[Kamen Rider Die]

LET’S LOOK! ONLY YOUR 48 RIDERS - EPISODES 1-12



Net Movies! Is there any more precious resource in all of Heisei? Reiwa’s had its fun with social media as a resource for weird-ass crap – I genuinely enjoy the various Gavv Dance videos – and the TTFC stuff has been agreeably bizarre and non-canonical of late – the Hades Sisters sketches were a highlight for Gotchard’s production – but there’s something special about the firehose of Net Movie material that this era of Kamen Rider turned out, you know? It’s absolutely bonkers, and clearly a creative team having fun with the format. If Episodes 27 and 28 of OOO were an HBV story on a TV budget, these things are an HBV story on a fan film budget. (Kivat’s a non-moving puppet on a very visible stick!!!) These are super fun, and I can’t believe I passed them up the first time I watched OOO.

As much as I love them, however, you are out of your mind if you think I’m watching FORTY-F***ING-EIGHT OF THEM in a row. We’ll be partsing this content out over four nights, in order to both maximize my enjoyment of the material and minimize my exhaustion with the material. Let’s Look at what the first dozen specials taught us!

-How to defeat your girlfriend’s disapproving father with earnestness and a minor amount of surprise physical combat
-How to defeat a picky eater through forcefulness and a lack of clarity regarding germs
-How to defuse tension with a friend by wearing the same underwear at the same time
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by holding a grudge against the production team for 18 goddamn years, and using a public platform to air every minor grievance you can think of as quickly as you can think of them
-How to, uh, use drumsticks instead of chopsticks??? (This one feels like the last sketch the team thought up, and they just wanted to be done.)
-How to see beyond surface impressions and understand that big people do not like being seen as just “big people”, even if literally the only thing J ever does in team-up films is grow big
-How to change your luck through accessorizing with specific colors, with the only visible consequence being that you may become embroiled in Japanese language puns
-How to cheat at cards, which is more Villainous than Heroic, but what do I know, I’m not Kivat
-How to defeat your girlfriend’s disapproving father with flattery and a minor amount of seduction
-How to defeat a picky eater through forced starvation and a lack of table manners, resulting in the picky eater’s questioning of their life goals
-How to defuse tension with a friend by inducing existential despair through the application of Kamen Rider Mitski Subreddit
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by holding a grudge against the production team for 28 goddamn years, and using a public platform to air every minor grievance you can think of as quickly as you can think of them

All this, with only two blatant horoscope errors: An erroneous match suggestion that Punchhopper’s best friend would be anyone other than Kickhopper, and an erroneous match suggestion that Punchopper’s rival would be anyone other Kickhopper. Good set of Net Movies!

[Androzani84]

I think I’ll wait until you’re at 48 to comment on these.

On the plus side, it gives me a few days to close the gap in my own rewatch of OOO (though not by much, since I’ll only be closing the gap by three episodes, due to my watch schedule)

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

I think I?ll wait until you?re at 48 to comment on these.

Okay!

[Kamen Rider Die]

LET’S LOOK! ONLY YOUR 48 RIDERS - EPISODES 13-24



I would normally say that these attempts at divination and soothsaying are complete horseshit, but then this series of Net Movies is like You Are Faiz, and now I feel like they’re the most relevant selection of tokusatsu materials of all time. Let’s see what else they can teach us!

-How to enjoy modern technology by preordering the new iPhone 16eee today
-How to cook with love in your heart, or at least fake it enough to impress a narcissist
-How to ruin your own treats
-How to cheat at cards by transmutating your opponents into inanimate objects
-How to defeat your girlfriend’s disapproving father with clinical depression and a minor amount of horrifying threats
-How to defeat a picky eater through deafening music and a lack of awareness as to what drumming has to do with eating food
-How to defuse tension with a friend by realizing that there are even more ineffective and toxic friendships out there besides yours
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by enjoying the hidden gems of the franchise
-How to find the right foods for the season
-How to massively overeat
-How to cheat at cards by changing your fate

It’s not… it isn’t what I’d call helpful, you know? It’s all pretty terrible, not withstanding ZX’s impassioned plea for respect. (He’d get it, eventually!) Also, why in the world is the stock image of Todoroki the one with the drumsticks?!

[Kamen Rider Die]

LET’S LOOK! ONLY YOUR 48 RIDERS - EPISODES 25-36



It just keeps going! There’s a real lethargy that sneaks in as you hit the 4th or 5th iteration of a sketch during these Net Movies – the realization that very little is actually changing from version to version, because they needed to film, like, a dozen of the same setups in a single day. It’s not bad, exactly, but it really makes you think that they probably could’ve done 24 of these things and it would’ve been fine. The extra ones just feel like extra ones. (The Shocker Family sketches feel the most exhausted, from a creative standpoint, but the Ankh’s Lucky Color ones do not fare substantially better as they progress.) There can be too much of a good thing, and Four Dozen is definitely into the outer limits of any fan’s enjoyment of Kamen Rider absurdity. But we are not done yet! Let’s Look at what new lessons we got to learn!

