Rising Sun Tokusatsu

Rising Sun Tokusatsu v2.0 has ARRIVED!

2011-09-22T23:53:00.002-04:00

After 2 years of writing reviews and articles here at RST, we have decided to change it up a bit and make a new site to commemorate our 2 years of utter nonsense. So click on the link below and check out the new and improved Rising Sun Tokusatsu! We will keep this page as a sort of back up site in case something happens to v2.0. Click the link, like right now. You owe it to yourself and your respective countries.

Rising Sun Tokusatsu v2.0!

MOVIE REVIEW: Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-07-24T15:33:00.007-04:00

Captain America is essentially the last of the comic book hero blockbuster films of the summer, so I decided to review it. Not sure why I didn't do this before, seeing as I saw pretty much every other comic book movie this year. But that's beside the point! Here is the first of hopefully many (a Snickers bar to whoever can figure out how many times I've said this very phrase) theatrical movie reviews. As with pretty much every review we do here, it will contain spoilers (ESPECIALLY THE END!!!). Just a friendly reminder.

The movie starts off following an expedition in the Arctic. Scientists discover a ship frozen in the ice. Upon further investigation they find, wait for it, Captain America's shield. Flashback to 1942, and we see a castle being raided by forces known as HYDRA, led by Johann Schmidt. He finds the hidden case that contains the Cosmic Cube and leaves with it in his possession. Schmidt takes it back to HYDRA headquarters to have it examined since HYDRA is the secret science division of Hitler's army. He hopes to harness the power of the Cosmic Cube to wipe out all enemy forces in the fraction of the time. Most evil genius' do.

Cut to Steve Rogers, a scrawny American who's only wish is to join the army and fight against the Nazis. But, due to his small, lanky stature and various ailments, he fails the physical every time. Bummed by the expected result, he is forced to go out to the World's Fair by his friend, Sgt. James Barnes accompanied by two ladies, to watch the spectacles. There, they see Howard Stark present his latest creation. Steve sees a flier for another recruitment center, and after arguing with James, decides to try yet again. It looks to be another failed attempt, but his case is taken over by a German scientist named Dr. Erskine, who coincidentally heard Steve argue with his friend and was impressed at his courage and stubbornness. He enlists Steve into a special program that he is heading, working to develop what they call a "super soldier".

Steve is put through basic training and is later administered the syrum that increases his body and muscle mass. But immediately after the experiment is complete, a HYDRA spy that infiltrated the lab blows it up, kills Dr. Erskine, and steals a vile of the syrum. Steve chases him down on foot and captures him. For his heroic actions, he is asked to do promotion for the military, which he is not entirely fond of.

While on tour in Italy, he hears that a platoon has been captured by HYDRA, the same platoon his friend James was assigned to. He decides to go in solo to rescue them, after being refused by Colonel Phillips to send a rescue team. Steve sneaks in, frees the hostages and goes after Schmidt, who reveals that he was the first test of the syrum and became Red Skull. They part ways, for the moment, and Steve escapes with James and the whole platoon. Steve is promoted to Captain and put in charge of taking down Schmidt's forces, which he saw a map for in the facility. He picks his team and systematically takes down each stronghold.

In a raid of a train transport, things go sideways and James is killed during the mission. Steve vows to take down Schmidt himself and charges HYDRA's last stronghold solo. He is captured and taken to Schmidt, all according to plan because his team charges through the windows to back up Steve. In the last showdown between Captain America and Schmidt, Schmidt attempts to use the Cosmic Cube in a last ditch effort. But he is seemingly disintigrated in front of him. Steve is now tasked with steering the armed plane away from NYC, but the controls are busted. So he does his best to steer it into the Arctic ice.

Steve wakes up in a hospital room and immediately asks where he is. He runs out in a panic and finds himself in 2011 NY. He is approached by Nick Fury who informs him that he has been asleep for 70 years.

This leads into what I deem as the most epic after-credits teaser yet. It has been deemed a common rule during the last few years that you never leave a Marvel movie until you see Samuel L. Jackson. Well, this time he appears before the credits, that should be the first clue that something crazy is about to happen, and it does. We see Steve training in a boxing ring, when Nick Fury shows up again. He tells Steve that he needs his help to save the world. Then we cut to the first-ever teaser trailer for The Avengers! The movie hinted upon for years, ever since the first Iron Man movie, is finally proven to exist. We see all the actors involved, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo who now plays The Hulk.

Now, this was just the icing on top of the amazing cake that is Captain America: The First Avenger. I already thought this was a great movie by the end of the movie proper. The acting was well done. As many other people were, I was worried if Chris Evans could pull off Cap. A, even though he was the best thing in the F4 movies (though that doesn't really take much to do.). But honestly, I think he fit the part. He portrayed the straight-arrow, patriotic soldier that Steve Rogers seems to be in the comics in a confident fashion. I say "seems to be" because my only exposure to Cap. A is through the recent Avengers comics. But from what I hear, he did a good job according to fans of Cap. as well. The action in the movie was well-done, not too flashy but still packed the necessary punch needed. And I thought the story itself was simple and to-the-point. It was a clear story of his origins and his first encounter with Red Skull. Oh, and by the way, Hugo Weaving once again proves that being a bad guy in a movie is his forte as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull. And the suit took some getting used to, but I liked it as a sort of first-draft of the iconic Captain America suit. It seems that it will be revised and made to resemble the comics a bit more in The Avengers movie, so that's also something to look forward too.

If you got this far in the review, I'm guessing and hoping that you have seen it in theaters already. If so, please comment on the post and let me know what you think. I can't stress enough how good this movie is. A good way to cap (see what I did there? ehh? ehhh?) the comic book movie season. And what a season it has been. But, next year seems to be aiming to top this year in total badassery, which I seriously hope it does.

MOVIE REVIEW: Gantz

2011-07-17T22:28:00.011-04:00

Now, I'm not much of an anime/manga fan like I used to be. So I heard very little about Gantz up until promotion for the movie started. I actually planned to go to the limited US theatrical release of the movie earlier this year, but something came up and I wasn't able to go. So I was pretty anxious for the DVD release so that I could finally see what this movie was about. Now, since this is a pretty story-oriented movie (I know that's weird to say. But considering that most of the movies I review are either Tokusatsu-related or Martial Arts movies, this has a tad bit more story to it.), it will be hard to talk about without spoiling the movie. So, here's a fair warning. THIS IS A SPOILER REVIEW! If you haven't seen the movie or read the manga or watched the anime, go do one or all of those things, preferably the first one, and come back. You've been successfully warned.

The movie stars Ninomiya Kazunari as Kurono Kei and Matsuyama Ken'ichi as Kato Masaru. Kurono and Kato are childhood friends who coincidentally run into each other at a train station. Kato attempts to save a drunken man who fell onto the tracks. He manages to lift him onto the platform, but the train is too close for him to get out. Kurono lends him a hand but is pulled onto the tracks as well. The trains barrels towards them and they close their eyes in anticipation of the impact. They open their eyes and find that they are in a room with a bunch of other folks and a big black ball (save your jokes for the end, people!) or should I say sphere, in the middle of the room. Inside the sphere is a man who seems to be unconscious and is hooked up to the machinery within. The sphere, known as Gantz, tells them that their lives have been taken away and that it will determine how they will use their new ones. It proceeds to give them targets for extermination along with suits and weapons to carry these missions out.

Most, especially Kurono and Kato, are hestitant to carry out this task at first. They then learn that the targets are aliens that have invaded the Earth and that if they receive 100 points which are issued by Gantz, they can either have their memories erased and returned to their normal lives or have a loved one come back to life. Little by little, the characters begin to accept their fate and tackle the missions given. Kato wants to save as many lives as possible, while Kurono starts to enjoy his new life and new abilities (the suite gives them super-speed and strength, and as long as they do not die before time is up, all injuries taken during the mission disappear). Since in his normal life, he seemed to be stuck in limbo and felt worthless. Here, he can do something and do it rather well, as far as he's concerned. Plus he has a goal now, 100 pts. This obviously results in conflict between the two friends which is later resolved in the final mission of the movie.

Now, from what I've heard, the movie is VERY different from the manga and is a pretty watered-down version. I was told by a friend that I may have a unique perspective on it since I wasn't exposed to the story in the manga. From what I hear, fans of the manga really didn't like this movie. Don't ask me why though, because as far as I'm concerned, I liked it a lot. The story was something that kept me interested the whole time. It was an interesting concept to me, though I'm sure I've seen it done before in some capacity or another. It did have a bit of a Matrix feel to it, but rather than being in a "computer program", they were still in real-life, just that they had less consequences for their actions. And the cliffhanger at the end definitely has me hyped for the second movie, Gantz: Perfect Answer, which released about 3 months after this movie and should be out on DVD in the next coming months.

The acting in this movie was pretty well done. Everyone seemed to hold their own and none of the characters came off over-exaggerated or underwhelming. Ninomiya did a good job portraying the change of his character and Matsuyama seemed perfectly casted for his role. The rest of the supporting cast did their job well also. Though if there was one character that seemed tacked on, it was Kojima Tae, played by Yoshitaka Yuriko. Kojima ends up being the love interest for Kurono in the movie, but it never seemed to be developed properly. They talk once, then have coffee while she shows off her manga drawings, then professes her love for him after he almost gets hit by a train again (seriously, this guy needs to start taking the bus or ride a cab or something.) Other than that, it just seems like her part of the story was rushed. Which is unfortunate because it could have added another element to the end of the movie and made the audience feel what he feels when he makes his choice to fight on. It just seems mishandled. And it threw me off because she seemed to be in a lot of the promotion for the movie, but she's barely in it.

The action in the movie was pretty good. Special effects were used to show their enhanced abilities as well as CGI for some of the aliens. I actually thought the CG in this was pretty good. Not Transformers good (though one can argue if that is actually considered good, but that's for another day.), but I'd say its a slight step above your average Tokusatsu series CG. Though the CG used to show their muscles bulking up seemed odd to me. The suits themselves are pretty cool and I thought the weapons designs were good, but not something to get too excited about.

Overall, I had a good time watching this movie. As a stand-alone film, it does what it needs to do. It sets up the story, gives you enough action to feel satisfied, and serves you up for a second helping in the next movie. I guess if I read the manga, I'd have a different opinion. I'm glad I didnt though, because that happened to me with the Green Lantern movie and it would suck to have a jaded opinion about this movie.

So, if you got this far in the review, chances are you have seen it already. If so, feel free to leave a comment or two on this post and let me know what you thought about it. If you blatantly ignored my warning and read anyway, well, that's on you. mwahahaha, I kid. I tried to leave enough out so that it would still warrant a watch for those who haven't seen it. Go check it out and come back to post a comment.

Episode Review: B-Fighter Kabuto 31

2011-06-19T14:50:00.007-04:00

[合体最強銃と哀戦士] gattai saikyoujuu to ai senshi

"The Ultimate Gun Combination and the Sorrowful Warrior"

This episode marks the introduction of the third new B-Fighter, Min. B-Fighter Min's human form is a Chinese guy named Lee who happens to be against fighting, so we don't actually see him in action as Min for a good chunk of the episode. A bit of an odd way to introduce a new character, but it sort of fits him. Lee is here to deliver the final Beet Arms piece to form the Input Rifle weapon . . . or at least that's what he's supposed to be doing.

Since Lee is essentially a pacifist at the start of the episode, he doesn't actually want to hand over the Semission Magazine weapon to Kengo. Lee's line of thinking is that a stronger weapon will just lead to more fighting and that's never going to solve anything.

Elsewhere we have a frustrated Dezzle trying to make his last stand in the eyes of Mother since the B-Crushers have essentially been out-performing him in just about every aspect of his mission since their arrival.

So this was a pretty decent episode, much like a lot of the series since episode 25. It seems like that team up with the first generation B-Fighters was just what the series needed to finally get going. I would say it was Toei's attempt at just adding new toys since we've gotten eight new armored characters and three new weapons in five episodes . . . but it's worked out quite nicely. As of this episode, the only new B-Fighter I haven't really felt is Genji, his episode sort of just glossed over him as this mysterious pretty boy.

I figured that Mac was the only one of the B-Fighters to have gotten a decent introduction because he had two episodes dedicated to him while the others have one. But, I think Toei just dropped the ball on Genji/Julio's introduction. We only got to know Lee for one episode so far and it did a great job of showing off his character. He's a nice guy who just wants to entertain children. Fighting is the very last thing on his to-do list, which leaves him and everyone else wondering how in the world he ended up as a chosen warrior.

The last three episodes have given us a character focus for Kouhei and Ran, each teaming up with one of the new characters. Kouhei saw a rival in Mack Windy and Ran gets a love interest in Julio. Kengo? He, erm, I'll get back to you on that one. The two don't really form much of a bond at all in this episode and it sort of throws off the pattern set up with the introduction of the third generation B-Fighters. Lee's entire reasoning for finally relenting and letting Kengo have the Semession Magazine was more or less self-discovery.

Kengo and Lee shared a few scenes together, but nothing really made them stand out as this pair that relates to each other somehow like the other two. I guess anyone who gets paired up with Kengo is going to get the short end of the stick since his character is pretty damn bland. He's supposed to be a hardened cool guy, but he often just feels like a set piece, just there to even out the number. Might be thanks to his actor, who isn't exactly the greatest at portraying Kengo in the way he probably should have been portrayed.

So anyway. Lee transforms, becoming B-Fighter Min and hands off the Semession Magazine to Kengo, who uses it on Dezzle and then combines it with the other weapons to form the Input Rifle, a pretty nifty-looking gun. Kengo did have more focus than Kouhei this episode, so I totally expected Kengo to be the one to use it and then he just . . . hands it off to Kouhei. That sort of bothered me because it feels like Kouhei gets to use it just because he's Kabuto and his name's in the title.

The episode in general seemed like a decent balance between the good guys and the Melzard tribe, especially Dezzle. Since the death of Raija and the introduction of the B-Crushers, he's been pretty useless and wants to prove himself. He enters his mother (...yeah) and combines with his grunts to change form and become Dezzle the Great, who does a decent job of smacking around just about anyone in the way. Seems like he could have stood a decent shot at keeping up with the B-Crushers had he not been killed.

The last few episodes have essentially felt like the show was trying to write off a lot of the first half characters on Melzard's side. Raija is dead, Dezzle is dead, Miora and Drude are by their sides morning their fallen leaders and the B-Crushers are taking center stage now. I would say this is pretty poor writing, but hope is not lost! Both Raija and Dezzle are regenerating and will eventually return once their bodies are healed and...they stop being stone.

So we've finally got the Input Rifle formed! Now it's time for, oh, what's this? We've actually got one more B-Fighter left to introduce next time and no new toy for her to introduce? This should be interesting.

Kamen Rider Fouze: First image leaked?

2011-06-19T10:30:00.001-04:00

Looks like we have what might be our first image of Kamen Rider Fouze! As per the rumors and theme, he has four different body parts to switch from, supposedly these switches will be based on the look of older Riders. The Rider has been seen filming at a high school with Shu Watanabe on set handing off an item to the new guy. Eye witness reports stated that he looked like Skyzel (pictured left) from Uchuu Tetsujin Kyodain and...they weren't too far off.

Ninja Sentai Kakuranger - Judgement!

2011-06-02T18:24:00.030-04:00

Ninja Sentai Kakuranger is an odd little series that came to us in the early 90s from the producer-writer team of Suzuki Takeyuki and Noboru Sugimura, who had headed up Sentai since Zyuranger and would go on to do Ohranger. These series, particularly the trilogy of Sentai that is Zyuranger, Dairanger and Kakuranger, are often considered a curiosity within Sentai. They came about at a time when even Toei staff weren't sure of what Sentai's future would be, or if it even had one. The unpredictable nature of Sentai at the time is likely what lead to these three series being rather different from anything before or after.

This trilogy of Sentai are often noted for their downright bizarre contents, even by Sentai standards. The shows ranged from pretty bad to really great, but they all had their share of strange thematics, villains, and mood going on. Due to recently finishing Kakuranger at a monthly event I host at HJU, I thought it would be appropriate to do a review of the series, so without further adieu, let's dive into the strange world that was 1994.

So first I suppose I should tell you just who the Kakurangers are, right? Well let's begin! We've got Saizou, the sparsely focused on blue ranger who feels like the biggest set piece of them all. The guy is good when an episode focuses on him, but otherwise you get the feeling that he's just there to fill out the five ranger quota since it seemed like teams with four or three rangers weren't the biggest thing back then. Following Saizou is my favorite character in the show and probably one of my favorite rangers in all Sentai: Seikai the yellow ranger! The guy is great to watch, even when an episode doesn't focus on him. He's a bit of a coward and can often be the first one to just run screaming out a room, but damn if I don't love the guy for it. You'll be hard pressed to find a more hilarious character than Seikai in this show, and I think a lot of that has to do with his actor, who is awesome at wild movements.

Next up is the most famous of famous warriors, Jiraiya! Played by Kane Kosugi, Jiraiya was truly the first foreign ranger on a team -- the guy could barely speak Japanese at first! Jiraiya (much like his actor) grew up in America and returned to Japan in his adulthood. Because the guy hasn't always lived in Japan and English is his first language, we're presented with a few amusing scenes involving the language and culture barrier between him and the other rangers. You'll also notice that he carries a pretty thick accent throughout the entire series when he speaks Japanese, something I always though really drove his character.

Our next ranger is Sasuke, a rather interesting character to begin with. He isn't interesting because of who he is, but because of who he isn't - he isn't the leader. Sasuke was the first red ranger not to be the leader of the team. And, unlike other series where this happens, he's also the first red ranger not to be the main character. Kakuranger is truly an ensemble piece and even though certain characters get the bigger story beats, you never feel like anyone (sans Saizou) is being left in the dust. Sasuke, to me, feels like a very important character. It's through him that I feel the staff realized that they could create a series where all the characters are written and presented almost on the same level of importance.

Our final ranger is Tsuruhime, the white ranger and the first female Sentai leader. Tsuruhime is a pretty middle of the road type of character. She can be girly, but more often than not, she's the leader who brings the team together because of the situations they're tossed in and what she's experienced throughout her life.

Kakuranger's premise is simple enough: ancient demons are let loose upon the world by the descendents of the ones who originally did the deed and now it's up to them to fix the mess they've caused. It sounds typical on paper, but once you go into the series, you realize this is a Sentai series unlike any other before it. A lot of the story also revolves around Tsuruhime and her family history, but we'll get to that later on.

There's also something really neat that I'm very fond of in Kakuranger, something I wish Sentai would do more often: the team isn't gathered up by the first episode. The first episode introduces us to Sasuke, Saizou, and Tsuruhime, the third to Seikai, and the fourth to Jiraiya. My ideal Sentai is one where it takes a good 8 episodes or so to introduce us to all the rangers, but Kakuranger's approach is a pretty effective one as well.

From the visuals to the clothes the characters wear, you're hit with the idea that this is not meant to be a timeless Sentai. When you watch, you will be reminded of the 90s, and that's what the creative team was going for with this series. Despite this, the message of the series is one that just about every generation of people will be able to identify with at some point or another: Damn you kids, get off my lawn!

...

Right. Well maybe not that far, but the idea is there! Kakuranger's hook is that the modern day has ruined the youth of Japan. Kids are lazy slobs who rely on technology and have no respect for their elders and are generally following a pretty poor lifestyle. Now here comes the fun part: it's not just the human youth that the modern age has ruined, it's the demon youth as well. After they're released, the demons go about leading lives in the 90s and quickly become just as tainted by society as humans.

There are subtle and not so subtle criticisms of modern day Japan strewn about throughout the series. From people doing whatever it is they can to get money to the age old lesson that a team is stronger than the individual. Despite this, you never feel that one way is better than the other. The series presents viewpoints that are valid, one is just thrown at you as if it came from an old man angry at kids for making too much noise.

This is a series that wants to be subtle in some areas, but then just feels like smacking you over the head in others. When it wants to tell you how terrible and lazy the new generation is, you get subtle stories that deal with the changing characteristics of the population over time, and at times goes deeper than just the kids being horrible, terrible people Japan should be ashamed of.

When it wants you to see just what sort of wahahahacky things the modern age brings, you get this:

Sounds effects, baaaaaby! No, this isn't a screenshot from Adam West's Batman, this was the sort of thing you would see in the early episodes of Kakuranger that would later be sprinkled throughout the series. Why? Because comics are ruining the kids! No, not really, but American comics were the inspiration for these on screen sound-effects. Some people hate them, some like them, some have no idea what to think of them. Myself? I'm not the biggest fan only for the fact that they do seem to obscure the fights at times and Kakuranger was a series that I loved watching fights in. That said, I understand their purpose, but I'm also glad that they weren't around for the entire series, not sure how much of that I would have enjoyed.

