Kamen Rider Den-o 仮面ライダー電王 [series]

Can i have a pet Ryutaros? I'll keep him out of trouble i promise

So I finished Kamen Rider Den-o a while back. It was a long haul – I’m not sure why it took me so long to finish but I think it was something to do with not wanting it to end. But it has taken me even longer to write it up. My posting has got some sort of latency drag going on now. I cant ever seem to write stuff up when at the actual time of watching. It makes my screen shots a bit rubbish I tend to forget half the storyline but never mind.

I’m now working my way through Kabuto and W, ive seen bits of Decade, and have a whole heap of others lined up on my hard drive ready for my constant long train rides to London. Kamen Rider is great for long train rides at sh*t o clock in the evening when I’ve been up since 6am.

So, Den-o specifically is a Tokusatsu drama of 49 full length episodes and a movie 俺誕生 ‘I’m born’. There are three other movies that accompany the series (a red, blue and yellow) but I haven’t finished them all yet. They stand alone as extras for after the series is done, which is good as I have no idea when you are supposed to watch them and in what order. Sato Takeru is not in these either so I’m not exactly jumping off my seat to watch them.

Annoyingly enough, there is nothing to say at what point you watch the movie during the series, it just prattles on about it in the credits for a while then all of a sudden the next episode doesn’t make any sense anymore. That is when you have to splice the movie in between. It is after episodeツキすぎ、ノリすぎ、変わりすぎ [28] in case  you want to know.

Cast list:

Sato Takeru - Nogami Ryotaro

Matsumoto Wakana - Nogami Airi

Nakamura Yuichi - Sakurai Yuto

Shiratori Yuriko - Hana

Matsumoto Tamaki - Kohana

Akiyama Rina - Naomi

Ishimaru Kenjiro - Owner

Ishiguro Hideo - Kai

Voice actors:

Seki Toshihiko – Momotaros

Yusa Kōji – Urataros

Terasoma Masaki – Kintaros

Suzumura Kenichi – Ryutaros

Ōtsuka Hōchū – Deneb

This was a great series to start with. Having known about Kamen rider for ages and seen the Decade movie and bits of the series, I wasn’t sure where to start. There are so many versions of Kamen Rider, so in the end I went with Den-o purely because I love the three lead actors.

We first meet Nogami as he ends up (still on his bike) stuck up in a tree. That pretty much sets the pace for how unlucky and clumsy he is. Sato is really very funny and watchable in Kamen Rider I can’t even explain.

This unbelievable world of a time traveling train called Denliner and spirits called Imajin who seek to poses the memories of the living in order to travel back in time to destroy the past and change the future, was thrust upon Nogami all of a sudden by a feisty girl who believes him to be something called a singularity point. There is quite a lot of made up physics to keep up with so I wont bother to go into it in detail, but basically they end up fighting these rubber suited bad guys to save the past, future, and everything else that floats in and out of the in between.

Nogami is useless at first, but tries so hard to become strong. He ends up being possessed by four (then later another) Imajin who in turn become his allies and help him to fight in his masked form.

Sato Takeru had the huge task of acting like all these different characters as well as his own. He is such a fantastic actor, and this appears to be one of the more involved series of Kamen Rider, having so many episodes and such an epic strong storyline.

He had to breakdance as Ryutaros, charm ladies as Urataros, Be a narcaleptic bear of a warrior as Kintaros, stomp around like an angry bored teenager as Momotaros, and ponce about with feathers in his hair as the arogant prince of no-one but himself, Sieg.

We meet Sakurai Yuto later as the story starts to properly unfold, and it gives a brilliant chance for Nakamura Yuichi to be his goofy self, running about shouting and pouting like it was soon to go out of fashion. There is a long and sad past between these two characters and Nogami’s sister Airi, but as it takes a rather long time for that to become clear, I wont tell you anything about it. The only thing we know at first is that there is something which connects them all which still binds them together in the present, Sakurai vanished from their lives some time ago, and although they were once to be married, Airi doesn't remember him at all. Matsumoto Wakana is beautiful as ever. Airi has lost her memories of their tragic past and smiles bittersweetly through her forgotten sadness. I love how she calls the coffee beans Kōhii-tachi when she explains that they are working hard to make nice coffee.