-How to defeat your girlfriend’s disapproving father with a forceful embrace of your positive qualities and a minor amount of sprinting away from other people
-How to defeat a picky eater through knife skills and a lack of clarity as to how fine something should be chopped
-How to defuse tension with a friend by admitting it’d be better if one of you wasn’t dead
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by understanding the difference between fan terms and official terms
-How to get crushed by a rock
-How to allow for personal growth in others, while still deeply resenting it
-How to maybe have some tofu instead of constantly eating only ice cream
-How to cheat at cards by endlessly replaying the same moment, which sort of doesn’t seem like it’s going to give you different cards, but maybe you can just use the opportunity to fold instead of betting
-How to be defeated by your girlfriend’s disapproving father with an invitation to dance and a minor amount of assuming you won’t be killed
-How to defeat a picky eater through yelling at food and a lack of clarity as to which foods are actually villainous
-How to defuse tension with a friend by bonding over Scissors’ magnificence
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by refusing to let the franchise grow beyond the attributes that first engaged you, regardless of how the newer attributes might engage a different generation of fans

We’ll get to my favorite setup next time, for the conclusion, but I gotta say that the Shocker Family ones just never feel like they’ve got even a single move on them, let alone a twist to act as a punchline. Crushed by a big rock! That’s it! That’s what you get! No wonder Kamen Rider has been trying to obliterate this secret society for 40 years.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It just keeps going! There?s a real lethargy that sneaks in as you hit the 4th or 5th iteration of a sketch during these Net Movies ? the realization that very little is actually changing from version to version, because they needed to film, like, a dozen of the same setups in a single day. It?s not bad, exactly, but it really makes you think that they probably could?ve done 24 of these things and it would?ve been fine. The extra ones just feel like extra ones.

Yeah, I've always gotten this sense with the smaller-scale ones like Decade or W's. I cannot imagine how repetitive it must be to go through 48 of these things.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Yeah, I've always gotten this sense with the smaller-scale ones like Decade or W's. I cannot imagine how repetitive it must be to go through 48 of these things.

I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it's some sort of punishment; these are goofy Kamen Rider shorts, not dental surgery. But, yeah, with only a half-dozen basic premises -- of which around half of each one is the same footage -- you can lose your love for ridiculous tie-in promotions way before you reach the end.

[Kamen Rider Die]

LET’S LOOK! ONLY YOUR 48 RIDERS - EPISODES 37-48+EX



Jesus Christ, we’re all done! Certainly more of a trial than a reward, but still a worthwhile exploration of OOO’s contribution to the Phase 2 Net Movie canon. After crunching the numbers with my own panel of Kamen Rider mascots – PoppinGummy, Negataros, Captain Ghost, and Sabaki – here’s how I’d rank the various premises of these Net Movies, from Best to I’d Rather Watch That Final Tsurugi Episode Of Kabuto A Billion Times Than Watch Another One Of These:

State of the Union
Bell Peppers
Partner Fight
Marriage Meeting
Lucky Food
Poker Battle
Lucky Color (Ice Cream)
Shocker Family

Honestly, it’s just the first two that reliably delivered throughout. (I could’ve watched a hundred more of the State of the Union sketches. Exactly my sense of humor.) The middle four had a few hits and misses, but were mostly just okay. The final two took FOREVER to get to the new footage, and rarely ever felt like there was even half of a joke inside. If you’re not an insane person like me who feels the need to watch everything, just watch the State of the Union and Bell Pepper ones. For the final time, though, Let’s Look at what we learned!

-How to make bondage safe and fun for the whole family
-How to smuggle some light nutrition into meals
-How to ruin a joke sketch by treating the stick as the unfinished form of ice cream, rather than individual ingredients that are less appetizing in isolation, but I guess the grips in charge of setup wanted to be done for the day and a bunch of sticks are a way faster set of props
-How to cheat at cards by having an additional card beyond the maximum
-How to defeat your girlfriend’s disapproving father with hidden massage skills and a minor amount of lethal strikes
-How to defeat a picky eater through aggrieved insults and a lack of clarity as to what constitutes a Kamen Rider
-How to defuse tension with a friend by recognizing the boundaries of your friendship, especially the physical ones
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by not dwelling so much on the more inflammatory or embarrassing corners of the franchise, and allowing them to merely be quaint diversions from the mean
-How to, uh… man, what? The fan sprays water and then the kid gets doused from above? What the hell?
-How to recover from a terrible sketch by calling back one of the most amazing jokes from Kabuto
-How to berate the staff
-How to cheat at cards by HEY WHAT’S THAT OVER THERE
-How to be a good member of the Kamen Rider fan community by not getting hung up on the details of a show, like when a series says there’s going to be 48 short films and then suddenly there’s a random 49th one about G3

Glad I finally watched these, even if they will do me no good on tomorrow’s rewatch of Den-OOO. Why was Kivat in these, again?

[Androzani84]

My main takeaways from this series of shorts.

Hina’s father being General Shadow makes too much sense.

The only way to beat General Shadow, Garren and Chalice at cards is to cheat.

Ankh really should just go out and buy his own Ice pops.

Ichigou wasn’t given his meds either for his speech, or for the next three years.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Ankh really should just go out and buy his own Ice pops.

Disagree! They're payment for services rendered, as negotiated with Eiji! Eiji's the villain here!