Slogging Through Engine Sentai Go-Onger Part 3: Highs and Lows

Welcome back, everyone! This time around, I'm changing up the format of my Go-Onger reviews rather significantly. Instead of just glossing over and crunching all five episodes together, I've decided the most enjoyable way for you guys to get some entertainment value out of this is by reviewing and breaking down each episode individually. This means more screencaps, much more thoughts, and a post that's hopefully a lot longer and thus more worthwhile to read.

In this third batch of five episodes, we see the best Go-Onger has offered so far hand-in-hand with the worst. There's still 35 episodes, some Net Movies, a DVD special and a few theatrical movies left before we make a final judgment call, but this should be pretty indicative of the quality I can expect for the rest of the series. Now, for your reading pleasure, Engine Sentai Go-Onger episodes 11 through 15!

Wait...why are the Riders fighting again? Preliminary thoughts on "Kamen Rider War"

Oh, Shinichiro Shirakura. You really are a one-trick pony aren't you? For those who are uninformed, Shinichiro Shirakura is one of Toei's longtime content producers. He served as head producer on several Heisei Kamen Rider TV shows including Kamen Rider Agito, Kamen Rider Kabuto and Kamen Rider Decade. Since Decade finished with Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider: W & Decade Movie War 2010, he's kept only to producing movies including OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go, Kamen Riders, Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero War and last year's Kamen Rider x Super Sentai x Space Sheriffs: Super Hero War Z. Notice a pattern with those last few movies? That's right, ever since Kamen Rider Decade The Movie: All Riders vs. Dai Shocker was such a runaway success (it remains to date the highest grossing Kamen Rider movie ever), Shirakura has been obsessed with the idea of a bunch of superheroes getting together and fighting among each other for little to no reason whatsoever before joining forces to take on a big baddie.

His writer of choice for these massive headaches disguised as crossovers is usually Shoji Yonemura, whom I've made very clear in the past I am not a big fan of. Yonemura obviously has a vast knowledge of the material, we can see this in the Net Movies he writes, but he's one of the laziest writers alive. He relies on cheap and meaningless fanservice to appease franchise faithfuls, writes the same plot over and over, and doesn't know how to work with characters he's given. Yonemura is fine in small doses (the aforementioned Net Movies, his episodes of Kamen Rider Den-O) but give him his own show or movie (with the exception of All Riders vs. Dai Shocker, which I liked) and you're in for a hell of a mess.

So that brings us to the newest collaboration between the two: the upcoming crossover film Heisei Riders Vs. Showa Riders: Kamen Rider War feat. Super Sentai.

A Personal Milestone Approaches

Greetings, everyone. I've been watching tokusatsu for as long as I can remember, but it's only been since 2006 that I've been serious about watching tokusatsu series from start to finish. Now, in less than 10 years, I'm about to approach my 50th finished tokusatsu series.

Slogging Through Engine Sentai Go-Onger Part 2: Toys. Toys Everywhere

Sosuke is a stupid asshole. Not only does he spy on Saki for no reason except to make sure she doesn't even deserve to look at another guy (it's not even implied Sosuke is jealous. He just wants her to remain away from dating), he then makes a painfully strange jump that after just ONE date with a flutist and seeing her fixing her hair in front of a shop window that coincidentally had a wedding dress inside must mean she wishes to marry him. Plus, his actor does a really wretched job this episode. He overacts more than usual and doesn't deliver any of his lines convincingly. Then again, it's not like he's given much to work with.

That paragraph above contains the thoughts I had to write down while I was watching episode 6. I was so dumbstruck by how much of a dick Sosuke was that I couldn't just let those thoughts stick, I had to get them down as soon as I possibly could. Thing is, the future episodes continue to do him no favors.

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.