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08-27-2021, 03:08 AM | #131 |
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You may remember (or you may not, I never know), I had a very open, outspoken dislike for Ryuki when I watched it (which was roughly the same time as you did) and had a tendency to prefer the franchise when it was in the hands of ANYONE but Kobayashi.
As such? I LOVED this episode. The idea of people fighting to enforce their ideas of justice being taken absurdly literally is just incredibly more entertaining than what Ryuki did with it. And I don’t mind Abyss’s design, since he does have two Contract Monsters (seriously, that’s broken as hell) and at least he manages to actually look like them (looking at you, Imperer). Also Tsukasa’s line “I suddenly want to find her very much innocent” is one of my all time favourite lines in anything. And finally for this, an etymology lesson for the counterpart’s. Shinji Tatsumi - Tatsumi is a portmanteau of tatsu (dragon) and kagami (mirror) Ren Haguro - Haguro literally means “blackwings”, as in the name of Knight’s Contract Monster. Atashi Journal - atashi is the feminine equivalent of ore (keeping with the theme of Ichijou’s and Maya’s equivalents being a female and a male respectively) |
08-27-2021, 07:01 AM | #132 |
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Addendum. The kanji used for Tatsumi in this case are the ones used in the Chinese zodiac. Tatsu'辰' is dragon, Mi'巳' is snake. Keep in mind that these are not commonly used to describe dragons(龍) and snakes(蛇) although exceptions can happen such as this, since these specific characters are used within the context of the Chinese Zodiac.
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Last edited by Sunred; 08-27-2021 at 07:03 AM.. |
08-27-2021, 09:56 AM | #133 |
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Just out of curiosity, is there a reason as to why you severely disliked Kobayashi as a Toku writer? Admittedly, I thought she’s basically hit-or-miss myself and that’s just from judging on her works on Super Sentai and I have yet to really start watching her works on Kamen Rider. OOO, just going by its first two episodes, does look like it’s going to be fun though.
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08-27-2021, 10:01 AM | #134 |
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I predicted Zatyme, Fish and Androzani for the last few arcs, but I wasn't expecting DreamSword to be so excited about Ryuki and have so much to say about it!
Apologies in advance to whoever's doing World of Blade BTW, I haven't watched that show yet (before Die reaches Day of Oma) so I'm probably going to skip that discussion for now so I don't get spoiled too much. Quote:
DREAMSWORD: Yes he is. And I'd be willing to give him a fraction of a point in these episodes if his stance were more "Everything will work out because I'll save her. No duh she didn't do anything." But, at the very least with RiderTime's' subs (those are the subs I'm using) every chance he gets he instead goes "Yeah she totally did it" without any sort of indication of irony, which is backed up by every other character telling him to shut his dumb mouth.
KAMEN RIDER DIE: Look, we're friends, but let me be completely honest with you: If we both landed in the world of a TV show, and you got charged with murder, I would probably spend a little time acting shocked at your previously-unseen malevolence. If I knew I could also get you out of prison? Yeah, for sure, I'd be like Oh He Definitely Did It. I am honestly laughing about it right now. DREAMSWORD: I pray you never become a lawyer then. Which, by the way, to give this two-parter some credit, even they knew better than to try and have Tsukasa ever try to practice any sort of law on screen, because they knew that that'd be huge stretch even by Decade standards. (Also yes I would expect such teasing but like this is SERIOUS BUSINESS Tsukasa! Do the teasing afterward!) KAMEN RIDER DIE: Tsukasa is too familiar with Kamen Rider tropes to waste an opportunity to tease Natsumi. His real business is trying to get over on his friends, and he is always serious about that business. On that note! Quote:
DREAMSWORD:Speaking of Onodera and "teamwork" I love how Onodera never once figures that since Kamen Riders, even ones that no one has ever heard of, are just allowed to enter the Rider Fight with no real hassle, that he could maybe Henshin and help Tsukasa out in any of the fights. Very cool, Toei.
KAMEN RIDER DIE: Or maybe Onodera, sweetheart that he is, just wants to let Tsukasa feel like a hero? Tsukasa is all I'm A Destroyer, so Onodera letting Decade fight to save Natsumi (note: not really what Tsukasa's doing) is part of the way he's supporting his friend. Quote:
Also! I meant to bring this up, but there was never a good place.
