|
Community Links |
Members List |
Search Forums |
Advanced Search |
Go to Page... |
|
Thread Tools |
07-02-2019, 08:38 PM | #15431 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
|
Now I gotta rewatch Heisei Generations Final and cry about Eiji and Ankh again.
|
07-02-2019, 09:48 PM | #15432 |
Stronger Than You
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: nyet
Posts: 25,327
|
If Blade didn't exist, OOO would easily be my favorite KR series, hands down, basically for all the reasons you pointed out
__________________
|
07-03-2019, 07:37 AM | #15433 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
|
Also Fis Sandwich, you gotta pick out which of those three shows have the best theme song. (I kid because I think we can all tell that Climax Jump has an actual death grip on your heart)
|
07-03-2019, 04:03 PM | #15434 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
|
OOO is a show that I think about rewatching a lot but never get around to doing so. I've had a growing itch to go back and go through Fourze again, though.
|
07-03-2019, 09:15 PM | #15435 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
|
Well, somewhere along the line, I started having so much fun with this that my crazy idea to rewatch all of Kobayashi's Rider shows got even crazier, so now that I'm finished with the shows proper, I'm going to be sweeping up, so to speak, going through whatever other related movies and assorted scraps I also haven't seen in forever. Kougami would no doubt approve of such unbridled desire.
First up are the scrappiest of scraps, the Hyper Battle Video/DVD's for each show, as well as OOO's Net Movies. Don't expect anything too deep out of this one, okay? Ryuki HBV: It's kind of hilarious to think that this was the original Heisei crossover in light of Agito later getting the absolute best tribute in Zi-O. Not that you're expected to treat this like a real team-up, though. Still, just like Ryuki proper, this special establishes trends that are still going strong to this day, namely the cheap, pointless reuse of old suits and soundalike actors that don't actually sound alike. You'd have to be super petty to even waste time complaining about it here, though. It's firmly tongue-in-cheek, and unlike many future HBV's, there's actually an emphasis on the battle part, with the bulk of it being Ryuki and his surprisingly cooperative fellow Riders teaming up to stop Burning Agito's evil plan... whatever that is. Of course, the "real" Agito shows up to help, and together all the heroes save the day, followed by Shinji waking up. Yeah, unfortunately for Shinji, a plot this clear-cut and uncomplicated could only happen in his dreams. Poor guy. Den-O HBV: This one is totally canon to the TV series as far as I'm concerned. Momotaros and the gang were already established to be helping Ryoutarou train anyway, so who's to say they didn't do it with a cheesy exercise video aerobics routine at least one time? Den-O lends itself naturally to doing wacky side stuff like this, and the result is a fun waste of time. A waste of time to watch, that is. Given Den-O's massive popularity at the time, I can appreciate that the exercise gimmick is clearly intended to get children moving the same way ending themes in Sentai do. If you're a little Japanese kid in 2007, and Momotaros tells you to work out, you're going to listen. Plus, you get to see the single funniest gag Den-O ever did with Deneb's inability to notice other Imagin. What more do you need? OOO HBV: This is from the era where HBV's were all about the choose your own adventure style gimmick thanks to the magic of DVD menus. The result in this case consists largely of softball quizzes about animals, which is a rather dull use of the format. I mean, maybe that would be engaging for the target audience, but I have to imagine even a lot of the younger crowd would feel patronized being asked to pick out which of three pictures is a grasshopper when the other two options are a praying mantis and a butterfly. The actual fight scenes with the Kangaroo Medal are definitely fun, but it's a minuscule amount of the overall package. OOO Net Movies: I miss Net Movies so much. They were this haven of absurdist comedy that also tended to allow Toei to acknowledge a lot of meta stuff the fans care about, while also frequently delivering minor but interesting bits of trivia in a way that's going to draw more people in than a straight up guidebook or something. I'm pretty sure nobody knew Faiz's head was pattered after a shark until the Decade Net Movies told them. The .5 episodes for Zi-O sratched that itch to some extent, but it's just not the same. Anyway, OOO is extra special because he got two sets of Net Movies. One for Let's Go Kamen Riders in the spring, and then another for the summer movie after that. The Let's Go Net Movies are loaded with great fanservice. The horoscope shtick is fun, the summaries of each Rider's personality are generally surprisingly on point, and the resulting comedy skits thus land because even with the usual bad soundalikes, the characters actually do feel like themselves. Seeing Rider 1 go off on the modern Riders for not being remodeled humans is just amazing, you know? It's neat to see all these Riders come together in a way that ironically gives them more of a spotlight than the actual big team-up movies do, and my boy Raia gets his own skit, too, so how can I be anything other than satisfied? The only caveat these come with is that there's so many of the things watching them in one sitting starts to drag after a while. So maybe take a break somewhere in there. The ones for the summer movie are probably the slightest bit funnier on average, and the particularly good ones include gags as legendary as GataKiriBa learning the "adult circumstances" behind his lack of screentime. There's also Shuu Watanabe reciting the names of all of OOO's sub-forms (that's over a hundred) in one take, with surprisingly few flubs considering he's basically speaking in repetitive gibberish for two minutes straight. You also get to see how close all of OOO's interior sets are to each other in the process, which makes it even cooler. Honestly, it's a closer race than you might think. All three of them are really great for different reasons.
