gekidasa

And so it begins. Watched episode 1 raw, so obviously I will have missed things. :D

The first episode kind of already confirms the impression I got from the press releases and character descriptions: that many elements of Os are very obvious nods in the direction of past Riders. To be fair, Kamen Rider is a franchise that relies on a specific, limited set of tropes; but what I’m talking about isn’t that exactly. A trope is an archtype basically, something honed down to its basic elements; what I’m talking about is the specific ways in which those archtypes are explored. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if one liked what is referenced, and it’s all revisited in a way that revamps the ideas.

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Mirrored from my blog at tl;dr. Please leave comments over there! :D

So again, kind of filler episodes which mostly serve to reinforce what we learned about whichever Imagin was just introduced; in this case Kintaros.

I wasn’t really all that interested in the story itself this episode, because the plights of a pre-teen girl idol/model really just don’t interest me very much (it’s a matter of demographics, really). Things pick up in episode 12 when it becomes less about the modeling and more about an estranged father/daughter relationship. The second episode also revisits the problem of creating paradoxes by changing the past, which I find very interesting.

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Mirrored from tl;dr.

As is probably obvious, my response to Den-O eps 7 and 8 can best be summed up thus: LOL, Smart Lady! Or Shimada Nanako, whichever you prefer!

Also! Urataros comments on the unfortunate length of Momotaros’ pole. And then Momotaros takes offense… when he figures out what Ura means, at any rate. 8D/

(For a kid’s show, they sure get away with Urataros implying an awful of lot really horribly badwrong stuff).

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Mirrored from my blog at tl;dr.
I'd love it if you left comments over there, although it's fine here too! :D

Now, if one is identifying common tropes that Kobayashi likes to revisit, wouldn’t it be fair to say that Urataros is probably the closest Den-O has to one Kitaoka Shuichi? :D

Probably, and this would explain why I like Urataros so much. I mean they’re both full of it, they’re both smooth with the ladies (well, Kitaoka supposedly is, we don’t see it work in Ryuki because it’s always directed at Reiko), and they’re so much smoke and mirrors around their motivations that it’s very hard to tell just what there is underneath it all… except for the fact that one suspects they’re really not bad, underneath it all, just selfish, opportunistic and self-serving. But quite charming, really!

Especifically with Urataros, there’s the mystery of why exactly he’s doing what he’s doing, why he’s possessing Ryotaro knowing the limitations of possessing a singularity point (which at this point… haven’t exactly been explained).

Omae... boku ni tsuraretemiru? »

Mirrored from tl;dr.

So quick thoughts, because of the time:

→ First instance of Hana beating up Momo!

→ Again with Ryotaro’s ingrained kindness: wanting to give the keyholder back to the bully, because it was the right thing to do.

→ First glimpse of That Guy (spoiler!)

→ Momo saves a little boy, aww. Again, Momo was always decent, under the hooliganism.

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Mirrored from tl;dr.

So greatfountain  and I have been thinking about doing a Kamen Rider Den-O rewatch (rewatch for her, half rewatch for me, since I actually have not finished the series). In light of the fact that Ozu debuts September 5th and that the writer is Kobayashi, who also wrote Den-O (and Ryuki!), it might be fun to do it before then.

Mostly we’re just going to be watching a certain number of eps per week, and talking amongst ourselves, but we thought that Den-O being Den-O there might be others interested in watching along, so we’re testing the waters and asking if there’s interest (in other words: if you might be into it, comment and say so… we’re not going to hold you to it or anything, we just want to know if others might like to try it :D).

Anyway, we’d be watching 8 episodes every week starting next week, with the exception of the 6th week (August 28 to September 5th), when we’d watch 9 eps. If others are into it, we’ll see about setting up weekly discussion posts somewhere (I’m thinking separate spoilery and spoiler-free versions?).

So one again, comment if you’re interested~ \:D/
(Here or on my blog)

Mirrored from tl;dr.