This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is Writer Tears. Welcome to the Spoiler Full Shin Common Writer Review.
I will wait a day or so to put this out. I've got my spoiler free episode in the can...
Well, it's not in the can. It's in... It's... It's recorded. Excuse me. I'm really excited about this.
It's recorded and ready to go. It'll be out first before the spoiler review is...
...or whatever spoiler reaction is. And here I go.
So, Shin Common Writer was an amazing movie.
There were... I probably should have said this earlier, but like...
People laughed, people kind of cheered softly, like people enjoyed moments.
And there was maybe only 50 of us in the theater. Maybe that.
But everybody seemed to like it. Everybody approved of it. Nobody had a negative thing to say.
Or at least they didn't say it to me. And I sought comments from people.
And anyway, it was really cool. So, gosh, how do I go into...
It's very much rooted in the original Common Writer. In the aesthetics of the original Common Writer.
But there's a modern... There's modern technology. There's modern takes. There's modern...
...takes on the way the suits work. On what they do.
The different capabilities they have. There's this Parna energy thing.
And there's this energy projection. I can swear... I'm confident that I've heard of Parna before.
I almost feel like I've heard of it from Shin Megami Tensei.
It feels like it's an urduc word. Is that what it is? Urduc word?
Anyway, like Sanskrit. It sounds like it's one of those words.
And it wouldn't surprise me if Parna is a word or a keyword used in the Shin Megami Tensei...
...Devil... No, no, no, no. Digital Devil Saga. 1 and 2.
Brought to you by Atlas. Anyway.
So, yeah, I would not be surprised if that was the case.
Speaking of Atlas, Lotus Juice had a song here which was pretty cool. It was decent.
I like more of the stuff on Persona. You didn't get to hear too much of it in the mix of this movie.
For whatever reason. Anyway.
I'm going to share one really silly, stupid thing that I didn't like.
Which is that while there's a chase going on in the beginning of the movie...
...and a bike chase through the hills, which the landscape in the movie that it showed off was gorgeous.
And I know one of the things that the original Combinator production did is...
...as the time went on, I don't know... Well, because they filmed in the snow and stuff.
As time went on, as the years went on, they filmed in different locations.
And they filmed every cool location in this area, then that area, then that area.
And they trekked across Japan to do, I guess, cool, unique new shots in different places.
And it works. It's really cool.
So you get to see Cityscape, you get to see Waterworks, and Power Plants, and Aqueducts, and things like that.
And then you also get to see the countryside, and streams, and rivers, and forests, and mountains.
And it's really great. That was a really bad Bilbo Baggins. I'm sorry. Excuse me.
So, anyway. They have this awesome chase in this beautiful scenery of the countryside.
And there's two big shocker vehicles chasing Hongo and Ruriko, Midori Kawa.
And there's a giant spiderweb in a couple shots between the trucks with a big spider in it.
And then it's not there. And it's not that man spider, or spider-man, or whatever is there.
Which they call them Aug. Spider Aug. Komo? Komo Aug?
Komo Awa? No. Komo Aug. Like, Komo...Komora, I think, is spider. Anyway.
And then Aug for Augmented. So Augmented Spider Person, whatever.
So, and he's...it's a hopper...oh, Bata Aug. It's Bata Aug, Komo Aug, and I don't remember the others.
But, anyway, those are their names. Anyway. Which is interesting.
So, yeah. He's not, like, suspended in the web between the trucks.
And then there's, like, a weird continuity thing where the trucks end up splitting apart from each other.
And they still...and then, like, later it has the webs together again, and the spider in the middle.
Which is really silly and goofy, and, like, I don't know why you fought for that shot.
You should have just cut the one in between that showed it where the trucks were separate from each other.
Whatever. But, yeah. So, like, anyway.
Hongo and Ruriko are running away, and then they meet Midori Kawa.
I'm not going to go into a beat-by-beat, like, breakdown of this.
Same thing. Midori Kawa gets killed. Ruriko isn't really sad for, like, crazy spoiler reasons.