__________________
|
07-04-2019, 03:33 PM | #15436 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
|
So, following up on my own suggestion I started rewatching Fourze last night. I'm almost certainly not going to do an arc-by-arc recap like Fish Sandwich, but after the first two episodes I am definitely remembering how much I loved this show's characters. I'd forgotten just how delightful Gentaro is and it's nice to see the early version of Yuki again, before she was exposed to too much cosmic radiation and lost her damn mind. I'm looking forward to the rest of the cast getting folded into the KRC and the inevitable arrival of Ryusei.
I remember having some big issues with the show's pacing near the end, but I'm curious to see if that's less of a problem when I a) know it's coming and b) am not watching one episode a week. Another thing I'd forgotten is how good the action is. Taikawa did such a great job playing Fourze as this kind of aggressive but clumsy brawler. I miss the era when Rider fights didn't just consist of dudes standing around throwing CGI at each other (looking at you, Grand Zi-O!). So yeah, glad I decided to go back and watch this again. It's been really hard to watch it without a huge grin breaking out across my face. |
07-04-2019, 08:01 PM | #15437 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
|
13 Riders:
I've always wanted to like this special a lot more than I do. Not that I even dislike it, either. It's a concept that sounds super neat on paper, you know? Like, wow, an hour-long special episode of Ryuki that tells a condensed version of the story and has all the Riders in it! How could it go wrong? A lot of ways, and I don't envy the position Toshiki Inoue was in writing this. It's honestly impressive how much he managed to create a plot that was coherent on its own merits, but the trade off is that there are so many oddities and contradictions when compared to the main series that it comes off like a fever dream anyway. It's generally all in service of keeping the story here simple and tight, but beyond the basic premise it has nothing to do with the show's plot. We get the whole central plot device of the Core Mirror you can apparently conveniently destroy to seal off the Mirror World, which is naturally nowhere to be found anywhere else. Then there's also the way characters who were previously totally independent are altered to fit into nice, manageable groups. There are a few weird things about this. It results in Tezuka being reworked into a guy who seems to be buddies with Ren, who also loves Eri, making this the first instance of Inoue shoehorning in an unnecessary romantic angle to Raia's character, which I guess is just his go-to way to streamline Ryuki scripts in a pinch. Note that he's still opposed to murder here, though. The rest of the Riders aside from Ouja also become this comical gentlemen's fight club, who almost immediately get together and decide they need to all team up to kill Shinji, before his heretical talk of stopping the Rider Battle proves dangerous. Which would be silly anyway, but this is Inoue Shinji we're dealing with. You know, this guy? The one who never gets to do anything remotely competent or cool aside from occasionally doing his finishing move on a Monster? I think you'll be okay, guys. The other glaring flaw to this special is that despite bragging about it right in the title, it still manages to mess up having all the Riders in there, because even with all the work Inoue does to get everybody in there in 44 minutes, he ultimately resorts to having Tiger, Imperer, Femme, Ryuga, and Odin all be reduced to glorified mooks who show up entirely in suit at the very end to get in on beating up Shinji. Now, part of this is down to when 13 Riders aired. Right between episodes 33 and 34. What this means, aside from a pointless cameo appearance by Ryuki Survive a few days before his way cooler actual TV debut (Episode Final beat both of them to the punch though), is that Tiger was just about to appear, and Imperer wouldn't show up for a while. Their characters were probably still being worked out while Inoue was writing this, and in Imperers case, he likely wasn't even cast by the time they were filming it, so, what else can you do? Femme, Ryuga, and Odin were all established by this point, but just like in Episode Final, bringing up Odin's actual purpose would derail the story, as would Ryuga's in this case. Femme doesn't get quite the same easy pass, but even in her case it probably just comes back to that this thing is way too short to work in anything as complicated as what I'd like to see in an ideal world. So the way to enjoy 13 Riders is definitely to just take it as its own thing. For what it is, the story is a competently told version of Shinji and Ren becoming friends, and that central element is made stronger specifically because of plot beats like turning Tezuka into someone whose death can provide a turning point for Ren. Especially in light of what we got down the line, it seems clear their