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Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Kabuto
Hi. My name's Kamen Rider Die, and this is a thread where I'm going to watch Kamen Rider Kabuto for the first time. I'll be talking about my experience with each episode, and hopefully you'll want to talk about your experience with each episode. Let's see how that goes!
This is somewhere between the eighth and eightieth one of these threads that I've done. We have officially reached an amount of these threads such that I no longer feel like digging through the forum to find the links. Trust me, they're there. I started off doing half of Ghost on a lark, and now I've done enough of these that the time spent not working on them is the aberration. It's weird. I'm weird. I am excited to start Kabuto, though. I know one thing about it, Clock Up. I honestly don't know if that's a big thing or a small thing, though. It's a factoid, maybe? I guess I'll find out. I'll be finding out everything about it, in the next few weeks. This is... it's a fun point in the process. Specifically I mean writing this post. I do this part a few days (usually) before I start watching the show, so this is like the orchestra tuning up. Flexing those critical-analysis muscles, some. But also just getting used to... I don't know, turning off the tiny part of my brain that acts as a filter. Just, like, typing, and not getting in my own way with it. Having fun with self-expression. It's nice to get back to. And, since we're getting back to one of these Kamen Rider Die Watches threads, some ground rules and requests, just for clarity's sake. PLEASE DON'T POST ANY SPOILERS ABOUT KABUTO: Like I said up top, I haven't watched anything from Kabuto. I like being able to watch these shows as cold as possible, so please try not to mention anything from episodes I haven't posted about. If you can, please don't even hint about what's to come, because that gets me expecting things I'd rather be surprised by. Spoiler tags are also a no-go for me, since the notification emails TokuNation sends out don't block a spoiler. Like, I will get an email that says SPOILER here is a big plot point that someone put in a spoiler tag END SPOILER. It's a bummer. It's not meant to be a bummer (it's meant to be the opposite of a bummer!), but it's a bummer. Please, no Kabuto discussion beyond the episodes I've covered. PLEASE DON'T POST ANY SPOILERS FOR SHOWS I HAVEN'T WATCHED YET: I'll eventually be covering whatever Heisei and Reiwa shows I haven't watched yet, so please try not to mention anything from those shows. Those include Den-O, Kiva, Decade, Zi-O, Zero-One and Saber. If you can just, like, table that discussion for 2021-2022 (I cannot believe I just typed that), you'll be doing me a solid. Thanks in advance! I MAY SPOIL SHOWS OUTSIDE OF KABUTO: Not maliciously or anything, but if it seems to be a parallel to what's going on in Kabuto? Yeah, sure. Consider this a warning if you haven't watched Kuuga through Hibiki and W through Build. I DON'T KNOW WHY I WRITE THIS WAY: I tried to frame these threads as accurately as I could in the first paragraph. These are me experiencing Kabuto. I'm not reviewing them, exactly, nor am I recapping them. I just watch one, and then talk about what it was like to watch it. Sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're frustrated, sometimes they're confessional, rarely are they insightful. (Like, two or three episodes each series at most.) Almost everything is a first draft. That is probably not to everyone's taste! If you're already sick of reading this, you are probably not going to love this thread. If this works for you, though, expect more over the next few weeks. I HONESTLY JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT KABUTO: All of this is in service of maintaining a discussion. I'm sharing what I get out of these episodes with the hope that you'll feel like sharing what you got out of them. (Also, my brain just needs to process this shit publicly? I don't know why, either.) If you just want to lurk, that's cool. But the absolute best part for me is getting to hear what these shows mean to other people, so I'm grateful to anyone who wants to express themself. I can never remember if that's everything. I think it is? I've done so many of these and my memory is just nowhere. Feels like everything. Let's say it is, along with the hopefully unnecessary reminder to keep treating everyone as well as you always do on TokuNation. You're great people. Keep it up! Thank you for sitting through all of that. As a reward, what do you say to an episode of Kamen Rider Kabuto? Let's walk the path of Not Heaven But Not Hell Maybe A Limbo-ish Thing That's Mostly Pleasant! https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kabuto/kabuto00.png |
KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 01
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../kabuto01a.png SOME GOOD I like Tendou. He's an interesting protagonist (I'm assuming!) so far. His introduction is all about his zen nature, his clarity of purpose, his ability to focus on his own responsibility rather than the actions of others. It's a neat idea, him being all about the achievement of personal excellence as an inherent good for society. I like it mostly because we see a couple shadings of it here that don't... he doesn't come across as The Best Dude always, and I think that's fun to develop? There's a kindness to him (the scene with his sister), an aloofness to him (the scene with Kagami), and even a judgmental aspect to him (snapping at the vendors for not doing their job, basically his whole Henshin). There's a complexity there that feels like a nice counter to Hibiki's more straight-forward personality. Tendou feels like a character I'm barely scratching the surface of, while still feeling like I'm rooting for him. Pretty good first appearance! -- It helps that this episode just looks gorgeous. There's a great use of light through Tendou's various scenes, keeping him illuminated to a degree that I don't really doubt his divinity. He's frequently bathed in light: the living room of his house has windows everywhere; the garage might as well be on the surface of the sun; and that Henshin scene is him practically enveloped in sunlight. The camera tricks deployed to sell the Worms' Clock Up abilities are always always fun. It's nothing that needs CG, which is why I adore it. It's just body doubles and edits, but characters suddenly appearing in new places is... I'm just a fan of it? It's such a great Oh Shit technique, and I never get tired of it. Some guy is halfway down a block, the camera pans around, and now he's behind the POV character? That's the sort of stuff I love to see, how a show can create atmosphere and tension through practical effects. The rest of the episode looks like a million bucks, too. Not a very showy set of camera moves or anything, but coherent edits and perfect angles and great blocking and solid tracking and and and. Incredibly professional work that may not match the lyrical quality of Hibiki's opening, but has a technical precision that feels like a leap forward. -- Which is good, because the action in this episode is of a much larger scale than Hibiki's One Guy Versus Two Guys thing. There are dozens of Zectroopers (with their Riderman gauntlets!) and multiple Worms (who turn into spiders, because Kamen Rider Premiere), and that's before you even get to the Kamen Rider showing up at the end. The first fight reminded me a lot of the Amazons premiere, where the tactical nature gets full focus, setting up the organization that'll support/contrast with the more singular nature of the title hero. It's a neat way to set up the stakes, to see a well-armed, well-trained crew of elite killers just get demolished by the lowest-level monsters. The Zectroopers aren't chumps, but they sure get chumped out in a hurry. But that's a) still fun to watch, and b) super helpful to make Kabuto's somewhat brief fight at the end still deliver. He's in a Husky Kabuto suit, so he's clearly not even at full strength/speed yet, but he beats the Worm with clever actions rather than brute force. The trick of bouncing his targeting lasers (?) off of mirror shards to locate the Worm, man. Man! I love it. I love it because it undercuts some of the Chosen One stuff I'd normally dislike by showcasing how prepared Tendou is to be Kabuto. He's someone whose entire existence has been about this role, and that dedication pays off. It's not a huge fight, but it's a smart fight, and I maybe prefer that? -- Overall, just a smart episode with how it's telling its story. The opening has an otherworldly sadness to it, full of pain and portent. Then you move into a nightmarish sequence of being killed and replaced by a doppelganger. Then there's a paramilitary raid. Then a moment of danger, resolved with bizarre humor and nonchalance. Then familial warmth. Then training, then action, then heroism. Every scene flows into the next with focus, with care. Nothing feels unnecessary, or irrelevant, even as you're certain that some small touches will take on greater importance later. It's a very watchable premiere. SOME LESS GOOD Although it could stand to be more fun? There's only one scene that even vaguely approaches Funny, and that's the Tendou introduction. Even that's, like... I didn't laugh at it, you know? I admired the playfulness of it, but that's the most