Re: Wizard 53

[akinoame]

Weird as that special was, I think it captured the spirit of the Heisei Series Riders better than most of the anniversaries to date. All it took was one line:

"Someone once said: We don't fight for justice. We fight for human freedom."

More on it when I do my Decade reviews.

Comments

[gourdcaptain]

Yeah, the special was a bit of a drug trip (especially anything relating to Amadam, he of the constant Rider movie villain cosplay), but it was an enjoyable one with some nice bits to it.

I still want to know how Shinji Kido shows up in these things, though. He's the one main Rider from the Heisei era who's plot is least workable with crossovers. (Heck, I'm curious how your fic with JK running into the Ryuki Rider decks might address this, with the comments in it about how the Rider Club's never really interacted with the Ryuki riders). Personally, it does get me thinking of my personal little disturbing thought when it comes to Shirou Kanzaki's time looping - when he vanishes at the end of Episode FINAL, the timeline keeps going. Maybe whenever Shirou Kanzaki resets time, he's actually splitting off a new parallel universe and all the previous doomed ones (due to the ridiculously huge Mirror World invasion) keep going? Ouch.

[akinoame]

I like crack, and that was certainly trippy. Plus, I had fun trying to guess all the Rider movie villains.

It's entirely possible, and the problem is that time travel isn't actually well explained in Ryuki, compared to setting rules in Den-O (though not necessarily following them in later movies). Every time I try to explain it, I always come up with a new theory that makes just as much sense as anything else--"Leave Out All the Rest" was just lingering memories as in the Time Vent episode, "No Perfect Endings" was little Shiro's art getting ahead of him, "The Elephant in the Room" conveniently avoids bringing up that little pachyderm, and "13 Times" has its own explanation. I've got two chapters coming up in the future that will actually explain things. Suffice to say, the next time JK sees Momotaros and Ankh, he's going to yell at them a lot. But overall, given that Shinji seems to be the only Rider from his era who keeps returning, and given his lingering memories where Time Vent is concerned, it's entirely possible that he gets flashes of memory and takes up the deck and lets Den-O or Decade or whoever drag him along while he's still useful. Especially given how Ren and the others never seem to show up again after Let's Go Kamen Riders.

[gourdcaptain]

Fair enough, but shame on you for reminding me of Let's Go Kamen Riders. :) I really, really can't stand that movie. Never finished it - primarily because the Imagin when I was first watching OOO came off as insufferably annoying. Since then, I've watched some of Den-O and found them a lot more tolerable there (like a lot of characters, they're probably just better written in their own series), but I never watched it past episode 8 or so - Den-O just really isn't my thing. (It's not BAD, but it's not something that really engages me all that much.)

[akinoame]

LGKR is better for its worldbuilding than for anything else, really. And then it doesn't really do much with its worldbuilding afterwards. I'd kind of love an AU movieverse taking place where the Riders have to rebuild the world after Shocker took over. And where a shitload of people just suddenly EXIST out of nowhere.

[gourdcaptain]

Sounds like it could make an interesting fic.

Honestly, the words "Kamen Rider OOO" and "Movie" anymore leave me wary and on edge. OOO is my favorite Rider series... and with the partial exception of OOO Wonderful, it goes pretty badly every time it's gotten focus in a movie. Eiji Hino is not that hard of a character to get, so why is it nobody other than Kobayashi can write him worth a damn?

To be fair, Kobayashi wrote the OOO portion of MEGAMAX, which isn't THAT bad. (It still kind is of stupid and it needlessly destroys the Birth Prototype driver for no reason. Which as a huge fan of both Gotou and Date and their brief team up at the end of the season as the two Births, annoys me.) It just doesn't really add anything wortwhile (except old man Kougami being kind of amusingly awesome when you think about it), and is followed by the Fourze section of MEGAMAX. Which makes me want to hurt people.

[akinoame]

Eiji is actually not that easy, when you get down to it. His personality is kind of a traumatized deconstruction of Yusuke Godai, who is an extremely difficult character. And Kobayashi is really the master of writing desire as a motivation. I'll try to go more into detail on my thoughts on OOO when I get to the Movie Wars series. And Go-Busters, to be honest.

[gourdcaptain]

Okay, point. Correction: It should be at least easy to get him more correctly than Movie Wars Core did. Which isn't saying much. Also, yeah, I'd spotted the parallels between Eiji and Yusuke Godai when I later watched Kuuga... although Kuuga itself as a show was somewhat boring for me.

[akinoame]

Kuuga had an amazing ensemble, but it made the unforgivable sin of having a better supporting cast than main character. Too much focus went into making Yusuke a role model rather than a person, and in the end, I feel like Ichijou and Enokida succeeded more on both fronts--both were really role models for adults, how to balance work and a personal life--what you have to do and what you want to be like.