State of the MedOOOls

I sit here at my desk wondering why modern tokusatsu has felt so bland to me lately and I've come to the realization that . . . I pretty much dropped Kamen Rider OOO. Goseiger isn't a bad series, but there is nothing too remarkable about it. I generally look for Kamen Rider to give me my dose of tokusatsu melodramatics for the year, but it seems like I won't be getting that any time soon. OOO is 14 episodes in and won't end until August, it will also be the first Kamen Rider series that I've dropped as its aired.

I'm not sure if it works like this for other people, but for me and some others, there are certain franchises that hold a special place in their heart. Kamen Rider was MY tokusatsu. It was the series that I could always get some entertainment out of. If I didn't like the story, I liked looking at well designed suits in exciting stunts and vice versa. This is something that I don't get out of Sentai or other tokusatsu, so Kamen Rider was always my safety net. It was the one series I could go to if I ever needed something to keep my passion for tokusatsu alive, but this year that finally changed.

Before the series aired, we had rumors that Bandai was going to try and push the triple motif following W's Double motif. I thought it was kind of stupid, but I tried to keep an open mind about it all. When the first pictures came out, I loved the suit. It broke all artistic rules and gave us a really fresh take on the Kamen Rider design. ...then I saw the other forms and realized that I really didn't like any of the other combos or form changes. I eventually came around to GataKiriBa, but that was it. I tried to keep an open mind about it all because, like I said, Kamen Rider was MY tokusatsu. it was what resonated the most with me, so I had to keep an open mind.

The first episode of OOO aired and I thought it was okay. There wasn't too much in there for me to like, but I kept an open mind because Kamen Rider was the sort of series that sometimes takes its sweet time getting to an interesting point in the series. More episodes aired and I realized that I just didn't like the characters. Eiji was a bland character I couldn't find much interesting about. It's my personal belief that if you can hand us a main character who has a past entwined with a civil war and it still comes off as bland, then there are issues with the series. He isn't a bad character, but he's just the personification of all the things I disliked about Shotaro in Kamen Rider W. He's written as if he's just going through the motions of being a tragic hero and is a combination of writing tropes with no real passion behind his motivations.

Eiji is an interesting character on paper and some of his execution is interesting, but for the most part, I just see him as a bland character. I think this is mostly because I'm not finding the actor's portrayal of the character to be all that convincing to me. It feels more like an actor in a role than an actor truly bringing a character to life, and I'm actually one of those people who feel that tokusatsu can generally give us some pretty great actors, especially when it comes to lead roles. But this series is not one of those cases.

I don't like the main character, fine. Maybe I'll like the other aspects of the series? Well, let's take a look . . .

We've got Ankh, a monster who seems to be an antihero of sort for the series. He is supposed to be full out evil, but that's something that I never bought, again, could be thanks to the actor. I was actually most excited about the actor in the role of Ankh because he was in Sazer X, one of my favorite tokusatsu, and played one of my favorite characters there. I'm guess he was never a really good actor and that it was just easy to play the sort of soft spoken character that he was in Sazer X because he tens to come off as so hammy when in the role of Ankh. It seems as if Kobayashi took the character of Momotaros and made him actually threatening.

There are the makings of a great character in there, but as of where I've seen up to, he's just another bland character. Ankh isn't exactly with the Greeed, the enemies of the series. But he's just using the humans for his own purposes at the moment. He's basically been weakened to the state of only being able to materialize a disembodied hand as his true form. There are actually some pretty interesting thematic going on with his form as a hand, but for the most part, there isn't much for me to like in the character. I see him as the sort of character who will eventually end up valuing life and the humans, but he won't get there in an interesting manner that hasn't been done before. He won't even get to that point in a unique take on that trope, he'll just go through the basic motions.

There's Goto, a character so bland that I feel he should have just been written in much later than at the first episode. He plays the top soldier in Kougami's army and is pretty much tossed to the side so OOO can get all the new toys and take the limelight. He's got the makings of a character who might end up getting fed up with waiting for his moment to come and just take it. He might have an interesting resolution, but at the moment he just seems like little more than a character who sits around and gets screwed over time and again. He would be the sort of character I would actually like to watch as the lead in this show, but it seems like we're just going to have that teased as he gets sloppy seconds when it comes to the better aspects of the series. (which are not all that great to begin with)

There other characters are so unremarkable that I can't even write too much about them. We've got the soft spoken “cute” little sister in Hina, the sister of the person who Ankh possessed to have a human form. It seems like she tends to forget the mortal danger that her brother is tossed into whenever that possession breaks because she seems just fine with it. I feel that her only purpose in the series is to stand there and look cute, to give Eiji someone to feel like he has to protect for more than just the guilt he feels. We've also got Satonaka, a cake eating assistant who doesn't do much other than stand around in ugly dresses. Finally, we have Kogami, the guy behind the organization of the year and the tech behind most of OOO's weapons. The man is a nut case with no signs of a deeper story to him, and of course there has to be a deeper story to him, but it's just not coming pout at the moment. All I see is someone who rants about cakes all the time and speaks in an unnecessarily cryptic manner. He never seems to fill anyone in on his plans and risks losing Goto because he thinks that Kogami has lost it and is just being arbitrary with his money. I know Kamen Rider loves to do these crazy bosses of organizations, but this is not the way to do it.

Now the one bright spot in the series for me would be the Greeed and the Yummies, the main antagonists of the show. They seem to have some grudge against Ankh, who did something to have them sealed up a long time ago through his own betrayal. I tend to really like the loveable lug character, so Gamel is certainly my favorite and sometimes the only reason I even watched an episode. But I don't think they're interesting enough to keep me into the series. There's a bitterness between the characters, as if they're only working together because of the situation they've been placed into and not really what one could think of as comrades. Their alliance is just a product of circumstance . . . well, perhaps not Mezool and Gamel, those two seem to have a natural bond, but I get the feeling that Mezool is just using Gamel and he'll soon bite the dust.

At this point there is really only one reason I look forward to future episodes, and even then, it's only two episodes. I'll be looking forward to seeing an actor from Tomica Hero Rescue Force, Hiroaki Iwanaga, otherwise known as Ishiguro / R5, come in to play Kamen Rider Birth, the second Kamen Rider in the series . . . for two whole episodes. Rumors say that he might die and Goto will finally get his moment in the spotlight, but something about that just does not sit right with me. I want Goto to get his just deserts, but not at the expensive of a truly talented actor. I feel that we could have had a great element in an older actor like the one that will be coming in, but it seems we're just going to get what seems to be the start of another Rider belt that is basically going to be hot-potatoed throughout the course of the series.

So, as much as I hate saying it, with 10 episodes watched and only two to look forward to, unless something changes greatly or Iwanaga sticks around as a long term character, I'm calling it quits on the series. Now, I'm just one fan and I know it won't kill Toei to lose one fan, but I really have nothing to make me feel excited about tokusatsu for now. This was the sort of medium that could make me feel like a kid again. I could feel excited when I watched these shows, the fun and dramatic stories, the fast paced fights. These were the sort of things I loved, but it seems that I won't be getting any of that for the time being. I look forward to Goukaiger with hope after for the first time in ages, Kamen Rider is done for me.