam of several things that the director hater, all blended together to try and create something cute. Its name Zaiohn derives from Robert Zanjonc, the psychologist who discovered the “mere exposure effect”, which is where someone comes up with an incorrect opinion of something just by looking at it.

And this episode’s other big thing is the Dynamic Cannon, DynaSoldier’s alternate mode. It’s a homage to the Dragon Cannon, the alternate transformation of Gridman’s DynaFighter, which was supposed to be a regular mid-season upgrade for Gridman (and a final form weapon for his combination with King Jet), but the prop proved too bulky to see more uses than its debut (meaning the only role DynaFighter played in the rest of the show was he head of DynaDragon). Obviously, being an anime, they’re not bound by those limitations.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Portable charger, some snacks, and probably their usual school stuff that they forgot to take out.

Yume needs a backpack-sized battery, based on how often she's on her phone in this episode, so maybe!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

The only part of this episode I really cared about was that bit with Koyomi at the beginning. It didn't exactly go anywhere, but it was still a nice moment with him and his struggling emotions.

I don't completely know where it's going (which is neither bad nor unusual for this show), but I also like how he's clearly feeling conflicted about a girl he likes who maybe continuously takes advantage of him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Hey, maybe that's it! Both of them are actually swamped with schoolwork at all times and they always carry those backpacks around because they're constantly chipping away at it offscreen.

God knows that Gauma's training and Yume's investigation are both huge, semi-unpredictable time sinks -- to say nothing of Kaiju battles -- so it really would make sense for the two kids to just get a little homework done around the edges whenever possible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Obviously, being an anime, they?re not bound by those limitations.

Wait, this is an ANIME?!

[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 9 - “WHAT ARE THESE OVERLAPPING EMOTIONS?”



I like a show that meets me where my interests are, especially because I often feel like I’m watching these shows… not wrong, exactly, but definitely outside of the intended usage. So to get an episode that not only features Chise so prominently, but to also explicitly state that the point of the team is to look out for each other emotionally first, and to defeat kaiju second? That’s an incredibly kind gesture, and it makes me feel less alone.

Which is sort of the whole thing for this episode! Being grateful for what you have in your group of friends, and letting them be a shield for you when things get tough, or catch you when you fall. (Goldburn makes those last two nicely literal, to drive the point home.) Chise’s been on the outside plenty in her life, and it’s sort of killing her to be the most vestigial and overlooked member of the Dynazenon team. (To the other teammates, not to me. I would never overlook the best character on the show!) To have Yume casually disregard Chise’s intervention as none of Chise’s business, when Chise is both a friend and a teammate, is the last straw for a girl who’s been trying to put a sunny face to her frustration and neglect. Worse, it’s Yume thinking she’s alone and isolated when that couldn’t be further from the truth – Yomogi rushes back to save her when Gauma points out that she might be in real emotional trouble – and it’s frustrating to Chise to have Yume not see the strength she can draw on from her friends, and the ways that her strength has changed people like Yomogi for the better. Chise is the semi-ridiculous voice of the audience, begging Yume to see that she’s got people in her life that will not let her turn out like Kano, and that that sort of end for her isn’t inevitable.

The rest of the episode paves a nice road to get to that Yume/Chise scene, and an exciting battle in the aftermath, but it’s not really where my mind is at. I really loved the Chise/Goldburn stuff, because it’s a goofy Magical Pet story that speaks to Chise’s unaddressed tragic back story, and her need to be seen (that dream sequence!!!) when no one really makes time for her. And I liked the open-ended Futaba interrogation, where he’s clearly avoiding his own culpability because he’d rather view himself in the present than grapple with his actions in the past; the inverse of Yume’s struggle here. I wish I had anything of substance to say about the big new robot configuration, but if you’ve read more than three sentences of anything I’ve ever posted on TokuNation, you know that it just sort of washed over me without much more than basic endorphins being released by an elaborate transformation and the theme song’s mid-episode redeployment.

But that scene in the middle, where the girl who wants to be seen has to save the girl who wants to vanish? That’s the stuff for me, and I’m glad it was the stuff for the production team as well.

[DreamSword]

Not so fun fact; FUNimation made Simuldub viewers wait an entire month for this episode.

[Androzani84]

And so we get the second half of our add-on set. Just as Gridknight is an obvious retool of Gridman and DynaStriker retools Battle Tracto Max, Goldburn combines the pegs from Sky Vitor, the shield hook from Caliber’s shield component and the helmet from Buster Borr to complete the look of our King Gridman homage, Kaiser Gridknight.

My two cents? It would look good were it not for the energy cape and the hands sticking of the shoulders. And considering this ends up recycling most of Dynazenon’s combining mechanics, I think I prefer Powered Xenon/Full Powered Gridman.

And in terms of Kaiju names, while the episode makes up a band to justify Goldburn’s name in universe, out of universe, the name references Lewis Goldberg, who devised the 5 point personality model, while our villainous Kaiju’s name Gibzorg derives from James Gibson, whose studies concerned the perception of curved lines.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I was never more impressed with Dynazenon's subs than with this line. 「あんた、贅沢なんだよ] is the kind of incredibly specific word choice in Japanese that'll make a sentence hit the viewer lit a truck, and I think the translation accomplishes the same impact in English, because it was smart enough to not just translate the individual words.

I think it'd be easy to argue that line from Chise is kind of the whole show in a nutshell, really. It's a story about all these characters who are haunted by all the things they don't have and can't have, and here that finally gets flipped on its head by having it be pointed out how thinking that way can make you miss all the things you do have, and everything you might still be able to have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I wish I had anything of substance to say about the big new robot configuration, but if you’ve read more than three sentences of anything I’ve ever posted on TokuNation, you know that it just sort of washed over me without much more than basic endorphins being released by an elaborate transformation and the theme song’s mid-episode redeployment.

So, just as a starter, and I don't know how this theory gels with the overall symbolism of kaiju in Dynazenon specifically, but I feel like it's sort of significant with the whole outcast vibe of the main characters that the big ultimate combination of awesomeness in this show is made up of:

- a robot that looks like a kaiju
- a kaiju that looks like a hero
- just a straight up kaiju

I've never really put more thought into it than the vague notion I'm suggesting, and maybe the show's staff weren't thinking about it the same way at all, but I've always liked that about Kaiser Gridknight. Like, if any characters from the previous show were going to play a major recurring role in this one, it maybe had to be the two they chose, with everything else going on?