[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

Man, the guy who wrote that opening bit sounds really full of himself. Never have him post here again!

They've already been reported to the mods, don't worry. I'm sorry I let you all down like that!

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Originally Posted by DreamSword

I agree! The third episode is SO GOOD. It contains something that I really wish Zero-One proper had: MBJR growing as a family unit, since that was a big part of the story.

No, for sure, it's a failing of the later part of Zero-One (surely COVID influenced) that we rarely get to see all of MetsubouJinrai in a room together, and never for anything too character-focused. This adds so much weird weight to their relationship, and it's a shame it's probably non-canonical.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Otherwise, this movie had things going worse at the end with the public trust on Humagears turning worse, and the government likely going to repeat history. Yua and some Solds did break into the conversations, but it's vague if it's successful or not.

I like that it's vague? We're at the start of another story here, where new characters have to struggle with old problems. It's good to leave it unresolved.

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Originally Posted by Kurona

Get used to these (which it doesn't sound like you'll have a hard time doing!) because it seems these anime shorts are just a thing for Reiwa Rider now! It's a bit like the second coming of net movies and I happily welcome them! As someone who doesn't like either 01 or Saber as a whole I thoroughly enjoyed both their anime shorts series and highly recommend them to anyone. Just a great laugh, and I hope someone subs Revice's set soon

Oh, that's nice to hear! I just sort of assumed this was a one-off thing, not some new initiative. And, yeah, these are definitely scratching the same absurd itch that the Net Movies used to, slightly to the detriment of the actual TV series. Gai fixing everything in a way that makes things worse is maybe the character trait of his I'll most remember, despite it only showing up in these shorts!

[Kamen Rider Die]

THREAD WRAP-UP



And that’s it for “Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Zero-One (and builds SO-DO)”!

Thank you so much to everyone who came by and chatted as I spent five months working my way through Zero-One. Which… holy shit, FIVE MONTHS. I’m so sorry! Obviously some life stuff happened (big move, much-needed vacation, narratively-appropriate COVID), but I never want to have such big breaks mid-thread. I like the routine of six posts each week, and the speed of working through an entire series in under three months. Hopefully things’ll be more steady in the future.

Still, I hope people had a good time with this thread. I think I did okay on this one? There aren’t really any big blindspots on it for me, at least that I can recall. (The SO-DO part was probably a bust, but it helped me clear out some backlog.) The discussion everyone provided was, as always, the highlight for me, and it was a blast to experience this show around each and every one of you. You helped me take off towards my dream, and I’ll always appreciate it.

Normally I’d post a celebratory picture of a newly-opened Zero-One Figuart, but, uh:



That’s my pile of boxed Figuarts, waiting for next spring’s Moducase delivery. There’s a Zero-One Rising Hopper in there somewhere, but I’m not digging him out until those cases show up. As a consolation, I think you can see the Vulcan and MetsubouJinrai members I got in recently.

That’s about all I got? This thread isn’t going anywhere, so if anyone has anything else to say about Zero-One, I’ll definitely read it. The next few weeks are going to be tricky for me (packed late-November, followed by a work-heavy December), so I might not be around too much to post. But I always read! This thread was always as much yours as it was mine, I’m happy to pass it along to your stewardship.

I’ll be back full-time after the New Year for “Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Saber (and ****** ***********)”, most likely around January 5th. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am! In the meantime, have an awesome rest of your 2022, and I’ll see you in 2023 for Saber. You can count on that 1000%.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Thank you so much to everyone who came by and chatted as I spent five months working my way through Zero-One. Which? holy shit, FIVE MONTHS. I?m so sorry! Obviously some life stuff happened (big move, much-needed vacation, narratively-appropriate COVID), but I never want to have such big breaks mid-thread. I like the routine of six posts each week, and the speed of working through an entire series in under three months. Hopefully things?ll be more steady in the future.

If there was one thread that was going to be interrupted by unexpected real life chaos, there really is no more appropriate option.

As always, it?s been fun and I look forward to talking about Saber, a show about which I have some thoughts.

