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!
Kamen Rider God episode 7 was a really good one.
Another good one.
Chiyoko Komura continues to do well.
She gets the writing credit for this episode, released October 13th, 2024.
Teruaki Sugihara was the director of the episode.
The direction was fantastic.
I saw somebody the other day
talking about how they think Sugihara is a big fan of Hong Kong film.
And like this running thing was a reference to something,
a movie called Hardball that came out in 1992.
And they put up a clip of it and I could definitely see the parallels.
That was really cool.
And I don't know who to give credit to for that, unfortunately.
And I might not be able to find it quickly.
So, sorry about that.
But whoever you are out there, thank you for sharing that.
It's a great insight.
Very cool.
I'm glad to know that and to see that that's something he was into.
And that's something that he is bringing to Kamen Rider.
I think it's been more than just Gov that Sugihara has done this sort of thing.
But regardless, it's cool and it's good and I'm glad it's here.
And I hope we continue to get more of it because, well, like I said, it was really cool.
As much as I love the story of Kamen Rider and it's so important to me,
it is a visual medium and it's important that the stories are told in a visually interesting way,
in a beautiful way, in a dynamic way, in a way that really pulls in people.
Because you can have the most wonderful story in the world,
but if there's nothing attractive there or there's something repellent to people there,
then kind of what's the point?
Kind of what's the point?
And you're messing up as a storyteller if you refuse to make things in such a way that it draws people in
and gets them invested in the world, in the characters, in the story.
What's more important?
World, story, characters, story, characters, world.
I don't really know.
Depends who you ask.
Depends what kind of author you ask.
Depends what kind of audience you're asking as well.
Because everybody has different opinions on those sorts of things.
So, yeah, I don't really know how to answer that question.
So I won't be answering that question right now.
Let me see.
I'm scrolling through Twitter right now to see if I can find that, oops, that reference real quick
so I can give credit where credit is due.
And, sorry.
Oh man, people are funny.
The internet is like, it's an amazing, scary, wonderful thing.
That's part time suck and part time treasure.
So very interesting.
Very, very interesting.
So, yes, I would say that I'm not going to find it scrolling through right now.
So I'm going to pivot and I'm going to go back to talking about the episode on my terms and the way I want to.
So anyway, here we go.
What else did Suga Haru direct so far in Ga?
Let's see.
One, two, seven, and eight.
OK, so one and two, the first and second episodes, which had amazing action.
Remember, we all freaked out about the boxcar action that we were getting there.
So very appropriate.
Very cool, Suga Haru.
Thank you very much.
Your work is appreciated.
And, yeah, so getting back to talking about the story stuff and the character stuff that I'm so interested in.
I love this dualism that's going on.
I mentioned last time we've got.
Yeah, I think I mentioned last time we've got two writer teams forming.
We've got the Kenzo Kanto team.
We've got the Dente Shoma team and.
Two of them are.
Granu and two of them are.
Human.
And this Kenzo is a lost half brother and he is a stomach as well.
Because Shoma seems to be able to conceal his stomach, at least his clothing does.
That might just be for the prop.
And then it appears in the preview for next episode, Kenzo specific.
Well, yeah.
And then the Stomach Ink family, they're hiding their stomachs as well because.
Was it Guta?
Gringa?
Greta?
Is that you, Greta?
Let's see.
What is her name?
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
Shoma, both stay.
Honto, that clear up.
Chopicoon, Shoma.
Stomach Ink back on earth.
Chopicoon, Chopicoon, talk to me, Tomiki.
Alright.
Happy party.
Masuku.
I'm trying really hard.
Trying so, so, so, so hard.
Glotta.
There we go.
Glotta.
I was close with whatever I said.
Anyway, so Glotta.
Is.
Able to hide her belt.
She's definitely wearing clothes where you would see the stomach thing if she had it out.
And the other sisters, Shita and Jeeb, their belt is concealed too.
So anyway, the stomach thing is concealed.
And their stomachs look different too from Shoma's, don't they?
They don't have like the full monster stomachs of the part timers.
And they don't have the full monster stomachs of the actual monsters.
The part timers, one, they're transformed.
So they've got some other kind of stomach that is concealed.
So it could be possible that Kenzo is one of them.
And maybe he's not half-Granu.
Maybe he's whole Granu.
But then again, maybe he's half-Granu and the stomach is concealable through certain
means and maybe he has those means.
So anyway, we've got the two parallel teams.
We've got Gov and Valon.
We've got Dente and Kenzo as the mad scientists behind them.
And we have the two of them confronting, not confronting each other, meeting each other
and having interactions with each other.
And I was really disappointed at the end of last episode.
It looked like they weren't going to meet anytime soon.
And the preview kind of, you know, dispelled that concern for me.
But I was worried about when they would meet and how they would meet and how contentious
things might be.
But what happened was they talked.
They talked and they had a reasonable conversation while keeping their distance from each other.
And like both fronting and both internally freaking out.
And we got to see that.
And that was really cute and adorable.
And I like that we're seeing like they're being serious, like they're handling it seriously
and they're trying to do things in a serious way that makes sense in a world of like danger
and threats and things like that.
They're not just being silly goofballs externally, but internally they are being silly goofballs
because that's who they are.
And that's kind of a nice balance.
Like they get to have that harder edge.
They get to be standoffish.
They get to interrogate each other and like find out is this guy an enemy or an ally?
What is he doing?
Like, are you going to hurt humans?
No way.
I've never heard humans.
