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01-21-2024, 10:10 PM | #71 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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one? Okay, sure, they're part of an evil organization, but not only is the Mom terribly unlikable due to how she's handling her daughter in general(such as using her as a manipulation tool), but, frankly, the property that she wanted the Wind Tower II built on IS private property and, legally, they have every right to say no to it, sad backstory with the dad or not. I think think alot of people would say no to having that thing in their own backyard to say the least.
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01-21-2024, 10:14 PM | #72 |
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KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 8 - “LOOKING FOR C - DANCING HERO”
I don’t think this one worked for me? Visually, I thought it was excellent. There’re a whole bunch of incredibly cool shots in this episode: all of the manga sequences; the cross-cutting between Philip and Double during the dance battle with Roachstar; the incredibly cool rack-focus during the scene with Saeko and Kirihiko that emphasizes their growing distance and mistrust. It’s an episode that always looks good, which is no small feat. I don’t want to overlook the really beautifully-shot episode that came about. I just… I don’t care about anyone in this story? I feel like the writer was going for a Teenage Miscommunication love story thing with Chizuru and Dango, but I just came out of it feeling like they’re both deranged, and probably shouldn’t see each other ever again. So, they were a dance group, and Chizuru felt like she needed to train separately to make them a better team? And she didn’t tell Dango any of this? She just stopped showing up for practice or talking to him? And he countered by being a violent, possessive creep? Who dealt with his rejection by wishing she was dead? This is who we’re rooting for in this story – these two jerks? It would help if anyone outside of them could make a case for why they weren’t going to self-destruct in another cloud of toxic codependency, but basically no one else cares. Philip – hilariously, in my favorite recurring gag in the episode – just wants to see Heaven’s Tornado, and could not give less of a shit about the emotional drama between Chizuru and Dango. Shotaro, meanwhile, is hunting down Roachstar, and is entirely outside of the high school attempted homicides and well-intentioned ghostings. Akiko is vaguely rooting for these two crazy kids to work things out, but her attitude is treated as slightly deluded, and not much more than a waved hand towards the obligations of premise. These two kids are awful, and the show’s just like Sure But We’re Moving On. It’d maybe not be so bad if it felt like the story of Chizuru and Dango held any lessons for Double, but it really doesn’t. Philip’s story is about finding space to pursue individual passions within a partnership, but that’s not even a little bit what the teenagers are dealing with. Chizuru didn't love swimming, she joined the swim team to feel like less of a burden on Dango. It’s like the show went PARTNERSHIP, and thought it landed some huge point. It didn’t! All that, and there’s barely any room for the Fuuto wordbuilding that helped last episode become an enjoyable whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. We get Santa, and that’s about it. (And only two Sonozakis! What a bummer!) It’s fun to see Shotaro use the geography of Fuuto to track down a suspect, but I need more than that. This one… yeah, not so much for me. I appreciate that more of the story was about Double solving a mystery, but I can’t believe how little I cared about Chizuru/Dango, and how little it seemed to get at elements of the Philip/Shotaro partnership. Sort of a miss! — DIE-A MEMORIES -I don’t ever want to be the guy that complains about the logic or rules behind transformation items in Kamen Rider, but what the hell is going on in the initial fight of this episode? Every time Shotaro has removed the Gaia Memories from the Double Driver in previous episodes, he immediately de-Henshins. Here, the Memories are removed multiple times by Roachstar, and nothing happens. What? How long can Double maintain a form like LunaTrigger without the Memories – indefinitely? It sort of wrecked the entire fight for me. Help me understand what’s going on here!
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01-21-2024, 10:49 PM | #73 |
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I enjoyed this two-parter relatively well enough, definitely a step up from the prior two episodes.
I think there's something to be said where the easy solution is Luna Trigger, but we manage to (clumsily) get Luna Trigger out of the way so we can get some cool Cyclone Joker and Don Tupac tag team beatdown action against the Cockroach Dopant. At least until we get Luna Trigger back to go for the kill. Listen, I know he has a name, but he was legendary in the Toku community for the Tupac shirt. Not to mention he's the singer of my like, favorite Sentai ED, so his name is Don Tupac for me. But yeah, this mostly puts Philip as the primary focus and man is his unintentional comedy with how he acts the best. Not to mention Akiko just having to tag along and babysit while also having to deal with his antics is a delight. Shotaro's parts in this were fairly straightforward so I don't much to say, alongside the general Dopant case. I did find the manga being a clue via locations illustrated in it as a neat way for Shotaro to get the drop on Cockroach though. Speaking of the Dopant... entirely forgot Cockroach had an actual face and it wasn't just weird and bug-like. Also I said it earlier, but the way he swiped Luna Trigger was clumsy. Like it was a lot of movement and quite a few seconds for something that was supposed to be fast. They corrected this later when he took Heat Metal, it being a lot smoother in the transition but yeah that first snatch was meh. |
01-21-2024, 11:18 PM | #74 |
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Philip answering every revelation of Chizuru and Dango's fractured relationship with I DON'T CARE JUST SHOW ME HEAVEN'S TORNADO ALREADY is probably the thing that saved this episode from being a total disaster for me, narratively.
