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#1 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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Hi. My name is Kamen Rider Die, and this thread is “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider OOO”.
I first watched Kamen Rider OOO in three days. It was my… I want to say fourth Kamen Rider series? I did Ex-Aid, and then Double – which weirdly took me a long while, big break in the middle – and then the first season of Amazons because it was on Amazon Prime. I don’t think I ever did more than a couple episodes in a day for any of those. But OOO? Devoured it, with a passion and intensity that would make even the Greeed suggest that I throttle back some. I literally couldn’t stop myself from seeing what would happen next, spending almost every waking minute for three days burning through this show. The result is that, for a long time, it was both my easy pick for Best Kamen Rider, and also I show I could barely recall. It doesn’t exist as a year’s worth of narrative, like a Geats or Gotchard. It doesn’t exist as several months of measured exploration, like the Phase 1 Heisei shows. It’s just this solid mass of storytelling – smooth and difficult to dig into, but consistent and flawless. It’s a show I frequently described as being The Best not through frequent perfection or personal connection (Geats, to both) but by never doing anything wrong. If it never 5-starred any segment or element of being a Kamen Rider show in my estimation, it did absolutely everything at 4-stars for me. I enjoyed it all, and never felt betrayed by a story choice or let down by a lack of emphasis. It was the most complete Kamen Rider experience I’ve ever had. I also, uh, don’t remember any of it! Broad strokes, big name characters, and literally nothing outside of that. I know how it ends, and where it’s all sort of going, but the minute-to-minute story of any and every episode is going to be basically brand-new for me. I’m thrilled to rewatch this show at a slower pace because I honestly regret not savoring it more the first time, to let some of these moments lodge in my brain better. (I say that, but I don’t remember basically anything from the shows I’ve spent months writing about, so.) I want to give OOO the attention it deserved the first time, since I know how special of a show it is now. And what could make it more special than by rewatching it alongside TokuNation? I did this show way before I knew that such a haven existed for Rider fans, and I’m very excited to get to delve into OOO with the feedback and discussion that’s made this site so integral to my toku journey. Before we get started, a couple returning ground rules! ONLY DISCUSS THE EPISODES WE’VE COVERED SO FAR IN THIS THREAD. While I’ve watched this whole show once before, I’d prefer it if we could keep the discussion to the episodes I’ve posted up here, and nothing beyond that. It’s my hope that we can all really appreciate the individual installments of OOO, rather than just rushing to the end. I did that once before! It’s a little wasteful! ON THE OTHER HAND, I MIGHT RUIN SOME STUFF FROM OTHER SHOWS. It’s not intentional, but I might vaguely reference other Rider shows (Den-O and Ryuki for sure) while I talk about OOO. If you’re trying to stay spoiler-free from every other toku show, consider this a warning. OUR DYNAMIC IS WHY I’M HERE. Literally the only reason I write this stuff anymore is in the hopes that it’ll spark a discussion. My episode posts are a conversation starter, not a final judgment. I love hearing from all of you about what you’ve taken away from an episode – good or bad – so please chime in if you’ve got anything you want to talk about. I think that’s it? (I never remember if that’s it.) Much like the 2024 threads, my plan is to post daily, except for Wednesday. (Wednesday is Gavvday!) I’ll be using the OZC-Live subs for the main series, and a smattering of other sources for the ancillary material. We’re on this ride through… I don’t know, April? I don’t foresee anything that’d cause skips or delays, but I’ll always try and give a heads-up if it’s unavoidable. Okay! Preamble done! Let’s jump into OOO and see if I can show it the love it deserves! ![]() |
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#2 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 1 - “MEDALS, UNDERWEAR, AND THE MYSTERIOUS ARM”
![]() There’s a thing that I’ll always associate with Kobayashi, and it’s the idea of partnerships – specifically, how two people can pull in the same direction without necessarily wanting the same things. I wonder sometimes if it’s her expressing the feeling of working on a toku show, where her ideas and a producer’s ideas have to coexist within one narrative, regardless of how often those ideas are mutually embraced. It’s just… it’s you and another person, someone you may not have chosen to partner with, trying to accomplish a goal that’s been set for you. Being an adult means needing to work in concert when you aren’t friends, or even exactly friendly. (Ex-Aid hits some of the same ideas for me, but it’s more about a workplace than an explicit partnership. It’s about people seeing each other as supporting cast members, but we’ll talk more about that in a few years!) OOO is maybe the Most Kobayashi show, for exploring the dramatic and comedic potential of that template. Den-O gets at it early, but resolves into a friendship fairly quickly. Go-Busters keeps the tension to a minimum, outside of a few short stories, to focus on the bond of family between the cast. Ryuki has it with the Contract Monsters, but they don’t really have enough character to be a part of the narrative. But OOO! OOO is the show where a disembodied hand outwits a well-meaning vagabond, as the best Henshin sounds in any series ever try to distract from the peril. It’s hard not to just talk about Ankh and Eiji, even this early. The beats land instantly – Eiji’s eagerness to defend a disembodied hand from a monster made out of impulses, Ankh’s quick decoding of Eiji’s eagerness to create a patsy that can secure his future, and the low-level animosity that dances with the enthusiasm of defeating a shared foe. The instant chemistry of this series, man! Eiji immediately buys into what’s happening here, to a gloriously absurd degree, which is maybe the only way this premiere episode could fit in a complete adventure, tons of series setup, and the actual full opening title sequence. You can only do that in 20-odd minutes if your hero jumps in with a smile on his face, ready to make some new connections. I love that little idea floating through this episode, that meeting anyone new, experiencing anything new, is an objective good. Kougami being excited for the Greeed’s appearance because it’s something brand-new in the world, Eiji’s willingness to defend a cop he had one conversation with that morning and a mildly terrifying disembodied hand that is maybe mugging him because he’s known them for all of a few minutes and that’s enough for him to want to help them… I love that. I love how Eiji’s simplicity and guilelessness never looks like childishness or stupidity; it’s charmingly direct heroism, full stop. But it’s the monster