[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

I really like Jabi's effect on Kouga, up until this point, Kouga has been infuriatingly arrogant, but she practically full on pushes him off of his high horse and it's damn refreshing to see him on the left foot. And then she died. And he seemed to care for about thirty seconds then seemed to forget it happened. Great.

You're not quite done with Jabi yet.

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

You're not quite done with Jabi yet.

Exciting!

GARO 20.

I really like the way they've set up Kouga's character arc, spending most of the show as your typical unfailable hero, only for everything to suddenly start to wildly slip from his hands, until everything is crumbling around him and he has no idea what to do because he's never been at a point of no control.

I don't just mean that in the deaths, either, Kaoru is a point of chaos in his life, summoning feelings he doesn't know how to face or comprehend. There is a reason to fight, beyond destroying Horrors? A sword can be used to protect? Kouga has had these ideas, all along, but never had a face to place to the words.

Suddenly he's all huge bursts of anger, wild declarations even he can't confirm he can actually live up to, and a few jokes and smiles, and this creates an emotional resonance on us as they bothered to set up Kouga in control, so for us the gravity of the situation is all the more real in Kouga's dramatically shifted mannerisms. I just wish the romance was better handled, and much more convincing.

And as far as CGI abominations go in toku, I thought Grou Dragon was really really cool.

[DrillBIT]

Zetsuro Zero Black Blood

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrillBIT

Zetsuro Zero Black Blood

That is a very... unfortunate goatee.

[Locke]

Dat pube chin.

GARO 21.

This was a great episode, in a lot of ways. I loved the continuity and world building, it shows hell of a lot more thought has been placed into this than your usual toku, and goes to deep, darker more thought provoking places while it is at it.

I love how Kouga has retained a sense of control again in his life, but is no longer simply streamrolling through his fights, and I loved the little critique of a genre and culture that centres around placing the old in the modern.

Plus, the Gun Horror looked insanely cool and the action was great fun. And I gotta admit, the little romantic walk between him and Kaoru was so cute.

[ZeoRangerV]

Random question: Are there any design differences between Kouga and Ryuga's Garo armour?

I'm just wondering out loud how easy it would be to repurpose a Garo figuart into the Ryuga version, since it'll probably never get made in that line.

[Locke]

Man there is a Kouga GARO Figuart? I need that shit.

[ZeoRangerV]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

Man there is a Kouga GARO Figuart? I need that shit.

Yup. They did Garo, Taiga and Zero. The only differences between Garo and Taiga being the eye colour and Taiga coming with the bigass sword I've forgotten the name of.

Zero and Taiga were web exclusives too. Not sure how much Taiga runs for but I have a Zero on the way to me that was about 4000 yen.

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZeoRangerV

Yup. They did Garo, Taiga and Zero. The only differences between Garo and Taiga being the eye colour and Taiga coming with the bigass sword I've forgotten the name of.

Zero and Taiga were web exclusives too. Not sure how much Taiga runs for but I have a Zero on the way to me that was about 4000 yen.

Oooo I'd love a Zero even more!

Garo 22.

So Kaoru goes from Horror bait, to being the gate for the ultimate Horror? Poor girl, is this like a reverse Mary Sue? Although I think her backstory was probably the weakest part of the episode, 'oh yeah lol I just remembered...' I do like that her and Kouga are more openly romantic now.

Beast sure has a complicated backstory in this show, especially for something that turns out to be so simple, but I'd still rather too much explaining than none at all like in Wizard. Barago was fucking awesome from the start though, which Beast couldn't say the same.

Hell, this overly complicated backstory even made Taiga come across as even more awesome, as one of his final actions was to mark Barago for death meaning even though Taiga would die, Barago would die as well a few days later. Where is my Taiga centred show?!

Kouga didn't half chat some shit tough, I'm pretty sure every episode his armour has been pierced and he's taken injuries through it.

GARO 23.

The Watchdogs killed the Western Makai Knight? But isn't that Zero? So Kodama is the son of the Watchdogs? I don't wanna know how that works, or why they gave birth to Black Bolt. But all I know is, Kodama is so damn fun to watch fight. Not sure how I feel about his armour though, the helmet looked kinda goofy. It's just a shame he was killed by Kouga, when Kouga became some ridiculous and cheap CGI abomination.

Although it looked like shit, I loved the CGI abomination from a story telling point of view. Remember that other post where I gushed about Kouga? Yeah. I love that now he's so desperate, he's willing to give his soul to the darkness, just to have the power to win. He would have spat at the idea in the first fifteen episodes, so it shows how much he has grown as a character but also the gravity of how dire his circumstances are right now.

So that is who the foppy haired guy was, Kaoru always addressed him as Sensei but they never once established who he was. Now we know. Minus the terrible haircut though, he is really fucking awesome, as I was watching this show alongside Dairanger, I can't tell you how much I missed the oh shit factor from my villains.

What is it with Kouga running everywhere? By the time he got to the scene, it was a night time, why not just get a cab?!

GARO 24.

So the Watchdogs were just slaves to Messiah this entire time? Why? I know they said something about them once being the Black Knight or some shit, but it's really confusing, none of their motivations make any sense, hell I'm not even sure what their motivations are. Her transformed form as well...err...what is with the torso bit? Is it juvenile that I was distracted by the fact that the only detail her torso had was erect nipples?

