Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Toku Movie Flashback: Chou Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade NEO Generations The Movie: The Oni Island Battleship (2009)
There are great Kamen Rider movies. Kamen Rider ZO, Kamen Rider 555 The Movie: Paradise Lost, and Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider: Fourze & OOO - Movie War MEGA MAX to name a few. There are terrible Kamen Rider movies. Kamen Rider The First, Kamen Rider The Next, and Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero War among some others. And then there are Kamen Rider movies that are strictly middle of the road. Nothing about them are offensively bad, but nothing about them sticks out as excellent either. Chou Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade NEO Generations The Movie: The Oni Island Battleship is one of those films.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Slogging Through Engine Sentai Go-Onger Part 1: The Worst Sentai Ever?
In 2008, I had just finished watching Juuken Sentai Gekiranger with my brother. We had already started watching Kamen Rider Kiva (which was already pretty underwhelming) when we decided to pick up the next Super Sentai: Engine Sentai Go-Onger.
We could already tell it was going to be a far more colorful Sentai than its predecessors. With its suit designs incorporating animals and its animal/vehicle mascots, it was clear this was going to make more of an effort to skew younger than either Boukenger or Gekiranger did. When we started watching it a few days after episode 1 aired in Japan (pretty much right as the subtitles became available), we couldn't believe our eyes.
This show was baaaaaaad. The acting was horrendous, the writing and post-production work seemed amatuerish, it was trying way too hard to appeal to young tykes and the characters just didn't seem that likable. We got through 8 episodes before my brother and I just couldn't sit through anymore and we unceremoniously dropped it, the first time we had ever done that for a currently-airing tokusatsu series. We also dropped Kamen Rider Kiva around the same time, but we eventually finished that sometime after Kamen Rider Decade began. It's been over five years and I still haven't watched Go-Onger again. That is, until now.
We could already tell it was going to be a far more colorful Sentai than its predecessors. With its suit designs incorporating animals and its animal/vehicle mascots, it was clear this was going to make more of an effort to skew younger than either Boukenger or Gekiranger did. When we started watching it a few days after episode 1 aired in Japan (pretty much right as the subtitles became available), we couldn't believe our eyes.
This show was baaaaaaad. The acting was horrendous, the writing and post-production work seemed amatuerish, it was trying way too hard to appeal to young tykes and the characters just didn't seem that likable. We got through 8 episodes before my brother and I just couldn't sit through anymore and we unceremoniously dropped it, the first time we had ever done that for a currently-airing tokusatsu series. We also dropped Kamen Rider Kiva around the same time, but we eventually finished that sometime after Kamen Rider Decade began. It's been over five years and I still haven't watched Go-Onger again. That is, until now.
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