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04-21-2022, 12:54 PM | #751 |
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The only part of this episode that?s even worth talking about is in the final few minutes. It?s just the Ren and Shinji stuff, Ren?s death scene and the aftermath. Everything else is terrible, just terrible. Sara?s abilities never make any sense, nor does her plan.
Like Eri below, for Odin... Shiro's actor Kenzaburo Kikuchi also has retired (Iwae?), shortly after his role in Kabuto, so they'd obscure his look in this as likely they also can't get the actor back. As someone who also pulls a sacrilegious take in liking Odin's looks and fighting style more than the likes of Ouja, I also dislike his implementation in battle here, he got kinda a downgrade similar to Ultimate Kuuga's later appearence (though Ultimate Kuuga's far more broken). Here, he's portrayed as someone reliant on 3 Survive cards (when Ryuki Riders are broken among ordinary Riders with 1), and that his Final Vent, which was not shown in the actual series likely to keep the hype (not counting the Dragon Knight or video game ones), is shown in underwhelming way in Odin just sending flaming Goldphoenix to charge, without Odin participating, feels like Advent more too (again, like Ultimate Punch/Kick of later Ultimate Kuuga). The one saving grace was that he still makes use of his teleporting power often, unlike his Dragon Knight counterpart Wrath (just Odin but different name). Otherwise, Tatsuya's the one who put a game kills 12 other people, the amnesia is probably the world's system, not Sara-induced, for the Riders there are some list below, but again I don't know if this is Sara-induced, this is Tatsuya's game. Not all the questions can be answered clearly, but I don't think I want for Sara to be viewed as scapegoat here which seems that you do here (and for her telling the deadline, it's unknown when the game started the Rider War is just much shorter and likely when Sara told them it's the start, not nearing the deadline, it's just short). And regarding Tatsuya, Odin's role was just to show that he's the actual mastermind or something, to manipulate Tatsuya into starting this murder game and gather all the lives he murdered into a mysterious crystal, of which Tatsuya is given false hope that it can be used to save Sara, while he was a pawn for Odin that the gathered life would be used by him, not Tatsuya, to revive his sister again (ignoring the final ending)... Quote:
Ren with his d̶e̶s̶c̶e̶n̶d̶a̶n̶t̶ twin Geiz irl and Ren 'cosplaying' as Geiz (also in this episode): Just too bad that Matsuda doesn't change back his hair to be like Ren's/Geiz's. Quote:
It?s a shame that those moments exist as the payoff to the most relentlessly mediocre Ryuki episodes I?ve ever seen. I couldn?t begin to guess why Inoue would make something so charmless and bleak, only to resolve it with something so humane and generous. My favorite moment in the whole series is Shinji leaving the big New Collectibles fight between Team Zi-O and Odin, to check in on Definitely Couldn?t Get Eri?s Actor Back So Here?s Eri?s Back.
Otherwise, this shows that Eri is fine, so that explains why Ren seems undermotivated before to fight and win, Ren has no need to win the war and save her via the wish, so what he did was also trying to stop the war like Shinji, albeit he's more of a jerk about it. And I think there's nothing wrong of obscuring Eri if the original actress Mahiru Tsubura can't be brought back, though she had more dialogue and voice than I expect. For other Riders' disappearence, there's some good in-universe logic behind them.
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04-21-2022, 01:12 PM | #752 |
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And I feel that RT Ryuki for some reason has less leash for Inoue, leading for something he pulled on the side-medias to surface here (unfortunately, the "true Inoue" as it's he himself without production team) like the Gai Couple. Not something so insolent but Inoue did write 13 Riders too before.
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Actually the reason may be, sadly, this is probably Inoue's spite towards Kobayashi. But their conflict was caused by how Inoue?s father was a writer for Showa Kamen Rider. But Kobayashi hates the values Showa Rider, and most of Ishinomori?s work, help as Kobayashi pushes her own political views in her work. With Ryuki?s premise basically murdering what being a Rider meant by Showa standards, it caused the two to hate each other (s̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶S̶h̶o̶w̶a̶!̶). Might by Ryuki's early infamy at release but very few staff and writers saw it as their favourite, but is still used as inspiration, because it had good ideas executed badly by how Kobayashi and Inoue didn?t like each other and had different concepts for how Ryuki should go.
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04-21-2022, 01:34 PM | #753 |
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RIDER TIME: RYUKI EPISODE 3 - ?ALIVE A LIFE?