The series also employed an on-screen narrator, a rather inventive technique that hasn't been done since. Because Kakuranger is split into two volumes, the narrator is only around for the first half, but he's almost always fun to watch. This is the guy who tells us the theme of the monster and the history of the demon that it's based on, at times even going as far as joining the action himself. Though it doesn't happen often, characters do interact with him, my favorite of these interactions probably revolves around a monster who uses sleeping gas to knock people out. The monster's sleeping gas just so happened to make its way onto the narrator's stage and he had to take over duties for the remainder of the episode. It was this sort of oddly meta interaction that Kakuranger wants people to remember it for.

These on screen quirks almost always come to mind when one thinks of Kakuranger, and it seems like that should make the production team very happy. More than Zyuranger and Dairanger before it, Kakuranger is a bizarre Sentai that goes to places the franchise hasn't seen before and probably won't go to again anytime soon. Now I know some might feel that the narrator is the sort of thing that might get too meta and take them out of the story, but he really is a pretty charming addition to the presentation. Without him, Kakuranger still has its theme, but you need this guy to remind us that you damn kids don't know anything and need to man up.

The series goes through this evolution on screen that clearly divides into separate arcs that I almost feel could work as their own series. Volume one is the one that gained Kakuranger its notoriety, its the half of the show that just throws these messages about modern day Japan all over the place and has so many visual cues that basically tell you "proper adults get their messages across with civility, kids need to scream it at the top of their lungs,". This first volume stretches from the very first episode to episode 24, we're even given a nice little "Volume One - End" card at the end of that episode.

Something to be noted, this is also the last regular appearance of the narrator. The second volume is titled "The Fierce Fight of Youth" and as it suggests, Kakuranger takes a more dramatic approach to some of its story around this point. And what's something the series didn't need in that half? The narrator apparently! I actually sort of missed the guy because, despite the title, it's not always grim-dark and serious business. The series has its fair share of silly episodes in that second half...albeit there are a good ten episodes before we get to that point. Oddly enough, we do get to see the narrator return in episode 39 in what is probably the strangest clip show ever. The rangers are sleeping throughout most of it while the narrator and a random film crew are doing an exposé on the team and the demons. The episode closes out with the narrator saying his goodbyes as this is the last time we see him in the series. It's a pretty decent send off for the guy.

So what makes up this second half? Action and a lot of the overall structure of the story being set up. While the first half mostly focused on character relations, the second half drives home the plot. Junior, resident guitar playing undead skeleton and son of Daimaoh, leader of all the demons, has been plotting to bring his daddy back to the human world and finally gets this underway when he turns everyone in a city to stone and summons that city up into the air to serve as the castle for his father, who will soon revive. The Kakurangers are utterly defeated in a battle and learn that as they are at that point, they have no chance at beating Junior, let alone Daimaoh. So what's a team of rangers to do when the world is ending around them? Go on a series of personal journeys!

Volume one ends with the team being told that there are Shinobi Scrolls scattered throughout Japan that they need to collect so they can unlock the pieces to the Kakure Daishogun, the second mecha and the final resting member of the Three Great Generals that make up their mecha. There's a pretty nice send off to the narrator here and more than that, the episode itself feels like it's the end of the first half, as if it could be the end of the series itself even. The team parts ways for now, knowing they'll eventually be reunited, but for now they need to go their separate ways and find what's important to them.

The next episodes, the very first ones in the second volume, make up some of my favorite from the series. I like these episodes not really because of the story they present, though a few are pretty cool, but because of what they give us in characters to follow. For most of the these episodes, you only get one ranger on screen. Outside of a shot that lets us know the others are traveling around Japan, Sasuke's episode is him all by himself. (well, he is joined by a butterfly-turned human played by Reiko Chiba) This is something that Sentai rarely does, even when there are focus episodes, the characters are there in the background. It feels really fresh to see episodes where you know the others aren't going to pop up, you know that the character being featured is one that's going to get focus.

What I have always been really fond of in this series of episodes is that each ranger is clearly given a resolve, a new reason to fight. Each ranger essentially finds the strength to fight for each other and for the innocent people that the demons have dragged into the war. Tsuruhime is tested on her leadership skills, being the first female leader in a Sentai and all, her family needs to be sure that she is up to the challenge. Jiraya discovers he's been lied to all his life by the man that raised him and in essence loses two fathers throughout his episodes. I've heard that these episodes aren't everyone's favorite, but I think they're ones you can appreciate from a different point of view.

These episodes are not for everyone, but I love them. I think you really have to be into martial arts films in general to appreciate them for what they are – basically abbreviated martial arts films. These two episodes give us a lot of standard cliches that are in film, the dead family member, betrayal, search for a great item of power, and a pretty great fight scene. Sho and Kane have some great chemistry on screen. I've got to wonder whose idea it was to bring in Sho to play Gali, I'd like to thank that person because it really worked out wonderfully. (Sho and Kane Kosugi are real-life father and son, btw!) The presentation could be a bit floppy, such as the scene that shows us what happened to Gali's daughter, but I really like it for what it is. I'm always fond of those episodes that don't have a lot of transformation and in suit fighting for some reason, especially in Sentai, they feel a bit more special and stand out to me because of that and these episodes shine through thanks to it. You get to see how kickass Gali is supposed to be and you get a pretty viscous fight scene out of it.

In general, this was one of the more "man, sucks to be you" set of episodes I've seen Sentai give us. No matter what happens, someone was going to have to give up something dear to them, and in the case of Jiraiya, he had to do that and learn he was lied to all his life, all sorts of conflicted feelings going on right there.

The arc culminates in the return of Daimaoh to the living world and the death of Junior, who as it turns out, was just being used by his father all along. As we find out later on, Daimaoh really isn't big on family.

Following this arc we're introduced to the strange armored knight, Hakanmenrou. Who is he? None other than Tsuruhime's long lost father! He long ago joined the demons in an attempt to figure out a way to defeat Daimaoh. In doing so, his two adopted sons were captured and turned into dogs, only having the strength to become human a finite number of times after that. The sons are lead around by a young boy named Bun, who as it turns out, is a demon himself! Not very happy with the way things are going for the demons, Bun ditches them and joins the humans. Bun isn't exactly my favorite character and I feel the show might have worked better without him. The guy is basically an eight year old kid with a deadpan expression all the time, not exactly something that makes you feel for the plight of the character he plays.

Right, tangent aside, back to Hakamenrou! Seems daddy dearest has to fight his own daughter and her team if he's to keep up the appearance of being on the side of the demons. This of course leads to all sorts of conflicted feelings in Tsuruhime, she has no idea he's working on a way to defeat the demon lord, so she sees him as a traitorous father that she still loves. It's a tough time to be her for sure.

After this arc comes to a close, we're thrown back into a string of fillers that are neither too good nor are they terrible. We get to see the Kunoichi female ninjas again after quite some time. Seems like they weren't quite destroyed when Junior, their creator, bit the bullet.

The Kunoichi are a pretty odd set of characters to begin with. Cats turned to female ninja meant to kick Kakuranger ass and, boy do they ever do it. It feels like the first five or so encounters the team had against them always had them losing. There's even a pretty neat two parter that has most of the team captured by them, leaving Sasuke to find them. For as strong as these girls are, they aren't in every episode and there were actually stretches of episodes I found myself wondering if they were ever going to reappear. It feels like we went at least ten episodes without seeing them at one point. Though, to be fair, seeing them used sparingly does portray a sense of real danger, they're the big guns called out only when Daimaoh really needs something to go his way.

Getting back on track, we've got a couple of fillers to deal with and they're mostly character pieces. These are the episodes that make me feel the narrator still had a place in the series, they hearken back to the comedic timing and visual cues of the first volume, so it feels strange without him. Going into these fillers feels a little strange because we've just been through what felt like a good ten episodes of straight story, but it's not the worst thing in the world. The string of filler in the final few episodes is what I've really come to dislike.

Anywho. Around episode 37 we're introduced to who could essentially stand in as the sixth ranger, Ninjaman! Ninjaman is a jive talking, look-before-you-leap, sort of character and man do I love him for that. Even though he was introduced pretty late into the series, I love his wild and rambunctious portrayal, a lot of that has to do with his voice actor, the great Kazuki Yao.

Ninjaman was basically a student of the Three Great Generals long ago and tricked into fighting humans by the demons at the time. Because he was tricked, Ninjaman was punished and thrown into an urn where he was to wait for 10,000 years before being released. The urn is found in the modern day by some siblings, a brother and sister. This introduction episode is rather cute as the sister does a lot to care for the urn and Ninjaman in general. The girl is eventually captured by the demons and this isn't the best news for Ninjaman. Tsuruhime finally breaks the seal on Ninjaman's urn, freeing him and allowing him to fight alongside the other rangers.

Though strong, Ninjaman doesn't really have the best temper and has a pretty nasty habit of getting ticked off whenever the demons call him "blue boy", this causes him to transform into the much more powerful Samuraiman form, who usually seems to kick ass and take names.

After this we get a few more fillers, but they aren't all bad, we get to see Ninjaman as a character and his interactions with the team. It's also pretty amusing to see him think a few possessed humans are demons as he tries to strangle the life out of a woman while the other rangers beat him off of her.

We eventually entered the Daradara arc of the series. This is a set of episodes that sees the team finally learning the truth about Hakamenrou and we also learn that Daimaoh has known the truth all along himself. He's just been using good ol' H-man as a means of causing strife among the team and luring the Kakuranger to him. Daimaoh clones himself at the start of this arc, leading to the birth of Daradara, a demon who can absorb the energy of any fighter it defeats and send any damage he feels straight to that defeated fighter.

Now, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm going to spazz about episode 44.

Oh man do I love everything about this episode, I think it might be my favorite episode of the series, and probably my favorite Sentai episode from the 90s. There's a true sense of desperation as the heroes are pushed against the wall and seemingly have no way of escaping. Sasuke's hurt and he can barely stand against one Kunoichi when he's at full strength, no way he can stand against five after being beat to hell. Hakamenrou's been outed as a traitor to the demons. The rangers are captured and the only ones left to protect the earth are the three generals, and of course stopping that monster means they kill four of the rangers and Ninjaman, it really seems like a lose-lose situation at the moment.

I love the way this episode was filmed, especially the night scenes. I can't recall the last time I saw a real sense of terror and destruction from the monsters in a Sentai series like this episode showed us. Things are going to hell all over the place and it really feels like that. Having that night time stand-off between the three generals and Daradara just adds to the intensity of the set-up. By the time this one ends, you really have no idea what the rangers are going to do to get out of it, everything seems pretty hopeless all around.

With a few alterations on a series of events, this could have easily worked as the final episode of the series. Everything is out in the open and everyone's basically learned all their lessons, now it's time to defeat Daimaoh once and for all.

We've got a couple more fillers after the Daradara arc and these are fillers that I'm not too fond of. Not because of the content in these episodes, but because of their placement. You get a big heavy set of episodes dealing with the apparent death of Hakamenrou and the rangers all finally realizing just how much rests on their shoulders and then...we're off to Santa World! Yeah, those were weird episodes even by my standards. Thankfully they don't last too long and we eventually hit the final arc.

The final arc opens up with Daimaoh's brother and sister showing up to try and lure the rangers into a trap by using copycats that look just like them. This leads to a few interesting fights and eventually ends with the death of the brother. It's eventually revealed that Hakamenrou, whose real name we now know is Yoshi Teru, isn't actually dead. He's been turned to stone and Daimaoh is now controlling him, causing him to wreck cities. What I love about these episodes is that we're shown that humans aren't exactly the nicest creatures on Earth. Daimaoh makes it known that Hakamenrou is Tsuruhime 's father and that he won't stop until she's dead. This leads to crowds hunting her down. It's pretty chilling to see ordinary people turned so vicious when they're presented with something to fear.

Tsuruhime tracks down her father and we soon learn that she's going to try and kill him using a demon sword Daimaoh's sister conviently gave her, telling her that only this sword can kill him now. Tsuruhime is conflicted as heck about what she should do, but the other rangers are scrambling to find her now. They've been told by the Three Great Generals that if that sword is used to kill Hakakmenrou, a terrible disaster will befall the planet.

Eventually Taro and Jiro, the two adopted sons turned dogs, appear and turn human for the final time. They fight off Hakamenrou and die in the process of saving their father, but they both die at peace by his side and at least get a decent close to their story. Soon after this, Daimaoh's sister bites it and we're left with Daimaoh as the last demon standing, along with the Kunoichi, though they aren't exactly demons, just a whole lot of pussy. (I went there!)

The series comes to an end in a surprising battle between Daimaoh and the others. The rangers are ready to face Daimaoh head on but are stopped by the Three Great Generals, who tell them that killing Daimaoh will actually cause him to envelope the heart of every human on earth. Here's where we learn something neat about big D. He's basically the incarnation of fear and hate itself. He's going to be around as long as humans have something to fear and hate, and as long as humans exist, so will hate, so there's no destroying him.

This, of course, causes the rangers a lot of trouble as they set about tracking him down against their generals' orders. They track him to a city and we get some interesting conversations between Daimaoh and the team about whether or not humans are really worth protecting. After all, greed, fear and hate are made much stronger by humans than they could have ever been out in nature. It's a really unique take on a final Sentai battle that doesn't resort to fighting the enemy straight on. Of course, Sasuke comes through with a speech about all the good humans have done and pure emotions like love, hope and dreams that cause us all to aspire to greater things in life. We're all flowers just waiting to bloom and make this planet into something truly beautiful. (or something like that)

We eventually come to the close of the current battle between good and evil. The Kunochi are turned back into cats and the final battle isn't so much a battle as it is one final desperate struggle for survival on both sides. The Kakuranger discover that, rather than defeat Daimaoh, they can seal him away into the same door their ancestors used on the previous generation of demons. What we're left with is the rangers pushing Daimaoh into the sealing door with all their might as he struggles against them with all his. The rangers do of course win and seal him away, but he leaves them with these words: I will returns! So long as humans are around, I will live on and I will definitely return!

So what do the rangers do? They're off to go spread the good word to humanity, to tell them to be good to each other, to love each other and not give into fear and hate, for that will bring a greater destruction than anyone could ever imagine. And with that, the series draws to its final close.

So Kakuranger is over and what do I think of it? If you haven't guessed yet, I love it. I often find it hard to differentiate between Flashman and Kakuranger as my favorite Sentai, but I think I might go with Kakuranger just because it feels a bit more vibrant and I find myself liking the characters a lot more. Kakuranger overall just seems like the culmination and avoidance of the problems that plagued Dairanger and Zyuranger. We've got a strong story with really likable characters and a rather unique message presented to us. Though it feels like the final evolution of what Zyuranger and Dairanger were trying to go for, there are so many unique aspects to Kakuranger that really do make it a wonderful watch.

I've always been incredibly enamored by the visual presentation of the series. The ninja aesthetics are fun to watch, from the random changes to their ninja outfits to the actual Kakuranger suits, some of the lowest key Sentai suits I've ever seen. I've got to wonder if anyone really had to fight for these designs to get off the ground because they just don't scream typical Sentai, but Kakuranger is not your typical Sentai.

The show sends home a pretty unique message, sometimes in your face, sometimes in a subtle manner that I can't help but love. It's as if the show itself is presenting us two different views of the same issues: whether or not the youth of today are being ruined by the modern era. In the end, the show basically takes the high road and gives the viewer hope. Yeah, there are a LOT of things wrong with the modern world, not least of which is the fear mongering attitude that has become rather prevalent, but there's always hope. This series tells us that, despite our problems, humans are good natured and want to be able to live in peace with one another.

It's not everyone's favorite series, and I can imagine it might be a pretty difficult one to get into, but Kakuranger was the necessary Sentai. This is the show that allowed the franchise to move out of bizarre comedy back to strong stories with a tighter sense of pacing and tone. I personally don't think it's the most difficult show to get into, but I've heard people have had issues with that, I'll just say that if you can get into it, you are in for one hell of a 53 episode ride. (oddly enough, Kakuranger is actually the third longest Sentai and the longest since its airing)

Koichi Sakamoto invades Japan!

2011-05-22T18:17:00.002-04:00

Chances are that if you are reading this, you have seen the work of Koichi Sakamoto's at some point in time. Whether its his Stunt Coordination and Director work in various seasons of Power Rangers, his independent films such as Broken Path and The Wicked Game, or his recent run in the Japanese Tokusatsu scene with his work on Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger or the Kamen Rider W movies, he has definitely become a popular name in the franchise and among the fandom as of late. So, what sets this guy apart? What is it about his work that is so appealing to the fans? How can I get a part in one of his projects? I will try and explore 2 out of those 3 questions in this article. And one of those questions will either be lost in the ether or very poorly realized. I'll leave it to you to figure out which that is by the end!

I'll start this off with a bit of background info on Mr. Sakamoto. After college, Sakamoto worked as the Stunt actor for Blue Mask in the Maskman live show. He later came to the States and landed his first major stunt role in the movie Guyver: Dark Hero. Sakamoto later landed the role of stunt director on the third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, moving up the ranks to 2nd Unit Director, Producer, and eventually Executive Producer. Along the way, Koichi Sakamoto helped make a few films, including 2 of his own: Wicked Game and Broken Path, both of which featured long-time friend Johnny Yong Bosch.

Recently, Sakamoto has gone back to Japan on numerous occasions to direct various movies and episodes from Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai. The big return that everyone noticed at first was his directorial work on the movie Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend. This movie pitted all of the Ultramen against the evil Ultraman Belial and introduced Ultraman Zero. Since there was a lot more Ultraman vs Ultraman fighting, Sakamoto used this to bring fresh and fluid choreography into the mix. The fights were more engaging than seen in previous shows and movies in the Ultraman franchise. Even the big monsters that usually just swatted aimlessly in the air and shot countless lazer beams were made to move a lot more and pull of more interesting moves. New and interesting camera work was used to make the characters and fights pop out more than usual. This movie seemed to breath some new life into the franchise since from what I have heard, it has brought a lot of fans around to watching more Ultraman who wouldn't have considered it otherwise.

Sakamoto has had his hand in a recent Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider W. He directed a couple of episodes which were interesting to see. But the biggest contributions he made to the season, and a big reason as to why I decided to write this article, were the Kamen Rider W movies that he directed: Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z/The Gaia Memories of Fate, Kamen Rider W Returns: Accel and Kamen Rider W Returns: Eternal. He has also directed the Dekaranger and Shinkenger arcs of the newest sentai series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.

The first thing you will notice in these pieces of work is the change in choreography. Kamen Rider and Sentai, for the most part, have a pretty fixed feel of fight scenes. Aside from the thematic change in fighting style, (ex. Kabuto calm and calculated movements, Gekiranger's heavily martial arts-based battles, or Den-O Sword Form's wild burst of energy) most battles are pretty forgettable if it isnt a pivotal moment in the story, like the beginning or ending episodes. Some may say that I am over-generalizing this and that there are more unique fights out there. But from my perspective, those are the only ones that stand out. Even if I rewatched shows like Boukenger or Dekaranger, I would not be able to tell stylistically if a group of episodes were done by one director or more than one. But, when Koichi Sakamoto directs an episode, I can tell right away its him behind the camera and I'm sure its the same for many others.

Most of Koichi's fight scenes involve heavy hand-to-hand combat rather than distant weapon action. Lots of combos are thrown and you can actually see styles clashing between two fighters. This attention to detail makes for a more rich experience for the viewer. For example, in the A to Z Gaiamemory movie, you can see how Kamen Rider W changes his fighting tactics against each NEVER member. This helps show depth to the character because you can see him adapt to different situations. He also finds ways to explore new uses for their suits/weapons, for example Kamen Rider Accel performing a memory break through his belt instead of his sword. These aspects along with his smart use of wire work and creative utilization of the suit actors' abilities makes these action scenes feel more organic and fluid.

The next thing that you will notice is the camera work. Many people have complained in the past about the shaky-cam effect in a few Power Rangers seasons. It was said to be too distracting. But to me, it felt dynamic, and the same can be said here. Koichi knows how to get the right angle to show off the moves performed on screen. A lot of tilting of the camera is done to add emotion to the shot and also to show the force of impact. Many movies nowadays use these types of shots and camera work, but if it isn't handled by a director that knows what he is doing, it can be very distracting. This can be seen in the countless movies that try to emulate the Bourne Identity-style of action cinematography.

The last thing that I have noticed that sets apart Koichi's work from the rest is the involvement of the cast in the fight scenes. I think we can all agree that for the most part, the actors that play Kamen Riders or Sentai warriors cannot fight. And thus, when the scene asks for them to encounter a monster, they will usually just hold onto them for a bit before backing off and transforming. This is done a lot more in Kamen Rider than in Sentai, from what I have seen. But this can take one out of the action because the actor is barely hanging on for dear life one minute, and in the next, he is kicking serious ass after he has transformed. There have been sparks of actors trying their hand at choreography, such as Kane Kosugi in Kakuranger (though that is because he is a trained and talented martial artist) or the actors of Gekiranger.

