Henshin Inspection presents Writer Tears. This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Find all my work at MJMunoz.com Prepare yourself for some biting Kamen Rider analysis.
My grandmother said this, you have to be kind to be strong. Now, let's go Writer Chat!
So Kamen Rider God episode 4 sure happened and there were marshmallows and that was kind of funny.
I like the fact that they've toned down showing how explicitly the marshmallows pop out of the gov.
Yeah, the gov, the red gov and like go through his boxers and out into the floor and whatever.
They just popped out into his hand this time, which was much better. It was a little too extreme before.
It was a little too much. We got a lot of backstory for Shoma and his family.
We had a lot more context for him and his mother and I know in the flashbacks his mom is shown eating stuff
that she thinks is disgusting and I don't know if that was grass on the side of the road or what.
I don't know if when he's a little kid and his mom is there with him, they're eating whatever they're eating
because they refuse to eat certain things from stomach ink and then they go off and like maybe they ran away
for a while and they were surviving off of grass, whatever that means, and then they got captured again by stomach.
I'm not sure. They talk about the old man's not here to protect you anymore. So like there was a lot of stuff that happened.
There was a lot of like lore that was dropped in this episode and we learned that like for instance the treats,
the dark confections aren't going to humans. They're supposed to just be going to granute granites
and there's like premium product and there's middle product and there's like the real cheap stuff
and it's just like mass produced stuff and they are these aliens from another world I guess.
And that's interesting and I think that's good. I like that it's not that humans are eating these things as well.
That's nice for now at least who knows maybe that will change at some point.
But what? What's my point? I mean it was nice. We kind of have been seeing the threads forming or the little,
you know, we've been seeing the breadcrumbs and getting little clues about what exactly is going on
and what the story is and we finally got the full context that like right before he escaped when he pops out,
you know, that interdimensional door or whatever and he falls out of that plane that his mother had just been killed
and that's when he ran away. So that was like his mother just died.
And again we get another clue that, you know, his mom talked about marshmallows.
So he knows about marshmallows so he has an emotional connection to marshmallows.
So when he eats them, then that's when he gets the power from them.
So it makes sense that the munchkins as one subgroup translated to the Gochibos, the Chirisos,
I don't know why I have such a hard time with that word.
They are formed by these things that he has emotional connection with.
So that was cool to see. It's really sweet that we have this story about this Japanese couple.
I felt like this is Minato from Persona 3 meeting the old book couple who they think he looks like their son.
Sort of, kind of not really. They're like a sweet old couple who feeds this guy and kind of takes him in and, you know, whatever happens.
I liked that story. I liked Shoma hanging out with his aunt and uncle as he called them.
My phone decided it was too hot to run. So anyway, now I'm back.
So yeah, aunt and uncle, whatever their names were. And yeah, so I liked that. I like, you know, what's going on here.
I like that we get to see a little bit more of the castle, a little bit more of what's going on.
We at the same time get more going on with Honto. Is it or not Honto? I don't know. Let me see.
Let me move this page over here and do this real quick.
OK, so we got one there. One to buckle my shoe. OK, good. That's going to be for looking at the crew.
OK, so yes. Actually, I lost one more thing.
Yes, everybody deserves a price. So yeah, then we get Honto doing stuff with Kenzo Suga,
which is Suga supposed to sound like Suga, like Suga, you know, like Suga.
Anyway, I'm kind of wondering if maybe this guy is not a Grenute researcher.
If he instead, well, if he's a Grenute researcher, but he's a bad Grenute researcher, is it possible that he wants to make his own Kamen Rider power?
He wants his own Dark Confections power that he can use on his own for his own purposes, independent from Stomach Ink.
Is it possible he's one of these agents? I guess I was suspecting that he was one of the agents that showed up, but there were a couple of agents.
There was an agent in orange. There was a male agent with orange stripe thingies, straps coming off of him.
There was an agent with white straps coming off of him who I think got killed here.
And then the female agent, I don't remember what her stripes looked like, but I find it interesting that there's male and female agents.
And this, the twins agents were like a power couple.
I think one of the twins is played by a guy and I noticed, you know, one agent was male and one agent was female.
And before people jump all over me and attack me, I'm not following all the stuff behind the show.
So I don't know if like in show he's a girl or if in show he's a guy because there's a long tradition, fruits basket.
One of the characters is a girl, but he's not a girl. He just likes dressing a girl, but he's totally a boy.
Things are a little weird in fruits basket. It's been like over 15 years since I've read the manga or watched the show at all.
But I'm pretty sure the little boy, he's like super cute looking little girl, but he's a little boy.
Like he dresses as a girl, but he knows he's not a girl.
So like it could be that this is a brother and sister twin pair who's like so close that one of them is like, look, we got to either both be boys or both be girls.
And I'm fine being a girl, so I'll join you sister.