Because, man, Ren and Shinji! Why wouldn?t you just build the entire series around their reunion? I get wanting to make it a reward, but why would you make something so miserable that you?d need to reward the audience? Just make something sweet and poignant, like the last five minutes! But over a 90-minute project! As stupidly obvious as Ren Sacrifices Himself For Shinji is as a plotpoint (the main gear for this project was Stupidly Obvious), the actors sell the shit out of the aftermath. Both guys make you feel every second of the past sixteen years, and the missed opportunities that come along with them. If the Tezuka/Jun stuff felt like a hollow excuse for a relationship, these two manage to put onscreen the kind of bond that transcends time and space and life and death and even reality itself. It?s a shame that those moments exist as the payoff to the most relentlessly mediocre Ryuki episodes I?ve ever seen. I couldn?t begin to guess why Inoue would make something so charmless and bleak, only to resolve it with something so humane and generous. My favorite moment in the whole series is Shinji leaving the big New Collectibles fight between Team Zi-O and Odin, to check in on Definitely Couldn?t Get Eri?s Actor Back So Here?s Eri?s Back. It?s the character realizing that these fights are hollow and pointless, so it?s better to spend your time helping people out, honoring their dreams. Odin?s dumb, and the show seems to realize that. But we still get the fight scene, an obligatory and heartless bit of business. That?s sort of the whole series of Rider Time: Ryuki. There?re moments that say that Inoue has as tight a grip on what Kobayashi was trying to accomplish as he ever did guesting on the TV series, but they?re tiny specks in a tapestry of meaningless fights that the script can?t bring itself to try and justify. It's a shame that you didn't enjoy this, since that means this is the second Rider Time series that disappointed you. Hopefully Decade VS Zi-O/Zi-O VS Decade will be more your thing. Quote:
There's also a ton of aspects of the plot that make no sense(why is Kenzaki acting as Odin directly when he can possess whoever -- hell, how is he even still alive?), but that really isn't the important part to me. What is most important is that, ultimately, it feels like alot more emphasis was put into getting the actors back rather than the characters, and that goes against the entire point of reunions like this, I think.
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I guess to make myself more clear, about Tezuka there's another stuff I added above regarding him 'turning back' here. But I also think that Ryuki does establish Tezuka as incorruptible anyway, but even if he does get tempted, what he did was the same as the most depraved Riders did in Ryuki, the likes of Scissors and Ouja! And iirc I thought Sento and Katsuragi was about personality split (and when they reunited again it's about them clashing through different personality), and I don't recall Tsukasa intentionally destroying the world, Destroyer of the World can be about his power system that caused that. Narutaki is all spiteful towards Decade, but Zi-O got Hiryu taking that role.
I'm disappointed that Die didn't make this one of his screencaps.
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04-21-2022, 01:38 PM | #754 |
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Let's hope! The little I know about it seems agreeably goofy. At the very least, I'm gonna watch Zi-O 29 in a few minutes, and I'm looking forward to that.
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04-21-2022, 05:13 PM | #755 |
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I've been saving my thoughts on Rider Time Ryuki because it's hard for me to really separate them from the ending.