For someone who thinks Reiko straightening cutlery in the finale is the thematic high-point for Ryuki as a series, can I just say how thrilled I was to see a fork become a hugely important part of the first Ryuki episode in Decade? Surely accidental (unless someone on staff used a Time Vent to read my gushing about Ryuki last year), but it made me incredibly happy. I felt seen! Quote:
Atashi isn't the only feminine equivalent of Ore/Boku. There's also Uchi which is most recently the preferred pronoun used by Sudo Mei. Now for my own thoughts about World of Ryuki. The Rider War as a very literal example of might makes right was interesting. I'm not sure how you could call it fair and impartial though, unless there's an even 7:7 ratio between Riders fighting for innocent and guilty verdicts. Even then, considering how the Rider War in the show was rigged by Odin who is stronger than the others, what if the government are using Odin to get the verdict they want? Then you have Kamata, the true culprit, entering to play judge, jury and executioner on his own crime. This is a terrible idea for a justice system! Ryuki is 11/19 in my Heisei Rider Ranking. Even though it's behind Den-O due to just how humorous Den-O is, I think Ryuki has the best plot of any Rider show written by Kobayashi. Specifically, the plot I'm talking about is the escalating interactions between the participants of the Rider War. Not the actual plot which is the Kanzaki stuff, which is good in theory but flawed in execution. If that was done better, this show could easily be maybe 8-10/19 instead. Tatsumi Shinji and Haguro Ren were intriguing versions of the main timeline characters who are weirdly inverted in their behavior. Like Kido Shinji, it's actually Haguro Ren who joins the fight for a reason other than why the fight was started, not caring about the verdict and aiming for Odin's Time Vent card instead. When Tatsumi Shinji joins the fight to prove Natsumi innocent while believing Ren is guilty, it's Ren who refuses to fight! I also think it's cool how the first episode depicts Ren as this mysterious character who disappeared a long time ago. He's also the first AU Secondary Rider to appear, since there was nobody called Keisuke in World of Kiva (and nobody called Geiz in World of Kuuga ).
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08-27-2021, 12:13 PM | #135 |
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Did the people making this show even watch Ryuki at all. Quote:
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Now for my own thoughts about World of Ryuki. The Rider War as a very literal example of might makes right was interesting. I'm not sure how you could call it fair and impartial though, unless there's an even 7:7 ratio between Riders fighting for innocent and guilty verdicts. Even then, considering how the Rider War in the show was rigged by Odin who is stronger than the others, what if the government are using Odin to get the verdict they want? Then you have Kamata, the true culprit, entering to play judge, jury and executioner on his own crime. This is a terrible idea for a justice system!
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08-27-2021, 12:38 PM | #136 |
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I feel like I can also easily explain why Mysterious Fisherman would collab with Abyss to frame Natsumi only to offer her freedom. It was so she'd say yes, he wanted to make her desperate enough to where she'd say yes and go with him. For what? No clue. But that's the interpretation I got out of it once I realized "Oh, he was collabing, yeah that makes sense."
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For someone who thinks Reiko straightening cutlery in the finale is the thematic high-point for Ryuki as a series, can I just say how thrilled I was to see a fork become a hugely important part of the first Ryuki episode in Decade? Surely accidental (unless someone on staff used a Time Vent to read my gushing about Ryuki last year), but it made me incredibly happy. I felt seen!
she knew kitaoka would be accused of murder otherwise. Quote:
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but people who care about each other a lot can also disagree and argue, similar to you guys actually!
pheh! phsaw! tch! bleh! no way. not in a jillion years. Quote:
Yuusuke is just a passenger in this world though, where Tsukasa is the one given a purpose as a lawyer that allows him to interact with the Mirror World. It makes sense that Decade, being Decade, can do that, but not some unrelated yet very helpful Rider like Kuuga. Yuusuke could definitely henshin more often than he does but I think his reason for staying out of the fight is justified here. Even though he didn't remember anything from this world, Tsukasa did and has a slightly higher opinion of him as a result of his moral support. Cause if anybody needs moral support, it's Tsukasa!
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And I just happened to be eating a cake while rewatching that episode! Clearly it was meant to be. I didn't get framed for a murder though, so that's good.
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Ryuki is 11/19 in my Heisei Rider Ranking. Even though it's behind Den-O due to just how humorous Den-O is, I think Ryuki has the best plot of any Rider show written by Kobayashi. Specifically, the plot I'm talking about is the escalating interactions between the participants of the Rider War. Not the actual plot which is the Kanzaki stuff, which is good in theory but flawed in execution. If that was done better, this show could easily be maybe 8-10/19 instead.
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He's also the first AU Secondary Rider to appear
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08-27-2021, 12:52 PM | #137 |
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Just out of curiosity, is there a reason as to why you severely disliked Kobayashi as a Toku writer? Admittedly, I thought she’s basically hit-or-miss myself and that’s just from judging on her works on Super Sentai and I have yet to really start watching her works on Kamen Rider. OOO, just going by its first two episodes, does look like it’s going to be fun though.