[Sh Ranger]

Kamen Rider Saber is my favorite Reiwa Rider show so far! I'll have a lot to talk about for sure!

[DreamSword]

Saber? I hardly knew 'er!

[Enchilada645]

I cannot wait to talk about Saber. Definitely a big favorite of mine.

[AkibaSilver]

Looking forwards to Saber! It's a show I have real mixed thoughts about, and can't wait to try and express them badly.

Also, well done on really comitting to the Zero-One bit and catching covid just for us, you truly do everything for the cause of watching a Japanese children's show.

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Originally Posted by DreamSword

Saber? I hardly knew 'er!

[wentwood]

I plan to watch this when I get to it during my run. I started with the first Rider and have watched 1st episodes up to Den O. It will be quite a while before I get to this. I have 97 episodes of Series I to finish before the run really gets going. I can see all of Rider on You Tube.

[Daikaijuman54]

Saber's going to be a fun one.

And it's been fun talking about (what I've seen of) Zero-One. I still have a bunch of Rider media I've yet to get around to, but things have been busy for me.

I look forward to revisiting Saber with everyone!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 0 - “THE END OF GENMS AND THE START OF THE OPERATION”



It’s a prelude, basically, so I don’t want to ascribe too much significance to anything it’s doing – this is all basically to introduce the core (?) cast of Kuroto, Dan, Mari, and the Arch Orphenoch. We are table-setting, and not much more.

Even by those enforced lower-standards, I didn’t think too much of this. Tonally, it can’t make up its mind as to whether we should be seeing this through the manic lens of Kuroto, or the now-inexplicable straight man routine of Gai (seriously, Gai is the Tethered To Reality voice of reason now!), so the episode just does both across different scenes. I’m not saying you can’t have jokes inside a serious action story, or vice versa, but you kind of can’t do Kuroto’s cartoon character in a 10-minute special unless that’s all you do. To try and land a scene of Kurotobot powering down and pulling his framed photo of his dad out of his jacket like it's a mallet from a pants pocket, and then be like Here Are The Serious Stakes with Gai and the Ark… man, get out of here with that. Pick a lane, Outsiders!

Beyond that, I can’t say I’m immune to the baser pleasures of a TTFC mini-series; namely, constant and barely-defined fan service. I mean, Mari! In two roles! Plus the Delta suit, making two times that lady got to dub in a voice for a fight scene in the last three years! Mari’s here to loop in Smart Brain and the Arch Orphnoch to the previous Gai/Genm stuff, but the reasoning behind Smart Queen looking like Mari feels unbelievably hand-wavey – I think a villain-centric mini can do a little better than Because They’re Bad as a motivation for a scheme – and very much like someone decided after the fact that they’d rather that actor just play Mari instead. I’m not gonna crab too much, since I recently went on record as saying that Mari is as big a part of 555 as any other character to me, but it’s sort of a narrative cul-de-sac.

Fight was good, though! There’s only the one, and it’s a pretty straight-forward one-on-one brawl between Delta and Genm Musou, but it’s stylish and visceral enough for this thing’s abbreviated runtime and limited scope. Delta’s meant to be a terrifying harbinger of doom, so seeing Kuroto gleefully demolish it in record time is a nice statement of where these characters are at, power-wise.

Still, not much to rave about here. There’s the YMMV aspect of famous faces returning, but Zein is relentlessly vague, and there’s basically no one here to root for; even in a cast of monsters, I’d like there to be someone worthy of my fervor. Nominally Gai, but BOY does he not get much to do besides be ineffectual. We’ll see if anyone steps up in the next episode!

(Not counting, of course, the climactic appearance of a cackling Hiromu Takahashi, the Ticking Time Bomb of New Japan Pro-Wrestling himself! I knew he was in this, and I can’t tell you how happy that stunt casting makes me. Hiromu’s a legend in pro-wrestling, and it’s going to be fun for me to see if they give him space to get weird. Closing shot is a good sign, though!)