I wanted to like this. Massive reunion of Ryuki characters, including most of the major Riders and that asshole who got punked by Asakura? That premise had a lot of potential. The result, though, was just so disappointing. I don't necessarily mind that the tone was as dark as it is, in concept. Ryuki was a show that definitely had some bleak elements to it, and a lot of them were probably things that got accentuated when consigned to long-term memory, too. I can definitely see how Inoue, always a lover of intense pathos, would want to do something that really called back to the darker and more emotional moments of Ryuki. This is a miniseries that took Imperor's death as its tonal cornerstone, basically. And that's fair; probably more accurate than basing itself off of Kitaoka stealth-transforming in a canoe as far as memorable Ryuki moments go. It still doesn't feel very good, though. My core problem with the miniseries is that it seems like the whole thing is predicated on taking Ryuki's sad, bittersweet ending and deciding that the characters forgetting everything - good and bad - wasn't miserable enough. So we get stuff like evil Tezuka, which is easily the most misguided take on a returning character that I've ever seen in this medium. And we get Ren turning his back on Eri, the love of his love and main motivation on the show, for 17 freaking years because he vaguely feels like something is missing (besides the original actress). And, of course, then everybody just fucking dies at the end. Again, but without the reset. It's just so relentlessly and needlessly bleak, even by Ryuki standards. The fact that the show held off on Ren and Shinji's reunion so long, and then made it so short, also felt like a massive misjudgment. You get these two characters back and the audience is going to want to see them together. That's the highlight of the entire miniseries and the two reconnecting and remembering their time together or even becoming friends again under new circumstances would have been a much more enjoyable use of the show's time. The final moment itself was still good, but we could have had so much more of them together. And that's Rider Time Ryuki for me: a lot of wasted potential that had a really bad read on what parts of the show really made it good. If only Zi-O could find a way to take a show's original characters and use them in a manner that felt organic, true to the show's spirit, and like it really built off of the original story. That's something I would be much happier to Turn Up for. |
04-21-2022, 05:13 PM | #756 |
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(Fish Sandwich also watched Rider Time: Ryuki)
...And Fish Sandwich didn't like it, either! I mean, geez, I really tore into this thing to a level I sort of regret, so, starting off with one positive thing I can say about this mini-series -- it was one of the eight million motivations that lined up to make me do my whole Kobyashi-thon rewatch of Ryuki, Den-O, and OOO only a couple months after that. Naturally, I eventually got back to this series as part of that, where I gave it a much less scathing critique: Quote:
Rider Time: Ryuki:
Bringing things full circle for the last appearance Ryuki's going to make in these posts. Again, part of the reason I rewatched Ryuki in the first place was basically to do some exposure therapy with Inoue's take on it, so how did that change my opinion on this? Eh, not that much. It's strange, because as I've rediscovered going back through it, all the Ryuki stuff he wrote before, I either consider legitimately good, or at least a fun guilty pleasure, but there are just too many things I still feel are wrong here for me to feel comfortable calling it anything resembling good. Even if I choose to actively ignore how upset I am about seeing Raia as a traitorous killer, that scene where him and Shibaura stab whatever the new Scissors' name is is one of the most edgelord things Inoue has ever written. The bizarre, pointless symbolism(?) of cutting to shots of the meat they're eating and everything, it's just too weird. Too many things are too weird. I also still can't make sense of how it's meant to fit in with either Ryuki or Zi-O. The only true closure I've found in this is reconfirming that I'll always have a strange love-hate relationship with Inoue's writing, and that I should just accept it. Sometimes he makes weird things I love, and sometimes he makes OOO's portion of Movie War Core, which, for the record, is infinitely worse than this could ever be. I do feel like I see a bit more where he was going with some of the plot points now (like Shinji mistaking Geiz for Ren and then not getting to participate in the final fight at all being some kind of a passing the torch thing), and maybe there's more to the story than I was giving it credit for, but at the end of the day, it simply isn't something I'm satisfied with. Which makes me feel greedy, you know? Because Toei was not under any obligation to essentially make three more episodes of Ryuki over a decade and a half after the show ended, and I don't like taking that for granted. There are tons of cool things in here. It's neat seeing everybody's Final Vent with fancy modern effects. It's awesome that they used the background music from the original show. It's fun that Inoue threw in little references like Shinji once again mixing up Ren's name. There are things to love here, and one day I think I will eventually make peace with Rider Time: Ryuki, even if only by doing what I do for Episode Final and turning my brain off when I watch it. Probably not like this, unfortunately. I really hope Die wasn't counting on my usual reckless optimism about tokusatsu to pull through here, because I really don't have any particularly redemptive reading of Rider Time: Ryuki. When I first watched it, I was legitimately a little heartbroken because of how much Ryuki means to me, which you can probably tell reading what I had to say about it at the time. Tezuka in particular, man, that guy is just so deep in my heart, and it was downright painful watching all of that thrown away, for what came off to me as shock value for shock value's sake. Inoue even wrote some of Tezuka's coolest moments in the series! He wrote Tezuka literally reaching out a hand to Shinji in episode 16! He knows these characters! And it's in trying to understand why he'd write this anyway, that I still came to the conclusion there just isn't any thematic heft to this thing I really feel justifies all the off-putting choices it makes. Which is why even my nicer review is still distinctly lukewarm on the story. To be honest, the comparison Die drew to Amazons talking about the second episode really rubbed me the wrong way, even. Both seasons of that show, and to an extent, even the movie I know Die doesn't like, I can say without hesitation that they all gave me something to think about after. Three times in a row, I went in skeptical of the kind of edgy story they were trying to tell, and came out by the end feeling like there was some legitimate point or another being made, or an idea being explored in an interesting way. As sad as it is to say, I've just never felt the same way about this mini-series. That scene with Ren and Shinji is pretty well done, though. Quote:
Kobayashi's vision for the finale of Kamen Rider Ryuki was for the Rider War to end with all the Riders dead after Ren used his wish to save Eri. Unfortunately, executives overruled her and forced the reset to happen, undoing an entire show's worth of character development.
