Kamen Rider Ryuki Review: The Start Of A Journey

You're probably wondering about that title...well, it actually has nothing to do with the show. It has everything to do with me since this was the toku show that I consider to be my official entry point into the tokusatsu fandom. Sure, I had seen Dragon Knight before-hand and I've been a Power Rangers fan my entire life but I don't really count them for this since I wasn't active in the fandom at the time. I remember exactly what I was doing when I first stumbled across this show. It was 2011-ish and I was sitting in the college cafe bored out of my mind while waiting for my next class to start. I was looking up Power Rangers clips on youtube when I noticed this little show had snuck its way into my recommended feed and I couldn't resist giving it a shot. It probably sounds weird that a Rider show was my entry point into the toku fandom at large when I'm such a big Sentai fan. So please indulge me while I take this little walk down memory lane for its 20th anniversary. Since I'm going all out for this and its an old show: SPOILERS AHEAD! Without further adieu...TATAKAE!!

Shinji Kido is an intern for the ORE Journal. While investigating a series of missing persons incidents, he finds a strange deck. He is attacked by a dragon from inside a window and manages to escape. While trying to save a friend from another monster, he falls into Mirror World. He gets saved by Ren (Kamen Rider Knight) and contracts with the dragon when it shows up to eat him. From there, he gets embroiled in the Rider War while vowing to use his powers to save people from the monsters on top of trying to solve the mystery of this man who only appears in mirrors.

The show features a lot of Riders and its probably got the most (well except for maybe Gaim). Its actually something I find pretty fascinating about the show is that most of the Riders pretty much have their own reasons for fighting in the Rider War. It shows what can go wrong if the wrong person gets ahold of that kind of power. Shinji and Raia are the only ones who aren't out for themselves and even then Raia wants to stop the war out of revenge for the death of his friend. Kanzaki purposefully picked people who would be willing to fight and kill each other just to get their one wish. Because there are so many riders in this show, I'm only gonna go over the major 4 so this will pretty much spoil who the top contenders are in the show.

Shinji Kido...where to begin...the man is my kind of hero. Dude just goes out of his way to help people when he gets the chance. He even outright tries to reason with the other riders and talk them out of fighting each other despite them telling him to fck off. He just can't help but throw himself into a situation that he feels needs to be resolved. On top of that, he can't even bring himself to kill someone in the Rider War. Just the impression of having killed someone was enough to devastate him to point of not wanting to transform again despite the risk of Dragredder eating him. Dude wears every single thought going through his head and every emotion he feels on his sleeve. Its his greatest strength and greatest weakness. You'd better believe that a lot of other riders take advantage of this fact too.

Ren is fighting in the war because his girlfriend is in a coma thanks to Kanzaki's experiments. The man is also...well kind of a dick in early Ryuki. He makes your modern asshole secondary riders look nice by comparison. The man nearly beats Shinji to death in the second episode to take him out of the fight. He is seemingly only stopped from killing him by Yui breaking a window to get his attention and has the nerve to say Shinji owes him the money he spent replacing the window. Despite all his crowing about how Riders can't co-exist, it feels like his heart isn't in it early on so his story is one about finding his resolve.

Kitoaka is a hotshot lawyer who is fighting in the war for one simple reason, he is dying from an incurable disease. He starts out valuing money, luxury, and his own desires because he knows he doesn't have a lot of time left even without the Rider War being a factor. Over the course of the show, he eventually grows and becomes a little more selfless, especially when Asakura gets involved in the Rider War. Something I really dig about how him is how he butts into fights. Its never some flashy or ominous entrance, he just straight up announces his presence by shooting people in the back. Its pretty fitting given his situation, he doesn't have the time to make a show of it.

Asakura is just straight up cold-blooded and he honestly kinda scares me. The idea that someone this unhinged became a rider is terrifying. The man joined the rider war just so he could fight and kill people. He was specifically chosen by Kanzaki for that purpose. He holds a particular dislike for Kitoaka because he played a direct part in putting him in jail. The man makes for a great villain because out of all the riders in the show, he is the one that Shinji absolutely can't even remotely reason with. The man loves dropping bodies too much. The show itself doesn't say what he could wish for but Episode Final (the movie) does. His goal is to wish for the rider war to never end because he is enjoying it that much. I'm so tempted to track down his jacket. Its one of the most iconic looks in Rider imo.