relationship was something Inoue enjoyed writing, and he does a solid job with it here. The climactic scene where Shinji taking up the mantle of Knight in Ren's place is actually a pretty awesome moment, and while it used to baffle me as someone who's a huge fan of the show why viewers actively voted for Shinji to betray to his core belief from the series, going strictly off of 13 Riders' own story, the ending where he decides to keep fighting makes infinitely more sense, and frankly, given the way the other one plays out, it doesn't even feel like Inoue wanted to give people a real choice. Climax Deka: Someday in the future turns out to be a lot sooner than you might think, as the Den-Liner crew gets back in action to spend an hour or so running around pretending to be cops. With some token appearances from Kiva. And also Kuuga. And also Chalice. And also Grease. Okay, I'm sort of lying about those last three, but there's only so much to say about this movie. It's the first actual team-up in Heisei Rider history, but just ignore that "& Kiva" in the title if you don't want to be disappointed on that front. He's only there because his show was on at the time and I think Toei wasn't 100% sure if milking Den-O after it was over was going to work out. Needless to say, it did, because this film is but the humble beginning of a long stretch of post-series Den-O movies. As for Climax Deka itself, it's harmless fun. Everyone deciding to play police because Owner lost a Rider Pass seems just barely believable enough to scrape by as a premise, and while the way actual cops react to their presence like they've doing this for a while, Yuuto using Altair Form, and the Taros all having physical bodies outside of the Den-Liner throw the potential continuity into serious question (I blame Zi-O), it's just not a movie you should be using your brain for. It's strictly entertainment, and to that end I think Kobayashi's script is actually quite good in how it makes sure to get in all the stuff you'd want to see in a Den-O reunion. Each of the Imagin gets a full scene to posses Ryoutarou in. Deneb gets to be a master of disguise. There's the obligatory train battle. Literally every insert theme from the show plays. It's all here, and if you look at Kiva's inclusion as more of a bonus than anything else, all that plus having fun with a bunch of crime drama tropes (remember, W doesn't exist yet) is enough for a good time, as far as I'm concerned. During the big fight with Nega Den-O (who, for the record, I find extremely unmemorable despite evil repaints being an easy sell for me), there's a bit where Den-O Gun Form shoots off his finishing move in slow motion, and as the big energy ball travels toward the left side of the screen, the audio follows it along in a really pronounced way. I was honestly expecting to do more of a (lighthearted) roast of this movie, but that scene got me thinking how cool that actually would've been in a theater, and from there I thought, you know, maybe it's not actually that bad. Sure, as a movie, it feels pretty cheap, and the story is utterly unsubstantial, but as something to eat some popcorn while watching and enjoy yourself? I don't know. You could do better, but you could also do much, much worse. Movie War Core: Yeah, I watched this again too. The theme for this post is basically wasted potential and mediocrity. You know we're not doing great when Climax Deka was honestly the most fun I had. Things start off strong for Core with Double's chunk of the movie. After his origin story was revealed in Movie War 2010, we essentially get Skull's very own Begins Night here, and it's quite good. Skull is a character I think pretty much everybody immediately fell in love with, and since this is about him and not Double himself, it goes full hardboiled, delivering a proper noir detective story that hits all the notes you could ask for. There are twists and turns, the action is pretty good, the atmosphere can be rather heavy (a couple of the scenes really push the Gaia Memories as drugs metaphor too), there's a solid emotional core to it, and, hey, who doesn't want to see Soukichi doing his thing? Learning the tragic secret history of things like where the "count up your sins" catchphrase came from is awesome, as are some other fun paralells with Double's present, like establishing shots of actual bookshelves in a real library that evoke Philip in the Gaia Library. There's also those sweet Showa shout-outs Riku Sanjou loves doing, such as the villain (who is retroactively the first Monster of the Week in Double, more or less) being the Spider Dopant. It's a great little slice of a great little show. ... And then we get to OOO's chunk of the film. Let me just get something off my chest first, alright? AARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! Okay, I feel a little better now. So, you know how for about a month now I've been whining about Inoue doesn't get Ryuki? Well, after politely staying completely away from Den-O, he decided it would be fun to absolutely