This is MJ with Writer Tears. I'm talking about
Kamen Rider Zets Episode 6, In Prison. I suppose
Case 6 is In Prison. It's written by Yui Takahashi,
the main writer for the show, and the director
is Kyohei Yamaguchi, who I will come back to
later because I like what I saw. Overall, I'm
just going to let you know, if you came for my
short, you'll know this. I don't really know
what happened in this episode. I don't know what
is going on. I feel like an idiot saying that
because this is like a, you know, kid show for
priests. Is it preschoolers? Is that what the
official word is from some Japanese fans who
are talking to us on Twitter? I don't know. Maybe.
Whatever. But yeah, I mean, I like the episode
overall. I'm going to go ahead and tell you I'm
confused about something, which is that for Machine,
which is a blue suit, he has the subsuit of Stream,
which has the three blue slashes on it. Maybe
across his chest. And the belt is blue. I don't
quite understand or know why the subsuit is changing.
It kind of confuses me. I don't know if it's
just for color consistency and for it to look
good. If they wanted to do that, they could have
saved the time and energy developing these different
sub... suit designs uh which from my perspective
as a writer and somebody who designs stuff in
such a way that i try to make it make sense in
world and out of world um you know from a metatextual
standpoint uh as well as textual standpoint um
i don't know why you would waste the time and
energy on that let's see there's probably gonna
be four basic forms and then each of those will
have a couple accessory type things that go with
it so impact uses transform and impact uses wing
for sure Impact is the red suit with the green
muscles on it. It's the classic writer look.
And when he uses wing and when he uses transform,
wing lets him fly, of course, transform lets
him change parts of his body. He gets the sleeker
suit with the flat chest and abs on it, but it's
still the green color. So the green and the red,
do they clash? Do they not? I don't know if you
go by a classic commoner or what he looked like.
They don't clash at all. But if you go by modern
standards in color theory, they're complementary
colors. So that's kind of funny. If you just
kept that base suit with the grayed out lines,
like the charcoal lines on it and the... I can't
see some of the other details on it. I'm trying
to look at a picture from the show and it's not
clear enough to me. There's not enough detail.
Anyway, if you had the gray lines and you had
the flat green and you had blue with it, would
it clash too much? No, I don't think so. If you
had purple with it, would it clash too much?
I don't think so. Wing is supposed to be pink,
but it's red with pink. The red doesn't clash.
I don't know what the fourth color is. I guess
it'd be purple -green. Oh, it's purple. Purple.
Does purple clash too much with the green? I
don't really think so. So you could just keep
the same base suit that has the chest and abs
on it and the muted gray, and then you could
change the belt color to blue and then have them
have the blue or the red. Whatever. You could
change those things, and I don't think it would
clash too much. So I don't understand why they
have these different subsuits. Except I guess
the color does flow a little bit better. His
eye color changes. His eye color and his belt
color changes. So in fact, it's red for Stream.
It's blue. But he didn't use Stream. He used
Machine instead. And Machine has the... It's
obviously kit bashed from the stream suit. So
I'm a little confused about what's going on with
that. And I know that's not talking about the
episode, but it is talking about the show overall.
And it's important to understand that for me
anyway. I don't know if you care about this kind
of detail and like kicking out on the details
of the suit or the costume design. But like I
said, it's important to me. And also his helmet
has that black haze around the mouth, like where
the. crusher would be um and even around his
eyes and his antennae go from red i think in
the base form to um to black uh but he keeps
the green which is like the very a very classic
writer's shade of green from you know the original
um probably more from like ichimonji's first
suit than from uh hongo's first suit because
hongo's is like dark green like dark green and
black um it looks really cool anyway um but I
understand Ichimonji's suit, the second suit,
has more pop to it. And I guess you could say
with the two stripes on it, too, or whatever.