Ryuki has a decent amount of timelines and quite a few endings. You've got the series timeline, two timelines branching from the ending of the 13 riders special, Episode Final's (the movie) timeline, and the Rider Time special continuation that basically ends Ryuki's story. I love this aspect because well...everything in Ryuki seems to be canon in a sense. In the last episode of the tv show, Kanzaki outright says "No matter how many times I do this, it will always end the same". All of the endings are rather bleak except for the tv series ending where the existence of the Rider War itself is undone. Thats probably why the Rider Time special continues from the tv ending instead of simply rebooting it for a new timeline. The Rider Time special is honestly the most fitting ending Ryuki could hope to have. There is no way the Rider War could really end without a lot of death. Its about as "happy" an ending as Ryuki could expect to given the 13 rider special and Episode Final have even bleaker endings. Rider Time's ending is downright chilling once you've seen everything Ryuki related.

Final Thoughts: Ryuki just has this kind of magic to it. Its engrossing from the first episode though I'm not sure how much of it is from the show itself or if its from the fact that except for two episodes, every episode ends on a cliffhanger that blends into the next episode. Either way, its was addictive for me at the time and it still is today this day (I rewatched a chunk of it as a refresher for this review since I've already seen the show twice). I legitimately had to force myself not to binge it. If you haven't seen this show yet, I give it a whole-hearted recommendation.

Supernatural Season One: Wayward Son

It was only a matter of time before I touched this show. This is probably one of those shows that may or may not need an introduction depending on who you ask. I'll be honest, I tapped out of this show around season 6 or 7 and caught a few episodes here and there afterwards. I've been curious how well it plays out given some of the things I've heard so I figured I might as well start from the beginning as a refresher. This isn't going to be too detailed and is going to be more of an overview of how the season went down for me. Note: I don't know how often these posts are gonna come out because in addition to working late, I've been rewatching this show in bursts in-between various korean dramas on netflix. Now, lets take a look at the first season.

The premise synopsis for this is gonna be tricky because the series goes places after the first season that would sort of render that pointless. As you'd probably expect from a show that managed to last 15 seasons, where it starts certainly isn't where it ends up. Anyway, even though I just said all that, here goes: Basically Sam's brother Dean finds him at his college and ropes him in to looking for their father who hasn't come back from a "hunting trip". Sam agrees to help out this one time. The twist? They hunt monsters. They do their thing, kill a ghostie, and Dean drops Sam back off at college only for Sam find his girlfriend pinned to the ceiling before the place catches fire. So Sam goes back to the hunting life to find their dad and whatever the hell did this because its not the first time this has happened to them.

This season is something I like to refer to as "Demonic Scooby-Doo" and I absolutely adore it even though I'm a known wimp when it comes to horror. They use their dad's journal as a way to retrace his footsteps and that leads to said Scooby-Doo-ish shenanigans. I was unable to tear myself away from the screen during pretty much every episode even though I've seen them all before. I think that says a lot about how well this season holds up for me. 

My favorite episode out of the entre season is the episode "Hell House". Its a pretty damn good ghost story with a twist. Essentially the brothers investigate a haunted house covered in odd symbols and when their usual tricks don't work on the ghost they start digging into the symbols. Spoiler (for this 15 year-old episode of a tv show): They find out through researching one of the symbols that the ghost in question isn't a ghost...its a Tulpa. A Tulpa is basically an idea given form when so many people focus on it that it suddenly pops into reality. Due to the Tulpa taking the form of an urban legend that two bored teens in town literally made up two weeks prior, it becomes a game of telephone (as urban legends tend to do) and the creature evolves as the tale changes. So its effectively one of the few things they've hunted that they can't actually kill.

I'm a sucker for monster lore so every episode's breakdown of how the monsters do their thing was always pretty interesting. One particularly funny thing of note to me is how the show handles vampire weaknesses. It outright says the classic lore is bullshit and that only two things can harm a vampire: 1. Injecting them with deadman's blood to weaken them and 2. removing the head. That second one makes me laugh every time I remember because barring ghosts and demons (and a few other outliers), pretty much every single thing the brothers hunt can effectively be killed if they remove its head.

Peppered throughout the first season is drama about Sam working out his issues while looking for their father as he goes about returning to the hunting life. If I'm being honest though, that part is pretty much unnecessary. Let me explain: The show's monster of the week episodes are so good that they overshadow the plot related ones. In that sense, them following the notes in their dad's journal in hopes of finding him really just kind of feels like a way to get them into those situations. I don't really have much else to say about this season other than that it is downright fantastic and its no surprise to me why the show took off.

Isekai World Tour: Sword Art Online: Aincrad Arc

Lets rip this bandage off and talk about SAO. I'm going to handle this differently than my other posts in this series. I'm going to split this show up by arc as opposed to season so each arc will get its own post (also because there is only so much Kirito I can handle in one viewing). This mostly because the first arc of SAO ended up being more enjoyable than I remembered and its really in Alfheim where my issues with it as a whole start cropping up. Welcome to the next stop on the Isekai World Tour!

