Well, that was a long break.

Hello there folks, Panda here. So yeah, we’ve been offline for a while now, Fourze not only ended, but then we had Wizard (bleh), followed by Gaim which is currently in its endgame (yay). The Gokaigers gave way to the harder-to-decipher GoBusters, when then sulked off to allowed the Kyoryugers to dance around and then let the kiddish ToQgers use the powahh of imagination which apparently only benefits the bad guys as they are more interesting right now. Garo is still going strong with an upcoming Anime, and even Ultraman is still kicking it.

As to why things have been quiet for sometime now, it basically boils down to the ever-so-wonderful personal matters, specifically relating to being a caregiver. I will say only that yeah, it’s rough times, and Cancer sucks. I can say though that things have slowed down enough to where I can put time into the site again, if not on a daily basis, then at least on a weekly part for now as we ramp back up on content. Stay tuned folks as The Force Has Returned!

-fmpanda

Gokaiger vs. Gavan (2011) Review

So, for Gokaiger Toei have changed things up a bit when it came to their Sentai movie schedule. Normally you have the summer “movie” paired up with the Kamen Rider of that time, then the “Vs.” movie, in which the current team joins up with the previous team, gets into a fight with each other, and then gets together to do the MASSIVE ROLL CALL followed by giant explosions and the kaiju killing, followed by light salad. If a Sentai show is successful enough, they even get a “Returns” direct-to-video flick. This time around however, Toei did the team up with Goseiger earlier in 2011 with the “199 Great Hero Battle”, which helped to mask the fact that it was a flick involving Goseiger. We did get the summer movie on time, but for the latter part of the year, we got Gokaiger vs. Gavan, allowing Toei to pay tribute to the Metal Heroes series. Never seen any of the Metal Heroes shows? Actually you did, when it was called VR Troopers:

A lot of the footage from that show was compiled from later eras of the Metal Heroes series back in Japan, of which Space Sheriff Gavan was the starting point. For those still wanting more info, just start here. With that all out of  the way, here’s my thought’s on the flick.

For one, I am thankful they kept the Gai-isms to a minimum except when it was time for comedy. As I stated before in my previous review of Gokaiger, Gai tended to drive me insane as a character to the point that he would become a major distraction from the narrative, so keeping him regulated to gushing over the 3 roles played by Kenji Ohba and kicking posterior as Gokai Silver was a much needed choice in order for this flick to actually be entertaining for me. What we do get is more focus on Captain Marvelous as it seems a portion of his own development as a pirate was influenced by his rescue as a child by Gavan, and his current need to save the Sheriff from the combined forces of Zangyack and the descendant of Don Horror, Ashurada. It goes a long way in establishing the personal stakes for the Gokaigers as to why they need to help out a guy who ended up kicking the crap out of them in the beginning of the movie.

Also, I like how they got the whole “Vs.” part out of the way by having Gavan kick the crap out of the Gokaigers and then reveal that he was using them as pawns the whole time to flush out the Zangyack forces. Most of the time when I watch these crossover flicks, it’s usually seeing the two teams battling it out over a misunderstanding and then coming to their senses over a common goal, which was really kind of odd for the 199 flick, as trusting others is just not the Gokaiger’s style, even by the end of the show.  Gokaiger vs. Gavan handled this better by keeping the initial fight and then teamup more in line with the tone established by the series in that they’re not teaming up with Gavan to save the world, they are simply letting Marvelous repay a debt to a man that he looked up to and they’re just along for the ride with their captain.

There is one part to the movie that bugged the crap out of me, and that was the Gobusters cameo. Okay, so we have Basco at full strength and form getting the crap handed to him by the same team that routinely gets their butts handed to them by Enter in their own show? Yeah, I was not feeling this part. I know Toei needs to make their new team look strong and able to match up to the Gokaigers, but doing a God-mode style scene will not work for ya. It’s the same thing that got them in trouble when All-Riders Vs. Dai-Shocker came out and they decided to have W smack the crap out of Shadowmoon. All stuff like that does is belittle your current Rider or Sentai team, at least the Gobusters did make things look back as W did to Decade.

Special mentions should go to the main comedy bits of the movie, the first involving the prison break-in, which I found to be hilarious as you got to see a lot of side characters from previous shows act absolutely ridiculous.  It was a nice tension breaker and we got to see more Jealoushitto. The other moment had to do with Kenji Ohba and his multiple personas. For those in the know, Ohba had already appeared in Gokaiger as two of his Sentai characters, Shiro (Battle Kenya), and Daigoro (Denzi Blue). I won’t give away too much, but let’s just say the movie has a funny way of acknowledging how the two Sentai look exactly the same as Gavan.

