Dial 199!

199 Heroes, but a bitch ain’t one. This was actually automated_alice‘s joke, but still.

The opening is fairly engaging, telling the story prior to the Goukaiger series. In fact, it’s only as the Goukaiger appear that things begin to slow down. I never thought I’d say this, but the appearance of the Goseiger cast soon changes this.

Again, the Goukaiger team seem guest stars in their own story. This seems to be a running theme for the series, although I’m fairly sure this wasn’t always the way. Perhaps I’ve simply become more cynical as the story has unfolded.

For a while there, at the beginning of the year, I was pretty engaging by both the characters and the settings… and then the worst thing possible for the show happened: they had a Hurricanger two-parter. If anything was needed to highlight how uninteresting the events of their own series have been, then it was episodes #25 – 26.

Obviously it’s well documented that Hurricanger has long since been one of my favourite shows. These episodes simply reminded me why.

After #26, I just felt that, more than anything, what I wanted was a Hurricanger sequel.

But all of this is besides the point as we’re talking about 199 Heroes.

So, what did I like about the film? Surprisingly, the Goseiger characters. I never watched this series, or had much interest in it, but they seemed a lot more well-rounded than the cast of this year’s sentai. Like Boukenger and Shinkenger, it also felt like the events of Goseiger continued beyond what we saw in the series – like we only saw but a glimpse of the wider world in which these events took place.

Speaking of Boukenger, it was also nice to see a cameo from Takahashi Mitsuomi, again reprising his role as Akashi Satoru/BoukenRed. Likewise I was pleased to see the original actors reprise the roles of the Big One and AkaRanger.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a vs. Super Sentai film were it not for the random selection of ‘favourites’ reprising their roles. I’m not going to complain about Aizawa Rina being in the film but I do have to wonder if she was really that popular to warrant an appearance here and also in the standalone Goukaiger movie. Regardless, she is an improvement on GingaBlue.

When placed side-by-side with Toei’s other big crossover of the year (OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let’s Go Kamen Riders), 199 Heroes is an infinitely better offering and a story that does its source material infinitely more credit. It’s still not as good as All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker – in fact it could even be said to rely too heavily on the tropes of the previous Rider crossover, but it is a lot of fun and worth checking out for that reason alone.

46 minutes

Well… 46 minutes into OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let’s Go Kamen Riders, and if this is the reason why the authorities at Toei wanted to cut back on using previous Riders in Fourze and successive shows, then I can’t say I blame them.

So far it’s not a patch on All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker.

I suppose I should award points for the fact that General Shadow from Stronger appears… but seeing as I’d completely forgotten who he was as he’s such a last-minute-head-villain, I don’t think I really can.

Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger Episode #1 ~ Initial Thoughts

I have, of course, started watching Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger, the Super Sentai franchise’s 35th anniversary show. As everyone knows, I am completely weak against crossovers – I love them, even for the lamest excuse. Whatever reason, whatever poor excuse of a half-baked, hastily thrown together plotline, I will be there for it. This is part of the reason why I was surprised that I actually enjoyed 70% of Kamen Rider DCD. I wasn’t actually expecting anything of any real significance and yet here was this show that reinvented the previous ten years of Rider history and did it in a unique and enjoyable fashion.

Goukaiger doesn’t look like it is as unique as DCD. The gimmick has already been proven and tested, we know the DCD format was popular hence its return here and the continued presence of DCD-related spin off features. So whilst not unique, what Goukaiger is, is actually a lot of fun.

The same AU premise as DCD seems to be employed in order to prevent the show from being too hampered by continuity (I can almost hear softpixels weeping as I say that) and we are treated to, on average, the return of at least three different former teams (if only for henshin and combat sequences) per episode, not including the Boukenger style Pokérap detailing a different chunk of previous shows at the end of each episode.

The use of former powers by the core Goukaiger team is also unique in that gender is not an issue – in episode #2, we see a female HarikenYellow, a female GekiRed, a male HarikenBlue and several other paradigm shifts in terms of the interpretation of established power sets.

So, having said all that, you would be vastly mistaken if you thought that I wasn’t about to write about to write Ahim de Famille as girl!KuwagaRaiger x Nono Nanami is seriously mistaken.

Hell, you might even get a new Sentai School piece out of me yet.

Stay tuned.

Kamen Rider GIRLS + Wolfheinrich

Wolfheinrich’s World is a truly unique blog by a truly unique voice. Amongst the delights of his journal is this Dollfie x Fate/stay Night x DCD combination.

In other news, today is the first time I saw the full line up for the Kamen Rider GIRLS project.

Initial favourites are Nakura Kaori (Kiva) and Yasuta Nao (Blade).

Final Form Ride!

I have awesome friends, BTW! (^_^)

Kamen Rider DCD All Riders vs. Dai Shocker (SPOILERS)

[SPOILERS, etc.]

So by now, every man and his dog will probably have seen this film.

After several months of waiting, finally some of the big questions of DCD‘s early story arcs have been answered. We now know what Tsukasa’s original world was like and, even more importantly, we know his original purpose in setting out from that world.