butcher OOO. If you know my general upbeat attitude, you'll know how serious I am when I say this part of the movie is straight up trash. It sucked then, and it sucks now. It fails on its own merits as a self-contained story, and as something carrying OOO's name? Holy crap, how do you even f*** up this much? Did you know Kobayashi is actually credited with assisting on the script? Because I sure didn't, and I honestly can't believe it even now that I know. From what I understand, I think the production schedules for winter films mean they're basically being written before the show has even started airing, which gives Inoue something of an out here, but surely with Kobayashi's help, they could've come up with something at least a little true to the series? It'd honestly be quicker to list things that didn't go wrong. The central conceit of the plot, Kougami deciding to resurrect f***ing Oda Nobunaga with a body made of Cell Medals, is this weird mad scientist kind of concept that always struck me as not really being the kind of thing that would happen in OOO's world, which is generally more grounded than it looks like. Kougami deciding to give Nobunaga the Birth Driver to "see what he'll do with its power" is even more questionable, because Birth was designed for the specific purpose of gathering his Foundation more Cell Medals. It was never some set of regal armor like OOO. Eiji's character is completely out of whack, running around doing a bunch of different part-time jobs in a way that suggests somebody thought that would be his gimmick in the show, and then giving out all the money he makes to random greedy people who ask for it, displaying an absent-minded, naive kind of attitude that is massively at odds with how his character was portrayed on TV from the very start. This is why I can't believe Kobayashi actually provided any significant amount of help. Presumably, Inoue would've at least had scripts for the first few episodes to get a feel for the series anyway, but with direct advice from its writer, it's especially questionable how you could get something this important this wrong. The overall theme of the plot is likewise about Nobu learning to appreciate how much nicer life can be when you don't desire things, which is the kind of black-and-white take on the subject that OOO built its identity around avoiding at all costs. Again, right from the start. Things like the odd premise, I can forgive, but I had completely forgotten how much worse the story here is than that. It's missing everything that was at the heart of OOO. Including Ankh, who is inexplicably barely in this, leaving Eiji to awkwardly fumble around with the Medal Holder whenever a fight scene starts. And as a story taken on its own? It's still terrible. You're expected to be emotionally invested in Eiji's relationship with Nobu after about one scene of them wearing matching underpants, before he immediately becomes a huge jerk to everyone, shooting what's obviously meant to be the dramatic hook in the foot right away. There's nothing even remotely endearing about Nobu, so it's impossible to empathize with Eiji's sadness beyond that you don't want to see Eiji sad. And since we're taking the story on its own right now, you're not even going to care that much how sad "Eiji" is, because all you know about him is that he's nice, yes, but also a huge airhead, which counteracts the first part. The action isn't as good as it is in the rest of the movie either. I'm not exactly standing in awe of GataKiriBa's amazing ability to form a totem pole. It honestly feels like being held hostage watching this part. Like you've been tricked by the cool part with Skull, and now you're trapped here for another 40 minutes because the emotional payoff to the Skull plot doesn't happen until the very end. It sucks. Fortunately, the team-up part was written by Sanjou, so it's actually a lot of fun. Fun that still contradicts OOO's continuity, but his version of Eiji doesn't come off like a dork, and I think this movie was the very first time we got a team-up between two Heisei Riders where they just get along and fight evil, which is awesome. The big dumb CG climax also looks surprisingly solid. The way TaJaDor is shot makes it look even cooler than normal, which I didn't know was possible until I saw it. It's just a shame you have to suffer through a trip to the Inoue Zone to get there. My biggest takeaway from Movie War Core, then and now, is honestly that I would've rather just had a third Double Returns movie about Skull instead of it. The thing I always remember the most fondly about Takaiwa as Fourze is those scenes of him testing out new Switches. There aren't a lot of Riders you get to see out of a fight that often, and without having to do any real stunts it was a great chance for him to show off how great he is at embodying a character. There's no disconnect at all between Gentarou in and out of the suit, and it's amazing. Whether he's in a fight or not, too, Fourze moves his limbs in this super forceful way that I love.
