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!
I certainly, I certainly do not understand why Kamen Rider God continues to be so good.
Episode 10 was great. There was really nothing to dislike about it. I like the big surprise at the end.
That was a nice treat. That was not a pun, it was just the truth. It was a nice treat.
And I like the escalation that we're seeing. The bad guys are really bad. They are truly vile.
Stomach ink, not all granutes, hashtag not all granutes are bad, but stomach ink is disgusting and they're absolutely vile.
And they made this awful, awful villain who feels like some sort of, I mean he's literally a child predator.
He's literally preying on children. So, yeah, saying he's a child predator is kind of silly.
But at the same time, you know, that's literally what he's doing. So, it's really nasty, really disgusting.
I really like how bad they're making the bad guys. It's a good thing to make your bad guys bad.
And I really love the sweetness of these two guys. This whole, like, it was funny.
After the fight, there was this whole scene of Honto and Shoma being concerned about each other and trying to hide from each other who they are.
But also thinking, oh no, did I accidentally kill the other guy?
And Valen coming out and just saying, hey, I need these things in order to transform.
And I don't quite trust the guy who did the surgery on me and who got them.
Wow, or he didn't say I don't trust him. He said, I don't want to rely on him too much.
Those are two different things. They're similar. They're probably rooted in the same concern that he has, that everybody has, that has been confirmed by the end of this episode.
Sorry about the minor spoiler, but nothing's really been confirmed.
Just things are being very heavily hinted at. So anyway, do that what you will.
But yeah, it was another great episode. And yeah, like I really cared about them beating this guy.
I hated this villain. I was so happy when he got killed.
And I really cared about Kirari, I think. I don't know her name, but I really cared about Valen, you know, saving her and then having that moment to reconnect with her at the end.
It does feel a little bit weird that he's, you know, watching her dance and he's got dance moves or whatever, but like, you know, they're not like Huchimama dance moves. They're not like inappropriate.
They're, I think, relatively child, you know, age appropriate for that person, for her at that age.
Like, I've never really watched like an idol dance except for the one that showed up in Blue.
Is it Deep Blue? What's that movie? My visionary filmmaker. Perfect Blue. Yeah.
I've seen the idol dancing in Perfect Blue and I guess I've seen the idols dancing a little bit in the Ultraman show based on the manga from Netflix.
But like, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if idol dancing is like wildly inappropriate.
Oh, also in like Glitterforce, they do the CGI idol dance things at the end of the show. And those are, you know, I think those are cute and fun and fun.
And this was like more in that vein than like something, you know, inappropriate.
But it did feel a little weird to do this guy who's like literally preying on children and like, you know, betraying their trust and whatever and like luring them in with his sweets.
And then you have this adult man hanging out with this little girl watching her dance.
It's like, that's kind of weird. Like, if he was her dad, if he was her uncle, cousin maybe, like maybe having that.
But he's supposed to have no family. So that's part of the problem for Valen.
But maybe they just should have had her not be a dancer. Maybe she could have been doing something else that she could have showed him.
She had artwork that she was working on and wanted to show him because he's an art critique critiquer because his boss, Soji, I think Soji showed him how to paint or how to do stuff with the camera as a photographer, as a, you know, artist.
We don't just take pictures of people doing things. We get really good compositions of people with our pictures and like photography as an art and let me take you around art galleries.
Anyway, I'm just saying it could have been different, but they did just do an artist recently. So anyway, whatever.
It just felt a little weird. A little like, are you, are you guys paying attention to your own show that you're writing, that you're making?
But like overall, it was really good. And it was great, actually. Overall, it was great. But just little things, little things. Felt a little weird. Felt a little bit weird.
But also this is a show for kids and like kids like older people, kids like teenagers, they want to impress them. They want to wow them.
And I don't know that a boy's going to want to, like a boy's going to enjoy watching a girl impress an adult or a teenager and then be like, oh, I wish I was doing that instead.
But maybe there are boys in that class. Like, you know, the boy dancing is like a common thing.
Like, you know, we've got two guys dancing and our opening credits are for the show. So it's not a big deal.
But again, what was great was the villainy being set up by like just showing the depth of depravity of Stomach Ink and their operators.
And like, did that guy used to be human or not? I can't tell the part timers. Are those people who've been surgically turned into monsters?
And like, but the guy said, you're betraying us. He said that to, to show us.
So I think he's a granute who has been pressed into service. No, he's doing it on purpose because he wants to.
He's a granute who just wants to do this because he loves them. He loves those drugs, basically.
And he wants to help make more drugs, even though they're made out of people.
So anyway, strange, strange, odd. I don't quite understand.
Well, whatever. I'm gonna leave you that aside. But just like if you look at what they're doing, it's awful.
And like we need our heroes to kill them all, at least from a kink or like stop them somehow.