It turns out she's, like, a computer programmer. She's very good at computing. I'll just say that.
And, you know, eventually things happen to her, and it turns out that, for some reason...
So they bring back, like, the turning into foam thing.
It's this protocol that Shocker has in order to stop people from telling what Shocker's all about and spoiling their plans.
So that was really interesting. And I loved seeing that effect brought back, and it was very cool.
But really, the thing that not surprises me more...
I need to stop recording in a minute, so I'm going to hurry up and get one big point out,
and then hopefully I'll remember everything tomorrow when I conclude this.
Is that Hongo is very upset at the fact that he has this deadly power, and the fact that he has to kill,
and the fact that he's so vicious in his killing.
And there's actually something in the mask, so the belt, the mask, and the cyclone all together are part of the Parna system,
for the Rider system, for the augmented, you know, person system for Shocker.
And that's really cool, and the mask has some sort of programming in it in order to help control his mind.
So Hongo has, like, a defensive mode in the mask that makes him more savage, and it makes him fight to survive without hesitation.
So he can basically, at least in the beginning, he's brutally killing these guys.
He's not murdering them, he's killing them in self-defense.
But it's absolutely... he punches a hole through somebody, I think.
Like, there's blood spraying all over the place, and like, I laughed.
It felt a little comedic.
And not like, oh, this doesn't look cool. It looked cool and it looked serious,
but it was also, like, shocking and, like, almost funny how, you know, bloody and violent it was.
And, you know, that's interesting because it almost seemed like that scene and the way it was done was a setup,
because then the next thing we know, Hongo is...
and you get all these really interesting ono first-person perspective shots,
where it's like first-person, like, real super close-up to the person, you know, whoever it is,
Hongo, Ruriko, different people at different times, and there it's this uncomfortably tight shot
where you feel like you're inside of their head or you're, you know, you are them and you can't escape.
And that's the next thing after this.
I think they do, like, a title screen or logo or something like that after all the bloodshed
and all the craziness of him defeating all these, you know, shocker grunts or whatever.
And then he's in a bathroom by himself looking in the mirror.
He's looking at his reflection and he's wondering what he is and who he is, what he's doing.
Like, he knows who he is, but he's wondering what he's doing and he says that his body was moving on its own
and he couldn't control it, which apparently is true because the, you know, mask has that ability
to turn on his survival instincts so that he'll go and be an absolute killer in order to protect himself.
But anyway, it's super interesting because after that happens, he, he, like, takes off one of his gloves
and he's got a green tinted half grasshopper half man hand.
So he really is beyond being a cyborg. He's some sort, some sort of monster.
That's what he's been turned into.
And, um, shoot. Anyway, he has all these crazy scars on his face.
And he doesn't have a grasshopper mouth, but he has like almost grasshopper like features and skin coming out of his face
when he peels off the mask and it terrifies him as, you know, it would.
And it's really interesting, really crazy, especially in light of Monstress.
He's just in that first episode of Combinator Gaia.
And it very much ties into this idea of the man becoming a monster in the suit, hiding it,
which is true for the other shocker cyborg soldiers, whatever, augmented people that you see throughout the movie.
And Hong-Goo's really guilty about having to use his power to kill people.
And he has a struggle with that. And he's almost a pacifist, but he does fight and he does kill to protect life.
And that's the important thing. He comes around to that.
And it's really interesting that emotional journey for him throughout the movie,
especially because other people do not share his doubts. More on this later.
So I'm back. It's time for me to go completely off of memory and hope that I get everything right.
The characters who lack doubt are Ruriko Midorikawa.
I'd say Hiroshi Midorikawa, which is the professor, which I don't know if he was always Hiroshi or if that was a nod to Hiroshi Fujioka or not.
But either way, that's his name, Professor Midorikawa.
And then I would say that Ichimonji doesn't have much doubt, but there's a little bit in there.
You'll see that later as I get more to him.
I don't think this line from Ruriko is in the trailers, but it's in the movie enough to be, I don't know, her theme,
or to have it be almost a joke at some point. She says she's always prepared, that no matter where she goes, she's always prepared.