So at the end of the day, is this a flick to check out? Absolutely, the action is well-paced along with the drama and comedy, and it makes the Gobusters look more competent than they actually are. Plus one can use this show as a gateway into the wide world of the Metal Heroes series, of which many subs are out for those who know where to look. GOKAI CHANGE!

Kamen Rider Wizard is REVEALED!

Well, here he is, and boy does he look……well….interesting! Now for those who are probably shocked by this image, keep in mind that in the last decade, the Kamen Rider show for their 5th Rider was Hibiki, which also ditched the “Bug-Eyes” look, took some chances on design overall, and also massively changed up how a Kamen Rider show works (Until Ep. 30 anyway…), so I’m not really surprised they went with such a radical concept for this decade’s 5th Rider. It also appears the whole “Using Rings for Henshin” part is also true, but I’m not sure how it’ll work with five rings, especially when he looks like he’s only wearing two. Here’s let me show you another pic so you can see the Driver:

As you can see, the central part of the Wizard Driver is a Hand. I’m going to guess the Rings function similar to the OOO Driver, except that the Hand functions as the scanning device to allow for the transformation sequence. This is going to make the next collect-a-thon more taxing on folks’ pocketbooks I believe, as more than likely he’ll probably have multiple Rings for different combo attacks besides the main Rings for other forms, so for you KR toy collectors, good luck.

More info about Kamen Rider Wizard will be revealed in the coming weeks as Japan gears up for Fourze’s Summer Movie, so let’s gear up for what will hopefully be another smashing Rider series! HENSHIN!

Kamen Rider OOO & Fourze Movie War Megamax Review

So, another year, another Movie War. For this third installment of the crossover movies where the previous Kamen Rider teams up with the new shiny Kamen Rider, we end up with a multi-part tale in which OOO regains his swag, Fourze exudes massive swag, and the Seven Legendary Riders join along for the fun (with Kamen Rider 2 getting a Neo-Old-School makeover). Oh, and that W guy is now the “Sempai” of the Post-Decade Riders. I should warn you, for those who like shiny pictures, well, there’s only the one up on top, but this allows me to get to the meat of things, so enjoy the show after the jump.

Kamen Rider Fourze Episodes 27-34 Super Overview

Alright folks, in order to get back up to speed on Fourze, I figured I would share my thoughts on the last few episodes that have been airing while I’ve been out of action. I have been keeping up with the show and needless to say I continue to be impressed with how the overall production is going, especially with the overarching storylines that are ramping up as we soon get to welcome Kamen Rider Wizard. Get the whole shebang after the jump.

A-Kon 23 Overview

So, I’m sure a few of you are wondering why I’m posting thoughts and feelings about an anime convention when this site is supposed to be more for Toku fans, eh? Well, I started attending A-Kon with 21, which was the first year that Monster Attack Team had returned from their slumber and launched their new magazine. That year there were a few Sentai cosplayers running around, and even the occasional Phillip and Shotaro from Kamen Rider W. The last two A-Kons however have seen what I would deem to be an explosion of Toku as I’ve seen folks in Gokaiger getups as well as noticed the Dealer’s room stocking an abundance of Kamen Rider material, to where even Bluefin came about to offer many of their S.H. Figuarts for happy Otaku to buy. Needless to say I think the Distinguished Toku Fan can gain a lot from attending A-Kon, so I figured I would give you some impressions of the con in general as well as my thoughts on this year’s Monster Attack Team panel.

A-Kon in general is held in the Downtown Dallas area, with many of the most recent cons being at the Dallas Sheraton, and the upcoming A-Kon 24 taking place at the Hilton Anatole, and is the oldest anime convention in America. Most would think that the “Anime” designation means endless panels and programming dedicated to the effectiveness of marrying a Linkin Park song to a Naruto clip, but in actuality this is far from the case as A-Kon actually has more of a balanced lineup between Anime, Writing, Sci-Fi, the Video Game Industry, Cosplay, and many other aspects of fandom, so there basically is something for everyone. As A-Kon is a larger convention, expect lots of crowd stuffiness, and also looooooong lines for popular panels. For the Monster Attack Team panel however, we were first in line.