I felt. Everything else is very dour, very serious. It's cool if that's the direction the production team wanted to go in, but I'm not sure I'm going to love that. I definitely want my Kamen Rider to be more bonkers, more wacky, and that doesn't feel like what Kabuto is? I don't know. Maybe there'll be more lightness, more comedy down the line. This one was a very dark premiere, and those aren't going to be my favorite. -- As a whole episode... I don't think it does anything wrong, and any complaints I'd have are going to be of the It's Not What I Ordered But I'll Still Eat It variety, but this wasn't a blast to watch. It's technically proficient, and solidly written, but all of the ZECT stuff is not what I watch Kamen Rider for. I can get through it, and it doesn't ruin the show for me, but Organizational Kamen Rider is not really my favorite template. Personal preference, for sure, but that's not where my enjoyment lies. A QUESTION Hoping to spur some direct discussion off of these episodes, so we're going to try some episode-specific questions for y'all. Kicking things off, how do we feel about not seeing the full Rider suit in the first episode? Feels chancy to me, and slightly misguided. I think the bare minimum a Rider show should deliver is the Rider's base suit in Episode 1. At a minimum! (I'd actually prefer it if the suit showed up before the final scene, but I get that that's maybe asking a lot.) Are you okay with only getting Husky Kabuto in this one? https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../kabuto01b.png |
I actually don't mind the show not showing the full suit all that much in the first episode. It helps build suspense and mystery. I know Kamen Rider is a kid show and they have to sell toys but this approach is alot more restrained and I like that it helps keep the pacing at a decent speed without going all out on the blantet toy shilling.
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Would you be okay with them not showing the hero Henshin at all in the first episode? Or would that be too much? |
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Fun fact, Kabuto shares a few traits with the Showa era rider Kamen Rider Stronger; they are both modeled after rhinoceros beetles and both are the 7th rider to appear in their respectful era. |
Kabuto not using his default form in the first episode is atypical but not completely unique. Kuuga was stuck in Growing Form and Ryuki was stuck in Blank Form for their first episodes since they hadn't unlocked their default forms yet. In Kabuto's case, he could use his default form if he wanted to but Heisei Phase 1 is a little slower at showing new forms. If EX-Aid had aired a decade earlier than it did, Level 2 might have debuted in the second episode as well. I think leaving Rider Form's debut until the second episode adds some more suspense to it, so it will be more awesome when he finally uses it. Tendo is something of a minimalist, unlike most Primary Riders, he uses what he has to in the moment.
I would like to mention one thing I love about Kabuto is NEXT LEVEL, my third favorite OP in Heisei Rider! The show actually starts out pretty good and surprisingly apocalyptic with the Meteor of 99. |
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Well this is the earliest I’ve ever showed up to one of these threads.
Anyway, my running thing for this thread will be to discuss the similarities between this show’s riders and their inspirations (and also share comments I made on the episodes and movie online when I watched this show for the first time). Kamen Rider Kabuto - Kamen Rider Stronger. (Beetle) Both are the 7th Riders of their respective eras. Both have something of an ego. Both have a fairly prickly relationship with their co-stars (Tackle/Kagami) Both refuse to associate with the main benefactor for other Riders (Tachibana/ZECT). And also ZECTroopers/AriCommandos. (The henchmen for Neo-Shocker from the 1979 Kamen Rider) (Ants). Both are primarily black. Both are disposable cannon fodder. And that’s all I can say about those without getting too spoiler-y. Anyway one thing I’d recommend with this series is watching the scenes that come after the “next time” trailers for some episodes. |
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And, yep, great opening song! Probably cover that more next time. |
Question to Die, The opening theme. Yay or nay? Personally I consider it the best out of the 20 Heisei Riders. Really fits well with the show I think.
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We're finally here, huh? Honestly I'm still not over you getting as far as Blade, so starting a Kabuto thread still absolutely has me in a "huh, what?!" frame of mind!