Premise: The hottest and most anticipated new mmo has dropped. 10,000 lucky players log in to get a feel for the game and everything is going fine...right up until they log out. Suddenly they're transported to a town square as the sky goes red. The Game Master appears and tells them that they're stuck here until they beat the game and if they die in the game, the nerve gear will fry their brains. He congratulates on playing his little game and wishes them luck.

I surprisingly enjoyed this arc more than I did the last time around. Its not bad but its not amazing either (well, outside of two episodes) and I have a few minor issues that don't break the arc for me. Kirito is still op as hell tho. The first half of the arc was really good but honestly, it gets kinda boring when Kirito and Asuna get together. Its one of those things where the constant time skips makes me not believe their relationship because its not shown on-screen until they get together. I legitimately said "WTF!" out loud when Asuna tells another player that Kirito is her reason for living. The arc is at its best when its just Kirito bumping into people and helping them out. Easily the best episodes in the arc for me are episodes 5 and 6. They're a pretty sweet murder mystery about players somehow getting PK-ed in safe zones. Its a fantastic episode that gives a decent amount of insight into how certain aspects of the game work. 

Kirito is a weird protagonist for this kind of story because the people he meets are more interesting than him. I would've loved to see an episode centered around Klein or the merchant guy. Outside of Asuna, the supporting cast isn't there consistently. I honestly would've preferred if this arc had been an anthology following Kirito as he helps people out during his traveling because the relationship with Asuna and her guild don't really add anything until the final two episodes. Actually now that I think about it, this show might have been better off if each episode had a different pov character in general.

I'm torn on the Yui episode, its an ok episode but its also a bit manipulative. Spoilers: Kirito and Asuna find an amnesiac girl while on vacation and adopt her while they try to figure out who she is and if and she has any family. She isn't a player, she isn't even human. She is a mental health algorithm designed to study and help people acclimate to SAO. The system admin forbad her from doing that so she could only watch on in horror at the players' mental anguish until her code bugs out and she seeks out the only two happy players in the game: Kirito and Asuna. See the problem yet?  Yui is designed to poke, prod, and study people's mental state and because of that, she inadvertently sort of controls the responses people will have to her. So I'm not sure how much of their "family" was legitimately Kirito and Asuna liking her and how much was Yui's programming accidentally causing them to react that way. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth the more I think about it.

Final Thoughts: All things considered, the arc is ok and it held my attention well enough. As mentioned earlier, the second half of the arc is a let down compared to the first. The show makes a point of saying a few times how emotionally scarred and terrified the player base is due to being stuck in the game but it only really shows it in one or two episodes thanks to all the timeskips. Sadly from what I remember of the next arc of the show, its all downhill from here.

Air Gear: The Power Of One Fantastic Idea

Lets get this out of the way: I love Air Gear. Its honestly one of my favorite anime and not because of the plot, characters, or really any event that happens in the show. Thats not to say its a bad show, its just rather standard and nothing to really write home about. What makes the show stand out for me all comes down to one simple and admittedly fantastic idea. This is gonna be more in-line with how my Isekai World Tour posts work instead of it being a full on review.

What is that fantastic idea? Its one simple part of the show: The Air Treks. Air Treks (ATs) are these sweet rollerblades with an exceptionally powerful motor thats both small enough to fit in the skates and powerful enough to let the user ride up the sides of buildings and jump far enough to fly through the air. They are amazing and add really give the show its own distinct feel. They're basically the backbone of the show imo. I'm gonna be honest, I don't like sports anime. I find them to be insincere and can't get into them due to not finding the love of the sport believable. However, I whole-heartedly believe every single second of Air Gear. When the opening theme (Chain) kicks in while a character describes what their first time riding was like and how ATs changed their perspective on life or let them forget their troubles, it legitimately feels like they've found their wings. I get hyped every time the show pulls that trick. Hell, I suck at rollerskating in general and have a massive fear of heights but I'd probably be willing to risk breaking neck just to feel what its like to fly. I want to be able to feel the wind on my face, take off like a rocket, soar through the air, and scale buildings with nothing but wheels attached to my feet. Thats how well the show sold the idea of ATs to me.