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04-21-2022, 07:59 PM | #757 |
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It's the Reaper's Ga- I mean the Rider War! I've just got back from watching this, and...
Have to agree that this wasn't that good... Especially since Ryuki itself feels like everything wrapped up perfectly, moreso than other Rider shows that leave room for another adventure, Ryuki is the whole thing. End of story. So naturally, Rider Time Ryuki does indeed sour the whole thing. Now even though my watch of Ryuki was somewhat recent (I say and that was actually more than a year ago), though admittedly some things slip my memory, I can say I could see what they might have been going for, but I doubt even by pulling them off better would have made any difference. I get that the cast has amnesia, so maybe they wanted to try doing the characters from different angles, but to rather poor degree as they end up remembering anyway, which only leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It also clearly doesn't work as Shinji is still very much the same personality-wise, including a few of the others. This even fails as a Zi-O Legend Rider tribute, as Ryuki's power is extremely disappointing (they should have just rigged that Ryuki Armor or something), and Shinji doesn't really interact with them all that much, though I do like how he thought Geiz was Ren for a moment. For some positive notes: this has that Heisei Phase 1 vibe, and Ryuki's atmosphere down to the letter, with the soundtrack as a bonus. It is great to see returning faces, though unfortunately, a lot of them mean nothing in the end, which is a shame. And the fight choreography was pretty good, but the opening fight was definitely my favorite, next being Ryuki Vs Another Ryuki (who might I add love his design, especially how Another Ryuga and Ryuki are mirrored). There were a lot of nice Shinji and Ren (love how he called him "Ron") scenes, a glimpse of Eri, and seeing how Tatsuya's (funny how his name also has something to do with dragons) story is basically Ren's. But once again, there's so much disappointment in this package, like Abyss appearing for a brief cameo before getting killed, same with Odin, who's fight felt more like a parody in the grand scheme of things, and that the whole Reunion Rider War felt pointless. Honestly, I have to take Shinobi as the best Rider Time Special, since while the recreation and Modern Ryuki vibes are something I loved, this special just doesn't work, because Ryuki wove something with a beginning, a middle, and an end, even the Ryuki specials had more purpose than this, which is a shame, since they pretty much brought back the whole cast with guests. Honestly it would've been more hilarious if it was just the Riders trying to win over Femme in a Bachellorette Rider War. |
04-21-2022, 08:25 PM | #758 |
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04-21-2022, 09:20 PM | #759 |
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To be honest, the comparison Die drew to Amazons talking about the second episode really rubbed me the wrong way, even. Both seasons of that show, and to an extent, even the movie I know Die doesn't like, I can say without hesitation that they all gave me something to think about after. Three times in a row, I went in skeptical of the kind of edgy story they were trying to tell, and came out by the end feeling like there was some legitimate point or another being made, or an idea being explored in an interesting way. As sad as it is to say, I've just never felt the same way about this mini-series.
I actually really like the first season of Amazons. Like, TAKAYAMA JIN. Maybe my favorite Secondary Rider of all time? I love that dude's arc in Season 1, and the actor is impossibly magnetic. And, yeah, I also found the show itself to be pretty fun. It was the second Kamen Rider thing I ever watched, after Ex-Aid, so I'm sure I'd find a lot more of value in it if I watched it today. The second season... eh, I didn't love the back half. That movie actually ruined my Christmas. Quote:
I get that the cast has amnesia, so maybe they wanted to try doing the characters from different angles, but to rather poor degree as they end up remembering anyway, which only leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It also clearly doesn't work as Shinji is still very much the same personality-wise, including a few of the others.