I'm not I'm anti genocide. Oh, oh, my gosh. I cannot believe I get a chance to talk about the two worst shows I've ever seen.
Drive and Gime. I refuse to call them comrader, driving, comrader guy.
Anyway, in Gime, spoilers for Gime and spoilers for Drive.
Okay, get ready. Strap in. Now, I want to end this quickly because I think I've done a really good job talking about how good this episode was.
And there isn't really much to say because it was just that good. CGI was fine. The giant gun was cool.
I feel like that suit that he's got, the big gummy suit thing, came from X-Aids, zero forms or level zero or level one forms or whatever.
And I think it's amazing. It's brilliant that that turned in like the Muteki thing and like the, you know, God form for the dark guy or the dark X-Aid or whatever.
And I can't believe that that crazy show that I was like, I'm not going to watch this show. It's so stupid. It's dumb.
And then I loved it. It's one of the best Domino shows ever. Yes, X-Aid is one of the best shows. It's true.
I feel like they put that suit in the closet and they're like, you know what?
With this technology, we can make crazy, ridiculous forms for our writers.
And here we have this guy, this giant gummy tint guy, which is insane anyway.
And I can't believe that they're making me like this giant gummy tint guy.
It just it's just shocking to me that I enjoy it so much because I do.
It's it's an incredible suit and it's ridiculous and it's fun and zany.
And I love the giant cannon, the, you know, war machine like shoulder mounted cannons. Fabulous, fabulous.
But anyway, getting back to why Gaiman and Driver trash, they totally violate the spirit of Kamen Rider.
They're totally. Yeah, they totally. That's why they're trash.
They totally violate the spirit of Kamen Rider.
That's really all you need to do to be a bad Kamen Rider show is violate the spirit of Kamen Rider.
But, MJ, how are they? Gaiman uses the power of evil.
I know he does. Drive uses the power of evil. Yeah, I know he does.
But here, here's the thing. In Gaiman, you have, at the end of Gaiman, again, this is spoilers for Gaiman,
you have the titular Kamen Rider, Gaim, Fruit Jesus, as they like to call him, send the bad guy, the snake guy,
whatever the heck his name is, the stupid DJ, whatever.
He has him tell him that he's the villain. He tells the hero, the villain of the show, tells the hero of the show,
Hey, I'm the villain. I caused all these problems. I gave you your powers.
You're the strongest of all the fighters. I can't even. Sorry.
There's an old song. It's featured in Kamen Rider, all 10 Kamen Riders or whatever it's called, Kamen Rider ZX.
The greatest of all the fighters.
Anyway, and saying that about that guy made me feel disgusted because I love Kamen Rider that much in a really weird way.
And it's just like, it'd be like if Shocker, the great leader in the last episode,
they unmasked him and he was like, right. And then it's just the snakes coming out of his head.
And then he was like, Hey, I give you guys your power. I made you strong.
I made you able to copy, you know, destroy all these things.
And they were like, Ichimonji and Hongo turned to each other and said, you know, the great leader is right.
He did give us all our powers and he did make us so strong and he helped us destroy all these things by giving us all these challenges.
Let's let him leave. Let's just let him take off and do whatever the hell he wants to do and go to America and destroy it.
And or wherever we're going to go to another planet and destroy it.
That's what happened at the end of Gaim. That is not a good Kamen Rider show.
That is against the spirit of Kamen Rider. The Kamen Riders should have come back.
The double Riders should have come back and killed Gaim because he was evil, because he was aiding and abetting evil.
Something that a lot of Tokusatsu fans say they hate.
Supporting powerful men who are in powerful positions where they can wield all this power to hurt people and do evil to them.
They see they're against that and then they like trash shows like Gaim or they like trash shows like Drive where the hero characters, hero characters actively engage in a genocide.
Yes, Drive commits a genocide against these evil AI.
The evil AI are only evil because Rikusajou wanted them to be. Rikusajou is actually a very interesting writer.
I think people feel I think I feel about Rikusajou the way people feel about Toshiki Inoue.
Actually, that's not true because I don't hate Rikusajou.
I just don't like some of the story choices he makes.
And people seem to hate Toshiki Inoue, who's one of my favorite Kamen Riders or Tokusatsu writers.
I've only watched Half of Dawn Brothers and I loved it, but stuff happened and I stopped watching it.
I haven't had the strength to go back into it.
Anyway, yeah, Rikusajou for whatever reason decided to make the God Dad guy from Kamen Rider Drive
actively turn all of the AI that he created, all the Roam Mutes bad.
The Roam Mutes could be good. They're neutral.
They have hearts. They have fully functional morality systems or whatever.
But he actively towards the end of the show.
Well, before that, they end up putting up a hit list.
The drive team, whatever they're called, pit or crew or I can't remember what they're called.