At one point, she says, she says that life is a battlefield and she's always prepared.
And you do see that she is quite frequently prepared to go into every single situation that she encounters.
There's one towards the end that she, uh, she wasn't quite prepared for,
but she still had like a decent contingency plan in place that made things okay anyway.
But she never lacks doubt. She thinks Hongo is too kind and too gentle,
and her father thinks that that's an asset, not a liability, and that that's why he chose him specifically, because he knew him,
that's why he chose him specifically to become the Grasshopper Og, which is his greatest achievement.
It's the most highly developed, uh, augmented soldier for Shocker that he had come up with to date.
And yeah, I guess it's the same where the brainwashing is interrupted. It's just they kind of don't show that, because we know that.
It's like not showing Uncle Ben getting killed, right?
Anyway, I think I can't hold back anymore. I got to get into the full spoilers to really explain this.
So, uh, Shocker was started by an AI developed by a Japanese billionaire who wanted everybody to be happy.
And the AI didn't figure that it needs to subjugate all of humanity for humans to be happy.
Oh, now it makes sense. Shocker, be happy.
But that there is like a dystopic version of happiness for all of humanity that is trying to be reached by Gendo Ikari.
I mean, by Shocker's AI.
That is basically, uh, well, it's odd. Within Shocker, there are different elements who want the greatest, who want this goal of happiness to be achieved in different ways.
And it's almost like there's different philosophies of how to achieve this greatness.
And it's almost that Hongo himself is a, uh, is a method or a showcase of this is how we can have the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people.
Take somebody who's suffered and who's been through trauma and pain and heal them or, you know, help them, assist them to be healed.
Give them an example of somebody like that who has healed from what hurt them and found happiness again.
Like that's the most stable form of happiness known to man.
And that if Shocker can create somebody like that, then that'll kind of show the way to happiness for the rest of us.
And that would be okay, according to some individuals within Shocker.
That might be the case. But then you have like the spider, uh, who wants to kill all humans because he hates them.
And, uh, he it's there's this really interesting thing with the Japanese language where apparently the kanji, I think it's the kanji for happiness and pain are just one stroke different from each other.
And, uh, Midorikawa, she says that and later on you'll learn her brother Ichiro Midorikawa says that, but he flips it.
He basically says, yeah, we can endure pain and find happiness because there's there's so intimately connected with each other.
And his point is that all joy is fleeting because you're just one stroke away from pain and therefore life is meaningless.
And that is the big motivating factor for a lot of what he does.
And I don't know. That's very interesting. The whole thing with Ichiro was very impactful to think that Midorikawa had a son as well as a daughter.
And to learn that the son is actually from his marriage and his wife died and that pushed him.
It's like if Evangelion and the village and Kamen Rider had a baby, this would be the baby.
What I mean by that is like shocker seems to be a secret society where everybody involved in it, all the major players are wanting to achieve something greater than themselves.
So they banded together as a collective to marshal their resources and their knowledge to achieve the goal in kind of a decentralized way.
Like multiple people within shocker are running their own operations for the objective stated by I.
And this is this whole weird thing where the AI named I as in, you know, me, myself and I or the letter I really iterates on itself.
It makes a body, a physical form for itself. It's not you don't get to see big one or is that what it was called? Big one.
I feel like it was called Big One, but that's also the name of of the train from Galaxy Railways, although in the Japanese it's called Great One.
So it could be big. I don't know. Anyway, but you know what I'm talking about. You read the manga, right? Come on, guys, you know.
Anyway, so it's this AI is running it, but I'm a little confused as to know if each was running it or not, as opposed to the AI or if I itself was like if it was just like an agent of it.
And I is because it's a machine and has, you know, a high intelligence that it has the ability to say, you know what?
It does make more sense to gamify this and have different branches all seeking the same ends.
That way, if one of them, if many of them fail, one of them will ultimately succeed and give us the success we want, which that makes sense.
Anyway, he's diversifying his his dream streams, his outcome streams.
