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#1101 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 11,335
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Quote:
Quote:
And loved how they pretty much had their own rendition of the Go-on Wings. ![]()
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![]() Last edited by Sunred; 10-14-2023 at 09:13 PM.. |
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#1102 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,325
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It's Short Form Sunday! Figured I'd keep up my momentum and watch various smaller tokusatsu things I've wanted to catch up on.
Garo Special: Beast of the Demon Night This would fit in easily as two extra episodes of the original Garo. The new Makai Knight is pretty forgettable but it's decent enough I guess. Garo: Red Requiem I think THIS is actually the most I've enjoyed a Garo thing yet. It's focused, well-paced, and let's us see some interesting new characters as they fight a unique new Horror. The higher budget of being a movie also helps smooth out some of the rough edges of the CGI that plagues the TV stuff. This really made me realize that Garo might be best as a film series, at least for my personal tastes. Garo: Kiba Gaiden This, meanwhile, it pretty awful. A bunch of stitched together flashback sequences giving backstory to a couple of characters who really, really didn't need backstory. Barely any action, heck, a lot of it was done in an inked visual style, so it barely felt like a tokusatsu! Kikaida Reboot This was pretty fun. It's interesting seeing how Kikaida was re-imagined and the fights were quite cool. The human characters all tended to feel very stilted though. |
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#1103 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,001
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Speaking of Garo, it took over a year or so, but I have finally started watching Garo: Demon Beast of the Midnight Sun TV special which takes place not long after the events of the original 2005 series. I even re-watched On Halloween Night and Vampire City episodes of Ultraman Tiga as well as It Came From Angel Grove episode from Power Rangers Zeo as parts of my Halloween marathon on which I'm currently doing the same for Garo's first TV special/movie.
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#1104 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,325
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No one was around to stop me this weekend so I ended up binge watching Garo: Makai Senki in only 2 days. This one did it for me. I went in thinking Garo as a series was a little lame and boring and by the time I finished it I thought Makai Senki was just AWESOME. I think there's several factors at work here that made this particular entry finally, truly work for me.
I think the CGI finally reached a point where I didn't mind it much. There was enough cool actual choreography to satisfy me, and they tended to go really heavy on the CGI when doing frankly ridiculously awesome things, so it felt more charmingly fake than anything. I think in terms of characterization and lore things really started to come together satisfyingly. Kouga, while still extremely emotionally constipated, has lots of moments where you get to see how much he cares for other now. Kaoru, in spite of generally getting less attention than the original Garo, feels more like an actual character than just a horror heroine. Rei doesn't have random, weirdly psychotic moments anymore. I really enjoyed all the emphasis on Makai Priests in this one too, the tensions between them and the knights made for an interesting story and it was nice to see the priests really get to show their stuff in all the fights. Nice to see Jabi and Rekka really show off. I also enjoyed Leo as a new addition, it was nice to have a Makai Priest more consistently help Kouga. The mystery surrounding whether he was a traitor was interesting too, I ended up correctly guessing that he was a red herring pretty early on but I still enjoyed seeing how it all played out. I think the episodes were also generally better quality. The one where it's all a game of poker was awesome. I loved the stage play episode, which had lots of entertaining meta elements referencing tokusatsu's theatrical roots. It was genuinely fun seeing so many characters come back and the entire climax felt like they were just slamming together every stupid awesome thing they could think of. I had SO much fun and am actually really looking forward to what else the series has in store now. Two thumbs up! |
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#1105 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,325
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I was going to wait until I finished Gamera the Brave before posting about Heisei Gamera, but I think I need to talk about the Heisei Trilogy while it's fresh in my mind.
