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#21 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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You know, like a new Kamen Rider series. |
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#22 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 11,354
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Ankh is one of the show's best characters and Miura does such an amazing job of bringing him to life. I'm not the world's biggest Eiji fan, but Ankh is still one of my favorite Kamen Rider characters of all time (another one of those all-timers is also from this show, but we're going to have to wait a bit).
Side note, for those who want to see what pre-Ankh Miura was like, enjoy. Skip to 00:34 if you want to see his part right away.
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#23 |
Echoing Oni
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,606
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#24 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2020
Posts: 1,454
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I think it's more that he sees Eiji's virtue as a thing he can leverage to get what he wants. Ankh needs Eiji's immediate participation, so he tells the empathetic, slightly-reckless hero that Hey, You Gotta Defeat This Monster. Like, it's a thing Ankh would find weak, but it's also a button he can push in Eiji to get what he wants. And the Greeed are all about manipulating the desires of others to get they want!
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KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 2 - “DESIRE, ICE CREAM, AND A PRESENT”
That’s what makes OOO such a perfect series to me, the way it never feels precious with its narrative. Storytelling in OOO is like Cell Medals: The actions of the characters are always creating more to be harvested, so don’t worry about gorging yourself right now. A subplot where one female character lives in blissful-if-infuriating ignorance while The Boys go off and have Kamen Rider adventures might be the sort of thing another show would lean on for a dozen episodes – Gavv; I love Gavv, but I hate how the show uses Sachika – but OOO dispatches it with barely a breath of separation, and in the funniest way possible. It’s nothing but delicious cake, all the way through. Quote:
(I honestly... I just sort of didn’t remember Eiji being this cool? I sort of have in my head a picture of him being sort of dopey, or easily misled, but he’s an outstanding scene partner in this episode. Eiji’s harried, and slightly baffled, but he never feels completely overmatched or dimwitted. It’s just the right amount of buy-in to keep the exposition scenes moving without forgetting how bizarre this is all meant to be. The actor nails that tricky balance, and I can’t believe I forgot that.)
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Not a completely perfect episode, though? I completely didn’t care about the Yummy in this; CGI nonsense, boring objective. The finale is cool for showing off the new toys – Gotou is a very menacing child, despite all the gifts – but it doesn’t have much juice to the conflict. The heart of this one’s resolution is all in Eiji asserting his need to protect people over Ankh’s laissez-faire view of monster fattening, which is great, but the Yummy is a generic monster to serve as an obstacle. (Even the human genesis of it is just one of the crooks from last time, comedically repurposed by Uva.) Quickly dispatched, and not terribly clever in its implementation.
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But everything else! Everything else was delightful, and I didn’t even really talk about the goofy interlude where Hina gets a job at Cous Coussier. (Another insane boss on this show!) Loved seeing this episode talk about the ways that desire is both a useful tool for human civilization, while also being easily weaponized into something harmful. I like Kamen Rider stories where the heroes and villains are using essentially the same resource, but view it in diametrically-opposed ways. Smart episode, brilliantly paced.
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The most complete non-wiki encyclopedias for Kamen Rider series (currently only found Ryuki and OOO's). |
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#25 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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Icing what you did there.