But anyway, you know, each hero believes life is pointless. Oh, yeah. Midori Kawaii, the Midori Kawaii family face tragedy and the it seems like the others in shocker.
Also, at least the older the people who are old enough for that, like the bat, maybe face things that put them on this path. And just because they have a reason doesn't mean it's an excuse or that it excuses their actions, of course.
But it's kind of interesting to see that these were all people who had had something happen to them and they were basically stuck in their hurt and pain and not able to move on.
Oh, I was going to say this. The billionaire created the artificial intelligence with this goal so that it could outlive him.
Later on, he created another version of it called J, which is a android of it that could be walking around in the world.
Then he created a K version of it, IJK. And that basically he looks like a robot detective K, not created by mother, not fighting hand created by a father.
And he is the hand of destruction himself. But it's just an interesting choice.
I recently actually you don't know this. I recently read the Skullman manga, the Shinomoto Skullman manga, the seven volume one that we have here in the United States thanks to Tokyo pop.
I think it was back in the day anyway. So I read all of that and it ends up working in all these different things from each of the more he's worked throughout the years.
And with the integration of K here, it kind of feels like on.
Oh, went for a similar vibe. And I would say the characterization characterization of some of the people feels very much like informed by the manga, maybe even like the original manga.
And then also like the shin or the commoner spirits and maybe even chin commoners spirits as well, which is pretty interesting.
But yeah, motivations each year. So again, I'm going full spoilers. So you don't hear this. Don't don't listen.
Each year, it becomes commoner zero. He's a butterfly.
Oh, that's what they call a butterfly. Oh, and it's pretty interesting to see his suit. He almost has the double typhoon of V3, but not quite. And his design is sort of reminiscent of V3, but not quite.
And again, he calls himself for a commoner zero.
Yeah, I think he does. He says he calls himself commoner zero, masked rider zero, which was super interesting.
But yeah, all he wants is destruction. I don't know. It's I'm losing the plot here.
I don't know. The fights were amazing.
There was this weird thing where there's these people from the government who are helping Ruriko and Hongo and they end up taking out one of the shocker augs on their own.
And then that comes back later.
And the weirdest thing about that one is they actually say in the movie that basically Hongo wouldn't have been able to take care of it very easily because of the way his partner system works.
And I thought that was odd. Like that doesn't actually make any sense that he wouldn't be able to do that.
But anyway, getting into more of the other aspects of the movie, I would say.
So I already covered that the fight scenes were really good. Very interesting.
Lots of CGI in them. It looked like to me.
Lots of mimicking, like lots of using the old methods as far as the cuts and the jumps and things like that.
But then also taking those jumps kind of like in is it called Mega Max?
The Forze team movie that has. Oh, boy, I don't know how to say this.
Anyway, the Forze team movie. Basically, I believe it's called Mega Max where like double O's, Forze and Wizard, I think all get together and they're fighting somebody crazy.
But all the old writers, the legendary writers are back to all.
Ten of them is CX, C Cross, Z Cross. I believe it crosses there anyway.
And yeah, that one. They used modern effects with the current accepted heroic common writer suits that writer one and writer two have.
We got to see the double writers in full effect.
I believe that one even features like stronger doing his super mode and some sort of finishing attacks.
So like it takes all the old writers and it gives them it keeps their suit, their suits, those same classic look that they had basically.
And it gives them modern effects and modern finishers.
And this one goes even farther, like the way that the hoppers are like somersaulting and flipping through the air is crazy.
Like it almost made me think about Sonic, but it didn't really make me laugh.
It just it just was kind of funny, but like everything else looked cool.
There were there was a little bit of jankiness, like there's a cop car that gets pushed off of a road during that beginning car chase thing that looks super fake, super CGI.
And I thought like, oh, maybe I should have had to write in here to help you guys do more practical effects for miniatures for this kind of stuff.
And then you could have composited in there with your CGI stuff anyway.
And I still kind of stand by that that looked really bad, that cop car.
But honestly, for the most part, the rest of the CGI looked really good.
