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12-05-2021, 01:14 AM | #31 |
Master Procrastinator
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 367
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Quote:
The problem for me is that I've seen too many of these stories in Kamen Rider. Dozens of Kamen Rider stories (and most Ghost movies) circle around... I was going to say "forgiving your dad for not being there for you when you needed him", but these stories aren't even about forgiveness. They're about realizing it's selfish to expect your parents to put you ahead of their career, and I don't love it. I get that it's a common story to tell (I think I referred to it as a "trope"), but it's one I can't ever get into.
The thing that's always so weird to me is how much these shows can tell stories about absentee parents who Had Good Reasons for not being around, while simultaneously telling stories about found families that're there for each no matter what... and never seem to acknowledge the disconnect of those two stories. Anyway, yeah, tokusatsu shows love to teach children that it's part of growing up to get let down by your parents, and it's childish to hold it against them. I don't have to like it, though. There's definitely a bit of a culture bias blinding them to the disconnect. And it's not entirely as contradictory as you think. If never see your own family, found family is all you have. What we see here is the writers inadvertantly telling us about how they grew up and what they see as normal. Found family is more reliable than real family, because one is with you no matter what, and the other is obligated by cultural norms to abandon you the second a job opportunity shows up. I should add, that I want to make it very clear, that I am not intending to say that Japanese culture is bad and my own is good. I am very much aware of some really negative point of US culture, and of other cultures as well. No culture or person or group is perfect and there are some hug negative in pretty much all of them. This just happens to be one in Japan. Doesn't make them better or worse than us. Just different. I mean, they never burned people alive for being to kind to cats at least. Last edited by catwhowalks; 12-05-2021 at 01:18 AM.. |
12-05-2021, 01:19 AM | #32 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
There's definitely a bit of a culture bias blinding them to the disconnect. And it's not entirely as contradictory as you think. If never see your own family, found family is all you have. What we see here is the writers inadvertantly telling us about how they grew up and what they see as normal. Found family is more reliable than real family, because one is with you no matter what, and the other is obligated by cultural norms to abandon you the second a job opportunity shows up.
God, what a nightmare. Everyone who works on toku needs therapy real bad!
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12-05-2021, 04:33 AM | #33 |
Member
Join Date: Oct 2019
Posts: 462
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Whether that's unique to Japanese toku specifically I don't know but yeah, given that parental issues happen a lot bad parents should at least be shown as such and I can see how the Japanese culture of 'respecting elders' could sometimes not always have good results if they had, for example, outdated views. I do kind of think most industrialised countries do basically have similar problems though!
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12-05-2021, 06:40 AM | #34 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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On that topic, it’s so ubiquitous that a recent show featured a heroic Rider who was billed as the first ‘dad’ Rider — which might seem odd with all the Zero Specters and Cronuses running around, but it refers to a specific subculture currently springing up in Japan where a lot of younger fathers are a lot more actively involved in their kids’ lives (which this character reflects)! Other recent Rider shows have featured good relationships with parents (or guardians, because yknow, kamen rider, All Dads Are Dead) that don’t feature the whole like. Respect Their Absence thing.
I know that’s… *sort of* a spoiler, but it’s basic minor setting stuff and I figured it’d be interesting to illustrate that post-Build, this particular trope appears to be vanishing. Sentai and Ultra seem to be following this trend recently too come to think of it
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Last edited by Kurona; 12-05-2021 at 06:47 AM.. |
12-05-2021, 08:09 AM | #35 |
Master Procrastinator
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 367
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Quote:
On that topic, it?s so ubiquitous that a recent show featured a heroic Rider who was billed as the first ?dad? Rider ? which might seem odd with all the Zero Specters and Cronuses running around, but it refers to a specific subculture currently springing up in Japan where a lot of younger fathers are a lot more actively involved in their kids? lives (which this character reflects)! Other recent Rider shows have featured good relationships with parents (or guardians, because yknow, kamen rider, All Dads Are Dead) that don?t feature the whole like. Respect Their Absence thing.
I know that?s? *sort of* a spoiler, but it?s basic minor setting stuff and I figured it?d be interesting to illustrate that post-Build, this particular trope appears to be vanishing. Sentai and Ultra seem to be following this trend recently too come to think of it |
12-05-2021, 10:55 AM | #36 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
Whether that's unique to Japanese toku specifically I don't know but yeah, given that parental issues happen a lot bad parents should at least be shown as such and I can see how the Japanese culture of 'respecting elders' could sometimes not always have good results if they had, for example, outdated views. I do kind of think most industrialised countries do basically have similar problems though!
Quote:
On that topic, it?s so ubiquitous that a recent show featured a heroic Rider who was billed as the first ?dad? Rider ? which might seem odd with all the Zero Specters and Cronuses running around, but it refers to a specific subculture currently springing up in Japan where a lot of younger fathers are a lot more actively involved in their kids? lives (which this character reflects)! Other recent Rider shows have featured good relationships with parents (or guardians, because yknow, kamen rider, All Dads Are Dead) that don?t feature the whole like. Respect Their Absence thing.
I know that?s? *sort of* a spoiler, but it?s basic minor setting stuff and I figured it?d be interesting to illustrate that post-Build, this particular trope appears to be vanishing. Sentai and Ultra seem to be following this trend recently too come to think of it When I was starting my journey with Kamen Rider, I'd done Ex-Aid, then the first season of Amazons, then W. When I hit Movie War Core, I'd experienced mostly solid family relationships (even in Amazons!), so the whole Skull Can't Wait To Go Into Hiding stuff was just a weird story beat to explain why Akiko was so mad in this movie, not the most recent in a long line of frustrating excuses for poor parenting. It's watching over a dozen additional Heisei shows with that trope that made me recognize it better, and I'm happy to hear that Ex-Aid -- pioneer that it was -- started a trend of minimizing one of my least-favorite story concepts.
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12-05-2021, 11:20 AM | #37 |
Master Procrastinator
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 367
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Quote:
GoGoV, for example, seems to follow this trope at first. All the rangers are siblings with a disappeared dad who was preparing the ranger tech in secret and a mom who also disappeared and was presumed dead. Dad comes back to make them all rangers and the now adult children do not at all accept it and it takes a good chunk of the series for their relationship to recover. It's quite the defying of the normal trope and lesson. In fact, all of the family sentais that I've seen do not follow this trope. There are always missing parents, but the parents either didn't leave voluntarily, or are dead. And the South Korean toku Legend Heroes has an episode that seems to be absolutely a response to this trope. The parents behave just like this trope, but are absolutely portrayed as harming their child and turning him into a monstern by neglect. |
12-05-2021, 01:41 PM | #38 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Oh, for sure. I mean: Hibiki. It's not like this trope is baked into the franchise or genre or anything. It just pops up often enough to be annoying.
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12-05-2021, 03:44 PM | #39 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Hey, I see all those apostrophes correctly appearing in that post about Movie War Core! Glad to see something going a little more right this time, Die!
On a much less happy note: a Rider movie even I'm not in a rush to defend! Especially that OOO part, which I, uh... Quote:
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?
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12-05-2021, 04:18 PM | #40 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Quote:
I am always happy to be depended upon to find the positive interpretation of Inoue Writes A Movie For A Non-Inoue Series. Let's see if that streak holds up, though.
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