That very well could be like a twist that happens later in the show or you just be straight up that it's a guy playing the girl and it's supposed to be played straight like that.
But if that's the case, I do find it sort of interesting that there's the male agent here, unless it's to make a red herring or orange and white herring for the other agent, because I'm pretty sure there's a third agent.
Like I said, I think it's an orange agent, an agent orange, if you will, who might actually be Suga.
So that's interesting. I don't really know what's going on with that, but Suga seems a little suspicious.
I got to say he feels like a wild card. He could be anything.
And I like that Honto's boss is suspicious of him. That really makes me happy.
That really makes me happy because he's a smart guy.
Anyway, yeah, so like we have a little bit of a setup that, you know, Suga has a couple of the gochisos and he wants to use them to make somebody powerful enough to fight the Granute, either him or Honto, if Honto was interested in that sort of thing, you know.
So it kind of feels like maybe he's like baiting him, like he knows more than he's letting Honto know that he knows. Does that make sense? Yeah.
He knows more than he's letting on to Honto. That's the point. Maybe that's what's going on. I'm not 100% sure.
But if it is what's going on, well, regardless, he's an interesting character so far and his role seems to be very interesting.
And I'll be very curious to see how that operates.
Be very curious to see how that operates.
Anyway, so yeah, I like this episode overall. The fights were really cool. The Marshmallow form was pretty cool.
It was really goofy and funny that he's like floating on the sound effects, which I think we got something going on with like the chipped, you know, crunch sound effects previously.
So like it's this show's just going to lean into the weird. But like we had a really cool moment in the forest where he's doing the civilian fighting at first.
Shilma is and then he transforms and he gets like thrown by the agents and he lands on a tree and he's almost like got a Spider-Man moment going on where he's like hanging on the tree.
And then he jumps off of it and like his sword comes out of his belt and then he starts swinging at them and attacking them like they're really fighting him.
And then he like tactically juices the guy in the face because apparently these helmet things that these guys, the agents are wearing our faces of some sort and their actual eyes can be and have juice squirted into them.
I had to I honestly had to go back and look at it like three or four times.
And it wasn't until the very last time when I was going through this episode looking for screenshots that I realized, oh, he's grabbing his gummy chess piece and.
It's so weird and sick and strange. He squeezes it and it shoots juice out and it gets in the guy's eyes and he's like, oh, I can't see.
And then that is able to make his big move and break through and get the marshmallow thing and stick it into the belt and.
Do his thing. And that's when he turns the tide of the battle and kills these two agents and the sisters, the twins or whatever.
They'd be his cousins, right? Like the whole stomach family is it's like his uncle and his cousins.
Is that correct? I think that's correct. Anyway.
Anyway. So I don't know. I'm intrigued. I like what's going on.
I like that we have like a clear statement of what the background is. And there's still questions that are there.
Apparently, he couldn't use the. Any of the good you. Go cheese those at all or munchkins as they call them in this in this sub with a subgroup.
Geo, I believe it is. Anyway, he couldn't use them with his red gov, which implies that there are gobs of other colors.
But we see that the stomach people have the stomach.
People have these like triangular medallions as their belt and they shove the little thing in there and it transforms them from their face, the human face to their monster face.
And then when they all transform, like you can still see their necks and their hands and stuff that like tall, dark, scary lady.
You know, I'm talking about she's tall and has like real black like, you know, very dark black hair.
And it's long. She looks a little older, maybe in the mid thirties or forties or whatever, as opposed to like the twins who look like they're in their 20s.
And she's like carrying a baseball bat or something or like some sort of club.
She's really scary. But like you can see, like her hands very plainly, but she's got the monster head and like that's kind of what all the stomaching people have.
But is it only when they transform with those belts? But if they're actually monsters or aliens, like, shouldn't that be the natural function they have to transform into being the human form?
You would think I don't know. It's kind of strange.
Also, other than budget and comfort for the actors, if they're aliens and they're in their alien world, then why should they all have human faces on?
Because it's like company policy that they have human faces on when they're not when they're in certain areas like where the employees can see them.
Whenever I was a little confused with that from a couple of episodes ago, but the brother of the twins, he says that and like they try to trick him.
But he knows about Shoma or he guesses that Shoma's alive and they're surprised that he shows them.
It's like there's a lot of stuff going on here and I'm not going to go into all that.
I wanted to talk real quick about the people who worked on the show.
So I have two for him. We go back to the beginning.
So this real quick, I want it. So the action was fantastic.
So I just want to highlight that the director of this episode is.
Sorry, my Internet is having a ton of problems. Shibasaki Takayuki, who has done a bunch of stuff.
Let me see. So it shows Kamen Rider stuff for him.
Does it show Super Sentai as well? Because I feel like he did.
There's also Chiroraki Sugihara, who does a bunch of directing for both series, I believe.