Oh, oh my gosh. So fighting Wasp Woman, there's this incredible.
I can't tell if it was like stop like live action stop motion animated on Hongo because he's moving in a very staccato motion while the Wasp Woman is going.
Apparently, she's a speedster now. She's going super fast running around doing stuff.
And she's got all this like electric blur coming off of her lightning bolts.
Yeah, close stuff. She's got all this electrical blur coming off of her.
And like, I honestly I couldn't tell if it was like really, really high quality hand animation or if it was a very nicely done CGI animation.
Or if it was mostly practical with effects put in over it or what.
But it looked incredible. It reminds honestly it reminded me a little bit of into the Spiderverse.
I haven't seen the new one yet, so I can only speak for the old one.
But like this weird pseudo motion like I don't know, like staccato like odd like frame rate type thing that's going on, which I hear they use like in that new Puss in Boots movie.
It's not new now, but you know the latest one to come out. I think the last one we'll see.
But anyway, like there, I don't know, like it was it was either really animated or it was CGI like really high quality or if it was this weird blend of live action, you know, animation and stop motion photography and stuff.
And it was super interesting, super good effect.
And I don't know, it was like really interesting, really compelling to watch. And I liked it.
I like that a lot. And I'm not going to belabor how Anno had scenes reproduced from the original because I think everybody kind of knows that.
And I mentioned that I touched on that earlier, so I do not want to keep talking about it if I don't have to, which I don't.
So I won't.
I really love the emotional story of it all of Hongo not wanting to be violent and his actor was, I believe, directed to like shake a lot like almost the entire time that you see Hongo in his body armor, they call it.
He is shaking a little bit, his head is shaking, his face is shaking. He's like shook.
He's shaken by all that he has had to do, all the killing he's had to do and like bearing the weight of doing that, which is really interesting.
Ichimonji never feels like that. He never has that kind of remorse about what he has to do.
But he's also... he's just a different person. He's still a good person, even though he started off as an evil writer and then he became a good one or, you know, a grasshopper og and then he became a writer.
And man, gosh, it was so interesting. It was so interesting what they did with him having a little redemption.
And it happened all in his head and it was at the best of... it was because of Ruriko and her actions, which was very interesting.
She's basically like a organic computer being and she... yeah, she's basically like an organic computer.
She says she's an artificial being made by Midorikawa to use as a tool for Shocker and she was raised in Shocker and it's so interesting,
especially because it makes for this really interesting dynamic between her and... I can't remember her name, but Wasp Woman Harumi, I think is her name.
Anyway, really interesting dynamic between the two of them based on the fact that they were basically raised together and grew up together within Shocker.
So, but anyway, the redemption thing that happens with...
Ichi Monji is super interesting. It's super fast-paced and you wouldn't think it would work, but it does, especially because...
I think because there's consequence to it. Breaking free from the brainwashing is horribly painful for him and it is for anybody else who undergoes that process.
And it hurts him so much, but he ends up coming back and saving the day because Hongo and Ruriko... well, Hongo and Ruriko were about to die, but Ruriko does die.
So it's interesting how this adapts from the manga and blends in stuff from the TV show because Ruriko, I think she disappears in the manga pretty quickly, I think.
Maybe she sticks around. I don't know. I'm in the midst of rereading it, so I guess I'll comment on that later.
But anyway, the interesting thing is that ultimately Ruriko dies. She uploads her consciousness, though, basically her soul, her prana energy into Hongo's mask
and she ends up orchestrating it so that Hongo can upload his prana into his mask. And at the end, Ichi Monji gets it and he utilizes it and that's how he's mass rider.
And they upgrade it and stuff so it looks like his other one from the show. His fresh, sparkly, bright green with the white stripe or silver stripe on it, which is kind of crazy.
It actually made me like it, made me like that design choice a lot more, at least for the helmet, if not for the mask, if not for the rest of the suit.
And he mentions how it's a fresh... he says that it gives him a new perspective. The old one looked mean, but this is fresh and new and it gives him a different feeling and he feels like he has a different outlook on life.