story aspects that made this episode pop for me, beyond the promises of the start of an indelible partnership over a year-long serial. The violence was unexpected, for one thing – the Greeed wiping out a platoon of Kougami Mooks (Ridevendor something-or-others; they’re Mooks) while a haunting orchestral version of Happy Birthday plays? That’s some dark stuff, despite the trappings of monster suits and vending machine motorbikes. (I love how the bonkers Kougami gear is, like, the first toku thing this show introduces. Why not!) But the Greeed’s immediate goals of reconstituting their bodies is a nice way of grounding the early battles and minor adversaries that a levelling-up hero needs to interact with. I get what these four villains are trying to do, and giving them all the same We’re Just Getting Started energy as the heroes is more appealing to me than a show where an implacable adversary is cackling from a fortress, waiting for a hero to get 40 episodes of power-ups under its henshin device and make a run at defeating him/her/them. I like that the Greeed are introduced as weak as OOO, you know? OOO the hero, not OOO the show; show isn’t weak at all! There’s so much energy in just this first episode, with an emphasis on embracing new experiences and fighting for new friends -slash- manipulative disembodied hands. Loved it all, especially that theme song. It grew on me! (But, boy, that OOO Driver jingle is just where my love lies the most. TA TO BA! TATOBA TATOBA!) ![]() |
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#3 |
Echoing Oni
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,606
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Looks like I picked the right day to pre-emptively copy my OOO folder off the external hard drive.
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#4 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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There's no wrong day! As long as you've got your OOO folder on an internal drive and the underwear you're going to wear tomorrow, you're all set.
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#5 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 11,354
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Not too sure if it applies to all of her sentai shows as well at the moment other than Go-Busters, but yes for her rider shows looking back now. Ryuki had Shinji and Ren, Den-O had Ryotaro and Momo (or would it be Yuuto in this case?), OOO had Eiji and Ankh.
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![]() Last edited by Sunred; 01-17-2025 at 01:22 AM.. |
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#6 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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I just... I'm not sure if I'd put Ren and Shinji in the same bucket as the other partnerships? That's more of your standard Rider pairing; arguably the template for your standard Rider pairing. (Agito toyed with that stuff, but there wasn't a ton of cross-pollination between the Shoichi and Ryo parts.) With the Kobayashi partnerships I'm thinking of, it's all about forced partnerships, or contracts. Even Go-Busters is like These Are Your Assigned Guardians, rather than a conscious choice made by a group of children. The Contract Monsters are the Ryuki iteration of all of that in my mind, not terribly different in concept than the Imagin of Den-O, if not wildly different in personality and narrative utility.
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#7 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 11,354
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Quote:
I just... I'm not sure if I'd put Ren and Shinji in the same bucket as the other partnerships? That's more of your standard Rider pairing; arguably the template for your standard Rider pairing. (Agito toyed with that stuff, but there wasn't a ton of cross-pollination between the Shoichi and Ryo parts.) With the Kobayashi partnerships I'm thinking of, it's all about forced partnerships, or contracts. Even Go-Busters is like These Are Your Assigned Guardians, rather than a conscious choice made by a group of children. The Contract Monsters are the Ryuki iteration of all of that in my mind, not terribly different in concept than the Imagin of Den-O, if not wildly different in personality and narrative utility.
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#8 |
Some guy. I'm alright.
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: Michigan
Posts: 4,948
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I won't be following along this time, as OOO is a show that I wanna revisit on my own terms. That particular pair if underwear is being saved for a later date. Hope you have fun though!
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#9 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,953
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Quote:
Anyway, it's nice to see OOO having the chance to chance to impress you all over again. I can definitely relate to the feeling of burning through one of these shows so fast everything except how much you enjoyed it immediately becomes a blur, even if that's not OOO in my case. No, OOO is, as I've probably mentioned in your threads somewhere before, my very first Rider show, since I got into Rider when it was airing, but in part because of that, it's also a Rider show I've just never appreciated the way other people seem to? Like, this premiere was literally the first ever episode of Kamen Rider I watched, but most of what I still remember about that night is watching Kuuga? Not that I'd want to downplay how strong a premiere it is, though, for reasons I probably don't need to explain to anyone. Fitting your idea of OOO maybe being the best because it's maybe the "least wrong" Rider show, I think pretty much anyone would struggle not to be charmed at least a little by everything going on here.
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#10 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,725
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Ah, OOO. The show where I couldn’t decide if I wanted to watch it or Fourze next (it was also one of my early ones, having watched Zi-O, Drive, Decade and Gaim beforehand. And I started Faiz and Kiva during my watch of this one). I went with both, and ended up finishing this one first due to how I pace my watches.
I’ll save my overall thoughts for when it’s appropriate, but as for the episode, I remember being distinctly confused by a lot of stuff, like why a hobo was living in the museum. And there’s some things about the actors that surprised me to read about them. Ryosuke Miura (who plays both Ankh and the poor bugger he possesses): You’d think the Ankh hair was a wig, while the detective is his natural hair, but nope. Other way round. Hina: Despite looking older (and being treated for all intents and purposes as an adult by the narrative), the actress was only 14 when she began working on the series. Mezool’s actress is similarly young, which is probably why she spends a notable amount of time transformed into a monster voiced by a different actress. |
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