__________________
|
07-04-2019, 08:17 PM | #15438 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
|
Movie War Core is both terrible and a really fascinating look into what OOO could have been if it wasn't heavily rewritten during production. I mean, obviously it wouldn't have been that bad and full of random ballet melodrama, but stuff like homonculi and Brotou Birth were supposed to be much bigger parts of the show before everyone fell in love with Hiroaki Iwanaga.
|
07-05-2019, 02:05 AM | #15439 |
Stronger Than You
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: nyet
Posts: 25,327
|
So I had given up on Ex-Aid early on when it was first airing because I just had no idea what the fuck was going on.
On rewatching it, I'm 8 episodes in, about 3 more further than I got before dropping it last time...And I can safely say I still have no idea what the hell is happening Like, I'm not expecting everyone to just stop, explain everything, then be on their way. But, like, from why they need to be level 1 to separate the bugster from the host, to why they need to clear the games at all if they can use the power ups regardless, to how the stage select thing even works, I just have no idea what the fuck
__________________
|
07-05-2019, 01:51 PM | #15440 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,426
|
Quote:
Like, I'm not expecting everyone to just stop, explain everything, then be on their way. But, like, from why they need to be level 1 to separate the bugster from the host, to why they need to clear the games at all if they can use the power ups regardless, to how the stage select thing even works, I just have no idea what the fuck
Seriously, though, you're not wrong. Ex-Aid can be Kiva-ishly bad about explaining how stuff works. Some of it gets explained a bit, but a lot of stuff about how the games work is never properly spelled out. I just wrote it off as Ex-Aid's gimmick for relocating to stunt team locations, kind of like how most shows will throw someone out a window that just happens to overlook the nearby rock quarry. If you can get past it, the show is a lot of fun. And speaking of fun, I'm now through episode 4 of Fourze, the end of Miu's recruitment arc. It's good to have her on board the team now and to have JK on tap to join up next. I'd completely forgotten what an asshole Shun was at this point, what with happily ditching Miu when the Queen contest turned against her. That's really funny given how by the end of the series he's really desperate to be her boyfriend while she is clearly not that interested anymore. I liked how Miu forgave her friend for trying to attack her, though. I think this arc is part of why she was always one of my favorite members of the KRC. She can be kind of an arrogant dick, but her heart is always in the right place. Other random things Switchblade had forgotten about Fourze: - Miu's "Oops" catchphrase. It's cute in moderation, but there were times when it, like Shun's twinkle effect, got badly overused. - Fourze's States forms. The preview for episode 5 teased the arrival of Elec States, which I had somehow completely forgotten existed. I do remember it, Flame, and Magnet now. I think that was it for non-movie stuff aside from Cosmic, right? As a final comment, I really hope Rikako Sakata took a thorough shower after filming that pool scene. |
|
TokuNation News & Rumors |
Kakuranger: 30 Years After |
ToyRise RyuKenDo |
Alternative Cut of "Day Of The Dumpster" Released |
Shodo SUPER Kyoryuger Teaser |
Figuarts/Seihou GRIDMAN |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:27 PM.
|