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Kabuto... not a series I have an awfully large amount of good memories with, but the ones that are good really stick, and I have to agree about the fight scenes. Wonderfully unique sense of style; that's what people often praise Wizard for, but for me Kabuto is the season all about that. It's always doing something creative with Clock Up and all its physical elements, and the sound design associated with it is incredibly iconic. |
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But thanks! I'll try and keep this one fun for folks. Quote:
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Kabuto will be a really fun one for me, because it's long been my Least Favorite Heisei Rider Show By Default. It's not that I consider it the worst or anything, it just hasn't left a huge impact on me, despite the cool designs still being the talk of the town when I was getting into Rider, and very much up my alley as someone who loves both insect-themed Riders AND heroes that go real fast. It's just some weird personal thing I can't explain logically, but what I remember the most about watching Kabuto was that I did it during Wizard in a period where I remember legitimately wondering if my recent interest in tokusatsu was starting to wane. Which is hilarious to think about in retrospect, when I later decided Wizard was my favorite Rider show and am still so into this franchise years later I've written tens of thousands of words about why Kuuga is the bomb – but at that moment, coming off of a year of constant excitement with Fourze and the shows I was catching up on then, I just wasn't feeling Rider as much in that weird little window of time, and Kabuto has always stayed a show I don't feel super passionate about one way or the other. It's something I'd love to watch again and reevaluate one of these days, now that I put way more thought into these things, but unless something in here seriously spurs me to watch along, I don't think I'll be doing that quite yet. Unless I decide to. Ah man, now I'm already considering it... Well, however that works out, I'll be looking forward to your insight as always, Die! Also, I love that we only get chonky Kabuto in the premiere; Kabuto's gimmick is one of my favorite things about him, and if the show immediately conditioned us to think of it as just something Tendou needs to skip past to do any real fighting, there'd be no point to it. I think it was an odd choice on the surface, but a very smart one. |
If there is one thing this first episode has taught us, tofu is worth the money to wake up super early in the morning and carry it on a stainless steel bowl in all its glory. :lolol
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Speaking of tofu, random tangent, everyone know or heard of inari sushi? That one sushi that is not fish? That is actually fried tofu pocketing rice in case you were wondering what the heck it was last time you went to a sushi joint.
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Okay, here we go.
Kabuto is a show I've been looking forward to because, as I've probably said before, this is one that didn't really stick in my long-term memory. I remember liking it, but a lot of the fine details have bled out over the years (including several character names, which it's nice to see confirmed again). I'm probably going to save my thoughts on the premise and characters until we get to episode two, so let's focus on some production trivia instead! Kabuto's head writer is Shoji Yonemura. This is the only show he served in that role on for its entire run (we'll come back to that in a few threads), but he'd go on to serve a major role as the go-to writer for the spring crossover movies between the current Rider and Sentai shows. His reputation is... not great. In particular, his films are pretty bad about reusing the same plot (heroes pretend to fight to trick villains) a lot. As far as Kabuto goes... at the risk of saying too much, Yonemura seemed to be a writer who focused more on the current arc than on the long term picture. That's kind of hard to assess fairly, though, given some behind the scenes stuff that we'll have to talk about later. Tendou is played by Hiro Mizushima, who would go on to be one of the bigger name actors to graduate from Kamen Rider. He was actually educated in Switzerland and is completely fluent in English (see below). Fans of HBO's Girls will recognize him as the co-worker that one of the main characters (no clue, never watched it) dated while working in Japan, making him one of the very few Rider alumni to crossover to the American market (the only other one I know of is Blade's Mika Hijii/Orchid Undead, who was in a cheap direct-to-dvd ninja movie). Quote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyBaO8yO7Qc (No real spoilers here; it's from a series of promos for the movie and half the actors in it are from that) |
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Ah, kabuto. That's gonna be fun.