But let me see. So for Shibasaki Takayuki, Shibasaki, really, he's been working on 40 on the on recent stuff.
Recent kind of goes back well. So he did a couple of like two episodes of Kabuto, two episodes of Den-O, six episodes of Decade, six of Double, 10 of O's, only four episodes of Fourzei.
I wonder why he was limited to that. Oh, wait.
He did one of the best episodes, only had best pairs of episodes from Fourzei, the Christmas pair of episodes with Perseus.
That is an excellent Zodiac design and that is a cool episode with a bunch of fights and it's got a really cool story to it as well.
So anyway, hats off to him for doing that. And yeah, my Internet dropped out crap.
So after that, he only did two episodes of Wizard.
He did nine episodes of Gaim, seven of Drive, two episodes of Ghost. What happened? Eight episodes of Build.
Maybe did Ghost have a lot of wire work like Wizard did?
Well, maybe and Fourzei was directed by the King of Wires himself, Kouki Sakamoto, so maybe he doesn't do so much on the wire stuff as other directors do.
And for Wizard for his kicks, they actually hired a special suit actor who just did the kicks.
And for Ghost, he was flying around on wires and stuff. So that's part of that connection there.
He did the Billy the Kid episode. That's funny.
And for Build, he did eight. Zeo, he did nine. Zero One, he did eight. Saber, he did six.
He did 11 episodes of Revice, nine episodes of Geats, eight episodes of Gatchard.
And so far he's got two of these episodes of Gob. He did the last one as well.
So that's cool to know what his legacy is on this. And he said the fighting was excellent.
The fight scenes were really great to watch, a lot of fun, very creative, very action oriented.
It was really visceral when Gob's being choked out by the agent. He could really feel that.
And there was some cool POV shots on the guns where they're shooting with them and stuff.
And that was really cool. And I liked that the guy was more hand-to-hand combat and the girl was using her range weapon, her gun.
That was pretty cool to see. And I thought that was neat. Let me see if I can pull up the writer real quick.
Okay, I got it back for a short amount of time. Junko Komura has written all five of these first episodes.
Well, the first four and then she's also credited for the fifth episode, which I guess they must have it up on the official website.
So that's pretty cool. I do want to check out her Super Sentai credits real quick because for Kamen Rider specifically, she wrote most of Wizard.
It doesn't tell how many episodes there. One, two, three, four episodes of Drive. And then like I said, these five episodes here.
So, okay. So in the notes it says this, besides Kamen Rider, she was also the head writer for Akiba Ranger.
Like, wait, the unofficial Sentai Akiba Ranger? Wow. Okay. Interesting. And people love that.
Oh, Jyuojer, Dobutsu Sentai Jyuojer, Lupo versus Potranger. I didn't realize that was her.
I guess I must have remembered that or known it at the time. Zenkaiger.
And she was a guest writer on Gohanjer, GoSager, GoKaiger, which makes sense. They pulled in a lot of people.
Oh, she was also the head writer for Satira or Satria, Garuda Bima X, which is that.
Well, click on it now and see what it is. It's from another country.
Indonesian Tokusatsu produced by Indonesian MNC and Japan's Ishimori Productions, a company behind the Kamen Rider series.
That is crazy. That's crazy. Huh. I wonder if she had to have that translated.
Interesting. Super interesting. That's a show I've never checked out, but I'm not against it. Just I haven't done it.
So I want to look at her Ranger Wiki entry as well. Oh, no, that's not the one I wanted to look at.
That's the one I want to look at. Yeah. So she wrote two episodes of. Oh, no.
She wrote, um, wow, one episode of Gohanjer and then the I guess the Gohanjer versus Gaggy Ranger movie.
And then two episodes of Go Sager. Then one, two, three, 16 episodes of Go Kajin. That is a lot.
That's almost a third. Yeah. Then she wrote most of the episodes of Akihime Ranger.
And yeah, for Jyuojer, she wrote a lot of them, like 30 probably, which is cool.
Lupinranger, she wrote even more. And for Zenkaiger, which I didn't watch at all, she wrote everything except for episode 20 and 25, which is interesting.
So, yeah, pretty interesting.
I just want to give credit because I think that Gob is really well written so far, and it's really holding my interest.
It's really neat what they're doing with it. And I'm impressed that this is her.
This is her second Kamen Rider series where she's the full the writer and everything, right? I think that's right. I hope so.
Anyway, sorry I messed that up. But anyway, I'm entertained. I'm liking what I'm seeing so far from Gob.
And I'm really excited to see where they go from here. Honto is pretty sure his mom's dead.
He seems like he's driven to become a Kamen Rider. We know now for sure, 100%, even though I think we knew before that Shouma's mother is dead.
And we know that his family killed her. We don't know why she was married to his father or whatever.
And don't know how that happened. And we don't know what the resolution is for this.
And that's what we got to watch the rest of the show to find out, right?
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