You know, if you're a longtime Kamen Rider fan
like me, and you know Ichigo and Hango, or, sorry,
Ichigo and Nigo, as they call them. I refuse
to call them that. Then you get what I'm saying,
and I won't elaborate the point. But anyway,
I find some of the design choices kind of odd
or distracting in a way. But I'm not going to
let it bother me too much. I say after spending
almost half of the runtime of the review talking
about that. But yeah, I'm just kind of sure.
Anyway, talking about what happened in the episode.
There's weird things going on here. I noticed
in her prison costume, Nim was in pink and blue.
And I almost wonder if Mr. Mr. Nobody Knox is
maybe her brother. The pink and the blue represents
the fact that she had a brother, but she's from
an orphanage too, we find out. And she was kind
of adopted by Bijogi. Is that like really? That
doesn't feel like a Japanese name, but I guess
it is. Bijogi and his wife, Reiko, kind of adopted
as a child when she was eight, ten, I'm not sure.
It was weird that he saw her and was stricken
by her beauty. I think about this with, like,
child actors. Like, Marsha Brady. This is from
a long time ago. You know, she's supposed to
be the beautiful one. And even from when they
were kids, she was supposed to be more beautiful
than Jan. And Jan's supposed to be, like, plain
and whatever. And she's jealous of her because
of that. But, like, some adult had to look at
that little girl and say, ooh, she's beautiful
or she's going to be a beautiful woman. Like,
let's pick her and put her in the show and have
this beauty aspect be, like, played up. And that
just seemed weird. So it also seems weird that
you have this guy from a talent agency see this
orphan. He's like, oh, she's beautiful. I need
to get her for my company. Very strange. I don't
really understand idol culture. And the whole
childhood actor thing is kind of weird, too.
But we won't talk about that. Anyway, going back
to the story, this guy and his wife are in a
prison and Nem's their daughter in the dream.
That's the role she's playing. But in real life,
he is like her father because he did adopt her
and take her in. And that really is his wife.
There's a lot of weird conversions and influence
of things going on here. And it's partly because
Nem doesn't want to talk about it because she
knows what's going on. She's hiding something
and maybe he's hiding something too. This guy
and his wife are getting divorced for some reason,
which we'll find out more about in the next episode,
I'm sure. And we don't know why that's going
on. And like at the very end, he hears that he
can live forever in this prison and he grabs
Nem, pushes his wife out of the way and runs
inside the prison to stay in there because the
prison is actually... the body of a nightmare
which is a prison nightmare i guess um even though
we saw chainsaw man nightmare um which that guy
looked really cool chainsaw uh nightmare which
i think he's a nightmare but officially he's
not it's actually this bigger prison one anyway
uh which is like a weird choice to me to make
but whatever because then now there's technically
two nightmares in this episode um and yeah again
i just find it strange uh but yeah he runs in
there and he wants to live forever and then it
looks at the end like maybe um She's dead. Looks
like Nem might be dead or near death or something.
And the fear of losing her is a problem. If you
have somebody who you love, who you adopted,
who you took on, who you have a relationship
with, a familial friend, loving, caring relationship,
and they're going to die, of course you'd be
sad and scared for them and not want them to
die. That's only natural. That's not a problem.
It's just the way the mystery is being presented
is weird. But I'll get off of that and I'm going
to hopefully in two minutes say a bunch of stuff
that I really liked about it and then check out
because it's kind of, it's an incomplete episode,
but it's also like it has kind of a satisfying
cliffhanger ending, even though, but I don't
feel cheated like, oh, this wasn't a real episode.
I just feel like it's structured in an interesting
way where it's like very deceptive and kind of
tricking you into thinking things are one way
when they're another. And it's interesting. I
really like you and talk about how she's writing
in general. Um, anyway, let me, let me wrap this
up real quick. So, uh, in the beginning of the
episode, it was hilarious. And I absolutely loved
it that, uh, Baku, uh, wanted to impress Nem's
parents because that's what she told him they
were. And he totally switched his demeanor. And
he starts snapping his fingers and using his
lucid dreaming powers to make all these cool
things happen. He unlocks his shackles. He changes
his clothes. The token hook change. He unlocks
their shackles by snapping his fingers and stuff
and going over there and stylishly flourishing
his hand around the shackles and they come off.