A great cast list to then throw a bunch of great extended cast list on top… and then the voice actors – they pulled in the best bunch for this including Seki Toshihiko (bleach, full metal alchemist, gundam seed, naruto, one piece, ninja scroll, paranoia agent, gunslinger girl) who played Momotaros, Nogami’s first Imajin,

and my personal favourite Suzumura Kenichi (gakuen alice, black butler, d-gray man, Gokusen (sawada), naruto shippuden, ouran high school host club, soul eater) *sigh* and that is just the ones I have seen. He plays Ryutaros, Nogami’s fourth Imagin. I have a huge fan girl issue with this man. I shall try and keep that under wraps for this post as it is a little pointless to include here. But in all serious-fan-girl-ness, he is the coolest and I’m singing Taylor the latte boy at the mere thought.

Ok, so the plot is good, the quotes are awesome, I even have the Denliner train whistle as my message alert phone tone. Actually I also have Sakurai Yuto’s ‘saisho ni itte oku ore wa kanari tsuyoi’ blurb as my ring tone. Which is probably why I can never hear it.

The bad guys are great, we don’t just have the rubber suited Imajin we also have Kai *swoon* I reeeeeeeeeeally squeetastcially love Ishiguro Hideo as a bad guy. Especially as a weirdo one who has a stupid laugh and poncho and talks like he hasn’t really got a clue what the hell is going on. I like it when he leans upside down over some railing in the stadium like a kid playing at a park, while threatening to destroy the world.

This is such a playful fun series, but also full of tears and tantrums. It gets really quite sad in places and I don’t know how many times some of the main characters wanted to die then come back and then die again – my poor little heart could barely stand it. There was a lot of stuff about memories being precious and the glue that holds the past, present and future together.

I really enjoyed Nakamura Yuichi being a complete over the top shouty brat, and Sato Takeru being a useless but determined absolute dork, and Matsumoto Wakana being sickeningly beautiful and lovely to watch. When any of these three cried I lost myself to tears as well.

This series was truly truly great and I think it was a great one to start the Kamen Rider saga off with as an introduction to this epically huge world of Japanese masked heroes. I have found some series’ from quite a time back when the rubber suited bad guys were quite ridiculous and the Riders were less impressive on the weapons and clothing front and more about the summersaults in the air and high kicks. It will be fun to watch these as well as newer ones that use more effects and bigger guns.

If you get a bought copy that isn’t fansubbed with lots of unnecessary swearing then it is perfect for kids as well as adults. This series is great for so many reasons; the live performance that comes with the dvd extras is really good and totally worth watching. I will forever have this series to thank for properly showing me a good way in to Kamen Rider and hooking me completely.



Can i get through this whole post without mentioning Nakamura Yuichi's nose.....
i failed.


slightly more relevant to the series, have some of the promo stuff:

 

my personal favourite:

kamen rider is awsome and if you dont like it you are in fact a foolish fool from foolsville called foolio.

~

Rescue: pride of orange 特別高度救助隊 [series]

Maru your face is so epic I may die. Your furrows of worry are the best.

Maru’s furrows = Marrows.

Ok the only reason I watched this was for Masuda Takahisa’s awesome face, I swear it was the only thing keeping me going. It was terrible and brilliant then terrible then brilliant again. I think I will go with it being brilliant, but believe me it was still very terrible.

The painful constant monologue, when people were in desperate need of saving, was frustrating and excruciating. Over and over again. But I guess it made it funny too. Nakamaru Yuichi has the most awesome concerned eager face in the world. Maru your face is epic.

He actually didn’t stop shouting throughout the entire program. It was geniusly funny in ways I’m sure they didn’t intend – ah maybe they did. Who knows. The writers of this show seemed to be off the f*ckin’ planet anyway.