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08-27-2021, 02:44 PM | #138 |
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Something I really like about Abyss design-wise is that he's kind of an example of working backwards! His two contract monsters - Abysslasher I think and something else - are actually Rider-less Mirror Monsters that were in the original Ryuki TV show!! So they're basically saying "what if a Rider contracted with them" and arrived at that. Just a super cool concept!
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08-27-2021, 04:00 PM | #139 |
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KAMEN RIDER DIE: So, while I can't say it's easy to like Tsukasa and/or even worth it (especially in these episodes!!!), I will push back on some of that.
Tsukasa's someone who never seems to take these worlds seriously. It's a bit Isekai, where Tsukasa thinks of this as A World Based On The TV Series "Kamen Rider Ryuki", so all of the peril is illusory, and all of the people are fake. He's not, like, invested in the narrative. Natsumi being held prisoner and tried by a dozen battling Kamen Riders isn't, like, The Night Of. Tsukasa can't pretend she's really going to get executed, because this world isn't real to him. He thinks it's funny for Natsumi to get charged with murder, and it sort of is? She clearly didn't do it, and this story is dumb, so why not tease her about it while also working to secure her freedom? DREAMSWORD: Because someone he supposedly cares about's life is on the line, and unless I missed something, there's nothing to indicate that it's not? Also I don't find "the plot is dumb" to really be defense here. And while yes, I agree that the plot IS stupid, when it comes to serious matters, you might maybe wanna show at least a little concern, maybe? I also get that Tsukasa at the end outright admits that he's a sociopath, but not only does that do nothing to endear me to him, it also just highlights how inconsistent I feel the overall writing of this show is. For example, in the very first episode he outright agrees to take on the mission to kill the Kamen Riders, but come episode 2 he's all "Huh, what am I supposed to do in these different worlds!?" No joke, my current interpretation of Tsukasa is that he has really bad short term memory loss, because even when he blatantly delivers the Moral of the Two Parter at the end of all of these, he seems to retain all of none of that information. That or maybe he's just saying things to try and look cool next to these other Riders? (Or maybe the writers are desperate to make more specifically Decade look cool?) It's not something my tastes in characters and their stories can really work with, ya know? Quote:
Yeah, it's... Tsukasa gleefully telling people that Natsumi is a murderer tells you so much about their relationship. She is constantly berating him for his (obvious, dangerous, troubling) personality defects, holding herself up as a model of decorum and empathy. So her getting thrown in jail? For murder? This is his moment! This is when he can get up on her high horse and act all shocked and disappointed in her moral shortcomings! He is going to make a meal out of her predicament!
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DREAMSWORD: Oh man, I feel like this is gonna be hard for me to convey properly, given what everyone else in the thread has said about the show so far.
Of the three two-parters that have happened so far, this was the one where I feel like I almost gave it a pass? But in the end, I still feel as though it fell short. Like yeah, a big part of Ryuki was everyone's own sense of justice and how that forms their personal goals and beliefs, and how even the mere attempt at getting to know others can open up new worlds for you and expand your own viewpoints. Teamwork was infact a thing, yeah(just like almost every Toku ever), and how in the end you can never truly know someone's intentions. So I THINK I get the general idea of this, which was to make all of that extremely literal. A literal justice system which is determined not by facts or the general populace's understandings of how things work, but rather placing lives literally in the hands of other people, where might makes right and the idea that the Rider who comes out on top MUST be correct because hey, "the truth always wins out in the end." I get all that, I really think I do. But to me, Ryuki, and almost every show I watch in general, is about way more than just plot elements? The core of any story to me is its characters, and unfortunately, with the way the staff of Decade decided to handle the general "story" of the show, we don't get any of that here. So to me, my response to this entire thing was "This isn't Ryuki." Which I know someone is gonna immediately think "Well it's supposed to be different." And YES, I understand that, but I still think this could've all been handle alot better, though I feel if I do on for much longer this'll just spiral into a rant aimed at the show itself rather than these episodes specifically. KAMEN RIDER DIE: Weirdly, while I agree with you about it missing the feeling of Ryuki's aesthetics and performances, despite a dozen suits, I think the themes as portrayed through Tsukasa and Onodera were a solid, if abbreviated, take on Ryuki's messages. The idea of Tsukasa learning to trust in Onodera despite super not liking him or even understanding his worldview... that's pretty much Shinji and Ren? That's two guys who are not even slightly friends, who are also willing to go along with the other out of respect. It's separating out Friendship from Teamwork, and I thought that was something Ryuki was pretty unique at in toku. Quote:
But, hey, let's talk about the Riders in this two-parter. As much as I wish we'd gotten personalities for everyone, I kind of liked the idea of becoming a Kamen Rider in this world as being like jury duty. It's not some huge part of your life, it's just something you get drafted into and have to care about for maybe a day or two. That's such a bizarre idea, and the show does almost nothing with it. (It's a little relevant to Abyss'ssss alibi, and Shinji's erroneous belief in Ren's guilt, but that's about it.) Do you feel like the show could've spent a little less time on dumb echoes of past storylines, and a little more time on their actually-clever world-building?