That being said, I do not think any actors have been pushed to do more choreography than in the Kamen Rider W: Accel movie or in the Gokaiger episodes. Minehiro Kinomoto (Terui Ryu/Kamen Rider Accel) pulled off amazing combos and impressive moves in the Accel movie despite not being a martial artist. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of his own stunts he performed, and how into it he seemed to be. This is how I want all Kamen Riders to fight. Another example of this can be seen in the Gokaiger episodes Sakamoto directed. The Gokaiger members also got to try their hand at rather complex choreography. Granted, they were doubled for the more grand stunts and moves. But they definitely gave their all to look convincing in these scenes. And it seems like other directors have caught onto this because in the recent episode, Episode 13, they did all of their own fight scenes despite it not being directed by Koichi. The fight wasnt as heavy in choreography, but it felt like the new director knew that these actors could be used for more than just a few slashes of a sword and a random kick here and there.

Koichi Sakamoto seems to have brought his experience on Power Rangers and his influence from Hong Kong cinema into the Toku arena and we are all seeing the benefits of this. Hopefully more directors and producers will recognize the potential that his type of choreography and direction brings to the genre and will try to either use him more or attempt to apply this to other shows with different directors. Whether you are a fan of his work or not, there is no denying that Koichi Sakamoto's work is a one of a kind in Tokusatsu.

New Twitter Accounts!

2011-05-21T21:17:00.002-04:00

Hey guys!

We are gonna start providing more content very soon and we decided to make new twitter accounts. Well, moreso because we forgot the password for the old one. But at any rate, here is the new RST twitter account along with our personal twitter account. Feel free to follow us. We will post all news and updates pertaining to the site on the main RST account.

Rising Sun Tokusatsu twitter account: @risingsuntoku
Aoi Kurenai's twitter account: @akumaizer3
Inui Takumi's twitter account: @InuiTakumi23

Oh, and expect a new article later tonight.

Peace out!!

Fansubs: The Progression

2011-04-04T00:12:00.016-04:00

Depending on how long you have been a part of the fandom, you have noticed the progression of the amount and quality of fansubs that have popped up over the years. Some have called this the greatest time to be a Tokusatsu fan. And I agree with this sentiment. More than ever, we have a wide variety of both fansubs and RAW shows out there, ranging from Sentai to Kamen Rider to Ultraman and even to less popular shows.

Now, I wasn't around for the "rough times" of the Toku fandom, where getting any episode, no matter if it was in sequence or not, either on vhs, bootleg HK dvd, or a low res video file was a blessing. But, from what I hear, we got it extremely easy now. After being in the fandom for a certain amount of time, you tend to pick up on tales of the wild wild west of the internet back in the mid to late 90s and sometimes stories from before the internet. I know, its hard to believe, huh?

But, even in the relatively short amount of time since I joined the fandom, around mid 2006, I have seen great change in the availability and the quality of Subbed content. There was basically only one big group that people turned to for Fansubs, TV Nihon. When I started watching, they already had a few fully subbed shows under their belt and were working on the current Sentai and Kamen Rider series along with a couple of non-Toei shows such as GARO and Ryukendo. There were a couple of other groups around that did a few other shows, but you would be lucky if they got one under their belt (I know this because I was a member of one of those groups. Anyone remember Elite Justice Fansubs? haha). But even then, if you wanted to watch a show that was older than 3-4 years old or wasn't Kamen Rider or Super Sentai, you had to rely on either Hong Kong subs (which were bootleg DVDs sold around Asia that were said to be translated from Japanese to Mandarin/Cantonese and then to English and it showed) or RAW files ripped from either DVDs, VHS, or rerun broadcasts. It definitely was a bit easier to get your hands on what you want, but we still lacked a good amount of decent quality subs.

Over the years, many groups have come and gone, trying their best to contribute to the fandom with subs that were clear and easy to read. But as some know, it takes much more than just the desire to get a show done to actually accomplish it. There are many factors, such as the amount of work and activities members of a given group have in their "offline" lives or just a matter of motivation to continue even when your download numbers aren't as high as you'd hope. A lot of elements factor into the release of just one episode, much less the completion of a 50 episode show. So it is no small feat to tackle when it comes to fansubbing.

There is also the issues of quality of both the translations of the show, the typesetting used, and the resolution of the video file that are constantly questioned by the fans. I know that I, myself, have gotten into heated yet thoughtful, discussions with folks like HJU members Kingranger and KouAidou about what we think should be considered a "full translation". And that discussion usually leads into or ties to the issue of typesetting and whether moving text and effects for karaoke and attack names enhance the subs or hinder them. The issue of resolution isnt really a big one as of yet, and has only arisen in the last couple of years through the ability to rip HD trasmissions or however that magic sorcery works.

And as people know, discussions sometimes do pay off. Now, more than ever, we have options as to what kind of subs we would like to invest our time and hard drive space to. For the current Kamen Rider and Sentai shows, Kamen Rider OOO and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, we have at least 2 groups (TVN and OverTime subs) shelling out quality subs on a weekly basis. In HD and SD, no less. Both groups use different philosophies as far as subbing styles, so fans have a clearer choice. And along with that, we have a slew of other groups that seem to be releasing episodes of both older shows and more obscure shows. For example, after more than 10 years, we FINALLY have a full translation of Kamen Rider Kuuga, the show declared "cursed" by the fandom. And it was done by a small team called Midnight Crew Subs, apparently composed of a couple of insomniacs with a purpose. We also have Gao Soul Fansubs who have finished subbing Gaoranger and are well on their way to sub Sun Vulcan. I could name many groups that are doing great work. GUIS (Grown-Ups in Spandex) are almost done with Liveman along with working on Gokaiger and a couple of other projects. Hi no Tori have finished Kamen Rider Amazon and have quite a few shows on their plate. We also have groups like HON, OZ, KITsubs, etc who are all doing great work.

But of course, the fandom as a whole is still relatively young. And with that, comes the fact that there is still a lot to learn as far as systems on how to do things. Naming them all would elongate this article much longer than it already is. So I will only mention one which is probably the one that bugs me the most. This is just my opinion on things and I will mention group names just to get the point across. But that doesn't mean I think they are doing a horrible job necessarily. Just that they may have things to work on, as do all groups.

The main issue I see with fansub groups is that they spread themselves thin as far as workload goes. For example, TV Nihon is known for taking on projects outside of current airing shows that usually end up on the back-burner or sort of put on hold altogether. I know that right now, a lot of people are dying to see more Megaranger and Dairanger, along with the DVD releases of Kamen Rider Faiz. These are only the major ones that I hear about. Another group that seems to be on that path is Hi no Tori Fansubs. They started off real strong with Kamen Rider Amazon, since it was their only project at the time. But now it seems like after taking on Gingaman as their main project, they have tacked on more and more shows. They have up to 9 shows actively being worked on.

Now, I don't know how many members these groups have in total, or how many are working on each project. But the way I see it, fansub groups in general, not just TVN and HnT, would benefit a lot by focusing on one or two shows and seeing those to completion before picking up other shows. I know when I was at EJF, one thing that slowed us down aside from personal activities was trying to do one too many shows than what we were capable of handling with the amount of staff member we had at our disposal. There needs to be an end to the so called "race" to grabbing as many shows as possible under a given group's umbrella. It is a lot less efficient that way.

But, like I said before, this is not a slam at any group. I still believe we are in the best time as far as the Tokusatsu fandom is concerned. Information is readily available at a moment's notice. Fansubs are being released in a wide variety of styles and techniques. RAWs are being provided by the butt-load. And we all are able to enjoy what we love whenever we want. It's great being a Tokusatsu fan.

Join the Effort to Help Japan!

2011-03-13T12:57:00.007-04:00

It is hard not to know of the events occurring in Japan right now. We have seen countless images of the massive tsunami that ravaged the coast of Japan which was caused by an even more massive earthquake. Thousands of people are still unaccounted for, many have lost loved ones along with all of their belongings. And there is now an overhanging threat of nuclear chaos due to reactors at the nuclear power plants in the damaged area. So if there was ever a time to help out your fellow man, this is most definitely one of them.

Even though we cannot do a lot on our own, banding together will definitely help in the cause. Join the heroes of CSToys, HJU, RRR, and many others by donating whatever you can to the cause. They have set up a fund that will go to Mr. S of CSToys who will personally deliver the money to organizations in Japan that are helping with the rescue and recovery efforts. We have been watching and enjoying content coming out of Japan for years. Some of us fans may even have friends in the region. What better way to show the strength of the fans then to joining forces for a good and admirable cause? Even if you do not have money to spare, spread the word. Every little gesture counts, monetary or otherwise. Follow the link below and do what you can.

It is now our turn to contribute.

superherotime.chipin.com

You Have Been Warned! - DoA: Dead or Alive Movie Review

2011-01-10T19:43:00.009-05:00

I present to you a new segment on our blog, You Have Been Warned! Its purpose is basically to showcase and to warn our readers of movies that are bad beyond belief. I know that my first segment, Double K.O., didn't really take off. But, I do have a couple of movies in mind to restart that segment. But for now, I am here to review the movie that inspired this in the first place, DoA: Dead or Alive.

For those who do not know, DoA is based off of the video game franchise of the same name. It is a fighting game in the same vein as Virtua Fighter and Tekken, one of the flagship 3D fighters of its time. Personally, I was never a fan of the franchise and out of the main 3D fighting games, I was more of a Tekken fan. But, from what I hear, it had a very technical type of gameplay that took a while to get into but once you mastered it, DoA became a pretty deep game, or so I've heard.

Let's go over the story first before getting down to the good stuff. The story revolves around Princess Kasumi, played by Devon Aoki, who is informed of the death of her brother by his best friend Ryu Hayabusa, played by Kane Kosugi. Believing that her brother is still alive, she leaves the temple, casting herself as a shinobi, in order to find her brother. While she escapes on a handglider (from where she got this from, I have no clue), she catches a high-tech shuriken that is an invitation to the DoA tournament.

The tournament is being held by Dr. Victor Donovan, played by the forever-evil Eric Roberts, in order to find the best fighter in the world. Among the other fighters are Christie (played by Holly Valance), a thief out for the big prize, Tina (played by Jaime Pressly), a pro-wrestler out to prove that she is the real deal, and other fighters like Gen Fu, Helena, and Zack.

Not sure how much of a spoiler this is, taking into account that this is a very predictable action movie, but the big twist is that the tournament is just a front. I'll wait while you readers gather your composure. Okay, so the reason why Dr. Donovan is holding this event is so that he can gather the data from the best fighters using nano-machines he planted in each of them. He will use this data to create special glasses that will help him to predict his opponent's moves, hence making him the baddest mo-fo out there. Oh, and Kasumi's brother is not actually dead, since he was the first subject for this project. If this plot sounds familiar to any of you Tokusatsu fans, it is because this plot premise was adapted for the Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger movie back in 2007. And personally, I think the Gekiranger movie pulled it off better.

Now, for why this movie should be avoided like any Jennifer Aniston movie. In my opinion, this is exactly wrong direction that action/martial arts movies in the US should be taken. Everything about this movie seems half-hearted and consists all of the wrong elements. The tournament concept has been done to death. And even though it is based off of a fighting game and all fighting games are basically tournaments, it still could have been dealt with in a way that it would not have turned into complete trash.

If we look at this from strictly a martial arts point of view, you can immediately see the problem. The main actresses have no experience in martial arts whatsoever. Well, you may be thinking that the Matrix movies had the same issue. But, for one thing, they had the legendary Hong Kong director Yuen Wu Ping doing the choreography. The actors also trained for many months to get their bodies to the point where they could pull of the moves in a way that would look halfway believable. The choreography and skill of the majority of the actors in this movie seem to have been done on the spot. A load of wire work is used to enhance flips, kicks, and hits, but it is done in a way that it looks tacky and cheesy. I don't think even non-martial arts movie buffs thought any of the fight scenes in this movie looked good.

Which brings me to the main issue I have with this movie. I can understand why the main actresses are not martial artists. The DoA franchise has thrived on its beautiful women in the game. So of course, they had to cast attractive women to play the part. But, the fact that they wasted the talents of 3 good martial artists in this movie enrages me to no end. The main one being Kane Kosugi. Many of us Toku fans know him as Jiraiya/Ninja Black from Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. He has been a few movies since, but his career never took off. And this movie definitely didn't help him. He has one solid fight scene against a bunch of guards and one fight scene at the end of the movie with a couple of other fighters against Dr. Donovan and that is it. For the rest of the movie, he just follows Kasumi, basically moping around. It's sad that he was not given more to do. Another upset is Collin Chou, most known for playing Seraph in Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions, along with being in the movie Flash Point where he has the big fight with Donnie Yen at the very end. He plays Kasumi's not-so-lost brother, Hayate. But, you do not really see him until the end of the movie where he has one fight and loses to, you guessed it, Dr. Mofo Donovan. And, if you think that is bad, I was looking forward to seeing Robin Shou in the movie, because prior to watching the movie, I heard that he was in it. And you do see him, but at the very beginning and the very end of the movie. He plays an islander pirate who tries to steal Tina's boat twice and gets his butt handed to him twice. I usually try not to get emotional about stuff but, THAT'S LUI FREAKING KANG! He can't get beat 6 ways from Sunday by an 110lbs Southern bell. He can't.....

And now that I got that out of my system, let's continue shall we? So we have already established that the action is severely lacking. I mean, if they can't even showcase the wrestler using wrestling moves in her fights, we have a serious issue. The acting in this movie is also pretty bad. They try to infuse humor and shades of character throughout but they all seem to fall flat. I am still trying to figure out if it is because of the script or the actors. Maybe it is a bit of both. I would say that the only person that I enjoyed seeing in the movie was Kevin Nash, who played Tina's father. He had some of the funnier lines and actually did some legit wrestling moves in his fight with his daughter. Everything else seemed phoned in.

There is a certain stigma attached to movie adaptations of video game franchise. Most of them turn out nothing like the video games and the ones that do resemble their source material, fail in every other aspect. This movie further helped to bring down the genre of video game movies. You could put it in the same calibur of work as Uwe Boll and his endless amounts of garbage that he likes to pass as movies. Which is a shame, because it was actually directed by Corey Yuen who directed such good and entertaining films as The Transporter series, The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk with Jet Li, and one of my favorite movies, Dragons Forever starring the amazing trio of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao. So, we know that he is capable of making great Martial Arts movies. I'm just not sure what happened here. Maybe he was trying a new brand of coffee or tea at the time and that through him off a bit. Either way, this is definitely a movie that should not be seen unless you enjoy watching crap movies once in a while like myself. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Power Rangers: Samurai Theme Song Hinted

2010-12-29T21:34:00.000-05:00

A bit of a side confirmation of what the theme song for the upcoming Power Rangers Samurai will consist of has been found on the Japanese blog for AAC Stunts.

Link: AAC Stunts Blog-Entry for 12/25/2010

The paragraph in particular that pertains to the Theme Song:

""毎シーズン恒例のクリスマス前に行われる１話の試写会＆BBQ！
今回はSABANに戻っただけあって、
テーマソングなんかは♪GO GO POWERRANGERS♪にかなり近いアレンジで、
お話も昔のパワレンを思いだすようなノリでしたね。"

AAC Stunts stated that "Seems that SABAN is getting the rights back. The theme song sounds a lot like 'Go, Go, Power Rangers!' and gives a vibe of the older series"

Rumors have been swarming around about this since the first promo of the upcoming series featuring a remixed version of the classic theme song. This is only a small confirmation of it, but it seems that Saban is really trying to hark back to its nostalgic roots.

State of the MedOOOls

2010-12-25T23:58:00.003-05:00

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.

Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger - First Promo Aired

2010-12-25T17:36:00.005-05:00

Aired today after the final episode of Super Sentai VS Theater, here's our first look at next year's cast! It seems Toru Furuya was narrating, leading credence to the rumors that AkaRed might pop up in the series.

Tokusou Robo Janperson the Movie - Review

2010-10-03T12:56:00.008-04:00

Tokusou Robo Janperson the Movie - Mother is Eternal! The Electric Brain's Love and Passion on the Operating Table

Tokusou Robo Janperson is the 12th entry into Toei's now defunct Metal Hero franchise and had a movie released in 1993. Unique among the Metal Hero shows, and really tokusatsu as a whole, is the fact that Janperson himself never cancels his transformation because he is, as the title implies, a robot. Once a killing machine, he now fights for justice. Seriously. The show won't let you forget that.

The movie was released on a triple bill with the Gosei Sentai Dairanger and Kamen Rider ZO movies as part of Toei's short lived Superhero Fair held once a year.

The movie focuses on the search for Sayaka, a young girl whose mother has recently died. Sayaka's father, an undercover F.B.I. agent, has had a rough relationship with his daughter since the death of her mother and feels that her kidnapping by the evil Neo-Guild is his fault. Sayaka has been angry at her father because he was away in America while her mother died, leaving her feeling abandoned.

Aiding in the search is everyone's favorite purple robot, Janperson! The two don't seem to get along at first, but things between them go smoother as they search for Sayaka throughout the movie.

After being kidnapped and taken to a base of operations, the Neo-Guild reveals that they plan to transfer the brains of kidnapped children to metalic robot bodies. This of course does not go over well with the children as they all start freaking out in fear over what might become of them should the plan succeed. Luckily, Sayaka's father was able to place a tracking device on one of the grunts who took his daughter, making it easy to find the location of Neo-Guild's base, an island!

Sayaka's father tries to sneak on the island, but that goes about as well as expected. He is attacked by robots with machine guns and is dodging them all over the place second guessing his plan. Just as he's about to bite the bullet, Janperson drops by and saves him. George Makabe, leader of the Neo-Guild, thanks Sayaka's father for bringing his greatest adversary to him as his plan will surely stop Janperson this time.

Of course that goes as well as expected. Janperson is able to fight off the baddies and piss off Makabe, who just decides to blow the island to hell. Before it blows, Janperson gets himself off the island on his jet along with Sayaka's father, who is incredibly distraught, thinking his daughter was on the island. There remians hope! Janperson is able to see that the children are really in an underwater base, so the two land on a strip of rocks to try and bust in.

Before Janperson and Misutah Efu Bi Ai (as Makabe calls him) go in to save the children, Janperson gives him a locket that Sayaka had dropped. In the locket is a picture of Sayaka and her mother, but behind the picture is her father's picture. This gives him renewed vigour, knowing that his daughter still loves him, he's ready to bust some ass and save her.

The duo break into a secret lab moments before the children are turned into robots, managing to save them. Sayaka's father is roughed up quite a bit as he saves her and then Janperson takes out the remaining baddies before Sayaka and her father reconcile in the end and watch Janperson walk off to solve his next case.

Is the movie any good? It's...decent, at best. The story with Sayaka and her father is actually rather nice to watch on screen and the highlight of the movie for me, both had great people in the roles and the father especially carried the movie. Though expected, it was rather nice to see that Sayaka still cared for her father despite feeling that he abandoned her in her time of greatest need, so seeing them finally reconcile in the end is great.

Annnnd that's about as good as the movie gets. Normally the draw for me in tokusatsu is the plot and the action, when one fails, the other will help me through it, though I feel it's vital to always have at least some decent action. Janperson is a movie that...does not really have anything memorable in terms of its fight scenes. Janperson himself is a robot, so his moves are often stiff as he moves joint by joint, so a lot of his fighting is standing in one spot shooting his adversaries. There are those interesting moments where he'll shoot his arm off at an enemy or pick a grunt's head and toss it like a bowling ball, but for the most part, Janperson's action is very static. There was one nicely fluid fight scene in there and that didn't even last for too long. If you're looking for an action-heavy movie, this ain't it.

Now, would I recommend it? Eh, if you're bored and have time to kill, go for it. If you have other things to watch, watch them. The human drama in this movie was actually endearing and heart warming, but that can't really carry a tokusatsu movie for me. I love the look of Janperson himself once he puts his face plate on, but the suit is just so...underused. Stand. Shoot. Stand. Shoot. Stand. Shoot. Repeat this and you basically have 99% of the action in this piece. I can't very well recommend it if you're looking for fast moving action.

That said, the movie isn't as bad as it might sound. I was able to watching it in one sitting, and though that isn't difficult at 24 minutes, I've had harder times sitting through regular tokusatsu episodes of the same length. I never really drifted off or lost attention as I watched it, so it's definitely not a bad movie, just one that doesn't stand out too much.