The first important thing for me to say is that, regardless of how the series sort of petered out, All Riders was a good film and, even more importantly, a potential open-ended conclusion to DCD.

Secondly, I want to say that I’m really pleased to see Hibiki’s (apparently expensive to film hence why it was dropped from the series) Onibi attack again.

The story begins with a *cough* tournament of Kamen Riders, not entirely dissimilar to one that avid readers of fanfic.net might already have encountered. Following a series of battles between Riders and a meeting with Tsukasa’s long, lost (or rather forgotten) younger sister and this world’s version of Black/Black RX‘s nemesis, Shadow Moon, Tsukasa is revealed as the definitive leader of Dai Shocker and the man responsible for disfiguring an alternate version of Yuki Joji (Riderman).

Kaito is also revealed to have stolen the DiendDriver from Dai Shocker, hence Diend’s similarity to the presumably Shocker designed DCD armour. I don’t know how this matches up with the World of Diend back story from the series as that was one of the arcs I skipped, but it makes sense to me, considering Tsukasa’s role.

It’s also the only time in the entire canon that the whole ‘DCD, destroyer of worlds‘ schtick actually makes any sense. What this means is that Hat Man may well have been a good guy all along… and yet still it’s hard to care about him.

"In the Hall of the DCD King."

Yet as soon as Tsukasa sits himself on his throne and assumes his role as head of Dai Shocker once again, Shadow Moon usurps him and, with the assistance of Tsukasa’s embittered younger sister, dressed in a similar costume to Golgom’s Bishium from Black.

From there, Tsukasa gets a bit angsty but eventually, with the aid of Yuki Joji, discovers what it means to be a Kamen Rider just in time for the big battle and a harmless bit of fanservice for fans of W (as in Shotaro and Philip, not Tsuji and Kago).

What follows is the biggest Rider battle since, well, since DCD‘s opening, featuring DCD’s Final Form Rider, Kuuga’s Rising Ultimate form, the return of J., cameos from the original Agito and Black RX, and what might possibly be the Rider Kick to end all Rider Kicks.

The main problem with the film comes from the pacing and the obvious fact that certain key elements/scenes were not shown in order to make the Director’s Cut an essential for those who enjoyed the film. When viewed in that light, it’s easy to argue that this version of the film is nothing but a glorified trailer.

The film is far from being a return to the Showa era, but it is a Kamen Rider film in the traditional sense as well.

After this, I’m willing to put money on the fact that I think DCD will return for a ‘second season’ this September.

Dear Tackle!!

(via seiji982)

Apparently I need to look at my LJ friends list more often…

HELLO!

World of Segata

Why did DCD not visit Segata Sanshiro’s world?!?

Kamen Rider DCD #31 Review (SPOILERS)

[SPOILERS...for the 12/12/09]

TRUFAX.

Asking if I liked DCD #31 isn’t the right question here. What should be asked is, did I like a 24 minute trailer for a forthcoming Kamen Rider W film in December? That is the question.

The answer, by the way, is no. Points out of ten have to be awarded however for the fact that Toei managed to offer up such a inconclusive and lacklustre episode. It’s difficult to highlight the ways in which this episode failed but, for starters, let’s begin with canon!Blade and his utter irrelevance and, whilst we’ve got you on that note, that’s level a similar accusation at the return of canon!Kiva and predict that the same arbitrary logic was responsible for selecting canon!Agito for the All Rider film.

Then let’s talk about Apollo Geist and how it is now impossible to count how many seconds, minutes, hours or days by which he has outstayed his welcome. A character that proved an interesting choice for the Black arc and served as an awesome suggestion of what lay in store for the upcoming movie has now become an irritating and petty character who turns up, achieves nothing and then runs away. His use of Fangrie ‘magic’ to prolong his life would have been interesting if it weren’t for the fact that Toei’s Kiva bias is already very much evident in countless other DCD subplots. The same results, I wish to point out, could have been achieved by Geist becoming an Orphenoch.

Moving on, let’s touch on the actual ‘Rider War’ established in episode #1. Towards the end of this episode, the story begins to take root and for the briefest of moments, I was convinced that we might see some kind of conclusion regarding the long running themes of this series. I feel like an idiot for even hoping for such a thing, and the prospect of this entire storyline being wrapped in a Kamen Rider W film scheduled for December does nothing for me.

So, what did I like about episode #31? Well…in all honesty, I liked Yuusuke’s determination, I liked the fact that Kaito finally seemed to be acting like he was on the same team as the rest of the main cast, and I liked the roles of kid!Wataru and kid!Asumu, even if their presence was abruptly terminated by a desperation to try and tie in the episode with the vague idea of what happened during the series’ opening.

Other than that, there was nothing here to recommend the episode at all, which is damn shame as it promised so much but managed to deliver so little. Even the famed ‘Rider War’ wasn’t really present in the actual ‘conclusion’, save for possibly one scene.

During the course of the original Kuuga, Godai Yuusuke was offered one seemingly insignificant but very important piece of advice: ‘Don’t do a half-arsed job‘. I can’t help but wish Toei had followed that advice when producing Kamen Rider DCD.

All in all episode #31 is a dissapointing end to what could have been the best Hesei series in a long time…but wasn’t.