Super cool. Super fun. And this is all because
he wants to impress her because everybody loves
Nem. She's this huge idol. I don't want to compare
her to an American because I'm not up on the
American stuff. I have two white blonde women.
I'm thinking of that. He's like, oh yeah, she's
like that. And I don't know if that's even accurate,
but they're in the news a lot. So anyway, whatever.
So yeah, I don't know who she would be equivalent
to, but she's that kind of superstar status.
And he wants to impress her because he's like,
oh, the presumption is he's thinking if he impresses
her parents in the dream, maybe it'll have an
impact on them in real life, which is something
he speculates about later in the episode when
he's trying to figure out who the dreamer is
in the dream, either Reiko or Bajoshi. um or
i guess his bajogi is the last name so it's masumi
masumi nareko um so he's trying to figure out
who he is and he interacts with him and he's
like oh this guy doesn't seem to remember me
from the dream now interesting so maybe he's
not the dreamer but then at the end it looks
like he is so i don't know how the rules work
um for people recognizing or remembering things
from dreams or not which i'm assuming it will
be revealed more as we continue through the show
um but anyway so he's being super cool guy and
then he I've criticized the capsules before,
but I will say this. Seeing him use the capsules
in the dreams out of suit is awesome. I love
it. I think it's very cool. They come off as
Power Balls. What's beautiful is that he just
grabs them and spins them, which I guess that's
probably how they play, the actual toys. If it
is, that's a brilliant way to synergize your
marketing with your story design because he grabs
the balls out of nowhere. He twists them or spins
them. He activates the power, and then he does
stuff like he grabs. reiko and he grabs masami
and he tells um nem to get on his back and he
jumps through all these flying saw blades and
you know nobody gets hurt and saves them all
through doing that and it's ridiculous but it's
fun and it's stylish and it's cool and it's a
little bit of a reflection of his character of
him trying to be this agent trying to be this
uh really cool guy and it's a lot of fun i i
had a blast with it um he used one other power
oh stream as well he used stream to knock all
these arrows that were being shot at them booby
traps classic booby traps from like a video game
or whatever old movie um and it's a lot of fun
it was a blast i liked his machine form with
his machine arm and like kind of like the um
it's a very mega man type design that they're
using with this big round ball capsule thing
at the end that has a machine claw on it but
then it has like a harpoon and he can retract
it and his hand comes out of it and you can use
that for a sword very cool stuff very cool visuals
very fun um and i really enjoyed it but i'm pretty
much out of time so i gotta go uh just want to
say i like the episode um check out the blog
at mjwinners .com for um the blog version of
this uh you can also see the show notes you can
get the audio only version of it if you want
to like that instead so you have to worry about
youtube stuff or you can just watch it on youtube
i have a whole playlist going i have a whole
like playlist podcast type thing going on YouTube.
So you can check that out. And I don't know how
you, if you subscribe to those or what on YouTube
or what I know, all my podcasts are audio podcasts.
I don't know how they work as a, as a YouTube
thing, but it's there. You can subscribe to the
channel. You can get linked to those and it'll
all lead you back to my site. And that's it for
now. Tell me what you thought about the episode.
Would you just, were you disappointed in how
it was like? Not a full episode. They didn't
have a real full ending. Or are you intrigued
enough by what's going on with Nix? Or, sorry,
Nox. It's not Persona 3. Are you intrigued enough
by what's going on with Nox and Nem? And, yeah,
tell me your full thoughts. I'd love to have
a conversation about this. You can leave a comment
here, on the blog, anywhere where you're finding
this. Until next time, folks, take care. Be well.
Check out my trailer for my book here. And, yeah,
I'll see you in the next one. Or you'll see me
in the next one, more accurately. This is MJ
with Rider Tears and Henshin Expansion. Inspection,
signing out. Magical bugs battle monsters in
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