The Sun Rose One Year Ago

2010-09-21T00:19:00.003-04:00

It's September 21st, do you know what that means? Well, not much outside of the start of fall on the Western hemisphere being only one day away to most people, but it means something rather special here at Rising Sun Tokusatsu -- we're turning one year old today! Rising Sun Tokusatsu had been in the works for a little longer than a year, but the site officially went live one year ago today and in that time we've released a number of reviews and opinion pieces we hope people have enjoyed reading, we've also started a podcast and managed to release two episodes so far with a third on the way!

To anyone who reads our stuff, thank you, even if you don't comment (though that doesn't hurt!) thank you. We don't exactly write for fame or anything, we just like sharing our opinions with people and it's rather nice to know that we've managed to capture the attention of anyone who might have read our stuff in the past. The tokusatsu fandom is still very much in its infancy on the English speaking side of things, every post, every new blog, every Youtube review, everything helps it grow and we want to be a part of that by announcing our one week blitz. To help celebrate the first anniversary of the blog and help spread the fandom, we're going to be posting one new article every day for the next week starting with the review of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight and ending with a special event we hope anyone reading this will take part in on Monday.

It's been a great year, sometimes more active than others but we've had fun the whole way through and look forward to our second year and hope anyone reading will as well.

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight Reviewed: Dive into the Mirror

2010-09-21T00:15:00.004-04:00

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is the first series to tackle adapting Kamen Rider for an American audience since 1997's Masked Rider. Neither series was particularly successful, but one managed to carry a stronger narrative than the other and, despite some faults, be a pretty entertaining show. It's a shame that the series wasn't as successful, but we're not here to talk how well it didn't do in terms of financial success.

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight revolves around Xaviax's attempts at kidnapping the people of Earth and sending them back to his home dimension. Len, a man from the same dimension as Xaviax, and Kit, a regular guy from Earth, attempt to stop Xaviax and the various Kamen Riders they face throughout the series in their various personal quests that would lead to the enslavement of the human race.

The biggest draw of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight to me was its serial story. You actually needed to watch just about every episode save for the clip shows to really get a strong feel for the story and character development. I originally found it hard to get into the show because I could never catch it at a decent time and only saw the odd episodes here and there in its initial run and was really turned off because it was a serial format show. I decided to download the first couple of episodes again on a whim a few weeks ago and I suppose because I had more time to sit around and watch the episodes now, the serial format worked out incredibly well to capture one more viewer.

Once I found myself watching more and more episodes, I was able to get a better feel for the show and what it was about. On a good day, it was about the growing bond between Kit and Len, at other times, it was about one-off Kamen Riders that did very little to contribute to the overall plot of the show. Because of a DNA-lock placed on the Advent Decks that allow people to become Kamen Riders, only the human counterparts to the Ventarian Riders are able to become Kamen Rider, thus leaving Xaviax with next to no choice concerning who he employs for his tasks, so he often resorts to trickery to get his way.

The show that Dragon Knight was based on came with 12 Kamen Riders, and this show ported all of them over. 12 independent characters definitely works within the confines of a 50 episode series, a movie, and a TV special, but it's a lot harder to really work with in a 40 episode series where these guys can easily fall victim to becoming glorified monsters of the week. For the most part, the show was able to get away without turning these characters into pointless space fillers and I applaud it for that.

When all was said and done, I felt like Incisor, Camo, and Thrust were really the only Kamen Riders I didn't care for. Oddly enough, Incisor himself seemed just as scantly used as his Ryuki counterpart. I particularly just didn't care for Thrust's story or his character, who was basically like Richie/Incisor, but a bit more masculine in his portrayal...and probably not nearly as spoiled. But from his slogan "Brad Barret always wins", one can assume he's used to things going his way and gets a little antsy when things aren't. He could have been an interesting character, but there just wasn't much there to work with and his venting scene seemed so last moment. Once he was gone, he was gone and it didn't really matter.

Kamen Rider Camo was the last of the three Riders I felt were terribly underused and the one that upsets me the most because I generally liked everything about this character. A cocky fighter looking to prove himself and be the best on two worlds, slowly learning how serious the situation he's been tossed into is. The character had a very interesting actor as well; I personally think he was the strongest actor of the entire series, so it was definitely a shame to see him there for all of two or three episodes. I can see why a lot of people would have bigger worries about this series when it comes to this character, if a second Kamen Rider can be marginalized within ten episodes, what will be of the rest?

Weeeell, thankfully the other Kamen Riders weren't nearly as poorly handled. We had the not-so-interesting-but-still-useful Drew as Torque, JTC as Strike, a coward and paranormal buff who basically wants to be on the winning side, the side that will let him learn "the truth"; the comatose Wrath, with Xaviax using his body as a puppet; Siren, Len's girlfriend and the only other remaining Rider from Ventara, and my personal favorite Riders, Chris and the Cho brothers.

Chris as Kamen Rider Sting was pretty much fated to always be the tragic character. A member of a family that has always served in the marines, Chris was basically a disappointment to his father, who could not stand the fact that he was being discharged from the services because of something as simple as asthma. Xaviax sees this and takes this chance to trick him into fighting Kit and Len as Kamen Rider Sting, making him believe them to be aliens out to take over his country. Chris jumps on this chance as he sees it to be his one hope of ever being something truly great.

Throughout his stay in the series, Chris is pulled from the extremes of fighting for Xaviax to joining up with Kit and Len. He was always a character looking to be a hero and thought he was one under Xaviax, so I found it rather interesting that once he joined the good side, he actually began to think that he really isn't a hero. He learns that all of his prior successes were manufactured by Xaviax and that he was nothing but a puppet, sparking a chain of self-doubt that would last for more or less the rest of his time on the series. Chris faced a lot of self-doubt in learning the truth, often questioning whether he should be fighting or not. He already had a hard enough time learning to trust Kit and Len and this just threw another wrench into the picture.

His asthma got in the way of battles constantly and made it almost impossible for Chris to be anything too useful in battle and prompting his “make everything count” attitude in those battles, which would eventually end up to be his demise as he is vented in an attempt to save Len. The episode following Chris's venting does a lot to cement this as a pretty great American tokusatsu in my mind. A good portion of the episode is spent following the reactions of the other main character's to the venting of Chris and we see Kit find a painful letter addressed to Chris's we saw him writing in many of the previous episodes. The letter that Kit reads perfectly shows how helpless Chris felt, admitting that he could never be the hero his father wanted him to be, but that he still had the need to be resolute and never leave a friend behind. I would hope this does a lot to show other viewers that, while Chris couldn't be the hero his father wanted him to be, he was still very much a hero.

In the end, Chris was pretty much the personification of every self-doubt people have about themselves, “What if I'm not good enough?” “What if I fail?” “What if I let others down?”, brought to extremes because of the situation that he's placed in. And, I believe that his exit from the show pretty much shows that, at the core, all humans are worth fighting for. And, this is something I think Kit picked up on as well and will definitely come back to haunt him because of a decision he'll make in a few episodes.

...and that decision has to do with the Cho brothers! The Cho brothers are a pair of siblings that are crooks out of the necessity of money. Neither of them has anyone else, no friends or other family apart from each other, so they've grown up looking out for one another. Xaviax easily manages to lure them into his game as Kamen Rider Spear and Kamen Rider Axe. The two are whipped in their first battle by Len, not even managing to transform before he beats them and leaving them bitter. They come very close to breaking Xaviax's “No one vents Dragon Knight until Wing Knight is gone.” rule because of more defeats and the fact that they're partly to thank for Chris's venting.

The pivotal stage for the Cho brothers comes when Kit vents Albert, the younger of the brothers, because of his fate for what happened to Chris. Danny is helpless as he was kicked through a mirror that broke and could only look on as his little brother is vented by Kit, finally leaving no doubt in his mind as to what he must do. The final episodes for Danny involve him constantly getting in the way of Xaviax's plans as he tries to get rid of Kit and get revenge for his younger brother.

Xaviax is not someone that you should go against all alone, yet Danny was foolish enough to do this because of how much he loves his little brother, and his love turns into hate for Kit. Xaviax knows this will only make things worse and chillingly commands JTC to “Vent him. Vent him now.” JTC is apprehensive as we're shown that he has some sort of sentiment for what Danny is going through, telling him that he lost a brother in jail. Despite him wanting to avoid it, JTC ends up venting Danny in the end and this sparks a bit of a rivalry between him and Kit when it's later revealed that JTC saw Danny as a friend and admired him as a fighter and would have rather vented Kit, a worthless kid, instead.

The final episode for Danny is rather calm-before-the-stormish as it doesn't totally focus on him, but I think his scenes speak the most about any character in that episode. Danny basically has no one left, his only family member is gone and he's all alone. There is no way Danny will ever want to work with Kit and Len, so he's basically out for revenge, on a suicide mission of sorts. It seems like Danny just doesn't care what will happen to him as long as he can get rid of Kit. This really shows the bond between the Cho brothers and just how much they needed each other. Neither one of them had anything else going for them, and when one is taken out of the picture, they essentially becoming living weapons whose way you should get the heck out of soon as possible.

Kit himself was an interesting character in that, though he was always trying to save his father, the mental messages he received from him proved to be just another trick from Xaviax. For the longest time, I thought Kit's father was someone involved with the entire war and had something greater for Kit planned, but to see him just another pawn of Xaviax was truly one of the biggest shockers in the entire series. Granted, it's rather obvious in retrospect, but on the first viewing, it was definitely a big moment for the series. Rather than being a special chosen one, much like Chris, Kit ended up being just another puppet.

In the end, Kit is able to rise above the situation and not let it define him as a character. There were no wasted episodes spent watching him angst or question his mission. I'm actually rather happy that things played out this way as it meant there really was no lull time so late into the series, it was definitely a big development, but Kit was resolute in his goals by this point. It probably would have had a much bigger impact on him earlier on in the series, but it shows the level of growth that Kit has undergone.

One aspect I hear criticized in this show a lot is that there really aren't consequences for the characters because in the end, everyone but Kit, Len, Maya, and Kase forget the entire war. The human counterparts to the Ventara Riders are brought out of the Advent Void and allowed to live their life again without remembering what happened. I've seen this stated as a way of saying that these people were basically allowed to be d-bags and get off without having to pay for anything they did and while that is partially true, I think this can be looked at different.

It's true that, except for a handful of them, the Kamen Riders were tricked into working for Xaviax and they did end up doing some pretty nasty things. But, I feel this was basically a result of circumstances they couldn't control. The characters were placed into desperate situations or had their last hopes dangled in front of them and often times they just had to take it. This doesn't justify what they did, but I think it does show that they deserve a second chance at living a life where the consequences of their choices aren't based on extreme circumstances. Sure, a lot of them would still likely be bad people in the end, but that's a choice that they need to make for themselves rather than be tricked into.

Dragon Knight as a show wasn't always the strongest narrative in this genre but it certainly did hold up when it needed to. Sure, there were things like that clip show final episode that just don't sit right with me and while I can blame the crew for not tossing that clip show somewhere else, I'm under the understanding that they just were not given enough money for the series. I think it would have been great if the last episode was a straight exposition piece like the final episode of Kamen Rider Kuuga, but I really don't think that would work on American television for something like this, not to mention, with what little money it seemed the show had at this point, I don't believe they could really get back a satisfying amount of characters to really make it worthwhile.

To be brutally honest, I don't see this show to be as bad as it's been made out to be, at least not in terms of narrative. A lot of what bothered me about this story had to do with the editing and I'm looking at it from a different perspective right now, so it's not something I weigh into my opinion on this area of the show. There are definitely places I would have done things differently or just paced a little better. At times, it felt like an entire episode was spent on action that didn't do much and this really would have been a great place to shed some more light on characters we weren't fully exposed to. Despite the faults, I really found Dragon Knight to be an enjoyable series and do think it's a shame we won't be seeing another American Kamen Rider series for quite some time because it didn't do that well in the one area where in mattered. It's not the perfect show, but definitely a lot better than other things that have come out on this side of the globe...which isn't totally hard to do, but for some reason we just haven't seen anything too great and I do applaud the show and its crew for trying something grand in scale and at least managing to pull most of it off narratively with all of the outside forces they had going against them.

SERIES REVIEW: Power Rangers: S.P.D.

2010-09-06T01:21:00.013-04:00

After finishing Power Rangers: Time Force, I was in the mood for some more Power Rangers goodness, so I decided to search for another show to watch. Judging from fan reception, it seemed like S.P.D. became a favorite among the fandom. After asking a few friends about it, I decided to bite the bullet and check it out. I had seen Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger a few years prior and it became one of my favorite Super Sentai series. So, S.P.D. couldn't be too bad, despite it was from the often-dreaded Disney era. So, let's dive right in. (I will try not to spoil as much as possible, but, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!)

The basic setup for the story, which is set in the year 2025, is that the Space Patrol Delta (S.P.D.) Rangers (B-Squad) are part of a task force who defend the universe from evil. B-Squad is told to step up to the plate when A-Squad mysteriously disappears on another planet while on a mission. The original team consisted of Sky Tate as S.P.D. Blue Ranger, Bridge Carson as S.P.D. Green Ranger, and Sydney "Syd" Drew as S.P.D. Pink Ranger. The first episode immediately introduces two new Rangers, Jack Landors and Z Delgado as S.P.D. Red and Yellow Rangers, respectively. They were criminals who basically stole in order to help the poor, but were recruited as Rangers by Anubis "Doggie" Cruger after being captured by the other Rangers. The Rangers finally band together to foil the plans of Emperor Gruumm, who has his sights on the destruction of Earth as well as settling a score with Doggie Cruger.

Alright, so let's get down to business, shall we? The story for S.P.D. definitely kept me interested in the show. It wasn't just a Monster-of-the-Week type of show, though it did seem like it a lot of the time. There were certain themes and plotlines that stemmed through many episodes, sometimes stringing through the entire series. One example is the feud between Cruger and Gruumm and what happened when Gruumm attacked Cruger's planet. This animosity is seen throughout the show and results in many great battles between the two arch enemies. Another theme that lasted the show was Sky having to live with not being the Red Ranger and being second-in-command. It gave the characters a bit of conflict with one another and also helped to define their friendship. This, coupled with the action and characters themselves helped win me over.

The characters of S.P.D. did have a sense of individuality amongst themselves, giving them a sense of identity and something to relate too. It may not have been as deep as other shows. But, for me, it definitely helped in getting immersed into the story. A lot of shows, for example Time Force, tend to have characters that do little to nothing to advance the story. For Time Force, it was Lucas and Katie. They were the least developed, in my opinion, and since the show was focused so much on Wes and Jen, that these two characters sort of fell to the wayside. In S.P.D., the character that comes close to this for me is Syd. All the other characters bring something to the table. Jack struggles with being the leader, Sky struggles with not being the leader, Bridge is the brains and comic relief of the group, and Z is the member that is the most genuine about being a part of something that will help others. Syd definitely has her good traits, as well as having some focus on being a rich kid who is sometimes spoiled but ultimately wants to do good. But, it felt like she brought the least to the table. Actually, i may have to back-track, since Omega Ranger seems to only be there to help with battles. So maybe he's the weakest link as far as characters go.

Doggie Cruger was a very interesting character, to me. He was strong and focused, the kind of commander you would want to lead you to victory. But, he also had a lighter side and had a knack for inserting humor once in a while, even in tense situations. Those moments, along with his amazing battles as Shadow Ranger, made him one of my favorite characters. Kat, on the other hand, was a basic tech expert. She dealt with all the technology behind the Rangers' weapons and Zords. She ultimately becomes a Ranger herself, but for some reason, just felt "there" for me. She was important, but didn't jump out at me too much as a character. Boom was another comedic character pretty much tasked to test out the various devices used by the Rangers. Gruumm, the villian of the show, seemed very odd to me. He could be menacing and fearsome when he wanted to be, and often tried. But his interactions with Morgan, who annoyed me to no end, seemed very out of place. He would sometimes, especially in the beginning of the season, fold over to her tantrums just so she would create a monster for him. And then sometimes he'd threaten her in order for her to do his deeds. It was kind of hit or miss for me till he started battling with Cruger. That's when his true colors began to show.

Speaking of battles, the action and fight scenes in S.P.D. were pretty awesome. Even though there were no Ranger actors with actual fighting and martial arts training, the action scenes seemed interesting and creative enough to keep me intrigued. I mostly enjoyed the in-suit fight scenes more. With those scenes, I knew that they were stunt actors and could freely enjoy the spectacle. With the out-of-suit fight scenes, it still felt distracting to see the actors try their best at looking tough while pulling off basic moves, than to see it cut to the stunt doubles who pull off these amazing moves while covering their faces. Took some time to get used to it, but I eventually enjoyed the fight scenes for the most part. And for some odd reason, even though I tend to not like mech battles and usually skip past the Zord battles, I found myself watching more than usual even though they were mostly stock footage used over and over again.

In the end, Power Rangers: S.P.D. surprised me. Going in, I thought that the only good Disney era show was RPM, seeing as its the only one I could watch all the way through and genuinely enjoy. And seeing as how every season between S.P.D. and RPM were pretty much horribly done, in my opinion, I was shocked to find S.P.D. so enjoyable. The cast was fun to watch, the story was entertaining, the action was done very well. It was all around a very good show. Makes me wonder what in the world happened during the next 3 years to bring the quality of the show down soo much. It also gives me hope for other shows that may have a chance at being good, such as Ninja Storm, which I haven't finished, and Wild Force, which is another show that seems to have mixed reviews among the fandom. We'll just have to wait and see, maybe I'll do another review when I get to those seasons.

2D Gaming: The Resurgence

2010-08-04T23:32:00.006-04:00

Gaming is not what it used to be 10-15 year ago, let alone 20+ years ago. Video games went from flat 2D games with a very limited color palette, to rich colored 2D gaming that expanded between different genres like platforming, fighting, racing, etc., to a bold jump to the third dimension with polygonal characters and worlds, to intriquitely detailed 3D environments and characters that expanded gaming even further into many more genres and ways to play. With this evolution of technology came a shift in what games were popular.

Back in the late 80s and early to mid 90s, platformers and fighting games reigned supreme. Games like Mario, Sonic, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter became household names and spurred countless adaptations and explorations into these genres. In the late 90s to early 2000s, 3D polygonal gaming brought other types of games more to the forefront. Now, 1st and 3rd person shooters such as Halo, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid as well as open-world games like Grand Theft Auto began to show their worth. Let's not forget racing games like Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, and Forza who also benefited from the jump to 3D.

With each new generation of consoles, more and more developers started to cash in on the fad, and we began to see countless games that were either 1st person shooters, open-world games, or racing game, with the main focus on 1st person shooters. At this point, lets say the mid 2000s, the market became over-saturated with these types of games, and it was time for the old champions to step back into the ring.

In late 2008-early 2009, we saw the return of a classic, a return to form. This was known as Street Fighter 4. It presented an interesting blend of 3D characters and backgrounds, but with only a 2D playing field. SF4 became known as a true upgrade of a classic. It brought back the classic controls and fighting styles of the characters and brought life back to a genre that was beginning to see its dwindling end with countless versions of games like Soul Calibur, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat that claimed to be improvements on the previous games but actually felt more of the same.

Suddenly, gamers were starting to regain that feeling of competition in the fighting genre. Online tournaments were being held, message boards were ablaze with talks of what this could mean for the genre, and developers were starting to catch on with the phenomenon. This started to spill over the platforming games as well.

Though games such as Rachet and Clank and Jak and Daxter did become successful in the 3D platforming realm, it just didn't feel the same as it used to to some people, including me. That's when companies like Capcom decided to bring things back to the basics. And with the advent of Xbox LIVE and PSN, games like Megaman 9 and Bionic Commando Rearmed could be sold as Downloads for reasonable prices instead of paying for a disc. This helped to spawn many true 2D platformers to crop up on these services.

With the recent announcements of games like Mortal Kombat 9 and Marvel vs Capcom 3 at E3 2010 and Street Fighter X Tekken at the San Diego Comic Con 2010, it really does feel like 2D gaming has truly made a comeback. Soon, we will see those familiar debates between MK and SF fans. And with games like Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 on the horizon, as well as games like Rocket Knight that are already out on consoles, it feels like we warped back to the mid 90s.

With this sort of revival of 2D gaming, it sorta begs the question of how long this excitement will last for this type of gaming? Will we go back to our Gears of War's and Halo's soon enough? Will that be a resurgence in itself? Could this pave a way to a new type of gaming that takes the good from both types? I have no clue. But I do know that I am enjoying it and it is definitely an interesting time to be a gamer.

Rising Sun TokuCast - Episode 2

2010-08-01T01:24:00.004-04:00

We are back with Episode 2 of the Rising Sun TokuCast. In this episode we talk about the web series Funemployed, review Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue and Power Rangers Time Force (where I'm at so far), our Top 3 songs we are listening to right now, Broken Path, and Cowboy Bebop.