As mentioned earlier, the rest of the show isn't much to write home about. The main character and his friends are about what you'd expect and they don't really go outside of that. They're slackers when it comes to everything accept ATs and one is pretty pervy for the sake of a joke. The dub itself is 2000s as hell to the point where I'm pretty certain the reason it makes some of the jokes it does is because they were certain it wouldn't air on tv. The plot is as a bog standard as it gets for a sports anime as well. Despite what I said about it being a good mood setter for flying scenes in the show, I'm not really that big on the opening theme, it just works really well in those scenes Its not bad, its merely ok. The ATs are what push the show from ok into great for me. In fact, after rebinging it all, I desperately wanted more Air Gear content. The way this show treats the ATs alone is enough for me to give it a recommendation. As of right now, my only option is to read the manga and oh boy from my research into that thing does the manga get stupid. Honestly, I think the show was right to end where it did but I wouldn't be opposed to a season two.

Isekai World Tour: Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World Seasons 1 and 2

I know I already covered this show on the blog before but I reread my original review and I really didn't say much about the show other than that I liked it so it was due for a redo. Like the other posts in this series, this post is probably gonna be kinda short. Welcome to the next stop on the Isekai World Tour!

Premise: After a tragic and frankly pretty embarrassing death, Kazuma Sato appears before the goddess Aqua. She insults him and laughs in his face about how he died and then "graciously" offers to bring him back to life in another world with a single boon to take with him. Kazuma is the petty and vindictive sort so he chooses to take the goddess herself as his boon.

How do I describe this show? Back when I first watched it, I was just testing it out as this kind of comedy can be very hit or miss with me. It took a few episodes for me to get a feel for the show but by episode 4, I was on board with it. I absolutely adore this cast. They're just one big lovable catastrophe of an rpg party. This party only has 2 braincells between the 4 of them and Kazuma has one of them. You have the overpowered but basically useless arrogant idiot (Aqua), the hyper focused mage obsessed with one spell (Megumin), and my favorite: Darkness. Darkness is the best of the trio for me. She is a crusader specifically because she likes getting hit and she can't hit back due to her low accuracy. Thats something she basically admits to in the show. I don't usually enjoy characters like her but man, this party and show really makes her work. All 3 of them combined makes for one enjoyable headache for Kazuma. It is never a boring day for the man with these 3 ladies. I can't really go into much else about the show because imo, how the party plays off of each other and the shenanigans they get into because of it is the main draw. There isn't really much an overarching plot at they just happen to luck into fighting the evil generals. Saying anything else about it would also basically require me spoil the jokes and thats not really something I should do for a comedy.

Final Thoughts: I started typing this before season 3 got announced. I miss these lovable idiots and I'm really looking forward to season 3. The show somehow manages to side step the cringe aspects of its characters' comedy. It manages to do it so well that I actually found myself laughing about Darkness'...tendencies. Not just any laughs for that matter, minute long deep laughs. For real, if you asked me which character I was certain I would've hated when I first saw this show, it would've been Darkness. This show managed to leave me a smile on my face with each episode. Its is easily one of my favorite isekai anime to the point where I actually want merch from it. However, its not a show I can easily recommend, mostly because if the comedy or characters don't click with you, you're probably gonna be bored or annoyed.

Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero (Ultraman Powered) Review

I naturally decided to watch this after Ultraman Towards The Future. Like that show the Ultra is only ever referred to as Ultraman in-show so I'll go with his official name in the franchise. It is also a 13 episode show so like last time, this review might be shorter than usual. Yeah, uhhh...I don't really have much else to say as an opener so...Here we go!

Premise: The Baltans have launched an attempt to invade Earth. In order to fight them off a strange alien fuses with WINR officer Kenichi Kai. With Powered's well...power, Kai is able to fight off the Baltan. However, Powered knows the Baltans aren't finished so he sticks around to help out.

Kai is fine as a protagonist but kinda lacking in character outside of him joking around with the team in one episode. Kane Kosugi does an alright job in the role. Thats sadly all I can really say for the character. WINR in general is an alright defense team and thats all there is to them. They do their jobs perfectly fine but they don't get much character to them and honestly, none of them really clicked with me. The closest to a favorite I have is Sanders but thats purely because of his snark.

Favorite Episode: This is a bit tricky because I kinda realized something 8 episodes in. Aside from episode 3, episode 7 (the Dada episode), and episode 12, most of Powered's episodes are remakes of episodes from the original Ultraman. The episodes aren't bad but it gets kinda distracting once you realize that. Due to that, I kind of have to pick episode 3, mostly because Jeffrey Combs is in it and his performance as a slimy film producer is a treat.