I mean, I think it's just my poor memory? I don't remember a lot about this show! |
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#26 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 3 - “CATS, EVOLUTION, AND GLUTTONS”
![]() Our first real two-parter, so let’s try a slightly different format to these posts. CATS: We’ve switched up from the last couple Uva plots into one by Kazari, the Greeed’s cat guy. For all of his prominence in the title, he’s not really present for this story? He kicks it off exactly how Uva did in Episode 2 – random guy gets coin in head, mayhem ensues – and then doesn’t pop up again until the cliffhanger. He doesn’t… he’s not really anything to talk about yet? Beyond Kazari, or only cat character is this episode’s Yummy, and I really liked it. It’s this sort of monstrous Lucky Cat, exploding out of the shredded bandages of the proto-Yummy form. I like how the cheeks of the cat face act as a brow for the human face underneath it, and how the bulk of the Yummy makes for a tougher combatant that Eiji has to strategize around. It made for a fun, if brief, closing battle. EVOLUTION: A lot of time spent in this episode with the Greeed – both Ankh and the more overtly-villainous four – starting to realize that their gameplans from 800 years ago are not going to get the job done against a human civilization that’s progressed significantly while they’ve been asleep. While Kazari is trotting out a parasitic Yummy to gather Cell Medals, Ankh is harvesting Shingo’s knowledge to figure out what parts of human technology can give him the edge. I think Ankh’s prominence in my memory over Eiji has less to do with Eiji’s sweetness than with Eiji's tendency in the narrative to be mostly reacting to Ankh’s cruelty/hilarity. This episode alone is largely just Eiji trying to work around Ankh’s more human-indifferent goals, while Ankh is the one deciding where to go next and how to approach a problem. Eiji’s job is to work within Ankh’s restrictions and push back on Ankh’s imperiousness, which makes for a solid episode of tense conflict between our leads, but definitely gives Ankh the juicier part. Regardless, I think Ankh having an iPhone is just a really fun idea. He seems like the type to get incredibly distracted by the ubiquity of modern human communication! AND GLUTTONS: Because Ankh is, naturally, one of two main gluttons in this episode. The other one is our (I believe) unnamed human victim, who Ankh lacks even the illusion of pity for. There’s a little bit near the end of the episode where Ankh’s objection to safeguarding the human becomes equally about Ankh’s desires for Cell Medals and with the way the human created the circumstances for his own manipulation by the Greeed. Like, this guy was already a glutton, and Kazari just took advantage of it. This guy was probably going to eat himself into an early grave regardless of whether some ancient desire monster pushed him into a rampage, so why bother trying to save him from it? It’s the sort of cold pragmatism we’d expect from our avian asshole, and Eiji’s resistance so far is more about a general belief in human life than a specific counter to Ankh’s worldview, but I’m sure that’ll come in time. The tracks are already being laid for a discussion about how some of the people who least deserve help most need it, and that probably includes Ankh. Ankh, who is absolutely gluttonous this episode when it comes to harvesting Cell Medals. We’re still at a point with Ankh where his blatant contempt for humanity is making his partnership with Eiji horribly ineffective, and threatening both of their objectives. Definitely a good place to leave the first half of a two-parter! ![]() |
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#27 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,725
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At the same time as this episode, Dan Kuroto is mid-breakdown over his dad pushing him too far when a kid in weird clothes freezes time to make him a king…
Anyway, this time, I’m trying to stick to actors who’ve already appeared in something before OOO when discussing the episode cast, but I will say that our victim this week is one Sentai fans will be seeing again 13 years on, in another world. If you get what I’m talking about. Also I think this is the one time OOO does his Rider Kick for TaToBa… and it fails. I’m guessing someone wanted to get it over with. |
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#28 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,508
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I mean, it's also pretty cool? It's neat to get a hint that something's weird right before Kazari (finally) shows up again. It's a cool cliffhanger!
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#29 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 11,354
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#30 |
Echoing Oni
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,606
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I really love Ankh and Eiji's dynamic at the start of the series. Ankh is such a complete bastard but Eiji does a good job of holding his own in their interactions. He's idealistic, but you don't get the sense that he's naive enough (because this isn't Move War Core) to think Ankh has better angels to appeal to.This leads to a lot of creative thinking on his part to work around Ankh rather than with him. I enjoy that.
I also like that the four Greeds have different ways of creating Yummies. One of my favorite old-ish school tokusatsus is Metalder, which had this great concept where the villain had four different armies under his command that were made up of different kinds of monsters. Black RX played around with similar ideas. The Greed aren't quite that divergent (the Yummies share the same aesthetics regardless of origin), but it still adds variety to how an OOO story can play out. Oh shit, it is. I'm 100% with Ankh on this one: let him eat until he explodes. |
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