Comedy gold

[akinoame]

Okay. I've never laughed this hard at a Rider series that isn't Den-O or Fourze but holy shit. The events of episodes 13 and 14 of Kabuto build up to the real villain being played by Kenzaburo Kikuchi, Kanzaki from Ryuki. And, well, let me post the commentary:

Akino Ame 9:33 pm
...Is that Kanzaki?
Did Kanzaki just shoot Kagami? Because that is TOTALLY IC for him
That is totally Kanzaki!
Holy shit!
I did not see that coming. Damn

Kaitou 9:34 pm
pffffh oh god

Akino Ame 9:35 pm
I can't stop laughing

Squall highwind KA 9:35 pm
keep your eye out for another Ryuki guy

Akino Ame 9:35 pm
I already picked out Goro

Squall highwind KA 9:36 pm
ah

Akino Ame 9:36 pm
I think, at least
Kind of hard to see with all the lens flare
But he definitely SOUNDED like him

Squall highwind KA 9:36 pm
it is

Akino Ame 9:36 pm
Awesome

Squall highwind KA 9:37 pm
hes gonna be in Gaim too apparently

Akino Ame 9:37 pm
But really. The bullshit with Kanzaki was hysterical
Nice
Because REALLY. Who ELSE would have an elite team of warriors and pick them off one by one?

Akino Ame 9:38 pm
Including having NO QUALMS killing--or attempting to, anyway--the nice guy who really shouldn't have gotten involved in this but got stuck in it anyway
Okay. Particularly gruesome death for Kanzaki. The writer clearly was wanting to do that for YEARS

Kaitou 9:40 pm
hehehehehehe

Akino Ame 9:40 pm
Seriously. Killed EXACTLY the way Shinji was
I have never laughed this hard at a Rider series that is not Den-O
Skip the rest, but holy shit, Episodes 13-14 build up to this bit

Kaitou 9:42 pm
hehehehehe oh god that is awesome

Akino Ame 9:42 pm
It all builds up to Kanzaki getting run through just the way Shinji was
Beautiful


Bravo, Kabuto. You're a pain in the ass to get through, but you at least pull off gems like this. That was clearly set up as a Ryuki reference.

Comments

[gourdcaptain]

While I noticed the guy was played by Shirou Kanzaki's actor, I never noticed the reference to how Shinji died in Ryuki. That's just amazing.

Also, having just watched them, I eagerly await your reaction to the sheer ridiculousness of the movie (God Speed Love (which you should watch, it's part of the plot... sort of), and the awesomely ridiculous Dark Kitchen arc (episodes 29 and 30.)

[akinoame]

I'm a really big dork, you see. That's why I caught it.

Looks like I'm going to have to raid the liquor cabinet.

[gourdcaptain]

Yeah, having watched a few more episodes last night after posting the first time: Kabuto starts out painful, gets pretty good in the late teens and twenties... and then starts going into full deep hurting mode in episode 31. To be fair, they had to deal with actors at that point dropping out of the series due to health issues... or in one case due to wanting to pursue their singing career. (Yeah, someone loses their Zecter OFFSCREEN around that point. Without actually appearing in the episode.) From then on, it's been so far a mix of painfully terrible and nonsensical (the overall plot), amazingly terrible (...dear god, the Hopper Brothers. For the love of god, what), and still kinda good (some of the character interaction, Tsurugi's stuff.) And then there's Hyper Kabuto, the single most broken and tension draining Rider form ever. (Yes. Even compared to Decade Complete, it is more brokenly powerful.)

It's not helped by the translation being one of TV-Nihon's earlier works and it having some downright goofy, inaccurate, or in one point flat out contradictory to what is going on translations of some lines. I'm not one of the people who says everything TV-N's done is unwatchable, but their earlier works like Kabuto and Blade really are getting close. Their newer stuff is okay, although I tend to prefer Over-Time.

What I've been doing to try to figure some of the weirder lines out is there was a Philippines-only English dub of Kabuto broadcast on Cartoon Network over there which, while a very 90's-ish dub, is a bit more natural and flowing than the TV-N sub, so I use it to check what might actually be going on when the TV-N sub gets obviously weird. (I'd watch the dub for all of the series, but the only copies of it I can find are poor quality videos captured in 480i badly. Also, while I drastically prefer Tendo's dub voice to his actual actor (he emotes a lot more like an actual human being), and a lot of the other actors are pretty good, dub!Juka and a few others are pretty bad.

[gourdcaptain]

And, for the record, a sampling of bits from the Kabuto dub (which is what actually helped me find out that it existed in the first place.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sul_G0WNJk

Yeah, it's a bit cheesy... but so is Kabuto to begin with.

[akinoame]

Oh my god. Kagami is the lovechild of Bolin from The Legend of Korra and Ziggy from Power Rangers RPM.

[gourdcaptain]

I'd make a joke about that unlike Bolin, Kagami has dignity and some competence... but no, Tendo's made it his duty in the early episodes of Kabuto to make sure Kagami has no dignity.

Seriously, one thing I thought during the early episodes of Kabuto was that Tendo had to be the reincarnation or such of Kusaka from Faiz with how he treats Kagami at times. (The difference ended up being that I dislike Tendo more than I do Kusaka. Kusaka's a worse person, but there's something about Tendo that drives me up the wall MORE.)

[akinoame]

To be fair, Bolin DID tell off Sato for being a terrible father. Oh, wait. Was I supposed to support Kagami there?

Yeah, though Kusaka is still Worst Person Ever, in my opinion.

[gourdcaptain]

*shrug* I really like Kagami, but part of it is him just being very non-stoic and emoting. Also, he's more competent than the actual ZECTroopers, although that's not saying much... Plus, once he starts being a Rider regularly and his character development kicks in, he's pretty awesome.

I also can't say much about Bolin as I quit watching Korra right after they did a shipping-focused episode before actually establishing the characters in any meaningful way for the most part. Ziggy's my favorite character in RPM except for maybe Dr. K.

[akinoame]

He's certainly sympathetic, but there's only so much I can take of the universe shitting on someone. Admittedly, yes, I find it funny with Ryotaro. But the difference is that Ryotaro is LEARNING something through all of it. Slowly, he begins proving he's got more and more of a spine through it.

Yeah. I don't think there's a single person in the world who liked THAT episode. The show does improve, but you've really got to ignore the ship, I think. And with RPM...well, I'll save my opinions for the review.

[gourdcaptain]

Yeah, a better series wouldn't shit on Kagami as much... but Kabuto is not that better series. Kabuto is probably so far (episode 36) my third least favorite Rider series, and that's only because Kuuga bored me a lot more (it was a less interesting kind of failure for me), and my hatred of Black is inexaustible (and it's not a Showa thing, I love Amazon.) And before you ask, no, I have not seen Agito yet.

[akinoame]

Do what you can to rush through Agito. Intriguing plot, infuriatingly bland main character.

[gourdcaptain]

I know. The friend of mine I watch most Toku series with so I can have someone to discuss it with has a burning hatred for Souichi to the point where he has done detailed rants about how terrible a character he is for roughly an hour, and how the show treats him far better than he deserves in comparison to how badly it treats Gils and G3. The only other series he hates to a comparable degree is Kyoruger.

(Personally, the most painful experience I've had with a toku series was Kamen Rider Black. It has the stupidest villain plots, and is a black hole of characterization, with maybe... two characters with any depth. And one of them is the main character's motorcycle. Said intelligent motorcycle, Battle Hopper is awesome... which is why he gets a less awesome motorcycle and uses it instead for half the series.)