A while back I posted about Pacific Rim (bear with me here), and at the time I was able to enjoy it as a fun little diversion because I had somehow managed to completely forget about it's overblown reputation from back when it initially released. I *wish* that had happened with the Gamera trilogy, but I went in with sky-high expectations after constantly hearing them lauded as some of the greatest kaiju movies movies ever created. I saw the Shibuya scene from G3 referenced frequently even outside of tokusatsu contexts among Japanese nerds. Unfortunately, the movies just weren't able to match up to all of this overhype. Among them, I think I actually like G1 the most. It's the most practical effect heavy of all three of them of course, but there's several other aspects working in its favor. The plot is well paced and coherent, with a broad but focused cast where everyone served some narrative purpose. I also generally find the general visual style the best in this one. The scenes are always well lit and stylish, with action sequences that are easy to follow. A pattern I found did not continue in later movies. It is definitely the most "standard" kaiju film of the three, but I thought it hit a pleasing balance of classic Gamera and a modern, adult take on the series. Not to say it blew me out of the water, but I liked it quite a bit, even if when I initially finished it I was like "That's all? I guess the next two movies must be really special if everyone talks so highly of the trilogy!" G2 and G3 were both considerably weaker in my eyes unfortunately. I like to think I am not excessively picky about every detail when it comes to tokusatsu, but man... Why are these movies so badly lit? Both of these films are really into nighttime kaiju scenes, which doesn't HAVE to be an issue, but they are almost always really dark with terrible contrast combined with some extremely heavy smoke usage. These movies also had a frequent aversion to showing the lower bodies of the kaiju, which often makes it even harder to see what's going on! To me, it came across almost like they were embarrassed by aspects of their effects and were trying to obscure the details, even though they were clearly amazing for the time period and genre. With any tokusatsu show or film there are times where the "flaws" are visible, but I think most genre fans consider it part of the fun? I know I do, so it was actually pretty frustrating how it felt like they didn't want me looking too closely at their work. Maybe I'm just reading too much into things. I also feel like both these movies have notable narrative issues. G2 mostly just has the issue that the nature of Legion's motivations and lifecycle are really hard to follow and understand along with more cast members who achieve very little. That being said, I do think Legion is a very unique monster and this movie is probably the most respect the JSDF has ever gotten in a kaiju movie, which is nice. G3 is a proper spectacle at times, but it overall very light on the amount of kaiju content. Like yes, the scene where Shibuya gets wrecked and all the civilians killed is spectacular and very daring for a kaiju movie show, but it is also an extremely small sliver of a larger film. This means more human drama overall, which I didn't think was that great. The cast is really large in this one, and there just isn't enough room for them all to develop, or even for us to learn what happens to them after the movie suddenly decides their screentime is up. The Ayana's brother just kinda disappears partway through. The guy who was a detective in the first movie disappears after getting arrested. We spent quite a while in this mountain town with the locals but every last one of them besides Moribe dies or stops being relevant. Whyyyy? but There are also numerous aspects of the movie that just aren't really relevant to anything but eat up time anyways. There's a Gamera graveyard? Not important at all apparently. What the heck is up with that game developer and the shine maiden lady with him? I'm not sure even the writers knew. I didn't hate these movies but I wasn't impressed either. I guess the moral of the story is that you should live in blissful ignorance of any sort of claims of a piece of media being the most amazing, mind-blowing thing so that you can actually enjoy it. ![]() |
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#1106 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Aug 2021
Posts: 2,434
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Watched High School Heroes. The impressions are mixed. The first episodes dedicated to assembling the team are good. But then everything slips into repetition, and the events are too ridiculous to sympathize with and too dramatic to laugh at. The coolest part of the show is Akaranger, which in itself is not a good sign. Overall, an interesting work, but of all the parodies/copies of Sentai that I have seen, perhaps the weakest.
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#1107 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,325
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After being quite thoroughly disappointed by the Heisei Gamera Trilogy I rounded things off with Gamera the Brave. I ended up totally loving it! The human drama and kaiju are interwoven well and both are compelling. The movie has proper lighting so I can actually see things (yes, I'm still mad at the Heisei trilogy about this) and in general has satisfying special effects! I was particularly pleased at Zedus, who was an aglie and fierce opponent for the adorable young Gamera to battle. I really appreciated how it was a kids' movie, but one that granted proper respect to both child and adult characters while also not shying away from some intense battles and sad moments. I think this might actually be among my favorite kaiju films now, talk about an unexpectedly good note to end the era on!
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#1108 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,325
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I feel like I'm really hammering this thread with all of my niche tokusatsu watching sometimes, haha.
Today I watched Mechanical Violator Hakaider! Featuring a dream team, or perhaps nightmare team, of Toshiki Inoue as the writer and Keita Amemiya as the director, both of which I was absolutely unaware of before seeing the opening credits. The movie that unfolded before me was... how do I put this... It had its head thoroughly rammed up its own ass. A generic dystopian setting with a hilarious dosage of faux-christian names and themes. Our anti-hero and his utter lack of characterization and dialogue. That pointless romance between Hakaider and a random woman he met that was filled with Inoue's typically hamfisted romantic stylings. Listen Keita, honey, I think you are very charming but also your directorial style is *a lot* and when you combine it with all the rest of this stuff the entire movie just becomes so laughably pretentious and bad. The Inoue Zone never ends and never stops. |
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#1109 |
Echoing Oni
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,599
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Sorry you didn't like it. I found the film very fun from a visual perspective. The fight near the end in the white room is easily the part of the film that stuck with me the most: very cool idea to put red stuff under the walls to make it look like the room was bleeding as it was damaged.
I'd say it's probably about on par with ZO for me as far as Amemiya's 90s trilogy is concerned. |
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#1110 |
Some guy. I'm alright.
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: Michigan
Posts: 4,941
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As a fan of most things Kikaider, the Hakaider movie was one I didn't like at all. It just overall felt really pointlessly edgy at best. And while the dub did try to help the script in a few ways, it wasn't enough to save anything.
I go to Tekkouki Mikazuki for my ideal Inoue and Amemiya team up.
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