But more importantly than that, like in the manga, the consciousness, the soul of Hongo gets to live on and work alongside Ichi Monji as he continues to be Kamen Rider because the shocker threat is not over.
Even though there was no explicit sequel bait in the movie, it very much feels like it can continue.
And except for it ended with the end instead of to be continued like on a screen like, you know, original Kamen Rider would always have at the end of every episode to be continued again and again and again.
And I think even Eva had that in the run of the anime, which is cool.
Anyway, it's interesting because Ruriko and Hongo get to live on together, their souls in the mask of Ichi Monji. And there wasn't an explicit romantic relationship between them.
Like there wasn't even an implied romantic relationship between them, but there was an intimacy and a trust between them.
And like it feels very cathartic and warm and hopeful that they get to, I guess, live on forever with Ichi Monji in this weird soul space as these souls together as companions, friends, brothers and sisters.
I don't know what they're going to be. I don't know if you can be soul lovers or if you even need that type of thing at that point or what.
But it's just very interesting that they get that and then that Hongo gets to live on through Ichi Monji and he tells him at the end that the like the last words are something like, you know, ride faster Ichi Monji.
I want to feel the wind and all this stuff because I can feel it, smell it, hear it, sense it all through your body as well because we're one basically.
And that's very much in line with what happens in the manga, at least for a time.
So that was really interesting to me.
I'm going to wrap it up there. I might do an addendum and update the audio podcast version of this.
Writer 2 is now officially an audio podcast. You can find anywhere I'm starting to.
I need to work on the distribution for it because I don't have that quite nailed down yet.
Anyway, I won't really be able to make adjustments to the video version of it unless I just upload a whole new one.
But I think that seems confusing and counterintuitive.
However, the audio podcast version of it, I guess because it's running over the podcast protocol, not on a specific platform.
So it's you know, it works differently.
I'll be able to adjust that and make an addendum and add anything more to this if I choose to, which I might.
I just it was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a. It wasn't a long movie, but so much happened in it that it felt like it was a very densely packed movie,
so there were wonderful moments of quiet and moments of introspection.
And yeah, it was I mean, it was it was film. It was beautiful.
It was art. And I don't know if I mentioned this already, but the music was very good.
They used old music, original versions, maybe remixes, I think, as well as new independent music.
There was a very interesting like rock guitar, electric guitar aspect to a lot of the background music, fight music score.
But there was also like orchestral.
Like orchestral suites in certain parts of it, and it wasn't I don't know, like it got a chance to be a beautiful movie and just like be a movie.
And I think as much as it's about these augmented humans doing this crazy stuff and going on this wild, violent adventure
and quest to save all of humanity because all of humanity is at stake.
Like it still got the chance to slow down.
And like I said, through the music, express itself and express scenes in different ways.
Like there were lots of cute, fun, funny moments and not even I would say like not nostalgia,
but like just weird moments of personality that you get to see, even like the cyclone had a personality.
And at some point, Congo needs to use cyclone strategically in battle and he apologizes to it basically and then does his thing.
And you know, it's a tough thing. I didn't even talk about one of the biggest things that happened.
But anyway, it was just a really good movie, really interesting.
I'm fascinated to see what other people are going to think of this.
And I think it's going to be very well received.
Yeah, I think it's going to be very well received.
And it makes me really want to see the Shin Ultraman and Godzilla movies now.
Not that I didn't want to before, but it's even more so like, wow, this is this is what can be done with this thing.
It's new, but it's true to the original.
And it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
Like there could I mean, you could have a whole, you know, Showa era Shin, you know, you'd have a Shin V3.
You have Shin everybody if you really wanted to, if you were clever enough about it, I guess.
And wow, yeah, really interesting, really interesting.
I'm very glad I saw it in the theater.
And it was quite the experience. So anyway, that's it for me.
I am going to go ahead and get out of here. I hope that you are well.
I hope that you be well.
I don't know that I want you to be happy because that's what Shocker wants.
But if you're well, that's that's good enough for me.
So anyway, until next time, folks, this is MJ signing out.