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01-21-2024, 11:31 PM | #75 |
Some guy. I'm alright.
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-I don?t ever want to be the guy that complains about the logic or rules behind transformation items in Kamen Rider, but what the hell is going on in the initial fight of this episode? Every time Shotaro has removed the Gaia Memories from the Double Driver in previous episodes, he immediately de-Henshins. Here, the Memories are removed multiple times by Roachstar, and nothing happens. What? How long can Double maintain a form like LunaTrigger without the Memories ? indefinitely? It sort of wrecked the entire fight for me. Help me understand what?s going on here!
Anywho, if my memory serves me right, this two-parter was where W first started actually pulling me in. It wasn't quite all the way there by the end, but here's where I stopped going "Ah, this show's alright so far" and started going "Hey, I'm actually invested now." And alot of that is thanks to the character interactions and comedy being top notch. The short of it is that the overall energy of both episodes is very quick and very fun, which, as The Only Power Rangers fan, appeals to me greatly. And that's about all I needed. I the relationship between the two kids exactly good? Probably not, but they're also both highly emotional kids who don't at all think straight, and there's still alot of time for them to work things out. Or break up. Either way, really. Also, props for Akiko not being at all annoying to me in this set either! By this point I still didn't fully like her, but her antics weren't actively aggravating me anymore. And the same goes for this rewatch.
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01-21-2024, 11:35 PM | #76 |
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Except that, if it actually worked like that, both Maximum Drives and Form Changes wouldn't be at all possible. They even swap two Memories at once during this episode to showcase the point. Releasing the transformation seems to be a very deliberate mental task on part of Shotaro and/or Philip.
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01-21-2024, 11:56 PM | #77 |
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I'm not an expert in this, personally, but I've had a lot of exposure to people who are neurodivergent and Philip displays a lot of characteristics that would put him on that spectrum. Philip's obsession with Heaven's Tornado, and subsequent lack of interest in it after something else gets his attention, is very similar to hyperfixation, which is a common element of ASD. I don't know if this was intentional on the writers' part, but a little bit of checking tonight shows that I'm not the only one who saw it.
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01-22-2024, 12:01 AM | #78 |
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I'm not an expert in this, personally, but I've had a lot of exposure to people who are neurodivergent and Philip displays a lot of characteristics that would put him on that spectrum. Philip's obsession with Heaven's Tornado, and subsequent lack of interest in it after something else gets his attention, is very similar to hyperfixation, which is a common element of ASD. I don't know if this was intentional on the writers' part, but a little bit of checking tonight shows that I'm not the only one who saw it.
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01-22-2024, 06:11 AM | #79 |
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I mean, as someone who spent the majority of 2021 reviewing works by him, I’ll admit Arakawa osn’t the best at writing guest characters or villains who don’t feel like throwaway characters.
But I do appreciate the sentiment this episode was going for. And I kind of wish the idea of the bad guys trying to take W’s Memories so they can learn more about them had been played up more. |
01-22-2024, 10:03 AM | #80 |
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KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 8 - ?LOOKING FOR C - DANCING HERO?
It would help if anyone outside of them could make a case for why they weren?t going to self-destruct in another cloud of toxic codependency, but basically no one else cares. Philip ? hilariously, in my favorite recurring gag in the episode ? just wants to see Heaven?s Tornado, and could not give less of a shit about the emotional drama between Chizuru and Dango. Shotaro, meanwhile, is hunting down Roachstar, and is entirely outside of the high school attempted homicides and well-intentioned ghostings. Akiko is vaguely rooting for these two crazy kids to work things out, but her attitude is treated as slightly deluded, and not much more than a waved hand towards the obligations of premise. These two kids are awful, and the show?s just like Sure But We?re Moving On. Also, the position of Cockroach Dopant's Gaia Memory port must be very inconvenient. Imagine having to take off your shoe everytime to henshin and having to retrieve it after the fight. Quote:
Which reminds me, I hope Boonboomger has one. Quote:
Anyway, currently playing catch up on episodes, and I just finished the Girl two-parter, so I'm typing up my thoughts now while they're still fresh.
I myself don't agree with nor like the ending, but I think I get it? Essentially, it seems to me that what the episode is going for is that it's the mother's' responsibility to tell her daughter the truth and not Shotaro, as it's their problem -- their business to deal with. Which is a stance many take when it comes to parenting, whether one agrees with it or not. Quote:
Except that, if it actually worked like that, both Maximum Drives and Form Changes wouldn't be at all possible. They even swap two Memories at once during this episode to showcase the point. Releasing the transformation seems to be a very deliberate mental task on part of Shotaro and/or Philip.
Then you have Ghost and Balon who actually take off their Drivers and equip new ones to access their Super and Final Forms respectively, somehow without de-henshining. Maybe there's some kind of time limit that allows stuff like this to happen. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. Pretty weird when you consider that this guy also wrote Kuuga and Gokaiger, which had a lot of focus on guest characters. Good thing Inoue and Komura were there to spice it up a little.
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