[Matrixbeast]

I'll never see the likes of Kuuga as mature, personally. It can be as dark as Shaq, but it's almost childish in it's attempts to make a monster a threat.

I think Blade was my favorite for a monster's MO. Rampaging to reset the planet? I love it. It gave the monsters a visceral feel without being an over the top toku love letter to Liefeld.

Fourze possibly has the largest threatening monsters, when you look into it.
The bullied kid can become a titan who can choke a bitch? The nerdy stalker can become a mantis what can control magnetism?

Making monsters the broken, the bullied, the beaten, the angry, the quick-tempered, and the confused kids of a high school.
Sure, worlds won't end and they won't have body counts equaling that of a small nation, but it's darker than "Bodies hit the floor. We're edgy!"

[KyoryuBlue]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

I think Gaim is as "dark" of a series as we're going to get now. Toei's current approach seems to be to move away from gory deaths and high body counts like we got around 2000/01. I'm not going to pretend for one second that I don't kind of miss that (Kuuga and Agito are two of my favorite Rider shows, after all), but recently Toei's been more into monsters that try to make people feel bad rather than kill them. We seem to be getting a bit more mindless rampaging in Gaim, but we're not going to see a bunch of dudes get stabbed and then dissolve into sand anymore.

Storywise, Gaim is shaking up to be pretty dark, but it's more of a psychological darkness than a violent one. We're dealing with a show where a big corporation is handing out powerful weapons to teenagers to see what will happen. There's no monsters eating people, but that's still pretty fucked up. I think that's what we're going to see from "dark" Rider shows - stories with more mature plot twists and creepy motives rather than mountains of corpses.

Personally, I'm largely fine with that. I do miss the days when monsters seemed like a legitimate threat to everyone. It gave the show a bit more edge and made the monsters more terrifying. I will always maintain that Ryuki had the scariest set-up of any Rider series - behind any reflective surface there could be a horrifying creature that could suddenly reach out, grab you, and then drag you off to be lunch. Stuff like that always felt like the stakes were higher than "we have to stop that Phantom from smashing that little boy's model airplane or else he'll be sad!" But we're not going to get that anymore. I think Gaim is a good compromise, though; the beasts rampage, but aren't going on killing sprees, and the real horror is what the people behind the monsters are up to.

They are a threat, when the people are the monsters.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KyoryuBlue

They are a threat, when the people are the monsters.

Sure, they could be, but usually they weren't. And that's less the monster's fault and more the "victim of the week" pattern that the show was stuck in for the last few years. Matrix mentioned the Undead a couple posts up - the Undead were scary because they could turn up anywhere and attack anyone. Dopants, Greed, Zodiarts, Phantoms, etc... they picked one person and messed with them. It made it easier to cast guest actors, but it led to an unavoidable lessening of scale in terms of the kinds of threats the monsters posed (especially in Wizard).

[Locke]

The difference is the humanity.

As stupid as Wizard's of the week plots were - and they were often as boring as they were stupid - the whole 'I want to stop that kid being sad' is a human story, built on emotion, not on mindless suffering. We had too much focus on the Gate's to be fair, but it was nice to understand them, so the people Haruto were saving didn't just function as window dressing. Sure Kuuga was full of carnage and gore, but it also had no soul or heart either, as it never focused on the people inside the carnage and what they were feeling, they had no faces, no names and we had no reason to care about the individual, or the mass either.

[SPLIT LIP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

The difference is the humanity.

As stupid as Wizard's of the week plots were - and they were often as boring as they were stupid - the whole 'I want to stop that kid being sad' is a human story, built on emotion, not on mindless suffering.

This is true.

Modern rider shows at least treat people as people, not just meat stacks to be bludgeoned.

[Gatack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

The difference is the humanity.

As stupid as Wizard's of the week plots were - and they were often as boring as they were stupid - the whole 'I want to stop that kid being sad' is a human story, built on emotion, not on mindless suffering. We had too much focus on the Gate's to be fair, but it was nice to understand them, so the people Haruto were saving didn't just function as window dressing. Sure Kuuga was full of carnage and gore, but it also had no soul or heart either, as it never focused on the people inside the carnage and what they were feeling, they had no faces, no names and we had no reason to care about the individual, or the mass either.

"I want to stop that kid being sad" is a human story, where as "I want to stop that kid from being killed" isn't? You don't need to place a face, name and 3/4 of an episode of backstory on one person to know people dying is bad and holds gravitas whether it's spelt out for you or not. It's even more unrealistic for a hero to coincidentally meet every victim of the week and save them from a laughable threat, in my opinion.

I liked the gore and carnage of kuuga, mindless/arrogant/whatever word you want to describe it as. Though don't be ignorant of Kuuga's story and mythos and act as if it's just visually dark, It was a nice contrast to super sentai. Now I'm not saying Kamen Rider should always be all gore, all grimdark, all the time. Definitely not. Though there are aspects, themes and overall tone I miss from those series. The past 4 years, it's been very focused on the opposite which is good for contrast and mixing it up but I am curious if thats permanent or if we will see a return to that kind of Kamen Rider.

Someone mentioned W earlier, I loved the humour and light-heartedness of that series. It walked a very hard line and i think it got the balance fairly well

[Sentai]

Who wants a series where it's completely dark, gritty, and serious? A Kamen Rider show should have a bit of everything. Heart, Humor, and Seriousness.

Which is why Gaim is so damned perfect. Embrace the Juicy! EMBRACE IT!

[Gatack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sentai

Who wants a series where it's completely dark, gritty, and serious? A Kamen Rider show should have a bit of everything. Heart, Humor, and Seriousness.

Which is why Gaim is so damned perfect. Embrace the Juicy! EMBRACE IT!

Do you prefer Adam West Batman or Nolan Batman?

[SPLIT LIP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gatack

"I want to stop that kid being sad" is a human story, where as "I want to stop that kid from being killed" isn't?

Not when it's handled in such an inhuman way.

Quote:

]You don't need to place a face, name and 3/4 of an episode of backstory on one person to know people dying is bad and holds gravitas whether it's spelt out for you or not.

Actually, yes you do. If you want REAL gravitas, and REAL weight, and not just make this person seem like a disposable nobody.

When a show knocks off folks every episode, it starts to lose weight fast. If all normal people do is die, why should we feel bad? It's not like they're real people, just bland non-characters, thus the effect lessens considerably.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gatack

Do you prefer Adam West Batman or Nolan Batman?

What about The Animated Series Batman? Or Keaton Batman?

[Sentai]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gatack

Do you prefer Adam West Batman or Nolan Batman?

Neither. Adam West is to campy, and Nolan didn't know WTF he was doing.

Tim Burton Batman.