This is bound to be a pointlessly unhelpful review and you probably won’t understand a word I say as my memories of this series are too wrapped up in jokes inspired by the dire melodrama to make much sense. I will try to be coherent.

 

Maru plays Kitajima Daichi – god only knows how I can possibly describe him accurately to you.

He is like a small puppy with all the enthusiasm of a girl scout trying to save her grandma, with only love and cookies, from a bulldozer.

Massu plays Tezuka – Daichi’s best friend, another lovely little puppy with a cute worried face.

I love watching Massu trying to look like he is having a hard time doing sit ups and chin ups and stuff when you know really he could sh*t all over everyone when it comes to that stuff.

These two are firemen. Yup. In silver News / Kat-tun-esque suits. So, everyone feels right at home then. But fire fighting is not enough for them, nor is the silver. They want to become part of a special rescue unit called the super rangers パー！and use said girl scout determination to undertake arduous training and become super-special-mighty-morphing-orange-eito rangers.

Or something like that.

We have lots of familiar faces for the other recruits, including Daito Shunsuke (fujoshi kanojo, tumbling, nobuta o produce) Yamamoto Yusuke (atashinchi no danshi, tumbling, rinne no ame, hana kimi) Ishiguro Hideo (gokusen, kamen rider den o, 1 pound no fukuin, Princess princess D)

here is them all staring at the sky for some reason:

Even baka Sato Jiro is in this series being his usual mental self. It isn’t right without him. I’ll say again what I have said before. He should be in every series ever made.

Rescue is full of shouting, disobeying orders, bringing personal issues to the pot, being irrationally angry at everyone else, sudden half naked chin ups in a restaurant/bar, main characters dying left right and centre unnecessarily because the rescuers all monologue instead of dig them out of the rubble, and lots of the

super-happy-ninja-orange-eito rangers stopping to stare at fire as if they have never seen it before.

Aside from the writers having not done a great deal of research into things that cause fire and therefore made believable scenarios it was the usual *things go bang and woosh fires explode and things fall down* and then super-orange-special-awesome-ninja-eito rangers rush in to save the day, or to stop to bring all their personal issues to the pot, or just to look shocked at fire for 20 minutes.

There were lots of great bits that made me think *ah this is why it was so popular.* Then with the frustratingly sh*t bits I was carried through my Massu’s amazing face which I would be distracted by even if zombies were sprouting up from the ground and turning into flowers as Johnny Kitagawa road passed on a Tegoshi’s pink elephant spraying magic zombie flower potion onto the dribbling hoard from the trunk.

The most brilliant part was probably Maru’s furrows of worry. Every time something serious was happening I was curled up on the floor laughing at the Marrows on his forehead so prominent you could wash your laundry on them like a wash board.

Actually, Maru come here a minute, let me borrow your forehead for a bit, I’ve got some socks I forgot to put in the wash last time. Just don’t let Roro near it, he’s murder with a wash board; he’ll ruin your washing and charge you for it.    ...hang on, theyre all at it.

Anyway. Back to the f*cking point. What is the point? The super-special-needs-orange-eito ranger guys having existential crises every time anyone was hurt or was scared or breathed. It was relentless and infuriating, then became brilliant, then plain frustrating, then kind of insulting that we were expected to go along with that sh*t, then it was brilliant again. I was very dizzy by the end of it all but those two weirdoes kept me going. How wonderful to have Maru and Massu in a series together with the most worried expressions anyone could muster.

I don’t know what else to say, clearly nothing else stuck with me but Massu’s general awesomeness which I already had such a problem with I have had to seek help from an addicts anonymous helpline, and the epic Marrows that I had no hope of accurately capturing in the screen shots. It was worth it in hilarity value on that alone.

More team NakaMassu please. It makes the world a better place. I’m sure there were meant to be lots of heart warming and soul searching moral messages in this series but when the orange NakaMassu power rangers – I mean eito rangers – I mean super rangers descend all I can do is laugh. What a stupidly great program. Or greatly stupid. Maybe both. Yeah both.