#production problems

Ok, I want to start by putting two things out there to start with about this post.

1) I am not dumping on the series.  There are things about it I very much enjoyed (which I will also be talking about here) but on the whole it left me unimpressed.  I do not mean to tell anyone that they are wrong for liking it or that their favorite series is objectively crap.  I just want to give my opinion on what I think went wrong with the production of the series and my impressions of what the finished product left me with.

2) There will be massive SPOILERS.  If you have not seen Kamen Rider Ghost and wish to remain unspoiled, read no further. You have been warned.

Let’s start at the beginning.  The first episode held a lot of promise, we were introduced to our main protagonist Takeru Tenkuji on his 18th Birthday.  He is the heir to the Daitenkuji temple.  His Father was a powerful man who could see and deal with ghosts, a power Takeru utterly lacks.  We also meet his friends Akari, a brilliant young woman who believes there is a scientific explanation for everything and Onari, a young monk and caretaker of the temple.  Takeru is killed by the villains of the series, the Gamma, and becomes a Ghost.  He must hunt down the 15 Luminary Eyecons containing the souls of 15 great men and use them to make a wish to bring himself back to life within 99 days or he will remains dead forever and pass from the world of the living.

Ok, solid setup.  We have a character with a strong motivation who has been given a direction in his life (ironically through dying) and the series MacGuffin, backstory and allies.  I have a few problems with this but that’s mostly the series’ adherence to the Great Men shaping history idea that turns into almost hero worship for some pretty shady figures and some who may never have existed.  I mean seriously, why is Billy The Kid considered one of the 15 Luminaries?  He was a thief and a murderer. Also, Robin Hood?  Seriously?  He’s a fictional character. On this tangent, why out of all of the Eyecons shown in the series does only one of them contain the spirit of a woman?

Sorry, it just kind of annoys me that an Outlaw and murderer like Billy the Kid gets a Luminary Eyecon but we don’t have a Joan of Arc, Marie Curie or Murasaki Shikibu Eyecon?  That’s just perpetuating the Great MEN of History Narrative. Ok, getting off my soapbox now.

After episode 1 is where the big problems start for me.  The show settles into a very fetch quest narrative.  This was established by the premise, of course, but it’s not handled particularly well.  It becomes a case of Eyecon of the week and seems, more than usual, to be a way to push the merchandise rather than progress the story.  

I’ve talked before about how Tokusatsu in general (at least the big three franchises) have become all about collecting the trinkets of the year.  Sometimes that works within the framework of the narrative.  I think Kamen Rider Ex-Aid did a pretty good job of it by having the trinkets be an in-universe product from a video game company.  We all know how modern video game companies LOVE to churn out sequels on a pretty speedy basis to their big franchises (Assassin’s Creed). So having new Gashats pop up regularly made sense.  On the other end of the spectrum we have Kamen Rider Gaim which, no matter what else you want to say about it, didn’t really handle the introduction of new Lock Seeds all that well.  Seriously, DJ Sagara just handed out new power ups without much reason simple to sell the new toy. 

While Ghost never seemed that contrived, the opening story arc did get bogged down a bit by the collection element and I know folks who gave up during that figuring the entire series was going to follow that track. It sacrificed a lot to push the merchandise including giving us a strong villain until the end of that arc.  Seriously, did bad teeth man really do anything to drive the narrative?

Once he was more or less out of the picture we did get some good antagonists.  At first we have the rival, Kamen Rider Spectre/Makoto and Alain as his best friend/boss.  Of course both of them ended up joining the side of the heroes.  That’s where I can give my greatest praise for the series as well.  Makoto and Alain’s arcs were incredibly well-handled and I actually felt for Alain once he became human and realized how tragic death was after the passing of Fumin, the takoyaki seller.

As for Makoto, his entire motivation revolves around trying to bring his little sister back to life using the Eyecons, which puts him into conflict with Takeru.  Once Takeru realizes what Makoto is doing, he gives up his one (first) chance to come back to life to save her and that brings the two of them back together as friends. I really liked Makoto as a character.  At least until the V-Cinema torpedoed his backstory.  Man, I hated that thing.

The story also wandered around and couldn’t seem to decide if what was going on was actually supernatural or a product of extra-dimensional science. It really wanted to have its cake and eat it to and I never could figure out whether what was going on was a mystical thing or sci-fi thing.  Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention but the series was also very vague on how things worked.  It felt like a story being written as it went with a start and some good ideas but no idea how to get to where it wanted to go. As someone who has DM’d an RPG game where I started with ideas and how to get to a cool end point but decided to wing it to get there, I can completely understand the technique but also know how bad that can get off track.

There was also a lack of tension for the main problem.  We say Takeru die completely once and then come back and then they pulled the same trick again.  You lose the tension of a time limit when running it out just results in your hero coming back with even greater powers.

You really can’t play the same dramatic card twice for the same character and expect it to have the same impact no matter how cool the new power he comes back with is.

I also want to mention how frustrating it was to have the tease of a new Woman Kamen Rider in Aria.  She got to transform once for a few seconds and then never, ever again.  That’s just a tease and pretty awful given Toei’s track record with female Riders. The pink Necrom outfit also looked really cool!

It didn’t help the series at all that due to relatively low toys sales compared to previous series, Toei decided to re-allocate part of the budget to the next series, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid.  It ended up making what I assume was planned to be a more lavish production flounder from cheaper effects and a loss of staff. It’s not quite as egregious as the total shift in tone and narrative we got with Kamen Rider Hibiki when they changed writers and staff partway through but it is a noticeable dip in quality.

So, in the end, what went wrong with Kamen Rider Ghost can be summed up by saying it tried too hard to push the merchandise over telling a good story and by the time it got to the story it wanted to tell the lack of merchandise sales had doomed its production.  In my opinion, this was a case of putting the toys before the story and because of a lack of a good story, the toys didn’t catch on and sell. It’s a cautionary tale of merchandising over media and why the latter should trump the former.  If you have a good show, people will want to by the toys.  If you have good toys but a lackluster show, there’s no reason to want to get invested in the toys because there’s no real connection to them.

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine was the first to arrive in Argentina in December 2020 with the promise of relief for Latin American countries low on the waiting list for shots developed, and approved, in the West.

Yet to receive UN approval, the vaccine has since been taken up by about a dozen countries in the region — but, eight months in, a critical shortage of the second dose is weighing heavily on governments with limited alternatives.

Inoculation with Sputnik V, produced by Russian institute Gamaleya, requires two doses that differ from one another and were not designed to be swapped or mixed with other vaccines.

“I feel betrayed, that it is a hoax,” Noreyda Hernandez, a 66-year-old teacher, told AFP after disappointment at a vaccination center in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, which has no doses for those who need it.

There are similar scenes in Bolivia, where older adults arrive at clinics only to find notices informing them that the second dose has been “postponed until further notice.”

“We are tired, we keep coming back and every time it is the same answer: ‘The government must say.’ But what can the government say if it doesn’t know anything?” German Alarcon, 70, told AFP in La Paz.

Russia registered Sputnik V last August ahead of large-scale clinical trials, prompting concern among experts over the fast-tracked process.

‘Still waiting’

The vaccine has since been declared safe and over 90% effective in a report published by leading medical journal The Lancet, restoring confidence in Russia’s jab.

The problem now, is production.

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