At this point it would probably be a good idea to brief you on what Monster Attack Team is. M.A.T. is a Dallas-based collective of Toku fans spearheaded by Ed Holland and Joe Reilly who had sprung up in the 90s thanks to their magazine and for a lot of young Toku fans like myself, a cable access interview show that would later morph into the M.A.T. series. This was pretty much the place to go to check out clips from shows and movies that weren’t Power Rangers, but rather items like Tetsuo, the Iron Man, the Metal Hero series, and even a dash of metal from Sekima II. One of their most famous exploits was getting access to the filming of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers before the show had even premiered on Fox Kids. This showed how much trust Toei and many other Japanese organizations had Holland and Reilly. The inital incarnation of M.A.T. later folded, but then spawned Alien Death Squad, and The Hypnotic Eye before seemingly disappearing for quite sometime until Holland had decided to reform M.A.T. along with Mike Keller where they premiered their latest issue of M.A.T. as well as begun a yearly panel at A-Kon. These panels end up being the highlight of the con for me as they usually talk about Toku shows that I haven’t even touched yet and watching Ed and Mike wax esoteric about Toku is pretty much satisfying, kinda like watching Decade falling straight into the waters of Mt. Midoriyama.

So, with this year’s panel they had actually beaten the A/V demons that had plagued their last two appearances, leading to us not only seeing footage of the 1st M.A.T. webisode, but also some old-school footage of The Hypnotic Eye as well as some interesting promo material they had shot back in the 90s for advertising their T-Shirts. Ed was running late due to the Tak Sakaguchi signing taking longer than expected, but he soon arrived along with the seminal action hero who pulled in a momentary guest appearance. Oh, for those who are not sure who Mr. Sakaguchi is, here’s a Kabuto clip, then after you read the rest of this post, you should go watch the movie Versus.

After Tak had bade all of us farewell, Ed disappeared to gather prizes for a lottery giveaway, we were treated to an early film Tak had starred in before his breakout role in Versus. Let’s just say this was more of the direct-to-video variety, but it still looked fun as hell to watch all the way through. We were then treated to a preview of an upcoming Toku remake of Denjin Zaborgar. I have to say I was really impressed how they managed to make an older design function in a modern environment and hopefully we’ll see this particular flick come stateside.

The rest of the panel was held for the prize giveaway, of which we ended up with some nice collectibles (of which many of them are proudly on display in my figurine cabinet), but there was one moment that I was particularly happy about. You see for the last couple of A-Kons I had tried to get Ed’s thought on some of the modern Sentai/Kamen Rider that had been churned out by Toei as of late, and usually he was not kind to the modern era Riders and Sentai. To an extent, I couldn’t blame him as a lot of the Heisei-era Toku is lacking to a great extent compared to it’s Showa-era equivalents, but I was hoping that it wasn’t a generational divide that one commonly sees in music or film. I have to say I was pretty happy to hear his positive impression of Gokaiger Vs. Gavan (of which you’ll get my thoughts on that soon), so hopefully we’ll get more modern Rider/Sentai material next year to go with the old-school Toku love.

Well, that does it for me at this time, be on the lookout for some Mini-Review to get caught back up on Fourze along with some other surprises, and in the meantime, go check out Monster Attack Team on the web. Well, after you get done watching Versus. HENSHIN!

So…Hiatus #2 is done, now what?

Sorry folks, you’ll have to excuse me for gaps between posts as of late. In the real life field I’m in, I ended up severely screwing up one hand making it almost impossible to type for a couple of months, then screwing up the other hand right afterwards. Yeah, not so great times. I have been keeping up on Toku shows though for the most part.

Kamen Rider Fourze (2012) Episodes 25 & 26 Overview

The Zodiarts that you see here is the Coma Zodiarts, mainly known for using it’s hair to spin off imitations of previous Zodiarts, as well as use said locks for mid-range attacks, although it is vulnerable to an extent to short range attacks. This arc is mainly about Miu and Shun’s impending graduation and chance to go to the prom, which in Fourze’s universe is done after school graduation. Funny.

He will fight for you, until your heart stops beating, at the end of time.