For the Ryuki-ness of teamwork (even if Ryuki doesn't have the Riders eventually team up at the end actually...) and understanding, dunno if I got that too even in main characters, as I'd think the understanding is the main part of Shinji (Kido) getting the dilemma in the series for his plan to stop the war, as he'd get to know about other Riders' motives and that he can't please everyone in his actions, causing hesitation. Shinji and Ren were common primary-secondary Rider dynamic (albeit Ryuki probably kickstarted that like you said as unique), so that'd be probably not Ryuki-centric thing, but almost all of the Rider series (the outlier is when they're more cooperative Blade except at first, Hibiki, OOO for Date, and iirc Wizard). Quote:
DREAMSWORD: Yeah I have no idea what any of these characters end up seeing in Tsukasa, really.
But from an acting perspective, yeah, whoever is directing this show clearly loves to portray things via facial expressions. One thing I noticed no one pointed out about the previous two episodes(unless I missed that post, sorry!) was at the end how Tsukasa seems to be taking all the accusations of being "the Devil" to heart... even if he does nothing to improve that situation, mind you. Still, good on the actors for being able to pull that sort of thing off effectively. Quote:
KAMEN RIDER DIE: Kamen Rider Abyss! I think!
DREAMSWORD: Yeah I wasn't fond of that suit. If it turns out that it was designed by the same dude who made the original Ryuki suits then like, wow, did they miss the mark. Granted, given the twist of who exactly Abyss is at the end of it, maybe that was part of the point? Hard to tell with Decade. KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, I don't... I don't get him. I don't understand why he's doing what he's doing. This is the second monster plot in a row where the villain's motivations are mostly opaque to me. Why is Abyss here? Why did he kill Momoi? Why frame Natsumi? Why did he need to be an Undead? I think the reason he killed Momoi was because she suspected him of being a monster, but why is this all so convoluted? And why in the world would you have a reveal like the end of this story, when it's a monster type that doesn't mean anything to the heroes? Help me with this, DreamSword. Quote:
KAMEN RIDER DIE: I didn't care for it, really. I think it starts with Not Shinji and Not Ren, who I thought were both badly written (Shinji's willing to believe Ren is a murderer because Ren quit his job a couple years ago?) and super bland actors. I spent the entire story not really caring if these two former besties (a billion percent Not Ryuki, the two of them having a deep and soulful friendship) could get over their completely inexplicable conflict. Thoughts on our two-episode setting?
DREAMSWORD: Yeah I totally agree. I feel like I pretty much already elaborated on this earlier with my stint on my attachment to characters, and AR Ryuki most certainly did not deliver on that front. My boy Raia didn't even show up! Also what the heck was with the first third of the first part having so much focus on Scissors? Was he a meme in Japan at the time or something? KAMEN RIDER DIE: Scissors is stupidly popular. Always has been, always will be. Also, if you want to chump out a Rider to show how serious a character is, you definitely want to chump out Scissors. That's his thing! Demonstrating stakes! It's the third thing he loves, besides treachery and onions! DREAMSWORD: From these episodes specifically? They totally screwed up how Time Vent works, and all for something totally unnecessary too. (Abyss eating himself.) The Mirror World is also kinda just there? There's like a one-off line about how Riders don't die when defeated there but like, that most certainly doesn't seem to be the case given the various scenes with Scissors?
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The most complete non-wiki encyclopedias for Kamen Rider series (currently only found Ryuki and OOO's). Last edited by DreadBringer; 08-27-2021 at 04:03 PM.. |
08-27-2021, 04:29 PM | #140 |
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Just to clear up any possible confusion on the matter, any and all digs that Die and I make at eachother are purely in jest. We're buds, it's all cool.
And I'll admit, I probably should've been a bit more clear on my stance towards Natsumi, but I wanted to try and stay totally focused on the two-parter itself, rather than go on a tangent about her role in the show overall so far. So for those interested, here it is. My problem with Natsumi and her doing nothing isn't just what I find to be a plot-related problem, but a characterization one as well. If this show wants me to seriously believe that her and Tsukasa are close, then I feel she would've actually done like, something by now. The main point of contention is her vision of the future, which by now is being proven to be more and more something that's very likely to happen in the future, given the circumstances of the plot at hand. I feel that if they really wanted to emphasize her faith in Tsukasa, then they should've had her show trust and respect for him and tell him outright about the visions she's been having. Instead she's just all "Well, let's wait and see" and it drives me crazy.
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Last edited by DreamSword; 08-29-2021 at 08:20 PM.. |
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