We are now on iTunes so be sure to catch this episode as well as our first episode. Also subscribe to get our future podcasts.
Rising Sun TokuCast (iTunes)

Feel free to comment and/or leave a review our podcast as well as make suggestions.

Thanks for listening.

Music Credits:

Opening Song: Fake by Mr. Children
Break 1 Song: Dance to This Song by Kevjumba, Wong Fu Productions, and David Choi
Break 2 Song: Start Up!~Kizuna by NoB
Closing Song: Natsu no Wasuremono by Tsuruno Takeshi

Rising Sun TokuCast - Episode 1

2010-07-22T01:40:00.022-04:00

Hello Everyone,

Aoi Kurenai and I, Inui Takumi, have started a new podcast called Rising Sun TokuCast. In it, we will talk about all things from Tokusatsu, movies, TV shows, video games, books, etc. This is our first time making a podcast, so please bare with us as we get used to things here. Hopefully, we will get into the groove of things and will result in improved quality with each episode.

In our first episode, we do a small intro of ourselves, then talk about What We Are Up To, where we discuss topics from Kamen Rider Double to Burn Notice to Goseiger to PR Lightspeed Rescue among many others. After that, we review Attack the Gas Station 2 which leads us to our Questions section at the end.

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback as well as questions either here at the blog or in our thread at Henshin Justice Unlimited. We are working on getting our podcast on iTunes, so when that happens, we will update with a link to that as well.

Thanks for listening,

Rising Sun Tokusatsu Blog

MOVIE REVIEW: Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie

2010-07-18T01:48:00.004-04:00

Yeah, I know this review is pretty late. It actually arrived at my door more than a month ago and I have watched it twice, but I guess time just got away from me. Been to busy to write up a review of it...till now!

Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie, (which will be abbreviated to Ultra Galaxy Movie if only because I don't want to keep typing that long title repeatedly.) hit theaters in December on the same day as the Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Double and Decade: Movie War 2010. The basic premise for the movie is that the evil Ultraman Belial (voiced by Hiroyuki Miyasako) escapes from his prison and sets out to steal the Plasma Spark from the Land of the Light to attain ultimate power and at the same time destroy the Ultras. It is up to Rei/Reimon (played by Shota Minami) as well as other Ultramen such as Ultraman Mebius (played by Shunji Igarashi) to stop Belial and his army of monsters.

Some compare this movie to the Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs DaiShocker movie that came out in the Summer of 2009 rather than the Movie War 2010, and I guess rightfully so. All Riders vs DaiShocker pit all of the past Riders against one common enemy and was built up to be a very epic movie as far as action and the appearance of our favorite Riders once again. Ultra Galaxy Movie does this as well, bringing back Ultras from various eras (such as original Ultraman, UltraSeven, Ultraman Taro, Ultraman Dyna, among others) and even showing glimpses of Ultras that only had small parts in the fiction. But, where Ultra Galaxy Movie succeeds and All Riders vs DaiShocker fails is presentation of story. Throughout the movie, there was always the sense of imminent danger awaiting our heroes. It also did a good job of making you feel the epicness of what was going on. I guess this could be attributed a bit to the fact that the movie takes place in outer space. But, you did get a sense that if the heroes didn't triumph, it would be the beginning of the end. Nothing sells a story better than that kind of feeling. All Riders, unfortunately, doesn't give off that feeling as much. You know that the Riders have to defeat DaiShocker, but DaiShocker themselves do not pose much of a threat, at least not as much as Belial. This alone, IMO, put this above both the All Riders movie and Movie War 2010.

The Ultra Galaxy Movie was directed by none other than Koichi Sakamoto, famous for his stunt direction in the Power Rangers franchise as well as being Executive Procucer. If you have seen any of his work, you know that he is a pretty talented action director. And he brings his experience to the Ultra universe and composes some of my favorite fight scenes I've seen in Tokusatsu. I know, this is a very bold statement, but I really do think that he set the bar pretty high as far as action goes in Tokusatsu. The way he shoots his scenes, with the dynamic camera angles and movements, really makes the action come to life on screen.

The fight choreography itself is refreshing to see, ESPECIALLY in the Ultraman franchise. I'm not the biggest fan of Ultraman, as some know. I like it and am slowly getting more and more into it. I have seen all of Ultraman Nexus and am working through Mebius and the original Ultraman series. But, one thing that put me off to the series at first was the action. Since they are giants, they have to move slowly in order to show scale. This leads to very slow fight scenes between Ultraman and a huge monster that just leaves a lot to be desired. Ultraman Nexus, I felt, had some good fight scenes since they were a bit more fast-paced. But, the fight scenes in the Ultra Galaxy Movie are definitely an eye-opener for the franchise. The fights between the Ultras are very well done as well as the human fights. Even the fights with the monsters are done well (when you see a giant monster do a backflip and hit another monster with its tail from behind, you know you're watching some creative action.) Koichi brought fight scenes that you would normally see between two normal people in a movie or show to the scale of the Ultras so that they didnt feel slow or sluggish at all. It was fast-paced and in-your-face, and I loved every minute of it.

Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie has become one of my favorite Tokusatsu movies in recent years. It's got amazing action, great cast of characters, and a story that helps drive along the movie. And the best part is that it does this without long periods of exposition. You go from a fight scene to a bit of exposition between characters, then you are thrown into another epic fight scene, without sacrificing the story. This movie doesn't hold back on anything and I think more Tokusatsu movies should look to this for inspiration. If you haven't already, buy this movie. Let me repeat, if you're gonna watch this BUY IT. I also downloaded the Ultrafanz version of the rip and honestly, it isn't very good. You may find better version of it now since more time has passed, but I really recommend saving up some money for this movie if you can. It has English subtitles on both the DVD and Blu-Ray discs. I don't want to sound condescending or anything, but we have always wanted more Tokusatsu to be subbed officially. Here it is. And here is our chance to show that we in the West are interested in this genre and want to see more of them subbed, whether it is a movie or a series. And trust me, with this movie it's worth it.

We've Got Stuff Baking!

2010-07-14T23:09:00.003-04:00

So we don't have too much as of recent, but rest assured, we're cooking up quite a bit and here's a preview of what's in store.

Reviews:
The Legend on Fong Sai-Yuk
Arahan
Attack the Gas Station
Attack the Gas Station 2
Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend the Movie
S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Drake and Kamen Rider Another Agito photo review

In addition to these, I'll be doing a massive review which has become a pet project of mine, the entire Heisei Godzilla series.

Topic pieces:
2D: The New Wave of Gaming
The Classical Generation of Tokusatsu

Kamen Rider OOO / Kamen Rider O's - Staff Information

2010-06-28T14:55:00.004-04:00

The 12 Heisei Kamen Rider series has been announced! The title is Kamen Rider OOO, read as Kamen Rider O's (Ohs), the series will start September 5th, one week after the 49th and final episode of Kamen Rider Double.

This time our main character will be somewhat of a blank slate, an almost emotionless guy. He has no friends, family, or goals, but none of this bothers him because he doesn't actually see any of it as important, so he isn't unhappy. A change will occur within him soon after he is given his Rider powers and for the first time in his life, he will be able to feel alive by fighting.

Five different monster races will make up the enemies this time, these are creatures who feed off human desires and are searching to complete their physical forms by obtaining what are known as Medals. Medals will play an important role in this series as there are three types that the main character uses to transform into Kamen Rider OOO, the Plural King.

A member of the five races of monsters gives the main character his henshin belt and tells him that he must collect the various Medals to transform and gain new powers to fight. In addition to this, there is a strange corporation shrouded in darkness who will back our hero, but we have yet to uncover what their true intentions are.

Yasuko Kobayashi will once again return to write this series, she is perhaps most well known as the head writer in the Kamen Rider Den-O series and movie franchise, but she also has various tokusatsu credits including Kamen Rider Ryuki, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, and Seijuu Sentai Gingaman. It seems her works lately have all been pretty successful, so Toei wants to see if lightning can strike again for what is going to be the 40th anniversary series in the Kamen Rider franchise. (it starts in 2010, but a majority of its run is in 2011)

The directors are the traditional stand-bys, Ryuta Tasaki and Shibasaki Takayuki, with others on the way as well since these guys only appear sparringly outside of major episodes.

Yutaka Izubuchi and Shinohara Tamotsu will serve as creature designers, some might remember Tomatsu as one of the head designers of the Orphenochs in Kamen Rider 555 and the character designer of Kamen Rider Ryuki.If you're a mecha anime fan, you've probably heard of Izabuchi, he is credited as the designer and creator of the RahXephon anime series as well as one of the head designers on Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and PatLabor. Izubuchi is somewhat of a newcomer to the Rider franchise, he designed the Buffalo Lord for Kamen Rider Decade's Agito arc as well as Kamen Rider Another Agito in the original Kamen Rider Agito series and various Makamou for the Kamen Rider Hibiki movie, Kamen Rider Hibiki & the Seven Fighting Demons.

Other tokusatsu credits for Izubuchi include designing the Changeman team, Bioman's Bio-Hunter Silver, a character based on Hakaider and the original Fushigi Comedy Series entry, Robot-8chan.

Producers for the series are Motoi Kengo assigned by TV Asahi as well as head Kamen Rider Double producer, Kazuhiro Takahashi, also joining them is Takebe Naomi, who first started producing as a secondary producer on Kamen Rider Agito.

Source: Uchusen Volume 129.

MOVIE REVIEW: Shinjuku Incident

2010-06-20T02:10:00.000-04:00

As a huge Jackie Chan fan, the past few years haven't been the most interesting as far as flicks go. With titles like Robin-b-hood, Forbidden Kingdom, The Myth, and Rush Hour 3 (oh and who can forget The Spy Next Door), I was starting to think that Jackie Chan was finally running out of steam and that the best of his work was behind us. Then I heard about Shinjuku Incident and how different of a film it would be from his past films. I was instantly intrigued and couldn't wait to see it. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch the US theatrical release in February of 2010, a year after its release in Asia. But, I finally got my hands on the DVD release of the movie about a week ago and I just had to write a review on it.

The story starts off very simple, Jackie plays "Nick" who sneaks his way into Japan illegally in order to find his fiancee who migrated there from China months earlier to follow her dreams. There, he meets a group of Chinese illegals who take him in and show him the ropes of surviving in Shinjuku. Along the way, he runs into a Japanese detective, played by Naoto Takenaka, who is intrigued by Nick and ends up crossing paths at various points in the movie. I don't want to give much away, but as it says on the box, it really does sort of echo the story of Scarface. But, it doesn't really feel like a rip-off because it happens all over the world, and here it is done in a bit of a different way.

The movie has been advertised as one of Jackie Chan's most serious roles yet, and so far I believe that is right. He doesn't play the usual happy-go-lucky fellow who somehow finds himself in a heap of trouble. His character is a bit more complex, you can tell he has been through a lot and that he is not totally innocent. It's probably his most negative role yet, which is a great career move for Jackie since he now wants to be known more his acting abilities than his action and martial arts prowess.

Speaking of action, if you are looking for the usual high-flying stunts and crazy martial arts, you may be in for a surprise. As per his character, Jackie chose not to choreograph the standard fight scenes that he is known for since it wouldn't make sense in the story. He is essentially playing a normal guy, and most normal guys don't know how to fight as well as Jackie Chan. So, a lot of the action is toned down to more down-to-earth brawls and scuffles. Despite really enjoying his action in previous movies, it was interesting to see him hold back in order to portray a character properly. That doesn't mean he doesn't take his fair share of falls, since everyone falls at some point or another. And of course, he still does that like a pro.

The supporting cast did help enhance the story, but some of them were just a bit bland and didnt really have much significance till later on in the movie. Naoto Takenaka and Daniel Wu did great jobs as the main supporting characters, though. Daniel Wu especially did a good job portraying Nick's "brother". You are made to connect to him throughout the movie and do start to feel for him as events occur. I think he pulled it off pretty well and aided Jackie's character development.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this movie and recommend it to anyone who is a Jackie Chan fan and is interested in seeing him in a different light. I think the only real knock I have against the movie (though very minor) is the box art Sony Pictures chose for the DVD. I was hoping they would use one of the original poster arts for the cover, but they went with the generic "Jackie pointing a gun to the camera" shot. It's okay, just would have added more appeal with a less generic art. Anways, I hope this is the first of many more to come of this type of work from Jackie Chan and I also hope people go and check out this film.

New Fansub Group releases ChouShinSei Flashman Ep. 1!

2010-05-30T17:58:00.000-04:00

A new fansubbing group has emerged and is ready to tackle an old school sentai series. Fantasy Forever has just released the first episode of Flashman and promises to complete the series. So, grab the download, enjoy the show, and visit their forums for discussion.

Fantasy Forever Forums

HJU Thread with MU link

Double K.O. - Ninja Assassin vs Ninja (2009)

2010-05-28T15:06:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since a real Ninja movie has been made, well as far as I remember. And, to be honest, I never had too much interest in older ninja movies. Don't ask me why, I guess they never appealed to me much. But, recently, I was at the store and saw both Ninja Assassin and Ninja stacked right next to each other on the shelf. Both came out around the same time last year, and both of them I hadn't seen yet. So I decided to pick them up and watch them. I had followed the hype of Ninja Assassin every since the first shots of Rain were leaked as well as the rehearsal video found. Conversely, I hadn't heard of Ninja until I saw a trailer in one of the thread over at HJU. Both had its appeal, and though I heard a lot of negative reviews about Ninja Assassin, I decided to check it out for myself.

So, here is a head-to-head comparison of these two very similar films in a new segment that I hope to continue more often down the road. Let's see who stands on top, the high-budget Ninja Assassin, or the little-known film known only as Ninja.

Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin was directed by James McTeigue and produced by the Wachowski brothers and Joel Silver. The story revolves around the main character Raizo, played by Korean pop star Rain, an orphan raised in a ninja clan who abandons his clan and seeks revenge on the man who took him in and taught him all that he knows. It's sort of a typical revenge story, not surprising since the story was completely rewritten only weeks before shooting. But, if you saw the trailer, you didn't go into the theater or buy the DVD/Blu-ray for the story. You wanted to see unrelenting action with tons of gore spewed around while shurikens slice through the air. And, that pretty much what you get.

The action in this movie is pretty good, considering its an American-made martial arts film, and that the main actor is not trained in martial arts. But, Rain did surprise me at how much it looked like he knew what he was doing. A lot of the moves he pulls off are impressive, and you can tell its him doing it for the most part. The stunt team behind these action sequences are some of the best in the world, and it shows....sorta.

When you think of ninjas, you think of shadows. They lurk in them like its separate form of transportation, and strike without being scene. This is awesome and can look great if done right. The problem is, since all the action scenes are in dark or dimly-lit places, a lot of the choreography is hard to see. And the times when you can see the aciton scenes, the editing is done in such a way that either the spectacular moves pulled off by Rain and the stunt crew are cut very short so that you get a glimpse of what is going on, or the camera is soo close up and jittery that its hard to tell who's throwing a punch. They do a lot of slow-motion shots and a lot of shots that start from a wide shot, zooms in for a punch/kick/spin, then pulls out without missing a beat. This effect is pretty cool, and actually done better here than in Ninja (2009), which oddly does the same exactly style of shots, but not quite as effective.

The story in this movie is....well its pretty much there to link one fight scene to the next. Nothing new is being done here. In fact, I'm sure this exact story was done many times. And a lot of the time, its pretty obsurd. And its sort of reflected in a couple of self-referential lines in the movie. I don't usually expect my ninja/martial arts movies to have deep, philosophical stories that explore things from self-awareness to the virtues of good and evil. But, it should at least give you something so that you can feel what he feels and ultimately side with him in his battles. In Ninja Assassin, aside from the head honcho of the ninja clan, I had no clue why his brother wanted him dead so bad, aside from one fight they had as kids. Though, I have to admit that I did find it interesting how he bred all of his students to basically become hired killers for big corporations, though again, that's been done.

Ninja (2009)

Ninja (2009) stars Scott Adkins (Unleashed, X-men Origins: Wolverine, Undisputed 2 & 3) and directed by Isaac Florentine. This was done on a much lesser budget than Ninja Assassin, seeing as its only theatrical release was in Malaysia in October of last year and was released on DVD here in the States as well as the UK and Canada March of this year.

Scott Adkins' character, Casey, has a strikingly similar backstory as Raizo. He also was an orphaned child taken in by a dojo leader and taught the ways of the ninja. The difference between this movie and Ninja Assassin is that instead of Casey seeking revenge, he is tasked to protect an ancient armor from getting into the hands of a corrupt fellow student who was banished from the clan. This takes them to New York where they go up against Masazuka, the banished student, as well as an...underground ninja-type syndicate? That's sorta where it got a bit weird for me. In Ninja Assassin, Raizo battles his fellow brothers who trained with him and know his strengths and weaknesses. In Ninja, Casey and Namiko (played by Mika Hijii, whom you may know as Kaoru from GARO), are on the run, fending off a group of underground hooded thugs headed by some corporate head who for some reason also wears a hood. Sadly, the villians are probably the weakest part of the film, aside from Masazuka who I thought was alright.

But, this did give way for some great action scenes. Granted, it wasn't as high budget as Ninja Assassin, so there wasn't as much CGI blood, gore, and weapons here. But, the CGI blood was done just enough to give the feel of brutality. There weren't really any chopped off limbs to speak of. And the CGI on the weapons (which was pretty much one scene, aside from the shurikens) was toned down, less than the average Tokusatsu show. But, I felt that the action here was a more grounded and practical, which is how I personally like my fight scenes to be. Adkins is a very talented martial artist and it shows in this movie. Hijii holds her own for the most part, but she does get doubled in a few shots. Overall, I think the fight scenes were very well done and worths seeing.

The Face Off: Both movies share the same premise for their characters but verge off in different direction as far as motives go. Casey wants to protect the pride of his clan, while Raizo wants revenge on his Sensei and goes against his clan. Ninja's story does seem a bit more fleshed out and its a lot easier to see the goal, whereas in Ninja Assassin, I was often not clear about who was chasing whom and who was with whom, especially the 2 Europol agents in the movie. Both movies have good fight scenes. Ninja Assassin banks on massive amounts of blood and chopped limbs, while Ninja focuses on the more practical side of battle, giving more clean and ultimately more viewable fight scenes with longer shots and wider angles. As far as the villians go, the Ozunu clan of Ninja Assassin are much more threatening and vicious than Ninja's underground NY clan. And Masazuka seemed to have more motivation to go after Casey than Takeshi did for Raizo.

The Winner: So, in the end, we got two ninja movies last year that were pretty sub-par as far as quality went. But, I have to choose a winner. And for this battle, I choose Ninja as the winner. The fight scenes were good , especially considering the budget, which focused more on the choreography than on different way to dismember someoen with a sharp object. It also had a simpler story that was easier to follow and gave way some good battles. This says something against Ninja Assassin, which was a much bigger budget film, back by the Wachowski brothers, who are usually known for their interesting take on storytelling. It was also created with some of the best stunt actors around, but the end product just became a bit lackluster behind all the blood and gore.

Classic Tokusatsu Review: Turboranger Episode 16

2010-05-19T10:02:00.000-04:00

[射てVターボバズーカ] Ute Bui Taabo Bazuuka
Fire the V-Turbo Bazooka

I think there are two Sentai seres that really are underrepresented in terms of fans, one is Fiveman, the other is Turboranger, today I'll be covering what I think is an early pivitol episode of Turboranger.

The basic story for this episode is that Professor Dazai is working on a new weapon for the Turboranger, the V-Turbo Bazooka, it's not quite done yet and seems to require one of the Mach Turbo engines to actually work. On their way to deliver the engine to Dazai, the Turboranger are attacked by Yamimaru, probably my favorite villain of the series. He gets rid of the team's ability to transform. The team are then on the run, worse yet, they're lost the ability to see their fairy partner, Seelon.

I like to call Turboranger one of those series that is "quietly great", in other words, it completes a rather good story and gives you a great team of characters, but it's rather low-key in the way these things are presented. This episode is one that perfectly describes that attitude I feel this series gives off rather nicely. The team has lost their powers are the ones on the run and being hunted for a decent part of the episode, they're clearly scared. This is an episode were the cast clearly shines through in portraying the helpless fear that the characters feel. I was never a fan of the girl cast to play Seelon, but even she's pretty easy to handle here.

As the Turboranger find a cave to hide in, they all lament on the fact that they can no longer transform, and then we're introduced to a rather interesting story point. As children, they were all showered in light that represented the spirits of the fallen fairy race. This power allows them to see Seelon and fully transform. After realizing this, that they were all chosen for a special reason, they head back to fight Yamimaru and his monster. Initially they think of running for it again, but they gather up their courage and take on both untransformed. What ensues is one of the most impressive short fights I've seen in Sentai, specially Riki's fight against the wandering demon Samurai Yamimaru. At one point it seems like Yamimaru has won the fight as he has Riki on the floor and is about to thrust his sword through him, but Riki manages to catch the sword, blood dripping off his hands as it's cutting into him.

