Kamen Rider OOO Series Overview (2010-2011)

Hello folks, it’s time for another overview, of which we dedicate large blocks of text to going over a series in its’ entirety. This will actually be a review of a recent series, the titular Kamen Rider OOO. When this show was initially revealed, a lot of folks were wondering about the suit design, the Multi-King Concept, and the whole Hippie look sported by Eiji Hino, the protagonist of the series. Did the show manage to live up to our expectations? Find out after the jump. Oh, a fair warning, if you haven’t finished the show yet, be mindful of the spoilers, as we usually like to break out a ton of them, for this show and other shows.

To start off with, you should know that this is a “Kobayashi” show, meaning that she’s the main writer and driver of the OOO story. For those who have seen Kamen Rider Den-O, you should know what to expect here, which is a TON of plodding along then a rush ending along with a final villain that is kinda meh. The narrative abandoned the initial Multi-King quest pretty quickly for 30+ episodes of Kazari scheming, which to be honest kinda of got old very quickly. I did expect the Greeed to fall apart, but what I did not anticipate was that the gathering of other Greeed’s medals would be discouraged via the Mega-Greeed form, which would then lead to a great deal of back-and-forth between Kazari, Uva, and Ankh before Doctor Maki would emerge as the true villain of OOO.

Doctor Maki is another issue I had. It was very clear they meant to portray him as a malevolent character, but were afraid to pull the trigger; the episodes with Chikiyo almost seemed to be a means of potential redemption for the Doctor until the end of the episode where it is revealed that he killed his sister, setting him down the path of meeting his end. I felt as if they were on the teeter-totter the whole time about him in the writing room, although this may be due to Movie Wars Core, in which there was a Dinosaur Greeed known as Gil who was the master of the purple medals, instead of Maki.

Something else that bothered me was the lack of continuity with Movie Wars Core. The previous series W had done a masterful job in integrating the movies’ story with the overall narrative, which even continued into the Skull sidestory in Core. The OOO part though was completely disjointed, as many characters did not act the way there were supposed to, you only saw Shingo-Ankh once, and again, the appearance of Gil setup a potential payoff that was never ruptured. With those many issues, it was probably no wonder Kobayashi and the OOO staff did not incorporate Movie Wars into their canon, but with how well W was managed, it still ends up being a crying shame.

There were a couple of things we did like with OOO, mainly with Eiji himself, Kogami, and the Birth Bromance. Eiji was actually pretty good for his role, a character who was more into helping others as much as possible due to trauma suffered indirectly by his own hands (or in the show’s case, his $$). I do give props to the OOO staff for not having Eiji go down the path of many other riders and have an extensive emo moment, or have Hina be the love combo needed to find his destiny. I also give props for not pulling the evil boss trope with Kogami, as he really is just a silly cakeboss who is all about subarashi!

The bromance involving Gotoh and Date is probably the highlight of the series for me though, as the Date character was a welcome relief while Eiji was mired in Kazari-Land, as he managed to greatly lighten up the tone of the whole series during this time. The Date character’s popularity did force Gotoh into staying as a backup for now, but his character was much more roundly developed as a result, to where when he finally did become Kamen Rider Birth, it made much more impact and sense than where he was at in the spot where he was supposed to take over in the original narrative. I probably could have done without the Double Births, but at least it gave a great way for Date to come back at the end of the series.

So would we recommend OOO as a whole? Yes, but not as a “First Kamen Rider” series. It is lighter in tone than older Heisei and Showa efforts, but the plodding of the narrative in the middle makes it a trying watch. The end also is kinda screwy (making it 2 clunky KR endings in a row, grrrrr!), as Kobayashi basically makes it to where unless they can come up with an effective means of being able to bring back Ankh and the medals, Movie War 2012 might as well be treated as an AU story, much like the OOO and Core material. We guess the basic wording to put this show would be, “Fun, yet Frustrating”, and until Kobayashi can figure out how to maintain a tight narrative and learn to incorporate other writers stories from films she has not written, the next Kamen Rider series she helms will probably be the same case. Henshin!