Effects and Action: I knew going into this show that the kaiju fights weren't going to be much of anything. This is mostly because of the material Powered's suit is made from. It was both fragile and expensive. The designs are stellar across the board (my favorite being the gnarly looking Red King in episode 3) but the lack actual action in the show really costs the suits points. I just do not get why they did all that if the suits were unfit for the purpose they were designed for. As for the effects, they're fine, sort of a stepup from Great's. The only exception would be episode 8. Something about it just makes them seem fake and the building Jamila gets tossed into it very clearly a painted cardboard box given how it crumples instead of breaking. Jamila's design is also a wide miss compared to Powered's overall designs. Nothing about it reads like Jamila to me. Episode 12 probably has the best fight in the whole show and its sadly pretty standard as far as Ultra fights go. The only reason its notable is because Dorako keeps swinging his razor sharp claws around so Powered can't get close enough to do his whole shoving thing.

Final Thoughts: Powered is an odd show. I can't actually decide if its better than Great or worse but its definitely a less good OG Ultraman. With that being said, the show is honestly just kinda ok but its biggest problem is that it doesn't really feel that distinct due to the aforementioned remakes of OG Ultraman episodes. The show doesn't really have its own feel to me other than it trying its hardest to be OG Ultraman. Its japanese theme song is killer tho so give that a listen. It actually makes me wish the show was better. Unlike Great, I don't recommend this even if you're morbidly curious or bored...watch OG Ultraman instead, you'll probably get more out of it. The only reason I can think of to recommend this to someone is if they say it as a kid and want to revisit it and even then its a maybe.

Ultraman: Towards The Future (Ultraman Great) Review

The Ultra kick returns somewhat with a show you probably weren't expecting. I mainly started watching this because well...it was short. They just refer to him as Ultraman in the show but I'm going to call him by his official name in the franchise for the sake of simplicity. Its a 13 episode show so this review might be a little brief. I don't have a clever line to start with so lets get to it.

Premise: Two astronauts surveying mars are attacked by the alien Gudis. A giant shows up to fight Gudis and the two try to flee. One is killed when Gudis blows up their ship and after seemingly defeating Gudis, the giant fuses with the survivor. However, Gudis' cells have fallen to Earth and thus begins the show proper.

Jack Shindo is smug...and weirdly its not the character's fault. The actor just kinda uses the exact same tone no matter whats happening and he always has this big ol' smirk on his face even when he should be scared or serious. The character is ok (though he just kinda reveals stuff to the team whenever they need a lead) and its interesting seeing him talk to Great in a few a episodes and asking him what he should do mostly because up until that point, the show kinda made me think Great was the one running the body, not simply being a part of Jack's mind.

UMA as a whole are fine and I was honestly a little surprised how active they were as a defense team. They're decent characters and their actors are fine. They're pretty capable as a team even if the show doesn't go into them much during its run. They just kinda do their jobs and that really all I was expecting from them. The team's scientist (Charles Morgan) kinda reminded of Ide from the original Ultraman, just without the dramatic moments. Charles is probably my favorite member of the team because the guy made chuckle a bit here and there. On top of that, he carried his personal episode pretty well.

Favorite Episode: I'm gonna have to go with episode 9 "The Biospherians". What can I say? I love stories about sentient plants trying to wipe out humanity. Its a trope I've always found interesting and the way the plants were capable of wiping out humanity was interesting on top of being kind of scary. Its the only potentially world ending threat in the show beyond Gudis and the monsters in the final two episode. Honestly, its better executed than those threats for me. Thats not to say the main threats of the show are bad, they're just a tad underwhelming for me. Unfortunately, the kaiju in this episode probably has the weakest design in the show. The episode also features a quickdraw fight with the kaiju complete with shotgun reloading sounds after Great's blasts and I honestly can't say I've seen that in Ultra before.

Effects and Action: The effects are iffy for the first 4 episodes. They don't look too bad but they're not too good either. After episode 5, the shows budget seems to have gotten bigger and the effects improve. I can't think of a single effect that stood out to me. The creature designs are fine but well, the kaiju themselves feel off. They don't feel like they're alive or exist in the world outside of the episodes they appear in. The kaiju feel more like props that are just there for Great to fight. The fight choreography isn't great either. A lot of it is just Great occasionally blocking and punching in-between laser blasts with the kaiju not moving much either. Once or twice he manages to follow up a punch with a point-blank blast and that was neat. The is an amusing scene in the final episode where Great swings a tower frame at the monster and the monster just catches it and proceeds to beat him with it. Its a small thing but it was a neat bit of set interaction.

Final Thoughts: I don't really have much to say for this. Great's japanese opening is leagues better than the english one. The show has an environmental message to it and its perfectly fine, its not heavy-handed. Its an ok show with two really good episodes and thats about all there is to it. If you're looking for a decent MOTW show thats also rather short, go for it but only if you're morbidly curious or really bored as I don't expect anyone to get much out of this show.