OK, fine.
Great.
Then you're good.
Oh, I shouldn't tell them I'm part of Stomach Inc, though.
Anyway, like it's I don't know.
It's interesting because like they are fronting to a degree.
They're putting on these characters and who they should be and how they should represent
themselves.
But they're doing it like for legitimate reasons.
And they're doing it like against character.
They're doing against their type of like these happy, more positive guys.
And it's nice.
Again, it's nice that we have such a dark show.
Then we have serious things going on.
These guys are happy.
I've been thinking a lot about Kamen Rider, digging into the roots of Kamen Rider.
If you look at my website, I've been making articles about Kamen Rider, what it means,
what the original stuff is, what the spirit of it is.
How can I make my own thing like Kamen Rider?
But you know, distinct from it and with its own with its own identity and also legally distinct.
You know, I just don't want to make karate bug man or, you know, grasshopper man and call it a day.
That's not enough.
Although.
That's not enough.
Let me say, but it was a cool curriculum.
That's a cool suit. Anyway.
So like, but that's not enough.
That's just for fun.
And maybe.
Anyway, that's not enough for me.
And I want to do something more than that.
But, you know, how do you do that?
You got to think about what the original was like and what it meant to Keishihongo.
I mean, Nami Kouchiro. These guys had joy.
They had happiness, even though there was always this sadness.
There was always this loneliness.
There was always this distance that they had between them and the world around them, the humans around them,
because they were no longer ordinary men. And these guys show more so than Honto has that kind of thing where they're withdrawn and they have to be a little bit distant.
And yet these guys, their personalities are so peppy and so happy that it still feels a lot like a lot of fun.
That's not saying black wasn't fun and the original cover writer wasn't fun.
I would say the original cover writer, the cast around Hongo and Ichimonji makes it more fun than they do necessarily.
But like black is pretty fun, like Nami Kouchiro is a fun guy.
Probably owed to Tsurukura to be so charming.
But yeah, this was really fantastic. I love the balancing of the tone.
I like that Honto is learning more about the world of the Granutes, that he's investigating,
that he runs into Glata and that he sees that she doesn't have a stomach thing on her, but he learns that she's not a Roamute.
A Granute and that she confronts him and the lady's tall.
The lady's really tall, unless, no, I didn't look at everybody's character profiles, but that's a tall lady.
It was funny how she like lorded it over Jeeve and Shita and like threatened them and stuff.
She's super intimidating. And I was learning what her thing, I thought it was like a wrench.
But it turns out it's this collapsible sight thing that she has, a Granute sight, which is super cool.
Kind of reminds me of Marluxia, I think, from Dude Looks Like a Lady from Kingdom Hearts, Organization XIII,
anyway, with his pink sight and his flowers and stuff. Anyway, kind of fun.
Also, Kamatari the Lord Scythe, I think, from Ruruna Kenshin. That was a transvestite.
I think this lady's all woman, but still they have that sort of thing going on in the show.
I don't want to talk more about that, but it's just an interesting, interesting connection, interesting visual connection, I think, sort of maybe.
She's a big lady, kind of like, you know, she's like Japanese Sigourney Weaver, I think, when I see this lady.
Anyway. So, yeah, I really like this episode. I like where it's going. I like the tone. I like the direction.
I like all the stuff that's going on with the story. There's something going on with Sachika.
Oh, I like that this is a two-parter, but it didn't feel like a two-parter because the B story, the A story got like three quarters of the way to its climax,
and then the B story really started to ratchet up and got to like the middle point.
So I would think between, I would think resolving those two in the next episode will be enough for this, for that episode to kind of stand on its own,
even though it was led into by this one. But this one also, to me, even though it has like a cliffhanger type ending,
it still felt like it stood on its own. It wasn't like a Forze type, and I love Forze.
It wasn't like a Forze type cliffhanger where it ends in the next 30 seconds, new 30 or 45 seconds of the next episode.
And then it's kind of like a cheat. Although there's no reason for Glata to run away, but she could do that. We'll see. We'll see.
But yeah, like I said, I like that this episode stood on its own. I like that it's connecting to the other episode.
I like that all this paralleling that we're seeing and these two teams that we're seeing and like, you know, Satchika is it's natural to suspect that she might become a Kamen Rider as well.
Because kind of why not? We were like Lady Riders were coming more of a thing. I haven't watched the last two shows, but they both featured like I didn't watch.
The T-Rex pink guys, that one. I didn't watch the sword one, the book sword one. I didn't watch the the chemi card one.
I think all of those had like featured like prominently in the cast, a female writer or two who's like very tied in with the main guys, the main cast.
That's interesting. And we'll see what happens with her. We'll see what happens with her because there's definitely potential.
But, you know, in order for that to happen, something tragic would have to happen to her.
We did just introduce this great aunt character to her, this, you know, wealthy old lady who she's trying to make happy.
And like that's her job. And she ended up being very sad. Oh, it was a really interesting moment with her and the painter guy.
She was like being peppy and trying to encourage him and stuff. And he through painted her and it felt like a really like a vile moment.
And it felt really like, I don't know, like almost violating. And the actress performance from being so peppy and up here all the time to being down and like shocked and upset was like really interesting.
It was really good to see. It was really moving to some extent. And I thought that was really cool.
And I like seeing the range out of her and makes me think, yeah, she could definitely pull off the whole writer thing and we could see that aspect of her as well, which could be really cool.
So that's all for now. Let me know what you thought of the episode. And yeah.
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