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.

Kamen Rider DCD #30 Review (SPOILERS)

[SPOILERS... for Bride of Dai-Shocker!]

I can’t say I was really taken with this episode. In my heart, regardless of whoever wrote this part of the series, I was always aware that it probably wasn’t going to work for on the same level that the reconstruction of the Heisei Rider shows worked. There’s just too much pointlessness going on and not enough character.

Having said that, I was really pleased to see both young!Wataru from the Kiva arc and new!Asumu appear in this episode. That kind of, for me at least, meant that watching this episode wasn’t a complete bust. I’m not sure if I ‘believe’ in the all-but-off-screen deaths of Akira and Todoroki during this episode (in that, I don’t doubt they happened according to the show, but that there was no reason for them) but what the hell, personal continuity for the win, yeah?

As an aside, have I mentioned how awesome young!Wataru’s eyebrows are? ^^

"Illogical, captain."

So anyway, this episode seems to be mostly about Apollo Geist getting married to not!Mari, getting an out-of-the-blue Fangrie upgrade in order to extend his life…and then wasting our time with pointless battles.

That’s it.

Honestly, nothing else happens.

Perhaps fans of Blade will have a different opinion and will be excited to see canon!Blade returning and almost being in the same scene as his counterpart, but for me I was kind of indifferent. Really it was only the presence of the two younger heroes that really made an impact on me.

I’ll fully admit that there are a lot of nuisances I probably missed and whatnot, but overall the late addition of Apollo Geist as the series’ ‘big bad’ and the determination by Toei to work whatever loose ends or vague ideas they had around this point seems to let the show down. This seems to be a continuing trend for these shows though and I’m beginning to wonder if, in order to judge a Heisei Rider show, it’s not the beginning or the end episodes you need to watch but roughly around episodes #19 – 25 as this seems to be the point where shows often change direction.

Whatever the case, episode #29, lacklustre as it was, has now passed and we’re on course for the final episode.

I wish I was more excited about it. It seems a shame for a show that had such a promising start to end on such a bland note.

WTF?

Someone reassure me that Fujioka Hiroshi is indeed returning as Ichigo in Dai-Shocker and that the wiki page is just speculation and/or lies.

I could have sworn Fujioka was in the early trailers for the film…