Barago was a massive disappointment as well, after all his hype, he ended up doing surprisingly little and felt like a real waste. A Dark Makai Knight was enough for a big bad of the season, without the need for the Mummy Horror Messiah or whatever else. I mean at least when they ripped him off in Wizard, the White Wizard actually got a few awesome fights before he died, Barago's fights were exclusively brief curb stomps which were badass but didn't give us many details of his powers.

Despite being crucial to the set up, both Barago and the Watchdogs became remarkably unimportant by the end which may well be the point. But they spent so much time on Barago, and remarkably little time on Messiah that it just feels really poorly handled. Especially as just as Barago and the Watchdogs finally stepped out of the shadows and got directly involved, they were either killed or immediately dropped down a handful of pegs in the importance scale.

The fighting was kinda meh for me in this episode. I mean the action was still great, but Zero has already been slashed and beaten by Barago, Kouga and Echo and then proceeded to fall down a building. Some of those injuries carried over for a while, like the limp, but then one by one they all vanished and he seemed fine again. This distracted me from the fight at hand, because he was supposed to be getting all these grave injuries and all I could think is he's already shrugged off a fall from a building, this dude will be fine.

Kouga did the same, I can't count the amount of times he sprayed blood all over the place or was rolling around nursing a broken limb, only to stand back up and be totally fine minus a bit of sweat on his brow. It takes the tension out of a scene, if every injury is completely superficial. And yes, I know Sentai and Rider does this as well, but it's kind of an unspoken rule that wounds work differently when transformed. They don't bleed, they burn and spark which allows me to accept that a fatal sword slash is something that can be taken on the chin. But Zero and Kouga spent the whole episode untranformed, so there was no logic as to why their injuries kept vanishing or simply being shrugged off.

Messiah Kaoru was fucking hot though. And then she becomes...a giant naked woman. I like this villain.

Time for the final episode of the first season of GARO!

Winged Kouga looked pretty fucking awesome, they really stepped up the CGI for this episode. Just a shame that Messiah was defeated so easily. I could say the same about the Watchdogs, but I love the way Gonza saved the day. Also wasn't Zero transforming just fine in that room just a moment ago? So why suddenly, couldn't they?

In the end, much like the Watchdogs and Barago, Messiah was superfluous. Honestly, considering how important the Watchdogs and Barago were in getting us to the finale, Messiah was even more of a tacked on after thought and I'm honestly left wondering why they included her at all, beyond having Kouga fight a giant topless woman in a thong, of course. Instead our final villain is an entirely new character, Kiba the Dark Knight.

Although we have no real investment in Kiba as a villain, I will say I LOVED his battle with Kouga. Some of the special effects work was...iffy...at best, but it felt more like a climax of a movie, full of epic set pieces. There is nothing wrong with Rider and Sentai action, but I feel like their fights stand out less, once you've seen one battle in a rock quarry, you've pretty much watched the whole show until the Rider gets a new form, or the Rangers get a new weapon. GARO however seemed to strive to make its important battles much more memorable, and fights like this with Kiba or when Garo and Zero battled their way down the side of a building really are going to stick with me.

What certainly helped as well, is the locations. Locations were never really something I gave much thought too, until the Marvel cinematic universe, and I realised how naff it seems that the fate of the world is decided in abandoned factories or rock quarries, the stage of the battle of good and evil is as important as the fight itself, and those locations just don't live up. So I was so pleased to see how little of GARO took place in abandoned warehouses and I'm pretty sure there were no quarries at all. The use of office blocks, city streets and public locations gave me a much greater sense of immediacy to the battle, that this war against the Horrors really is happening around us. Overall, that is probably the reason I can't hate GARO.

Still, the greatest aspect of the show had to be Kouga, who is probably my new all time favourite protagonist. His character arc, and growth, across the show is probably the best I've ever seen in toku, ever. He starts out as your generic steamroller who is without fault and you yawn away, but this is brilliantly set up to truly show how high the stakes become by the end. The shot of him crying at the last page of the book, and all the spoken and unspoken meaning behind it gave me goosebumps, I've rarely seen a character handled this well. He was just wonderful.

GARO still frustrated me in a lot of ways though, mostly in how poorly it managed its time. A lot of toku seems stretched even after the first twenty episodes, let alone trying to fill fifty, so I was hoping with GARO being only twenty five episodes it would be much more streamlined and focused. That seemed to be the case, but then in the last three or so episodes they totally fucked it up as a revolving door of villains without motivation or purpose kept popping up, being swiftly offed and replaced by someone else.

I think I'd rate GARO 'great' if I just imagined Kouga and Zero died on that bridge, Kaoru became Messiah and the planet was destroyed. But with the ending we got, I'd say the show was good and highly entertaining but it ultimately promised more than it really delivered. But I guess the saving grace is they all survived, so we can have more glorious Kouga moments still.

So next up is the Kiba Gaiden, yeah?

[ZeoRangerV]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

So next up is the Kiba Gaiden, yeah?

Might as well be since it's a prequel. As long as you tackle that, Beast of the Midnight Sun and Red Requiem before Makai Senki, you're good to go.