Seelon plays a bit of a bigger role in this episode by using Soul Shine Attack, blinding Yamimaru and the monster. While the attack gives the team enough time to escape, it leaves Seelon on the verge of death. After a bit of searching, the team finds the tree where they were bathed in light as children and regain their powers, and after defeating Yamimaru's monster, are able to revive Seelon.

While a rather early episode in the series, it introduces some rather interesting points in the story and the lengths that Seelon is willing to go to actually protect the Turborangers. It also shows the team as very human characters who, when totally powerless, are pretty much like any other humans in the fact that they run for it and they're scared when being attacked, but...it also shows them as special humans in the sense that they were picked as children. They were given the power of the light to fight off the various demon tribes and this allows them to realize what they're capable of. And, they actually manage to put up a pretty decent fight against their foes while just humans. This is definitely one of the better moments that places emphasis on the idea of characters being predestined for certain things.

A Journey Through the Decade (2000-2010) - Kamen Rider

2010-05-08T06:49:00.000-04:00

Here is part 2 of our Journey through the Decade series, with a look at Kamen Rider and its many heroes. Enjoy and please comment and subscribe.

MOVIE REVIEW - Samurai Sentai Shinkenger vs Go-Onger

2010-05-04T15:28:00.000-04:00

The Shinkenger crew star in the 2010 Super Sentai Team-Up movie alongside the team from the year before, Engine Sentai Go-onger. With the full name of the movie being "Samurai Sentai Shinkenger vs Go-Onger: GinmakuBang!! (Silver screen Bang!!)", the story is set with Sousuke/Go-On Red being separated from his team in a battle against Bacchiido in another world. Sousuke is brought back to the Human World where he encounters Takeru and the rest of the Shinkenger. From then on, they find themselves fighting to find the other Go-ongers as well as fighting both the Gedoushuu and the Gaiark.

The character interactions in the movie were pretty interesting. But, maybe that is cuz there wasn't too much between them all at once. I really didn't like the Go-Onger series and never actually finished it. Mostly that was due to how goofy the characters were as well as the talking mechs. I think what made me enjoy the movie more was that the goofiness was toned down a lot. Sousuke is still the same enthusiastic self-proclaimed hero, but when contrasted with Takeru's no-nonsense authoritative personality, it made for interesting quarrels between the two. The other Shinkenger and Go-Onger members meet in various different worlds and for the most part, the interactions worked. Well, except for Ryuunosuke's run in with Hant and Saki, the two Go-Onger members I disliked the most. Hant was okay, but whenever Saki opened her mouth, I was reminded that I was watching something with Go-Onger in the title, something that the movie successfully made me forget up to that point.

I thought that the action for the most part was pretty good. Shinkenger were cool as always with their sword-wielding skills. Some may say that their choreography gets repetitive with just a lot of slashing going on, but there are plenty of parts that made the action scenes more interesting, for example Takeru and Sousuke's fight scene. I thought it was well done considering how short it was. Though, the battles with the mix of the other Shinkenger and Go-Onger members sorta went by quicker than I had anticipated. The Mech battles were pretty much as expected, a cluster of 10-15 mechs each trying to move enough to shoot an attack. These were pretty much my two least favorite mechs, outside of the original Shinkenoh. But overall, my attention was definitely kept through the action and made me glad I got around to watching it.

We also got a little visit from the heroes of the then-upcoming Super Sentai, Tensou Sentai Goseiger. It sort of reminded me of Kamen Rider W's appearance in the All Rider vs Daishocker movie back in the summer. Though this time, they were onscreen for a bit longer (mostly due to the roll-calls). They did their thing, intercepting Akumaro, Dayu, and Juzou's attempt at attacking the heroes. I'm still not too into the Goseiger series, though that is changing with each episode. I'm just wondering if this will be a new trend for Toei, bringing the heroes from the next series into one of the current series' movies. Its a cool idea, and probably gets fans in Japan very excited. But, for us in the Western countries who wait for subs of the movies, its more like backtracking for us since the new shows usually start by the time we get access to subbed versions of the movie. Nonetheless, it was cool seeing them pop in for a bit.

Overall, I really enjoyed this Vs movie. I didnt really like the last one, Go-Onger vs Gekiranger, because it just felt too bland. I hadn't enjoyed a Vs movie this much since either the Gekiranger vs Boukenger movie or going back to the Dekaranger vs Magiranger movie. I think even fans who didn't like Go-Onger, like myself, will see something to enjoy here. And fans of Shinkenger will definitely get their fill, seeing as they are in top form here.

A Journey Through the Decade (2000-2010) - Super Sentai

2010-05-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

With the end of a decade, I decided to start a little video series showcasing all the different Tokusatsu shows that we have had over the past 10 years. First up is Super Sentai, which has had a very steady pace and with lots of varying themes throughout the years. Eventually I will get to others shows like Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and even shows that are a bit lesser known (I'm actually in the middle of making a Kamen Rider video right now). So, without further adieu, hope you enjoy the video, and look forward to more in the series.

A Journey through the Decade (2000-2010) - Super Sentai from RisingSun-Inui on Vimeo.

Daimajin Kanon - 01

2010-04-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

[歌遠] Uta Tou
Distant Song

Daimajin Kanon is a modern retelling and semi-sequel to the original Daimajin trilogy about a giant in ancient Japan battling armies and demons. This series updates things and sets itself in modern Japan, with the title character, Mikazuki Kanon, having some sort of relation to Bujin, the giant known as Daimajin in the past.

Episode one mostly gives us an introduction to Mikazuki, a student at Tokyo University who dreams of becoming a singer who, after dating a friend and finding out he cheated on her, has been left in a slump as well as giving us a little shadowy introduction to the other characters, namely Taihei and Ikechiyo. We also see the gathering of warriors sent out on a secret mission in Tokyo.

The episode itself was a rather good one, giving us a lot of introductions to what seems to be a fun cast of characters and setting up general personal problem and reason for Mikazuki's current behavior. This is a series that won't let the tokusatsu element of it completely take control as it tries to balance out the various aspects of the secret mission as well as showing us a bit of Mikazuki's life. The trauma of seeing someone cheat on her has pretty much changed her once happy demeanor and left her a shell of her former self that hopefully these other characters will be able to change for the better. I absolutely love Mikazuki's "I feel like I'm mourning who I used to be" like, it really shows just how big of a change she's gone through and how down her outlook on everything has become.

Now, just what is the secret mission the other people are on? These guys are looking for a young girl (well, young at the time), who sang something called the Prayer Song. Something about this song is useful in a fight against creatures called the Ipadada, and of course it's Mikazuki who not only sang the song as a child, but used it as a song for the band she was in, who have gone on to success thanks to their rock rendition of it.

Of course there are fights and whatnot here, but they're not as in your face as one might expect in a tokusatsu series, the stuff really seems to take a backseat in this episode to the human drama.

Daimajin Kanon looks to be a pretty great series, billed as one of the most expensive tokusatsu TV series ever produced and written by Shinji Oushi (Kamen Rider Hibik) and Naruhisa Arakawa (Kamen Rider Kuuga), I'm definitely looking forward to this one and I'm sure it has a good chance at becoming one of the tokusatsu greats.

Tensou Sentai Goseiger - 01

2010-04-18T09:29:00.000-04:00

[護星天使、降臨] Gosei Tenshi, Korin
Advent of the Gosei Angels

Goseiger is the 2010 Sentai and as of episode one, nothing to write home about. (yet I'm writing about it!) The series centers around Arata, Hyde, Aguri, Eri, and Mone, five members of the Gosei Angel race who have been stranded on Earth after the destruction of the Heaven's Tower. With no way home and no way to get reinforcements, these five are left to protect the earth from the invasion of the Warstar aliens.

The first episode was a little more laid back than I would like my series to start out with. I'm a believer of getting people hooked in with a bang in either the form of aesthetic or story, and this episode didn't really have either, though it's not all bad. There were certain elements introduced that I really liked and can see forming into some interesting stories. The rivalry between Arata and Dereptor, Bladerun, who looks like the obligatory cool villain, and the fact that the rangers themselves don't get along.

...

Well, they do, but the general theme is that they're all members of different "tribes", Landick, Seaick, and Skyick, with different personality traits that sorta clash. But, it seems like a down-played angle in this first episode and is something I hope will improve later on in the series. They generally get along, even if begrudgingly at times, and fight together. Clearly a team as seen during the roll call, but I suppose the clashing tribes aspect is there to keep the story from getting stale during the non-action scenes. The team is also seen as another outsider team, with no one really being used to the customs of earth as they really aren't from earth. This should lead to some amusing moments later on in the series, I would hope.

Goseiger also does something that people have wanted/dreaded in Sentai for quite some time, introducing cards as a general gimmick. Seems like Datass cards have been the big thing ever since Ultraman started it with their Giant Monster Battle series, Kamen Rider followed suit, and now it's Sentai's turn. Cards are a touchy subject with people. Personally, I like them if used right, they add an interesting angle to a series. If used well. Does Goseiger use them well? Eh . . .it's a little too early to tell, but my instincts tell me yes and no. First, it seems like the cards were an afterthought. There really is nothing about angels and cards that go together, so it really seems to clash. Second, the angels use them in some interesting ways, which is what I like so far about the series. But, I get the feeling they might need to fall back on them for every.little.thing. . . .and that might become a little tedious.

MOVIE REVIEW: Tai Chi Master

2010-04-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to do a piece on Martial Arts films for a while now, but hadn't found the right motivation or piece of work to start it off with. I recently bought the movie Tai Chi Master, released by Dragon Dynasty, and gave it a watch along with its Special Features. I have seen the movie once before, but it was of poor quality and I believe it was an English dub. Now, finally getting an excellent print of the movie, I thought it would be a good film to start off with. I'm hoping to do more than just movie reviews with this genre, same as with Tokusatsu. But for now, lets get on with the review.

Tai Chi Master (known from its previous Western release as Twin Warriors) stars Jet Li (Once Upon a Time in China, Fearless), Michelle Yeoh (Supercop, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and Chin Siu Ho (also in Fist of Legend) and was directed by legendary director/stunt coordinator Yuen Wo-Ping (Drunken Master, The Matrix trilogy). The story revolves around two childhood friends who grow up in a Shaolin Temple until they are expelled and thrown into the real world. There, the two friends take different paths, one becoming a rebel and one becoming a general. Eventually, they will cross paths once again, resulting some very impressive fight sequences.

The fight scenes in this movie, I have to say, are pretty amazing. They are very fast-paced, hard hitting, and some of the stunts pulled will make you rewind to see if you saw what you saw. Jet Li is in top form. I've always been intrigued by his prowess. The guy is extremely flexible, and so fast that I've heard that directors sometimes ask him to slow it down a bit so they will be able to capture it all clearly on film.

There are a few different fighting styles presented in this film, and Jet Li definitely showed good transition between the two main ones that he used. In the beginning of the film, his character learns Kung Fu under the Shaolin temple, which is very grounded in its execution from what was shown. Later on in the film though, his character goes through a change in both philosophy and skill, which allows him to develop was is known as Tai Chi. This allowed Jet Li to show off his flexibility as many of the moves required him to move very fluidly but at the same time needed to show strength in his punches and kicks.

Michelle Yeoh plays woman searching for her missing husband, only to find out that he ran off to marry a very rich and powerful lady. This allows her character to join up with the rebels, and Jet Li's character, to eventually help fight the Governor's army. Now, personally, I love Michelle Yeoh. She is a very talented actress who is very confident in her abilities. The fact that she never trained as a martial artist and uses her training as a dancer to pull off all these moves and stunts always amazes me. And when you see her in this movie, you won't be able to tell. She can deal the pain with the rest of them, and that's what makes her so great.

Chin Siu Ho plays Jet Li's childhood friend in the movie and later on, his opponent. I saw him in Fist of Legend first, and though that was made after this movie, I knew that I would enjoy seeing him in it. And, boy was I right. Something about his acting and martial arts skills makes me want to check out more of his films. He was great in this movie. I definitely enjoyed him in this semi-villainous role and couldn't wait to see him face off against Jet Li in the end.

Yuen Wo-Ping definitely pulled off all the stops for this movie, and it shows. The fight scenes are very impactful and bring you into the scene. The movie flows at a good pace, and the acting was good. I also liked the story, which allowed me to get into the character struggles, which in turn made you more emotionally involved in the fight scenes.

I can only really hold two things against the movie, but both are more of personal preference. One are some of the fight scenes and the amount of wire-work used. I agree with Chin Siu Ho's point of view expressed in the interview he did in the Special Features, that practical fight scenes are more appealing. You can see that kind of fighting style more in the beginning of the movie. But, there are fight scenes that have so much wire-work and everyone is flying around so much, that it just sort of bends the belief in the scenes a bit too much for me. I like fight scenes that are more based on reality than people pulling off unimaginable feats (despite me loving Tokusatsu. haha). The other thing would be the change that Jet Li's character experience, which happens way to quickly in my opinion. But, that could just be due to them not having enough time to expand the scenes more. But I just felt that his transition was too abrupt and left me a bit stunned.

Lastly, I'll comment a bit on the Special Features. There is a Feature Length Commentary by Hong Kong Cinema Expert Bey Logan (which as of this, I have not checked out yet), an interview with Chin Siu Ho, which I found very interesting. There are also two commentary pieces by Director Brett Ratner and Critic Elvis Mitchell talking about Yuen Wo-Ping as well as Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. These two pieces were pretty interesting to watch, though I'm a bit tired of seeing Brett Ratner popping up in these. Lastly, there is a piece on the Birthplace of Tai Chi, where they visit the Chen village and talk to one of the real Tai Chi Masters about the art, its history, and its application.

All in all, this was definitely a DVD worth the buy. I do wish I had bought it sooner, but didn't have the chance or the money. If you are a fan of any of the actors, or of Yuen Wo-Ping's work, you should definitely check this out. I think its a must-have.

MOVIE REVIEW - Samurai Sentai Shinkenger The Movie: The Decisive War

2010-03-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger The Movie: The Decisive War, the summer movie for the Shinkenger season which was double-billed with Kamen Rider Decade's All Rider vs Daishocker movie, was recently subbed by Tv-Nihon and I just got finished watching it a little while ago. Coming off of the pretty awesome finale for the show, I was pretty optimistic to see the cast in another adventure. But, being a 20 minute movie, I wasn't expecting it to be such a short journey. Let's see if it can still pack a bit of a punch.

The story surrounds the Shinkenger's ongoing battle with the head of the Kusare Gedoushuu, Aburame Manpuku and his vast army. The senshi/rangers are down to their last bit of strength and the only glimmer of hope they have is the Hiden Disc left behind by the first ShinkenRed. They set off on their quest to retrieve this Disc and use the power within to combat Manpuku and his army.

As far as the story goes, I really like how it started off. We got to see the senshi in their weakened state and desperate for any kind of solution. It put the story in motion very quickly, which was necessary for such a short movie. But, even if this had been extended for another 30-40 minutes, it would have been interesting to see where the story would have went, with possibly more interactions and story with the original ShinkenRed. I also liked how it wasn't just a situation where Takeru finds the Disc and then poof, becomes the ultimate killing machine. It actually took some effort and resolve on his part as well as the others in order for them to obtain it. That helped make this movie a bit more than just the average episode, though it was still pretty close.

Besides the cast and story, I was interesting to see what they did with the action in the movie. The action scenes in the show were cool when they were punctuating parts of the story, but when it was just a normal battle with the Nanashi, then it could get repetitive and bland pretty quickly. Luckily, the main battle in this movie was a punctuating part of the story, and thus, pretty interesting. We see the return of the horses that the Shinkenger use to ride into battle. The battle with the Shinkenger (excluding ShinkenRed), was interesting but nothing too special. The fight that I liked the best was between ShinkenRed and Manpuku. The choreography had a bit of fire to it adding to the tension. The eventual Mech battle at the end, on the other hand, I couldn't really have cared less for. Though that's usually the case with me and Sentai anyway unless its a pivotal moment in the episode.

One thing the Mech battle did show off was ShinkenRed's new weapon, Kyoryumaru which came with his new form, Hyper ShinkenRed. It seems to be a power-up to the Super Shinken form, except it can only be used by ShinkenRed this time. We have seen this form before in the show, since the story of the movie takes place between a couple of episodes in the show. This threw me off while watching the show because he all of a sudden had this form and new weapon with no explanation. Then I remember that it was introduced in the movie. It was cool to see where it came from, and I really liked how he obtained it. But, my one gripe about it is the sword itself. The red "coat" looks cool, but the sword just looks ridiculous to me and is a very rough contrast to the form and the legend surrounding the sword. Its supposed to be the ultimate sword to defeat this enemy, but its a blue and red sword with what I'm guessing is a live dinosaur snapping its teeth at the end of it. IMO, its an ugly looking sword and sort of killed the climax of the movie for me.

Overall, it was an okay watch for me. It didn't really live up to my expectations, but Sentai movies haven't really done that for me since probably Dekaranger. But, I think Shinkenger fans will still find something to enjoy in this bite-sized movie. As a Shinkenger fan myself, I enjoyed seeing them on screen again, especially since I really missed their air and attitude after watching the first few episodes of Goseiger, but that is for another article.

Movie Review - Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: The Mountain of Fire Roars

2010-03-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

For our first movie review, I decided to take a look at film Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: The Mountain of Fire Roars, which was recently subbed by Gao Soul Forever. This was the first Sentai movie to be double billed with a Kamen Rider movie, Kamen Rider Agito: Project G4. The story revolves around the Gaorangers and Tetomu being sucked into another dimension and landing in another world. They are tasked to help the people of this land to overthrow the Ogres that have taken over and made them slave workers.

I'm a fan of the Gaoranger series and was happy to see the movie get a proper sub since I watched the show with fixed HK subs a year or so ago and I hadn't gotten around to watching the movie. It was great seeing all 6 rangers back in action and made me remember why I liked the show. The fights were as you'd expect from the show, with lots of dashing, clawing, and plain kick-assery (yeh, I actually used that. What?). It could be seen as a knock against it, seeing as the action doesn't differ too much from the series, outside of the opening sequence. But, adding more to it would have made it feel a bit different, if it wasn't done right. So, Im quite content with it.

The same can be said for the acting. The actors do a good job in portraying their characters as they always have. But, I felt that this time, it fell a bit short. With the show, since it was 51 episodes, we got to see the many faces of the characters. In the movie, since they assume that you have watched the show (and rightfully so), they just go straight into it, without sort of giving a little taste of their different characteristics. Well, Kakeru (GaoRed) and Sotaro (GaoBlack) do display a bit of their goofiness in the movie. But for the most part, they don't really show much of their personalities, which is a bit of a shame.

But, that may be due to the fact that the movie is incredibly short. The runtime is about 27-28 minutes, which is a little over the length of the average episode. A bit unexpected, considering most Tokusatsu movies (mainly Super Sentai and Kamen Rider) run to about 40 minutes. So, I guess they didn't really have enough time to show each character's personality. But, a line or two would have sufficed in doing this. The short runtime did allow them to go straight into the action and thus, cutting down on the exposition. So, I guess its both a good thing and a bad thing.

The mech battle seemed to be the climax of the movie, like the show. The main attraction was the appearance of a new Power Animal: GaoKong. It's basically a different version of GaoGorilla and combines with the other Power Animals to form GaoKnight, a variation on GaoMuscle. Though, surprisingly, I kind of liked the fight scene. GaoKnight showed some quickness that I dont remember seeing in other Gaoranger mech battles. Credit goes to the suit actor for that, which surprised me because Gaoranger did use CG for their mech fights a lot (as far as I can remember. It's been a while so my memory of the fights aren't clear.)

All in all, I thought it was an interesting movie. It had a premise that, even though I kept questioning how they got there in the first place, it helped move the story along at a decent pace. My only gripe is that the makers of the movie tried an experiment that didn't exactly work, for me anyway. There are a couple of scenes in the movie where they break the fourth wall by having the actors turn to the camera and talk to the audience (one scene had Tetomu asking the kids in the audience to call the Gaorangers with her on 3.). This took me out of the experience and even though I know its for the kids, I just saw it as a bit unnecessary.

If you're a fan of Gaoranger or have seen the show and felt moderate about it, I'd say check it out. Its a good way to spend 30 minutes and it isn't a bad movie. But, if you were bored by Gaoranger, chances are you will be bored by this.

Album Review: Joe Inoue - ME! ME! ME!

