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06-22-2019, 04:33 AM | #15411 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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So one thing: within their series, Ryuki and Den-O of course only had one movie each... but OOO had two more, both before Wonderful. Are they part of this rewatch?
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06-22-2019, 08:57 AM | #15412 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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Oh yeah, how could I forget OOO's tragic friendship with Oda Nobunaga played out to ballet music.
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06-22-2019, 10:49 AM | #15413 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,416
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My favorite part of the OOO movie was how Toei reused the CGI of the rounded section of Tokyo flipping in another movie a year or two later. That and a pre-Akibaranger Karin Ogino as the jester girl.
It’s easy if you drink enough. |
06-22-2019, 06:46 PM | #15414 |
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
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And then it was used for Ghost!
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06-22-2019, 09:02 PM | #15415 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Ryuki 31-32:
After sitting out the madness in the previous couple episodes, Ouja is back, and it turns out he's really terrible at finding Mirror Monsters. Or maybe he's just unlucky. For guys like Shinji, the dang things seem to pop up left and right, but Asakura feels the need to spend several days stalking a little girl who's being targeted just to feed his own Monsters before they get hungry enough to decide it'd be easier to simply eat Asakura. I've always loved the way the contract Monsters in Ryuki were portrayed. The show never tries to make it seem as though they're reliable partners or even so much as proper allies to the Riders. They're mindless beasts who have nothing on their minds except the next meal, and I like that there was a plot fairly late into the show to remind the viewer of that. It's a super cool part of Ryuki's atmosphere, but like the Monster action in general, it wasn't getting a lot of attention for a bit there. It's been a while since they've actually shown one of them consuming those little energy ball things from the defeated Monsters. Getting back to the plot, the aforementioned little girl develops something of an attachment to Asakura, which doesn't end as tragically as you might expect, but the show also manages to avoid making him seem soft by stressing how completely one-sided the whole affair is. The crux of the drama is that once Shinji gets involved, he has to wrestle with the decision of whether or not he can let Asakura die, even knowing what a scumbag he is. Seeing this girl genuinely happy to see Asakura around, misunderstanding or not, ultimately pushes him to actively stop Knight and Zolda from trying to take the Monsters' energy for their own, a decision that definitely comes more from the heart than the brain. This is great example of one of the things I love about Shinji's character. He's a truly innocent, pure-hearted individual, but the show doesn't treat his idealism as a feasible solution to everyone's problems. It's a variation on the same attitude Kobayashi has writing OOO, where the story isn't presented in a completely black and white way. You're clearly meant to respect Shinji for his dedication to what he believes in, but his unwillingness to compromise on his morals also gets in his own way a lot of the time, and the show doesn't shy away from that. Den-O 31-32: This arc finally reveals exactly why Zeronos using his cards is such a big deal, and as you should be expecting from Den-O at this point, it's done beautifully. One thing that's especially nice is that although Deneb hints at it in dialogue, it's not until the very end where we actually see firsthand what's going on, letting the viewer connect the obvious dots instead of spelling it out. The show understands that words aren't needed at that point. It lets the drama of the moment hit a lot harder, as does the fact that it comes at the end of a plot that was already perfectly building up to it. I think I'll save talking about exactly what Yuuto's deal is for later (and if you don't already know, you should seriously watch Den-O ASAP. Trust me, you don't want to hear it from me rambling first). Suffice it to say these episodes are extremely well constructed, something I'm probably going to be repeating a lot from here on out. I'm keeping this one a bit short because honestly, I'm at a point in Den-O where just like I did with OOO, I'm going to have to think hard about what to focus on talking about with each arc because there's so much to love. So while I figure that out, I'll leave off by mentioning that 31 has my favorite episode title in the whole show. It helps that the pun is in English for once. OOO 31-32: Firstly, Uva reappears after a fairly lengthy amount of time out of the spotlight, and it turns out he was running a smart, sustainable scheme to get a steady stream of Cell Medals while flying under the radar. This is an absolutely amazing example of what I mean about OOO's world feeling real. It actually keeps track of all the pieces on the board, so to speak. It could totally get away with ignoring the subject of where he's been. After all, it wasn't his turn to be in the story yet. But it's justified in a way that's clever and makes logical sense. We've seen Uva has the most self-control of the Greed by far, so having him do something like this while the more brash, immature Kazari hogs all the attention is so natural it's... well, clever and logical. Is it ironic that I can't praise OOO without going in circles? Secondly, Uva promptly leaves the spotlight during the second episode, with his latest Yummy having been destroyed, making the two parts of this arc feel a little more standalone in a way that doesn't happen often. And thirdly, like how TaJaDor's debut focused on Ankh, PuToTyra's is focused squarely on Eiji, and I think it succeeds spectacularly on that front. It takes all the information we've been drip-fed over the course of the show, adds some more on, and uses all that to show how tragic his character is under that positive attitude. Everything in the episode supports that perfectly, from playing off of established character dynamics like Date and Hina's respective concern for him, or the Victim of the Week who tries to do something good only to find he's made things worse. It's the kind of episode that makes me so glad I finally got around to rewatching OOO in full. I really do have a habit of taking this show for granted. I knew it was good, but I'm consistently being blown away by just how much depth was actually packed into the story. I wasn't planning to commit to them, but since I'm flattered you asked, most likely. The main idea was just to rewatch the shows themselves, but Den-O obviously threw a wrench into that to begin with, and it's going to throw another one in there, because there's 6 more dang movies after the show that I definitely want to watch again anyway. I was planning to loop back around to all the OOO stuff during that, as well as the 13 Riders special and what not. Basically keep the gimmick going. I won't lie though, I was genuinely planning to skip Movie War Core simply because I cared that little about it. But this has been super fun so far and part of the idea here is to refresh my memory on this stuff, so I'm kind of looking forward to it at this point. Maybe it was secretly a masterpiece the whole time! Almost certainly not, but I'll at least give it another chance to disappoint me!
