Dumbass fox watches toku

Hi, Adri of @ammyamarant here. I've been watching some tokusatsu and decided I need a place to organize what I've done.

THIS IS NOT A WATCH ORDER. This is just so I can keep track of what I've watched, am watching, and want to watch.

I also added what mecha anime my sister is showing me because it's close enough and I still want to track that.

Please watch Good Morning, Sleeping Lion. It's the movie that Takaiwa Seiji stars in as his first lead face actor role. He was joined by several Kamen Rider face actors he had been the suit actor for, as well as many other well known suit actors, to support him. It's a very heartwarming movie. It's also essentially a Yakuza substory.

I will talk about my feelings on any of these except Gavv, because I make myself angry if I think about it. If you want to read what I've said previously, I have put them in a "Gavv meta" tag, with a full breakdown of my thoughts on it here. Any future request to talk about Gavv will be ignored and deleted.

If you want to know which ones I've enjoyed the most:

Kamen Rider Kuuga

Kamen Rider Ryuki

Kamen Rider OOO

Kamen Rider Zeztz

GARO

GARO: Makai Senki

Good Morning, Sleeping Lion

Good Morning, Sleeping Lion 2

Mobile Suit Gundam 0079

After War Gundam X

Avataro Sentai Donbrothers

So while I am a fan of his shows, I will outright say that his plots suffer, particularly in the middle. He has a lot of problems getting to first cour to third cour, and throws a lot at the wall just to get there. He's very character first, to the detriment of the plot.

But also he has things he falls back on that aren't in Zeztz or are done initially in a very Takahashi way and now aren't.

Let's take CODE. At first, we get some very Takahashi things. They are very shady and you squint when Baku just... accepts it all. The school for dream learning is very uhhhhhhhhhhh what's going on what is Odaka... if you look at Zero-One and Geats, yeah, he clearly hates systems like CODE. It feels like Nox's hatred of CODE is him talking through Nox about systems like this.

But after the halfway point, it... stops being that? It starts being people in the shadows of CODE instead of the entire organization? Three is really the only one who is "evil" in the Lords.

(Also, it's pretty clear Takahashi was told to kill off Kureha because her actress couldn't fulfil her commitment to Zeztz, and he tried to give her a "cool" death in comparison to Five. Like, really, she got a very flashy and cool death that I think normally would be meant for an important male character, and Five got car bombed)

But okay I'll talk about Kureha. Takahashi loves female characters. He gives them so much to do. I can talk about how Yua is actually the secondary in Zero-One for days. Poppy has her own full arc and it was the actual plot for a while. Geats, oh my god, the female characters are incredibly detailed and sometimes are more important to the plot than Ace himself! But Kureha... basically wasn't a character.

Isn't that weird?

Isn't it weird for a writer who has "character first" writing as a strength and a weakness regarding the plot to have a female character that is basically a faceless grunt?

Isn't it weird that we have two Takahashi tropes that he hasn't deviated on, even outside of Rider, suddenly become the complete opposite to what he usually writes?

Isn't it weird that Takahashi has two parents that aren't good parents, and despite his usual "I'm not going to redeem the fucking parents fuck off" writing, he redeemed Zero? And The Lady doesn't feel particularly evil either despite clearly being unhinged?

Isn't it weird that Takahashi's usual weaknesses regarding his writing aren't the weaknesses we are seeing in Zeztz, but are instead what should be his strengths but done badly?

I do have a whole thing about how Reiwa Rider feels like it's getting a lot more controlled by corporate meddling through the lens of Zenkaiger (I promise it makes sense), but I feel like you can kind of get the idea.

Zeztz doesn't feel like a Takahashi show.

His strengths and weaknesses are not the strengths and weaknesses of Zeztz.

Then, for the first time, he was redeemed. He wasn't actually bad. He was generally just misguided and trying to push Baku into saving the world.

This doesn't sound like someone who writes fathers being pieces of shit if they appear!

I'm really thinking there's a lot of corporate meddling going on regarding CODE because a lot does not fit how Takahashi approaches writing and characters like that. And also just not how he approaches organizations like CODE! I really feel like someone told him to be more Western audience friendly.

Because the answers are either Saruharu just... happened to have that colourful mess around and Haruka went "hell yeah I wanna look like a Pride parade barfed on me" or Haruka had to go out and buy a whole new outfit for this whole charade.

But I was thinking about names of the Riders. Obviously Baku's name is really interesting because the mythological baku was made of the parts left over and eats bad dreams. And it's pretty obvious how his name ties into his arc and who he is.

It's the actual names of the Kamen Riders I'm looking at. Zeztz, again, is obvious. Zzz, often used in a visual medium to indicate sleep. And then Nox, darkness, when we often sleep.

The thing that makes me go ??? is Sieg's Rider name is Dawn. Which, yes, is the complete opposite of sleep/darkness. Dawn is a new day. It's light. It's when many people wake up. And this is extremely interesting given Sieg's ability to use dreams and nightmares against people.

So here's the "hear me out."

What if this is leading up to Baku dying for real, becoming a god of nighttime and sleep and good dreams, and he does this using Sieg's abilities to usher in a new dawn of dreams?

I paused on this frame to screenshot and send to people, and every time I looked back at this I said "oh fucking hell" and Yomi knew I had looked at the screen again.

Sometimes it's about characters who should never meet because it would be some kind of world ending event. Lynne from Ghost Trick is a fantastic character and she'd get along with many people. She would also enable them with her "let's do it!" attitude.

But sometimes it's terrifying friendships. Like Parad from Ex-Aid becoming friends with Sakito from Boonboomgers.