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04-21-2022, 09:41 PM | #760 |
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KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 29 - “BLADE JOKER 2019”
I don’t know if it’s just the proximity to a Kamen Rider story I intensely disliked, but I thought this episode was just about perfect. It’s exceptionally funny, which helps a lot. A delightful 20-odd minutes of tokusatsu. Some of it’s fun physical gags, like Sougo and Geiz realizing five seconds into their Henshin sequences that Kaitou has stolen all of their Ridewatches. Some of it’s the thinly-disguised passive-aggression bubbling up in the expanded Team Zi-O, like when Woz gently suggests that Sougo not attempt to puzzle out the proper temporal conjugation for Geiz and Woz’z backstory. But a lot of it is the almost Blade-like energy of this collection of well-meaning idiots, and how success is never that far from failure. The minute I was like Oh Yeah Blade wasn’t when we saw Amane, which was great. It wasn’t when we saw Hajime, surrounded by photos in his wee little cabin, which was great. It wasn’t when we saw Actual Blade, Kenzaki himself, looking like he’d just had to tell Tachibana that the Puzzle Buffet was closed, which was great. (Not, uh, great for Kenzaki, obviously.) It was when Tsukuyomi asked Sougo what their plan was for finding Kamen Rider Blade, and Sougo realized he’d forgotten to think of one. That’s the energy I think of when I think of Blade’s series: how continuously bad at this everyone but Hajime was. Sure, Tachibana was an insect-themed dumpster fire, but Kenzaki and Team Blade were never particularly great at their jobs, either. That was their charm, though. They came across as scrappy underdogs, a collection of survivors and good samaritans who made up for their lack of training with a need to do better than they did yesterday, to meet every setback as a learning experience. The other big part of Blade is how proximity can forge bonds, even if you’d prefer they didn’t, and that’s where Team Zi-O finds itself in this episode. Woz and Geiz are already at each other’s throats, and it’s been maybe twelve hours. There’s plenty of history there (even if I’m certain we’ll discover that Woz didn’t purposefully get dozens of people murdered), and it’s hard for Geiz to let his anger go, because: Geiz. But there’s a point where Geiz brushes aside Diend’s claim that Geiz and Woz are friends by saying that, No, they’re roommates. It’s a tiny detail, and a funny comeback, but I think it gets to the weird sense of found family the best Kamen Rider shows have. It can sometimes be happenstance that puts people into each other’s orbits, and good things can develop from that. Weirdly, even found families sometimes don’t get to pick who’s in them. This was a great episode for fleshing out the new dynamic of Team Zi-O, as well as Hat Woz’z more direct villainy, but it sure didn’t skimp on the Legend Rider requirements. Amane’s return, and how this episode centered its story on her connection with Hajime, is maybe my favorite Legend Rider decision this show has ever made. (I love her little Heart Playing Card necklace!) It’s sort of the flipside of how we can create bonds unknowingly: what happens when we have to leave those circumstances? Exploring what happened between Hajime and Amane in the years after Blade ended is, seriously, right up my alley. Less up my alley is Kenzaki’s return, if only for how absolutely bonkers Kenzaki’s various post-Blade appearances have been. Hajime’s return is relatively clean, since the actor hasn’t (to my memory) returned to the character since Blade’s final episode. (He did play a tiny cop dad in a Den-O movie, though!) But Kenzaki’s popped up, like, a half-dozen times, and the Blade suit itself has appeared almost yearly in Phase 2 Heisei projects. I feel like Kenzaki can’t actually mean that he hasn’t used his powers since the end of the TV show, because that is empirically false. While some movies could be considered non-canonical (Heisei Generations Forever, give or take a W Ridewatch), he’s cropped up enough times to have at least one of them be canon, and that’s not even counting appearances in Gorider and Decade. I honestly hope that Episode 30 opens with Hajime immediately calling Kenzaki out on his bullshit. Other than that, this was terrific. Diend’s doing his normal charming thievery and armchair analysis, as well as matching Tsukasa for post-series sartorial excellence. (That white coat over black outfit! So good!) We’re getting some backstory on Woz and Geiz, but not at the expense of modern-day interactions. The action’s shot beautifully, with the Geiz/Woz/Accel/Birth/Diend fight being especially gorgeous. (I did laugh when Diend’s like Let’s See How You Do Against These Speedy Riders, and he summoned Accel and Birth. Is… Birth considered particularly speedy? Was he thinking of Mach? Mach was pretty speedy!) I like divvying up the cast into Geiz/Woz, and Sougo/Tsukuyomi, since those pairings rarely occur on this show nowadays, if they ever did. Whole thing was super rewarding. Funny, clever, exciting, and emotionally rich. Very excited for the conclusion!
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