It was a really fresh breath of air after Hibiki ended up pretty damn meh for me. Looking forward to this. |
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You know, it's hard to deny my contrarian streak when I feel the need to argue against myself the second I commit an idea to writing. I'm still not entirely sure I'll have the time to keep this up, which was the reason I wasn't already taking this thread as a sign the time is right. But, if the show keeps my interest, and I can balance my free time well enough, Fish Sandwich Also Watches Kabuto might just become a recurring feature in this thread. Again, we'll see. For now though, this premiere reminds me a lot of everything I remember feeling about Kabuto. Which is somewhat unfortunately largely down to overall bits of the setting and production rather than anything in the story. I was going to have to say this at some point anyway, but, first of all, oh my gosh do I ever love Kabuto's opening. Next Level is quite the jam and I love it too, but I mean, you could mute it and the visuals would still be some of the coolest and flashiest in the franchise. There's not a shot in there I don't adore, even the ones that don't signify all that much. Ryuuta Tasaki is credited with タイトルバック, which I think means he's responsible for all that silky smooth imagery, but Rider credits aren't totally consistent with the way openings are handled. Hibiki used "OP・演出", for example. Whoever I have to thank for that glorious montage of melodrama, they did a great job. I've also always loved ZECTroopers as a concept; they're pretty much the perfect heroic grunts to get slaughtered by the boatload, with designs that almost look like Riders, but without any of the flashy colors and with a weapon that's way too unwieldy looking to inspire much confidence. I have a similar appreciation for the pupa Worms. Kabuto's monsters have the same designer as the Undead from Blade, and it's these bulky little guys in particular where I feel that same creepy weirdness shines through the most, with the faces covered up by tiny secondary arms as part of the disturbing, vaguely human skeleton shaped design on their torsos. I might go so far as to call them one of the best Rider monsters ever? And I say all this stuff so passionately, but then when it comes to the episode proper, I still feel sort of detached from it? The word that comes to mind for the whole thing is "heavy". There's a sense they were trying to add a huge sense of weight to everything from the action, to the dialogue, to the music, with Kabuto's percussive motif. On an analytical level, I think it's all executed great, but I didn't vibe with any of it all that much. The best example to give is Tendou's introductory scene, which is one of the best any Rider hero has ever gotten. It's so memorable! It's so strange! The contrast it sets up with Kagami is so amazing! ...but again, it doesn't really make me smile or laugh or anything particularly visceral, then or now. Oh, and, while I'm on the topic, since the lack of a TV-Nihon translation note might obscure this: the whole point of Tendou's speech is that "Tendou Souji" literally means "path of heaven, ruler of all". You can uh, kinda tell he was raised to think highly of himself, can't ya? It's something about his character I really love as a concept; the tagline for the show was even "I am justice", which has always been one of my favorites for how blunt it is, sounding straightforward at a glance but actually deeply reflecting what makes Kabuto different than his predecessors. And again, I love all that as a concept. It's an odd feeling trying to say nice things about Kabuto and ending up talking around it instead. Hopefully if I keep up watching along I'll be able to get to the bottom of my strange relationship with this show. For the record, I had a good time with the episode! Usually when I say that it's redundant, but here it might genuinely be hard to tell! I called Kabuto my least favorite "by default" because I've yet to come across a Rider show I don't enjoy to some extent. |
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Talking about Tendou for a minute... I think what I enjoyed most about him is this mix of uncertainty and certainty. He doesn't know what he's meant for, but he knows he's meant for something. The idea of dedicating your life to prepare for a day that you can't predict, to do something you can't define... I think that's fascinating, as a motivation? It's so unique, compared to the various well-trained and dedicated Riders we've been watching recently. |
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While it's debatable, I do not consider Tendou to be the protagonist. He's the main rider, but not the main character.
Similar to Hibiki, we have a point of view character from the beginning who is not a rider and who is arguably the real main character. But it's definitely an opinion with a lot of things against it. |
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Excited to see where their stories go! |
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Yo it’s kabuto time! I’ll be catching up once I finish up my semester next week.
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I think I should mention that while Yonemura is the show’s head writer, Inoue was responsible for the conception of Tendou’s character.
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