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06-23-2019, 05:21 PM | #15416 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Ryuki 33-34:
Okay, so after this last stretch of episodes, I know what you're thinking. Wacky adventures with Zolda? Ouja hanging out with a little girl? This show was supposed to be serious, right? Well don't you worry, because starting right here, things are heating back up. This entire scene is legendary, by the way. Having it be the debut of the show's (awesome) second insert theme on top of Ryuki Survive makes it double memorable, but what amazes me even more than the perfect timing of the song starting up is that he doesn't actually do anything besides transform before 34 ends and it still works. I've always really loved the simplicity of the Survive forms. Not the designs themselves, I mean, although they are pretty streamlined, but how the show keeps it simple with all the Riders. Everybody gets exactly one form except the two leads, who get a single, straightforward power-up to further emphasize them as a duo, and the core of the story above all else. While also letting them look totally awesome, which is a plus. Den-O 33-34: This arc is by far the most memorable Victim of the Week plot to me. It's another one of those plots that really defines Den-O to me, that begins with a concept as simple as a man playing a piano, and tells a fairly bittersweet story that still ends on an optimistic note. The show draws some comparisons from there to Yuuto's dilemma, but for once the emphasis doesn't feel completely lopsided in favor of the main characters. Which is great, because for a guy with no name and not a lot of dialogue, it's hard not to like the piano man. There's a real melancholic atmosphere to a lot of these episodes, which is something Den-O excels at creating in a way I don't think any other Rider show does. This is also where Hana becomes a child due to a case of "adult circumstances", as Sento would put it. Den-O did an admirable job working that into the plot on short notice, and maybe it goes to show how much of these characters is in Kobayashi's scripting, but it's actually weirder how much of an adjustment it isn't. I honestly buy that this is still the same person, even though it literally isn't, and that's pretty impressive. OOO 33-34: Firstly, at a whopping 5 minutes and 45 seconds, episode 33 has the longest cold open yet, and now that I'm over halfway through the show I can confirm that OOO makes just as much of a habit out of this kind of thing as I remember from back in the day. See, the point of a cold open is to quickly establish the central premise of an episode before the opening, usually in a way that gets the viewer invested in the outcome, but this is OOO. There are several equally "central" bits of any given episode, so instead of one quick scene to establish one quick thing, the vast majority of episodes show what everybody is up to in turn. It manages to keep them around 2-3 minutes a lot of the time, but just as often they push the 4 minute mark. Mind you, I'm not saying all this to complain. Quite the opposite, actually. I think it's a very good sign for a show's quality if I get invested enough in a couple minutes that I get surprised when the theme song plays. Secondly, Nobuhiro Mouri is back once again, and I'm just as impressed this time at his ability to meet OOO's high standards. There are maybe some extremely, extremely petty nitpicks I could raise about the specific details of exactly how parts of it are written differently than I feel they would've been by Kobayashi, but if I have to go through that much trouble to say something is off, it only proves how good of a job he did. Not that I'd expect any less from the guy who went on to write some of my favorite episodes of Go-Busters, and is currently killing it on Zi-O. And thirdly, just like the last time he got a chance to write for this show, Gotou's arc gets quite a bit of attention. It's plain to see how much more humble he's become over the course of the series, and these episodes make it clear that he's actually swung maybe a bit too far in the other direction, being uncertain about his ability to potentially replace Date as Birth, even after all he's been through. Date, of course, has plenty of faith in him, and you can really tell how much mutual respect these two have for each other, despite seemingly being such a mismatched duo. It's fascinating stuff, but it's hard to call watching their relationship play out a highlight of the series when basically everything is that good.