Anyway, they're like the RID DMV group.
Anyway, they actively set up a board of like we're going to eliminate all these Roam Mutes.
It's like, but they're not all evil. Why are you going to kill them all?
Is this like an ACAB show or what is this?
And they systematically kill them all and then they don't because again, Sanjo or Bandai or whatever.
The creators behind the show didn't want it to happen where they could do like what they did in Kamen Rider Kiva,
which was spoilers for Kiva, find a peaceful resolution, find a way to coexist with the enemy race.
Instead, they decided, well, you're going to kill them all.
The 108 Roam Mutes or whatever it was, they systematically went through and they made sure they massacred all of them.
And it was disgusting. And I thought, how is this okay?
Like if there was a way for them to coexist with an alien species or whatever, with this other group of existences,
these other group of people, why wouldn't they try to find a way?
And maybe that's why I liked Zero One so much because they took that idea and they said, oh, we've got these AI,
we've got these robots, we've got these whatever.
And then, you know, can we find a way to live with them in peace?
And the answer is yes, if you just try, if you just have imagination, like Kamen Rider Ark might say,
you can actually make things work.
Like if you don't just make like, oh, I like the hardness of the edginess, the darkness of the original Kamen Rider,
that opening scene in Shin Kamen Rider where he's massacring the shocker runs.
And when he's in the bathroom looking at the blood on his hands and just how monstrous he's become.
I like that. I feel like there's a place for that.
I feel like that belongs in Shella.
One of the most beautiful things ever in Kamen Rider was when Emru got the Muteki form in Zero One, in Ex-Aid,
and he was able to rewrite the code of his enemies and stop them from being bad.
And that was incredible. Anyway, I could rant and rant, but like if Kamen Rider could,
if the original Kamen Rider could save his fellow cyborgs, he would do it.
Unfortunately, he can't, so he has to kill them.
However, later iterations of Kamen Rider, when the writers, when the creative team,
when the production behind it wants to make a genocide happen in the show,
when they don't have to, or they want the hero to help the villain and let them go victimize other people,
that's totally not Kamen Rider. And that's totally not what's going on here.
I've lost my focus right now. I cannot remember this lady's name.
Junko Komura. Yes, Junko Komura seems to get something that Butcher,
or whatever his name was, the Butcher, Genro Bucci, and Riku Sanjo, I guess for God?
Something that Genro Bucci didn't know, or something that Riku Sanjo forgot.
And that was to like remember the core of what makes Kamen Rider Kamen Rider,
and then do it in an interesting, fun, creative way that really pushes the boundaries
and sets things up, or like allows you to explore and manifest the reality of what Kamen Rider is,
the spirit and the heart of Kamen Rider in these vastly different forms.
For context, I have not seen Ryuki, so I cannot tell you how well Yasuko Kobayashi does with that show.
I loved Oz. Oz was fabulous. I don't understand why people like him at all, let alone love him,
but that's another story for another time. And yeah, that's not what's going on in this show.
Komura understands Kamen Rider, and she's manifesting it in this crazy zany world,
and she's making sure that the villains are evil villains, and the ones that need to be destroyed are being destroyed.
And will there be redemption? Will there be some sort of salvation?
Will there be some sort of reckoning for these people where they can mend their ways and return to their...
what are they called? Granted society and not be monsters anymore? It's possible.
And I would be okay with that. There definitely does not need to be a Granute Genocide,
because the vast majority of Granutes seem to be leaving people alone and not killing humans.
But then you have these jokers doing this, and it's just... I don't know, whatever.
Komura's doing a great job. This is a great show. Yeah, and those other shows are not so great.
And I don't know how Riku Sanjo wrote the first half of Guyver, the OVAs, the 88 or 92 or whatever it was,
the ones released by ADV with Steve Blum. And... oh, I can't remember his name right now.
Oh, Tom Fun, Tom Charles, in it. I don't know how he could have written those first six episodes of that show,
which were fantastic, and set up a really good story. And then also written Double,
which I have quibbles with, but is a very, very good show. Also, Futopi, which is actually really good.
I like it in spite of my problems with Double, because they're directly there.
And yeah, I don't know. He's done a lot of good work and a lot of great things over the years.
But then he made Drive, and that just drives me absolutely bonkers.
And it makes it worse, what added insult to injuries that Drive is one of the best opening themes of any Comrader, ever!
Anyway, tell me what you thought about Guyver...
Do you want...
Tell me what you thought about Guyver and Drive if you want to, but tell me what you thought about this episode of Gov.
I'd be curious to hear. Let's have a conversation about it all.
I hope you enjoyed that. Please, remember to like, share, and subscribe.
I invite you to comment, ask questions, and share your thoughts with me.
It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation.
Until next time, be well, and do good things.
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