2010-02-19T01:07:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the first music review of the site! This time we're gonna dive right into reviewing an album that was released last summer, Joe Inoue's ME! ME! ME!, narcissistic title? Yeah. Great album? Hell yeah. There is an amazing blend of styles here with Joe's unique vocals and total control of the work he does that adds a nice layer of personality to each song, so even the bad ones aren't terrible.

Anywho, let's dive right into...

TRACK 1 – CLOSER

This is the song that most people are going to associate with Joe Inoue since it was used as one of the openings to the second Naruto anime series. It's a rather up beat pop rock song that feels bright and energetic almost all the way, there are a few places where the mood drops, but it still has a sense of building towards a greater sound. This song is hard to describe because it does blend a lot of different things I like about Joe Inoue, but at the same time it's a little generic at times. What I love the most in the song is the great blend of guitar and synthesizer going on at the start and other areas of the song. It feels like it adds an originality to the song that really helps it out along the way when some of the vocals feel like they're just there to kill time because we otherwise would listen to a lot of instrumentation...which I actually don't see as a bad thing with this song since it's so catchy. I tend to think solos are rather dull and kill the mood in most songs, but not in this one, so great job on that part. My one gripe here is that it goes a little ska towards the middle of the song, which is just out of nowhere. And, there's also a really bad pause that has two characters randomly talking (in English!) and I feel like it's just a creative thing that did not quite work out because it feels so tacked on and kills the flow of the song.

TRACK 2 – Reiji ~ TWENTY-FOUR

Not really a fan of this song too much, the instrumentals are pretty good, but the lyrics are kinda off the wall in a bad way, so it's just jarring when you're trying to get into the song. It seems like it's trying to be a punk rock song, and it certainly gets there as far as the instrumentals are considered, but the vocals don't really reach that. The closest thing I can link them to, aside from one little bit of fast singing towards the end, is early 90's “clean” rap, you know what I'm talking about. Just seems like this song is a bit of a waste, being so short and not really innovative, but it's not the worst song on the album.

TRACK 3 – Maboroshi

Not only is this my favorite Joe Inoue song, I'm pretty sure I can easily call it one of my favorites of all time. Joe Inoue can do two sets of vocals really great, teen pop rock and mature, adult sounding vocals that give depth and weight to a song, providing an emotional attachment that you just don't get too often in songs. I really think the lyrics to this song are beautiful, if not a bit cheesy. But they portray the heart of someone who deeply cares for another person through an incredible song. There tends to be a trend with a lot of Japanese music I hear that just sounds so alike, high energy pop song or a derivative ballad with no originality to it, but this song smashes all of those molds. There's an honest energy here to Joe's vocals that, even if you don't know what he's saying, connects you to the feel of the song. This is one of those songs I think is the absolute sum of “music has no language”, which I don't think is true for all songs, but it most certainly is in this case and I would love to hear more stuff like this from Joe. The instrumentals to the song add a really heartfelt level of emotion that you can't really fake by playing a few generic notes, which I think is something that so many ballads from others try to go for, intentional or not, and it just hampers my desire to want to listen to the rest of the song. There is an absolutely perfect accompaniment to his vocals by the instrumentals, and even the unpolished sound of fingers lifting from strings of an acoustic guitar are left in and add a great layer of character to the song. This seems to be one of those rare times when a song can play little errors like that to its strength and help give it more strength to carry through the entire length of its run. I certainly didn't want it to end by the time it did. Some way into the song, there's also a really amazing verse in there that really captured my attention and made me listen to that little snippet a couple of times. It's a quick rise in the emotion of the vocals to an even more emotional level than already heard throughout the song before leveling off to the tone of the rest of the song. It's so...well it doesn't quite fit, yet it does. Something about that tiny verse really does a lot to change and improve the mood of an already great song. Adding the fact that Joe Inoue's pronunciation isn't the typical standard of Japanese, you have a really unique and great sounding song. If you only ever listen to one of this guy's songs, make it this one.

TRACK 4 – PARTY NIGHT ~ Odoritari NIGHT

There is a lot to say about this song and I'm not really sure because my opinions on it are pretty darn mixed. There are points when the song knows what it's doing and how to achieve that sound, but it more than not falls into the pit of being a stupidly repetitive song where the repetition isn't even too appealing to the ears. The song goes for an electronic feel that is quite clear in the later parts of the song and the vocals within the chorus, but I just never found myself digging them. Repetition is great when you can find a catchy beat and lyrics, but when it's just something rather mundane with derivative sounding music? You're not going to get anything that can truly capture the attention of the listener, at least not in a good way. I will say this, though, in the song's favor...Joe's vocals, the chorus withstanding, are amazing for the electronic sound he's going for. The bass and keyboarding he does here really adds to the mood and helps bridge various parts of the song into each other rather seamlessly, and I'm quite sure I would like this song a heck of a lot more if not for the chorus.

TRACK 5 – INTO OBLIVION

This is one of those songs that shows off Joe's mastery of various styles of music quite nicely. Though he isn't being experimental and blending different sounds, he picks a theme here and runs with it through the entire song in great style. This is a nice heavy rock song with some great bass and fast electric riffs going on throughout, as well as some inaudible low pitch screaming that really adds a mysterious and dark sound to the entire song. Joe is doing vocal ghosting, an effect which he seems to do a lot in his songs, but I think it fits here better than it does in any other song. There is a lot of energy through this entire song that is only heightened to a level of awe with the ghosting that places the vocals on a pedestal with a great range of sounds all in the tone of dark rock surrounding him and it ends with a very satisfying song that any fan of pure metal will be able to see some merit in, if not for the vocals, than for the instrumentals themselves. At points, I even here beats that remind me of the stuff Slash can pull off with such great style and here Joe is doing it all on his own.

TRACK 6 – ONE MAN BAND

Now this one I'll go ahead and proclaim as one of my favorite songs on the album, so if the review seems a little gushy...well now you know why. Joe Inoue is capable of a wide range of music that comes from his musical history and dual heritage that has exposed him to many styles of music that have influenced his works. This song shows that more clearly than any of his other songs ever have. It starts off quietly, almost like a rock ballad, but picks up speed soon enough with the amusing lyrics “this is where the chorus comes in” as it kicks into a faster pace song. The song then goes back and forth from fast pace energy to an almost soothing low tempo song. Joe's vocals have always had a unique quality to them that clearly makes it shine through. They aren't the most beautiful vocals you'll ever hear, but there's an endearing quality to it that is so present in this song. The song seems like a proclamation of what he is, as the title says, a one man band. He plays all the instruments and does most of the technical production himself, so it's easy to see just how much control he has. The intro of the song has a rather nice set of chords playing before light drum tapping and bass set it to accompany Joe's ghostly vocals at this point in the song. This bit of the song, which is the only part like it throughout the song, is wonderful and even though the mood totally changes in a few seconds, it gets the listener into the song. Things soon change to a fast-paced, high energy song as he blasts his lyrics out, taking moments to let the listener rest at various bridges in the music. Later on there is a really amazing combination of his usual instruments alongside a grand set of strings, mostly violin, that adds an epic feeling to the song. Maybe it's because of the unique production, but this seems like a song anyone can get into. Its lyrics are fun, the beat is uplifting and gives it a homely quality while still capturing a grander mood overall.

TRACK 7 – Hitomi ~ HE TOLD ME

Much like the next song, this one doesn't do a lot for me. There is a certain mood that it's trying to present, but I don't think it ever does so in a great manner. The instrumentals are certainly easy listening and I would definitely love a vocaless track to this song, but I don't think that's the intended point of this song, so it really just fails in my eyes. Easy enough to call this my least favorite song in the album.

TRACK 8 – HANNAH

I don't have much to say about this song because I really didn't like it. There wasn't much here that caught my attention and though there weren't any glaring issues in the music or vocals or mood of the song, I just didn't get into it. Was actually just playing the song in the background and completely forgot about it...at least it makes great background music? Yeah, there's not much to say about a song that isn't really something that can grab my attention and easily causes my attention span to pop off somewhere else. There's a definite sense of building energy throughout the entire song, but it just never pays off and leaves the listener with a rather unfulfilled feeling as you're expecting something to happen, but nothing ever does.

TRACK 9 – GRAVITY

First and foremost, “I wish I could just kill you”? Riiiiight. Creepiest lyrics I have ever heard. Moving on! This is an interesting song that tries to capture a light rock feel throughout, but does not quite get there. The vocals for Joe are perfect for it, as he knows when to up the pace and when to slow down, never causing a major conflict with the tempo of the music itself, it's the music itself that causes the conflict. I feel it tends to throw off the mood of the song as there are quite a few different sounds being thrown around here, from simple chord strumming to the more generic fast paced music you hear in pop rock a good amount of the time. The ending of the song totally throws off the mood of the song, which isn't great when the rest of the song already has a few problems that keeps it from being a consistent song throughout. If you can ignore these problems, you'll like this song. And, there are certainly verses that I do like, but for the most part, this song is rather forgettable for me and not one I can see myself listening to again too often.

TRACK 10 – KURUMA

I absolutely love this song, along with Maboroshi, it captures the sound that I call “mature Joe” in where his vocals are a no-nonsense adult sounding piece of work that don't have the teen appeal of other songs, but I think he can pull that sound off with great style. I do love the song, but the only problem I have is his vocal ghosting at times just does not blend in with the song and really does a number on the flow of what is otherwise a really great song to listen to...though that's not to say that bit isn't good. It just doesn't fit within the constraints of this song, I think. The instrumentals themselves aren't totally interesting here, standard stuff and nothing that would really blow anyone away. But I think that fits quite well here as the mood of the song seems to be one of a subtle amazement, contradictions are fun, aren't they?

TRACK 11 – AFTERGLOW

I think this is the shortest song on the album, and because of that, I find it hard to call it my favorite, but if it was longer, it would certainly be it. This song blends an amazing range of strings and piano to a constant drumming to create and captivating...wait for it...rock lounge sound. Even at the fastest parts of the songs, the lyrics are never really blasting in your face, they're present, but at the same time it truly feels like another instrument within the song, which is something I don't get too often from a lot of music I listen to. There is an interesting contrast going on with the building pace in Joe's vocals at the start that blends perfectly with the instrumentals going on in the background, reaching a sudden stop and then leading into the lounge sound of the song. I believe this was an experimental song on Joe's part and I loved the sound that he got out of it. I would definitely love to hear more from him in the same vein.

TRACK 12 – Haru

As much as I like Joe's music, there is one problem I have noticed in his music that this song pretty much personifies...he has a mix of mature vocals more at home with a deeper song, as well as a younger sounding voice that seems more at home with teen pop. And there are times he just can't get it focused and shifts through the two at awkward points in what would otherwise be a really amazing song. Despite this, the song isn't too bad, there is a rather boring bit towards the end with building and descending snare drum action that tries to pull empathy out of the listener, but just seems to fail. This song would have been constructed much better if it stayed more in the mood of the opening minute or so, but the song loses steam about halfway into it, almost as if a totally different idea for the song came to mind. The chorus of the song is beautiful and I just love the way he sings “something very nice is gonna' come your way...” as a charming set of strings play in the background. But around the second time this plays, the song just becomes an awkward listen that I'm not too fond of. Not a song I would listen to too often, but it gave me a glimpse into a really charming sound.

TRACK 13 – HELLO!

The oddly (ironically?) place “HELLO!” is the final song on the album, and was also the first major single released by Joe Inoue. The song is full of a fun energy as the lyrics run by at an interesting pace, taking moments to slow down before bursting into a quick stream of energy again. The lyrics are sometimes cheesy, especially the English bits, but even that is mostly stuff you can get into rather easily. Apart from just being a really fun light rock song, it has some interesting bits of experimental practice going on with the music, especially the “fast talking” bits of the song that isn't actually singing, but just fast talking with an echo place onto the vocal track. The song has something I tend to absolutely despise a lot of the time, badly placed solos that show off pretty bland music, but! It's different this time because Joe can definitely pull this off, he shows off a couple of different styles of music in here, from a nice and heavy guitar riff to a lighter lead up back into the lyrics, which now have a nice and ghostly effect going on that I absolutely love during the climax of the song. Now this isn't his best song ever, but it's pretty good and something that makes for a great listen if you happen to be bored and need a new song to get into.

Tomica Hero: The Franchise is Ending, but the Characters are Alive and Well

2010-02-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

In this era where Kamen Rider is trying to reinvent itself and Sentai is trying to reach for a more mature edge, there is one franchise of tokusatsu I think stands above them both, the Tomica Hero line of shows. Being something that isn't from Toei is an automatic disadvantage when it comes to these shows and this part of the fandom. People seem not to like to step out of Kamen Rider and really Super Sentai a lot of the time. It's recently been revealed that despite doing better in its second year, the Tomica Hero series will be ending with Rescue Fire, so without further ado, this is my tribute to a franchise gone before its time.

The show focuses on characters who aren't superheroes, but “super rescue workers” who are a part of a government organization. The UFDA is a worldwide organization with two unique teams that battle super disasters in their own ways. The first team is Rescue Force, who dealt with general disasters and the Neo-Terror group. The second is Rescue Fire, who dealt with Don Kaen's super fires. While the main characters do transform, the focus is placed on the giant super rescue vehicles that they have.

I've always thought the shining point of the franchise was that it could create engaging characters who weren't just plot conveniences. To take a recent series, Juuken Sentai Gekiranger, I felt that a lot of the characters more or less stopped living after the series ended. Now moving back to the Tomica Hero series, it feels as if the characters exist in spite of the problems they faced, rather than because of them. As in, so many other tokusatsu series have a hard time finding a balance between the tokusatsu element and the human element.

These characters in the Tomica Hero franchise do often end up in their jobs at the UFDA and their respective rescue teams because of events that that took place in their life. And while these jobs may encompass a grand part of their lives, there is more to the characters then just being part of the UFDA. Other tokusatsu series have tried to do this and usually fail. A lot of the unique character quirks are a little too quirky, making it obvious that these characters aren't real. While I've always been a proponent of fiction being fiction where nothing is left to chance, I feel that the characters themselves, no matter how odd they may be, need to have the core characteristics of being real people.

Examining the first series, Rescue Force, it's clear to see a lot of these real traits in our main cast of characters. A rather interesting arc is set up towards the end of the series, three of the team members end up having focus episodes where they are exposed to other aspects of life outside of the UFDA that they want to take part in. Now, granted, some of these other aspects do tie into rescues, and at least in the case of Juri, it ties directly into UFDA. But, they're going to keep growing as people because of these experiences.

The point I see with a lot of these characters is that while the series ends, they continue to live on as people because of what we were shown. Juri will eventually replace Nancy, Kyosuke will learn how to be a firefighter in a real-world setting without super tools, and Rei will be able to learn how to be a mother and a wife. I think this also sort of does a lot to give us a reverse image of what happened with the previous generation team before them. That team seemed to be trapped in a sense of guilt because of what happened with the previous R-1, Ishiguro certainly seemed to be, and it wasn't until his arc came to an end that I thought they really found themselves freed of that burden...well except for the previous R-2. He was just a troubled guy to begin with, but Kyosuke was the type of person that he needed to meet as well to heal him.

When all was said and done with those characters, they were still growing and still learning how to be proper adults in the real world. They weren't confined to the UFDA, at least not in the strictest sense. Some other series might have characters confined to what they do with the organizations that they work with. They have now been presented with more options in life and are taking them. That makes them some of the most realistic tokusatsu characters I have ever seen.

...though we're still not done with Rescue Force! Hikaru was an interesting character in that his life pretty much does revolve around being a member of the UFDA and Rescue Force, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that stunts any character development. In fact, there was a rather great episode towards the end of the series when Hikaru realizes that being able to rescue people isn't just a job to him, it's his life, and something he will devote every bit of power he has to. The realization that dawns on him seemed to be that, for others to have a normal life, there needs to be those willing to sacrifice the traditional idea of normal so that others may live it. I am pretty sure that this is something Hikaru came to realize around the same time as Ishiguro, in something that I think makes them equals and, ironically enough, allows Ishiguro to finally be on a level playing field with what the spirit of the current and previous R-1 represented to him.

Tomica Hero was certainly a franchise that took a lighter look at a lot of things, but it had a much more stable story structure for most of its run. And when the connecting story wasn't the strongest, the character arcs were incredible. It's the sort of thing that isn't the most obvious, and won't automatically hit you in the face the way other shows have presented it. But it's something that gives the viewer a richer experience in the end. We follow heroes who aren't caricatures, but people still learning to live, as we all are every day of our lives.

Kamen Rider Decade: Connecting Things in a New Way

2010-01-23T14:06:00.000-05:00

Kamen Rider Decade wasn't exactly everyone's cup of tea, I know it left various members of this fandom very sour and it certainly had a lot of moments in there that just made me think “WTF was that about?!” and just as it ended, I was actually pretty upset at the way things played out and was ready to cast it off as the worst Kamen Rider show out there, but now that some time has passed and I've been able to view the show a little more clearly, it's not as bad as I once thought it to be.

The first episode is one that shows the viewer that this is going to be an interesting series, maybe not good, but it'll be a spectacle for the ages. Many seemingly important points are set up and mysteries are tossed our way, but they never really get expanded upon. Now, I can easily blame this on the fact that head writer, Shou Aikawa, bailed on the series around the time of the Agito world episodes, and I do believe that a lot of the blame is there, but I just can't help feel that the replacement writers did not do much to try to expand on what he set up.

It's obvious that any time a head writer has to leave the series, things are going to be different than originally planned, unless of course the writer leaves behind an incredible amount of detailed notes, but I don't think that was the case here. What Decade's new writers gave us were self contained stories without really thinking about the overreaching story that was set up in the first episode and hinted at through a few more of Aikawa's episodes. This is what I've always thought to be the biggest fault within Decade's structure, they were short stories, essentially, there was nothing to connect the series' episodes together...ironic when you think about the series' catchphrase being “destroy everything, connect everything”.

Throughout its 31 episode run and two movies, Decade had five different writers, Shou Aikawa was the head writer through the Agito world episodes while it seems Shouji Yonemura took that spot shortly after. It seems as if there was a serious lack of understanding that the show needed somewhere to go other than two episode arcs involving the various worlds. We had the characters traveling through the different worlds with no real goal in mind, while I think this is an interesting concept, it's not one that works for Decade. Tsukasa was on a journey to save the Hesei Rider worlds and find his own home world, so there should be a finite number of destinations for the crew, whereas the show more or less told us that there are an endless amount of worlds out there for them to visit.

The world hopping aside, there was another problem that really hurt Decade. We never found out who Narutaki was, why he and Daiki knew each other, why he feared Daiki, what Tsukasa's connections to the previous Kamen Riders was and just how it all connected to his needing to destroy the other “false” Kamen Riders. Now, while people may speculate about this, there is nothing within the show that even remotely hints at what the reality of it all is. Some might point out All Riders VS Dai-Shocker, but even its place within the continuity is dubious at best. From the very little I could gather about this, Tsukasa most likely destroyed a world in the past, Daiki and Narutaki were there, Daiki showed off his strength and Tsukasa lost his memories...but even this is just me guessing at what little there is to understand that part of the story.

Outside of going to the various worlds, Decade was an aimless series that forgot there was an aim introduced. And when it came time to remember it in the final episodes, not much actually made sense because what we were shown was very cryptic and more than likely tossed in to give the series some deeper appeal to the older fan-base. But, this was poorly done. The plot involving Tsukasa's connections to the past Kamen Riders was a very interesting one, at least superficially, because that is all we ever saw of it. We were never told how he knew the others, where their new godmod powers came from and just what made Tsukasa so special. And from the looks of it, the second Decade movie doesn't do the best job at explaining this one either.
Now, you may think I really don't like Decade, and like I said, that was true at first. But I've come to see it as a rather good series in a certain light. It does self-contained arcs wonderfully and lets the characters expand their traits within those episodes. They obviously don't do this is in relation to the greater series plot, but it's clear that they're growing as characters within these other worlds they're traveling to, at least most of the time. Outside of a few episodes, Daiki is always the same annoyance to the main characters that he has been since his first episode.

Tsukasa was an interesting character in that, for what I think is the first time in the franchise's history, we had a main character who was vain and selfish and unapologetic about it. Granted, his actions often ended up playing out for the better of others, but he portrayed the dark side that every single person and wore it proudly on his sleeves. Everyone has a trait they aren't particularly proud of and one they wish they could be without. But, Tsukasa was someone who had come to accept that these traits were a natural part of being human and embraced them. He felt no reservations about his actions and dived into things without any doubt about the actions he was taking. In this sense, I think Tsukasa's human traits are what made him the most interesting main character in a long time and what made him so special within his own universe.