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06-24-2019, 08:50 PM | #15417 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Ryuki 35-36:
These episodes rock. I said last time things were going to be heating up, but I forgot just how much starts happening all at once. Where to start? Okay, so first off, Zolda gets into a fight with Ouja, only to lure him into a trap that gets him arrested. Now, you don't need to be a genius to figure out that there are Batman villains that stay in jail longer than Asakura, but what's important to note here is how Kitaoka is the only person to apply this kind of lateral thinking to the Rider Battle, and it's a cool thing about his character. Between being a classy lawyer and the designated ranged fighter of the show, straight up fighting just isn't his style. He prefers to play things as smartly and as efficiently as possible, using whatever underhanded, unsportsmanlike techniques he can, not even transforming if he can help it, and that's great. Then we have Ren, who is pushed to the absolute brink here, running himself ragged trying to fight whoever he can after being led to believe he has less time to accomplish his goal than he does. You know it's bad when he's the one telling Kanzaki to fight. Things turn back around for him at the end of 36, but up until that point, it's very clear that everything Tezuka said about the guy was totally on point. Despite being the one who's always telling Shinji Riders have to be ruthless and fight for themselves, he lacks the killer instinct, and is actually fighting for a pretty selfless reason. This paradox eats away at him, making it so that no matter what he does, he's going to end up hating himself. It's insanely compelling drama, and the reason he decides to fight Shinji here is very indicative of the terrible state he's in, mentally. He's actively trying to break himself because he's sick of feeling so much hesitation about doing the one thing he's totally devoted himself to. It's a seriously f***ed up situation, and what makes it work is that it doesn't feel arbitrary at all. It's completely understandable how he's gotten to where he is right now. Shinji's own crisis of conscience is yet to come, but he does meet the first new Rider in a while. Tiger is an interesting guy. Less as an individual and more as part of the group he comes packaged with, but still. I also love his design a lot, which isn't saying much because the aesthetics of everything in Ryuki are way up my alley, but Tiger is blue and silver, which gives him that extra bit of edge over a lot of the other guys. I've also always loved his Final Vent. I'm not sure if it's exactly cool or not, but it's unique, which is another thing I don't think any other multi-Rider show ever got quite as right since. No two final attacks in Ryuki are anything alike. Even the ones that broadly qualify as Rider Kicks like Knight and Ouja's go about it way differently. Den-O 35-36: Forgive me for repeating myself, here, but these episodes rock. It's hard to top Climax Form's debut, but then that's hardly a fair comparison anyway. This arc is more about being a new beginning than a conclusion to everything that's happened so far, so of course it's not going to tug at the heartstrings the same way. In just about every other sense, it's totally on the same level. You can tell how razor focused Den-O is by the cold open in 35. One simple scene that establishes in barely over a minute the only two things you need to know. Yuuto can't transform, and Ryoutarou wants to pick up the slack. We've actually seen Ryoutarou occasionally doing training here or there for a long while now, but in light of what's been going on, he gets more serious about it, and even asks the Taros for help. Another display of the great characterization is that it's specifically Kintaros who ends up being the man for the job. Ryuta's out of the question to begin with, and quick flashbacks comedically show why Momo and Ura aren't a great fit for a mentor position. Honestly, Kintaros really isn't either, but he's clearly trying his best, and he also makes it known that he thinks Ryoutarou is pretty strong to begin with, so he's also been paying attention to the excellent development he's been getting. Of course, this is the big turning point for him, as he's finally forced to fight for himself once it turns out that the Imagin can't possess him while in the past anymore, which means one thing. Liner Form! I freakin' love Liner Form so much. If anyone ever tries to tell you Climax Form is Den-O's "real" strongest/final-est form, don't listen to them, because they're a despicable liar and should feel bad. It actually took me a long time to become a fan of the design, which I had originally pegged for being overly simple and relying on that sweet sword to compensate for how weak it looks. I also think I had some issue with the color scheme or something, but I can't remember what it was. Nowadays, I actually love how much less black there is compared to Den-O's other forms, because brighter colors means more heroic, and the simplicity of the details just means it's sleek and sticks out from pretty much any final form that isn't Shining Agito (which, funnily enough, I had the exact same turnaround on). I also always loved the rainbow "feather" effect on the eyes. It hints that this is still a form that combines all the Taros' powers without making it look like a repeat of Climax Form. Ryoutarou's fashion sense isn't actually the important part here though. Even before I loved how Liner Form looked, I utterly adored it for its direct relevance to the story. It throws an interesting new wrinkle into the plot, while also symbolizing how much Ryoutarou has grown over the course of the series. He's still pretty awkward in a fight, but he CAN do it now, and he can win. And frankly, I disagree with the characters in the show that his taste in special attack names is bad. What else can you possibly call that move besides a Train Slash? Momotaros is probably just jealous because he has like six versions of his that all look the same. OOO 35-36: Firstly, this is the last arc by a guest writer for this show, and Nobuhiro Mouri goes out on a high note. I'm shocked by just how meaty the plot here is. You've got the other Greed coming back, who despite being out of action for a straight 20 episodes, somehow don't feel like any less the main bad guys than Kazari and Uva. You've got the reveal of Date's own tragic past, that's haunting him physically the way Eiji's does mentally. You've got Mouri also creating my second-favorite monster in the whole show with the Unicorn Yummy, who's shtick of destroying dreams continues a trend of strong development for Eiji lately by showing in a very memorable way just how much desire he actually has. Heck, you've even got Shingo starting to get better, threatening Ankh's status quo even more than it already has been lately. It's one thing for episodes by guest writers to not be filler (which isn't all that unusual even outside of OOO), but this is insane. Secondly, Uva has it so rough, man. I don't think it was until seeing what happens to him in the last few episodes, but he ended up being my favorite Greed after I really looked back and thought about it. All the other Greed make fun of him for being scared of using their Core Medals, his modest and well conceived plans always manage to go just as wrong as everyone else's far more dramatic stunts, and basically everyone except Gamel betrays him constantly. Which is the name of the game for the Greed, and Uva's not exactly innocent there either, but still, I really feel for the guy. And thirdly, the fact that Power to Tearer doesn't play until 36 when Eiji actually keeps it under control for the first time is awesome. Especially since the lyrics wouldn't make sense otherwise. It'd be even better if the show didn't botch using Shout Out, because then it would legitimately be the first break in the trend, but even so, it's a nice touch. PuToTyra is also amazing, by the way. Purple and dinosaurs makes it inherently cool, but OOO being OOO, the relevance to the plot surpasses even Den-O. The entire existence of the purple Medals is a massive game-changer for the story, driving a lot of the events from the second they show up to the very end, while also providing a lot of new material for Eiji's character to develop from.
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06-25-2019, 08:28 PM | #15418 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Ryuki 37-38:
Okay, yeah, this is pretty cool. But while it's great to see Ryuki finally living up to his name, but would you believe me if I said this isn't my favorite bike in this show? We'll get to back to that subject later, though. For now, Shinji is getting involved with Professor Kagawa and his crew, which is one of my favorite plot threads of the series. It's the perfect thing to introduce at this late stage in the story. Things are getting crazier and crazier, so of course it initially seems like a relief for Shinji to meet these guys. He's been pretty short on actual allies lately, after all. What a dream come true to find three whole people who say they're gonna stop the Rider Battle, right? But it doesn't turn out to be that simple, and Shinji has to wrestle with his beliefs even more than he already has been lately. Just like every new Rider in Ryuki, it creates lots of interesting new dilemmas that keep the series from ever getting stale. Den-O 37-38: One of the more specific reasons I had for wanting to watch Den-O again is that my brain refused to believe Ultraman Orb was in this show, but yeah, after hearing that voice again, there's no mistaking it. A decade before Hideo Ishiguro was saving whatever universe he happens to be in at the time while showing off mad acting chops, he was terrorizing The Den-Liner crew as Den-O's very own main villain. Kai took his sweet time getting here, but you watch him get into a dance-off with Ryutaros in his first episode and try telling me it was anything but worth the wait. These episodes feel bigger than usual in terms of scale. There's crazy stuff happening left and right, and between Deneb trying to stop a runaway train by himself, the Taros running around a big train station getting into adventures, and some excellent development for Ryutaros, there's a lot to keep your attention. The plotline involving Ryuta is especially great because it allows Ryoutarou to show his parental side again. It's always infinitely satisfying seeing how much of a spine he's grown by this point, and I love that in his very first interaction with Kai he gets to tell him to where to shove it. OOO 37-38: Firstly, the Yummy here has a fairly goofy personality that reminds me of a Sentai monster, but maybe that's the joke, considering he gets blown to bits at the end of the first part here and nobody looks back. Secondly, I haven't brought up the color-coded curtains that follow the Greed around yet. How have I not done that? It's such a bizarre touch of style but the show just wouldn't be the same without it. Do they actually exist in-universe? I don't know, but it's good imagery, so who cares. And thirdly, these episodes are, of course, the big turning point where Gotou finally gets to become Birth, and it's quite memorable. The fact that his debut fight consists largely of him flying around with wonky special effects lets it down slightly, but everything else is stellar. Gotou's gone through more growth than just about anyone in the series, so the moment feels incredibly well earned, especially with details like having Birth's manual come up again in a super satisfying manner.
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06-25-2019, 09:15 PM | #15419 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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Are you gonna say Alternative's transforming robot buddy bike is cooler than the fire-spitting dragon bike?! Because, well, that's fair, it is pretty cool.
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06-26-2019, 04:21 PM | #15420 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,416
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