Episode 25: Most of this episode deals with Shun’s hi-jinks with asking Miu out, which took care of the comedic part of the arc very nicely, although once again I must say I’m not too fond of the Shun character having to go to the extreme lengths that he did. I tend to favor more subtle measures in my comedy rather than ultra-over-the-top circuses, so this may be a matter of taste. I also thought Miu’s reasoning for not going out with Shun via wanting to go out with Gentaro instead was not really well done at all. For a show that tries to show character progression, they haven’t done diddly squat to hint at a love triangle between Miu, Shun, and Gentaro. Now one can take into effect that Kamen Rider is a show meant for kids in Japan who are probably not into the icky aspects of hooking up with a significant other, but love stories have worked in Kamen Rider before. I dunno, it just bugs the crap out of me as it really just does nothing but bog the arc down in unnecessary drama. So for the fun drama, let’s talk about Libra and Cancer!

The Zodiarts getting it on.

It is no secret that these two do not like each other, and that antipathy for one another came out full circle this arc with the rooftop battle. Toei really likes doing internal struggles with their villains, and lately they’ve been going all out with the inner circle baddies issues with each other. I almost get a Dark Knight feel from these two, as Libra represents the old guard of Zodiarts while Cancer is more akin to the Joker, well, minus the ultra-violent tendencies and beating sidekicks to death, and crippling other sidekicks…..Anyhow, I’m really interested to see how Gamou will manage to get all of these folks together to work as one unit once all 12 Horoscopes are revealed.

As always the fight choreography was nice to behold, and the PowerDizer actually didn’t pop out too much for cheap TV Toei CG. Staying on the PowerDizer, it’s nice that the staff did go out of their way to differentiate JK’s fighting style from Shun’s, it probably was a pain to animate, but again it did show a great deal of TLC that Fourze has become known for. Another cute aspect of the fight was Tomoko actually keeping Ryusei from transforming into Meteor. I’m really wondering when she ends up finding out who he really is.

 

Episode 26: So we go back to the drama, with Miu suddenly wanting Gentaro, Gentaro just trying to be the best bro that he can, Shun wanting to have the best prom ever, and us having to put up with the Kamen Rider Girls. Yes, what we really needed was a ballad song playing during the climax of the arc involving a pivotal fight scene between Cancer, Coma, and Fourze. Joy. Not-so-great signing aside, at least the episode tried to do what it could with telling a love drama story, well, without and of the love foreshadowing. This whole bit really just dragged everything down for me, to the point of where I wasn’t really able to concentrate on the side issue of Miu and Shun’s graduation shaking up the Kamen Rider Club. My general thought is that they should’ve gone with that as the main angle and based Miu’s anger on having to graduate and leave the club behind, but well, what can you do?

Ryusei once again has to be the mender of relationships as he forces Miu and Shun to come to their senses about their fellow club members and the fact that they need the duo to continue the fight. At this point Ryusei has crossed over into Akira Date territory for me, he’s a character and Kamen Rider that elevates the show into being better simply by his actions (which is also a major reason why I’m looking forward to the next arc with the debut of Meteor Storm).

Something else that popped out to me has to do with the Last One switches. If you haven’t already guessed, the voice of the Last One is the Horoscope who had given out the switch, and I have to say, Kijima’s Last One is nice in how it stands out, almost like the jokes that he likes to spout out even in the midst of battle.

So we get done with the final battle and Miu gets to dance with Gentaro, which again, I thought was pretty lame, but we did get a  pretty sweet series of shots with Shun as he simply took the whole situation like a man and simply walked away…..

Like a Boss.

I also thought the montages for Miu and Shun well pretty well put together, like they were really leaving the show, well, except they’re not. I do have to admit at least this arc served a purpose for making Shun and Miu able to make less appearances on the show as I do feel it was getting harder and harder to showcase all of the members of the KRC.

So, would I recommend viewing this arc? No, not really, unless you really want to see return appearances from the Altar, Dragon, and Chameleon Zodiarts, and maybe some more Ryusei awesomeness. Otherwise just stay put and get ready for Meteor Storm, or better yet, go watch Gokaiger Vs. Gavan. You’ll be glad you did. HENSHIN!

 

 

 

 

Kamen Rider Fourze (2012) Episodes 23 and 24 Overview

So, for this arc we are dealt a Zodiarts that claims to aim for being a hero like Fourze, and Ryusei is starting to soften up a bit more towards becoming just like one of the KRC guys, and we get to see Kijima in action as the Cancer Zodiarts! So does this set of episodes make the grade? Find out after the jump….

Gokaiger (2011-2012) Series Overview

Another day, another Series Overview. This time we’ll be taking a look at the most recently concluded Super Sentai show, Gokaiger, which was also the 35th anniversary joint. With anniversaries, the show in general can be hit or miss, so what did we think overall about how this set of spandex-ed heroes turned out? Keep reading after the jump.