The social boundaries that we are all aware of meant nothing to him. He wasn't doing things to save others, at least that wasn't his main intention at first. Tsukasa was just going through these tasks that were handed to him and if he saw errors in the way people went about things, he was free to tell them that. And through that openness, he managed to save their worlds. Perhaps this was the reason he was chosen to be Decade? He could use the powers in a way no one else could because he was free to act as unrestricted by society's standards as possible. Of course, this leads to the potential that he could hurt others, but that could have been a gamble that was taken with the hopes that his true human side would pull through.

While Tsukasa was selfish, he was essentially a good person. If he made a mistake, he was earnest in correcting it and helping the people that he harmed by doing this. This is something we learn through the various travels the crew take throughout the worlds that I think makes Decade a better series than I originally thought it to be. The stories are written well and we are given interesting characters to follow for the two episodes we're in these worlds. And, we see how they can sometimes reflect the relationships of the core cast and things that could come to pass should they not take the right actions. I think that Tsukasa, in seeing these actions play out with these characters, learns what not to do and essentially is rewriting the worlds in his image. He's connecting the human element that's missing or corrupt in that world, but that's about it. There is still the lack of an overall story that connects them at a greater level than the human one.

Kamen Rider Decade is certainly not the best series ever, but I don't think it's the worst either. Superficial things like the return of Riders and soundtracks that people wanted don't really bother me. I see them as a way to see how other writers would work with these worlds. What matters to me is that we have a strong an interesting cast of characters with a unique mission. And while it's clear we weren't given the strongest insight into what the reason behind that mission was, everything else was there in full force and better than most Kamen Rider series. The human element was clearly the strongest point of the series and because of the fact that we saw all these other characters, our core cast of characters was exposed to changes and situations that most Kamen Rider characters usually don't see.

Decade truly let its characters run through the spectrum of human emotion in one of the most interesting ways yet. So what it lacks in an overall story that reached to connect the grander elements of the series together, we were given compelling characters who were a lot more human than many characters we've seen in the past. The fantastical element of the genre was put to the side at times, both the element that involves giant explosions and suits as well as over-dramatic angst, to give us a look at the inner workings of real people in a manner that fits their situations and their limits. I really think this actually makes Decade one of the strongest Kamen Rider series out there, as odd as it feels to say now. Its revolving door of writers worked well off each other and kept characters in character most of the time. I would easily rank this as the best series had an overall theme and story been more present. Even the cliffhanger ending at the final seconds of the series is one I would absolutely love had we been given reasons for everything within the series, or at least clues that, while still cryptic, actually made sense.

Tokusatsu Fandom: More open-minded?

2010-01-18T23:43:00.001-05:00

Compared to fandom such as the Anime or Comic book fandom, the Tokusatsu fandom is fairly young in years. Sure there have been Tokusatsu fans since the early days of Ultraman. But, as for fans our age (teens to 30s) who keep up with the shows of today as well as news pertaining to the shows of tomorrow, we have only been around for 10-15 years. In that time, many people have come and gone, and we have seen things change. With the wide-spread expansion and access to the internet over the years, it has become increasingly easier to obtain copies of the shows that we love to watch. More groups have popped out of the woodwork to help provide English subtitles as well as subtitles in other languages. With that, more fans are being introduced to the genre that seemed such a small niche interest just 10 years ago. This rapid change has led some fans concerned as to where this fandom, as a whole, is heading.

Let me get this out of the way first, I am not one of the so-called “veterans” of the fandom. I’ve only been a part of it for about 3 years now. So, what I say may or may not agree with other’s opinions. Actually, I don’t expect it to. But, I hope to spark a bit of conversation regarding the questions being asked recently about the fandom.

From my understanding, due to the scarcity of episodes of many Tokusatsu series, such as Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and Godzilla, fans tended to consume whatever was given to them or whatever they could find. I know how that felt because I remember when Anime shows were just as difficult to obtain. Some say that due to the shortage, fans were more open-minded about what they were willing to say. Others say that it was more out of desperation since there was nothing else out there. Either way, fans found a way to enjoy what they wanted to see.

Fast forward a few years and we see a quick shift in this regard. With internet speeds becoming faster and faster by the year, it became easier to both upload and download videos from certain sites. The case became that an episode of a currently running series would appear online in RAW format days, rather than months, after its original airtime. This allowed people to sub shows much faster and we, as fans, were introduced to a lot more series at a much faster pace. Nowadays, we get RAWS a mere few hours after it airs in Japan, with subs following just a day or two later. I think everyone can agree that this definitely changed the fandom. The question is, whether it changed for the better or for the worse.

The question posed nowadays is whether fans are still as “open-minded” about different Tokusatsu shows as they used to be a few years back. Right now, Kamen Rider and Sentai seem to be the most popular shows and are the most talked about on many messages boards. Ultraman is currently tailing behind a bit as far as pure thread count and posts. But, does that necessarily mean that people are losing interest in Ultraman? Is Ultraman, as well as other series of similar or lesser popularity, in danger of being weeded out of the fandom community by the two “titans”?

In my opinion, this could never happen. Just because Kamen Rider and Sentai are popular at the moment, does not necessarily mean that there are not people out there watching the shows and movies. I know for a fact that whenever news of a new movie or special appears, a lot of fans come together and speculate as to what will appear in the said piece. I think its just due to the amount of content being pumped out from Japan at the moment. As Igadevil put it in a post at HJU “…these things work in waves”. Right now, Sentai and Kamen Rider seem to be putting out more content on a yearly basis than any other series. This will naturally cause more conversation. But, this does not necessarily mean that the fandom is skewing towards one franchise over another. I see a lot of people watching others series for the first time and it shows that the fans are still curious of things out of the big hitters.

We shouldn’t be too concerned as to how popular a certain show is inside the fandom. Some people stick to one or two shows, some people like to explore a bit more. Whatever the preference, as long as they are taking an interest into the genre as a whole, it should be fine. Some may say that we are heading in the direction of the Anime fandom. While that probably might be a bit of a scary depending on your stance on it, I think we should give our fandom a bit more credit and let it go as it will. In the end, it’s all about what you are enjoying in the genre. If you’re enjoying what you want and other people are doing the same, that’s all that should really counts in the fandom.

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: A refreshing gust of wind or just another breeze?

2009-09-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is the 33rd installment in the long-running Super Sentai series. It came off of the very lackluster (at least in my opinion) Engine Sentai Go-onger that aired the year before. Does Shinkenger live up to the very, VERY high expectations of the viewers or does it sorta simmer into bland nothingness?

First off, let me paint you readers a picture, a picture of the mindset that I and a lot of people I know had coming into this new series. Go-onger was in its last leg of run-time and I was glad to see it go. It was such a disappointing successor to Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger which blew me away in more ways than one. But, in retrospective, it seemed that Super Sentai did that a lot; one season was dead on, the next was off the mark, then the season after that was dead on once again. So, mathematically speaking, after the off miss of Go-onger, Shinkenger had to be a bullzeye, right? Well, for the most part, it was.

The first thing you see in the opening episodes are these monsters known as Gedoushu attacking a small kid who was practicing baseball. Then, out of nowhere, a little oragami lion attacks these creatures. Suddenly, a figure appears holding the origami lion, now folded up, and a peculiur phone. With a flick of a wrist, the phone tranforms into a calligraphy brush while men dressed in black throw smoke bombs between the Gedoushu and the warrior to create a screen of smoke. Out of the smoke appears a red warrior, with kanji on his helmet and an awesome sword. With one phrase ("Moving forward"), the battle between the monsters and this red warrior commences. And what a battle it is.

I could not believe how awesome this first battle was. With his sword as his primary weapon, ShinkenRed proceeded to cut down his foes with ease one after the other. And he did it with style and strength. It was also the first I had seen in a while, if ever, an opening song playing without the Opening sequence. You heard the song in the background while you were presented with this impressively choreographed battle. Right then, I knew that this would be an interesting and well awaited ride.

The story follows 5 pre-destined samurai warriors:

ShinkenRed aka Shiba Takeru

ShinkenBlue aka Ikenami Ryunosuke

ShinkenPink aka Shiraishi Mako

ShinkenGreen aka Tani Chiaki

ShinkenYellow aka Hanaori Kotoha

Takeru is the head of the Shiba Clan and is destined to be the leader, or lord, over the other samurai warriors. This concept right away seemed odd yet interesting to me. But, it gave the ranking more depth and weight that was different than the usual military ranking that usually is presented in Sentai. And, part of the story consisted of these warriors coming to terms with this order and learning to adapt to their duty.

Their duty was to fight against Doukoku and the Gedoushu who were trapped in the Sanzu River by a previous generation of Shinkenger. Their goal is to fill the Sanzu River using the tears and anguish of suffering humans and flood both the living and non-living worlds so that they become one world for Doukoku to rule. They try to accomplish this by slipping through cracks between their world and the living world and causing destruction. That is where the Shinkenger step in and take care of business.

Okay, right off of the bat, this show is about 400 to 500 times better than Go-onger based off of just the first few episodes, let alone the first one. The concept is unique to the series, the suits and weapon designs are top notch, and the choreography is superb. Not to mention that the characters are not total bumbling idiots with stupid catch-phrases and no interest characteristics. This show had every ingredient necessary to bring Sentai back to where it should be. And, it accomplished that....for a few episodes.

What I mean by that is, we got the usual character-centric episodes in the beginning that helped us get to know each warrior in depth. And those episodes worked great. Then we were introduced to another evil-doer known as Juzou, a human who apparently sold his soul to the Gedoushu and now is looking for a worthy opponent. I automatically thought back to Rouki/GaoSilver from Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger and was very excited. This built up for a few episodes to an epic first battle between Juzou, Takeru, and an Ayakashi (Monster-of-the-Week). This fight blew my mind, but sadly, was not continued upon in later episodes. Things sort of died down from there which is where I am getting at.

We are 29-30 episodes in and nothing too interesting has happened after that epic battle with Juzou. We got the debut of ShinkenGold aka Umemori Genta, which is an interesting character and warrior, along with many additional Origami mechs and add-ons. We even got our power-up mode which was an interesting touch. But, other than another battle with Juzou, the story hasn't progressed too much. Don't get me wrong, I'm still loving the show and cannot wait to see it every week. I'm just afraid that we got a big flash in the pan but nothing else after that. It's most likely the result of added hype over the show due to my famish over Go-onger since I stopped watching after the debut of the Go-on Wings. It also may have been due the to the added excitement with what was happening on the other side of the tracks with Kamen Rider Decade and all of the fan-service it was giving us. We got the first ever Super Sentai/Kamen Rider crossover, for crying out loud. That made this year all the more awesome as far as Tokusatsu was concerned.

I guess in the bigger picture, it added to the greatness that came out of the Tokusatsu scene this year for us. But, as a stand-alone show, Shinkenger is good, no doubt about it. But, it has sort of leveled off of its very high dismount of the first few episodes and seems to be cruising along for now. My hopes are that something formulates soon that allows Doukoku to come out of his drunken state on the ship to battle the Shinkenger and result in an epic last 10-15 episodes for the season. That would do well to keep this series alive and kicking with style.

Kamen Rider Double: Birth of Something New

2009-09-21T15:31:00.001-04:00

Kamen Rider Double

Episode 1 – Double’s Search/Two Detectives in One

Typical, yet different. That pretty much sums up the first episode of Kamen Rider Double for me. After something like Decade, whether you liked it or not, pitting all those Riders against a single Rider in a battle on such an epic scale is something that’s never really been done before. So, to a lot of people, pretty much anything short of Hiroshi Fujoka being the fused voice of Kamen Rider Double (actually, that’s a pretty cool idea) would have been a letdown.

Decade was a rather huge letdown for me. So, I was pretty open to Double being good, not only because the last few episodes of Decade were just sort of staggering to the finish line, but because of the production crew. For such a long time, Rider has pretty much been going to the same talent well with Inoue (and you can even say Kobayashi thanks to Den-O ) for their writers, and it seems like producers haven’t changed too much, either. Kiva gave us a new action director but in the long run, there wasn’t too much new for us there since it was pretty much all standard fare after the first few episodes. But with Double, much like its title, we were given two new people to follow on the production side of things: Riku Sanjo and Hideaki Tsukada.

Double brings in Riku Sanjo, a brand-spankin’ new writer to tokusatsu with not much to his credit. He’s done a few anime films, the recent remake of Gaiking, Beet the Vandal Buster, and that insanely long Dragon Quest manga that he’s probably best known for. Now, all of that probably means something to someone, but I’ve pretty much just seen the first episode of that Gaiking remake and read a couple of Beet chapters. Standard shounen fare; I would say that sums up what I’ve read of his stuff. And again, it isn’t much at all, but most of his stuff has run in kids’ magazines (and I know Rider is a kid show, but it loves to pretend it isn't). So to some, this could seem like a big turn off. But to me, it was great for a reason I’ll get to shortly.

Hideaki Tsukada is the new producer being brought on for Kamen Rider Double. In the past, Tsukada has worked on Abaranger, Dekaranger, Magiranger, and Gekiranger. So again, I’m seeing the cycle of somewhat lighter shows. He’s done three of my favorite recent Sentai shows, so I was given a lot of hope for Double simply based on that alone. Soon it hit me, we’re getting a new writer, and a new producer. And yes, I know it’s happened with Blade when Imai was brought on to write and Jun Hikasa was given the job of producer, but I’ve always thought nothing changed there mostly because of Imai. The sort of work Imai has done in the past has all been drama-heavy. He’s never done tokusatsu before Blade and I don’t believe he’s done it since. But, that’s the reason I think Blade really didn’t do much to shake up the world of tokusatsu in the long run.

So, back to my earlier point about being excited thanks to Tsukada and Sanjo, and the big reason is…well heck, let’s go for a theme here. There are two reasons: first, their past works make me think they’ll make Kamen Rider fun, and not that it wasn't already, but a different kind of fun. If you’ve ever read a shounen comic, you’ll realize that there’s a certain simplicity to the story that makes it easy to follow and fun to read. The second reason is the plot. I’ve read a good many shounen comics in my day and I’ve always thought they had such amazing, really ambitious plots that could be carried out in a great manner thanks in large part to the simplicity of the story. So in the end, these two aspects gave you a really engaging product, and that’s what I think Double is going to be.

Now the reason I say part of Double’s first was typical is because…there wasn’t too much new on the human side of things outside of Phillip and Shotaro (though, I guess you can argue that’s where it counts most). You have the sidekick girl who…well response to Akiko has been rather mixed and I’m more inclined to think she’s a cute girl who could tone down her obnoxiousness just a smidge. She has a connection to Shotaro through her father, and for some reason has been away from him long enough to not even know the guy’s been dead for a year, so I’m sure this will somehow play out later on in the series. The rest of the characters didn’t seem too interesting, either, there’s an antagonistic cop who doesn’t want Shotaro anywhere near the police cases, and there’s a sort of mentor type character who tosses Shotaro info on cases. The actors for those two don’t really do anything for me, though I do have hope they’ll eventually improve, but at the moment they just seem like angst fodder for later on down the line.

The aspects on the human side of things that did improve where Shotaro and Phillip, and I love both of their characters so far (‘course I’ve only seen two episodes as of this writing). Shotaro would seem like your typical cool-guy character, only he’s got everything trying to prove him wrong here. He’s undermined by a girl much younger than him, nearly kicked out of his own agency, and even fate itself kind of looks down on him when he tries to swing down to the ground after saving Akiko from the Magma Dopant, only to be hauled straight up by his Secret Agent Rider Watch. Renn Kiriyama plays Shotaro with a really charismatic flare, the character doesn’t feel as full of himself as say…Tendou, or Tsukasa, but like a guy trying to be someone he isn’t, hiding behind the mask of being a suave character. There are a ton of great nuances in how he plays the character that I love, from his baffled expressions to the slight high-pitch raise of tone in his voice when he walks in on Phillip studying up on Takoyaki. Despite being called Kamen Rider Double, I do feel that we’re meant to see the series through the eyes of Shotaro, and that’s a really great character we’re being given to be our eyes.

Part two of Double is Phillip, who I think hearkens back to early-Kiva Wataru in how he acts. Now, I’m really hoping that his character won’t change too much because, despite how much I liked Kiva, I loved it in the early episodes when we had a super socially awkward Wataru with odd mannerisms that made for a playful character to watch. As that series progressed, he sort of just became like Ryoutarou with improvements in certain areas. Phillip, right off the bat, you can tell is a unique character. As (I’ll assume) someone who isn’t Shotaro walks into that secret room in their agency for the first time, Phillip simply brushes Akiko off and continues his reading. The character seems to be in his own world, not really aware of the social limits of others, seeing nothing wrong in calling Akiko uninteresting, he isn’t looking down on her, he just doesn’t understand what a limit is. He’s a bit like a child in the big picture, from how he brushes Akiko off to how easily he was distracted from researching the Magma Dopant to researching Takoyaki.

Phillip is a character with an immense gift his ability to pretty much search the memories of the entire human population as if it were some giant library, but I don’t quite think he understands how vital something like that can be. Watching the prologue (Episode Zero from now on) sort of makes me think that everything that happened there made Phillip just a tad bit numb to the seriousness of the situation. Despite having a freaking helicopter on their ass, he nonchalantly asks Shotaro is he’s got the courage to ride with the devil. Now, maybe there’s an underlying theme here I’m not getting, but everything about this scene just tells me that Phillip is looking to have some fun in fighting because whatever it was that happened to him, I really think it’s left he a different person.

Watching how these two interact is certainly going to be very fun over the next…however long this show is meant to run. Haven’t really been following the rumors and whatnot, so I’ve really got no clue. Despite how their personalities would seemingly clash, Shotaro and Phillip are partners and do seem to get along great. Maybe going through the events of Episode Zero made them (or Shotaro since he seems to be the normal one) closer, perhaps it allowed them to realize that they can rely on each other when they need to, and that’s very much what we see throughout the episode. Shotaro is the foot-man, doing all the physical hunting, questioning of people, talking to the cops, and fighting the Dopant, while Phillip is piecing together the clues that he gets from Shotaro. The relationship between the two almost reminds me of that of the Imagin and Ryoutarou…without the silly antics and basically the real definition of “partner” here.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, on to the part of the show that really did impress me, the tokusatsu element. And by that, I don’t mean the overuse of CGI, but the general story that is soaked in sci-fi. In past Kamen Rider series, it felt like sci-fi was just the hard candy shell that encapsulated the center of the Kamen Rider Totsipop which was essentially angst.

With Double, I get the feeling that the sci-fi is the show; everything that these characters are going through is directly related to the Dopant and their actions. It’s a little odd to me since this is one reason I’ve criticized certain recent Sentai, the lives of the characters are the monsters, giant robots, and suits of color, there was no real character to them, but I think Double has (so far) found the correct balance that should give us a great show. The sci-fi element of the show causes these people to go through things and could even change how they act, thus leading them to maybe clash with other characters out there and making life more complicated. It’s not as if the Dopant cases are 100% their lives (well, maybe in Phillip’s case), they seem to do things outside of that. Shotaro has a job as a detective, Akiko is looking to snatch up her inheritance and is drawn into a mysterious world.

Moving on to the villains, the Dopant are certainly an interesting new type of villain, a kind that really plays up the similarities of a Kamen Rider to the monsters without outright calling them Kamen Riders. People transforming, much like Double, into their own creatures for whatever their reasons are. These are people who have really lost most of their humanity or in some cases, seem to just be on the brink and are frantic as to what they should do, as is the impression I got from Yosuke/Magma Dopant. There also seems to be a rather nice central family in the baddies as well, haven’t seen that in such a long time, and by that I don’t mean groups like Lucky Clover and Checkmate Four, who were often just as much against each other as they were the humans and Riders, these people seem to generally be together in their opposition of the humans and Riders.

The themes of corruption and hiding behind masks are all there as well for the common Dopant. They’re “dopping” their bodies with the powers from these false Gaia Memories and just hiding their weaknesses behind the masks of these new bodies they were given. They’re pretty much the bully, or kid who was always picked on, suddenly tossed a monster to pick off anyone they don’t like or might have had a negative effect on their lives. I can already see that there are a lot of people who will have this come back to bite them in the ass and it’s really interesting to see that, for the first time in a while, we have some humans who are genuinely looking to harm others through these powers that are given to them. They basically are the “bastard” Kamen Riders, but done right, in other words, not called a Kamen Rider.

Double is a new show, and I’m sure many things will change, but I’m hoping for the best. The production team and everything I’ve seen so far really leads me to believe this will be a season that quietly changes the status quo of what a great Kamen Rider should be. No longer separating the human and sci-fi aspect of a series, but merging them together to create a truly engrossing story that you’ll want to revisit a lot, and just be eager to see the new part of. It’s an ambitious series, but it’s being ambitious in all the right places, so not everyone may notice the subtle changes that I think have the possibility to make it a great series.