Bitter blood ビター・ブラッド [series]

Nansensu! 

ok so i have 4 things on my task list at work... 4 things damn it. I cannot just sit here while there are so many things left unwatched and unreviewed. I cannot watch any thing here though - thats a bit too conspic. But i can try and rant a little. 

Ive got some loopy meds which make me crazy for the neck rippage pain, so when i got home and edit this w*nkered off my tree trolley I'm not likely to make any more sense than my bored at work self. 

So whether its bored work self or tripping on ripped muscle pain relief meds self talking here, youre in for a garbled mess of nonsense. Ah nonsense. That certainly gave me an idea of what to review... 

Right, well here we go. First ever post to have its own blurb? I think not. But I'm liking this self introduction business, as if you guys dont already know how stupid my writing usually is. I decided to do it purple and green like my hair is at the moment. I cant make the post knotty and dry though.

My favourite Kamen Rider munchkin Sato Takeru (Kamen rider Den-o, Rookies, Q10, Bloody Monday, Princess Princess D), and Watanabe Atsuro (Godhand Teru, 3 extremes, Rookies, Zebraman) team up as the unlikely father and son crime fighting duo in this series. 

It is stumbling bumbling clumsy stupids with a running threat weaved in and out of the separate stories of each episode. 

The threat sewn into each episode that builds to the almighty crescendo is Oikawa Mitsuhiro! (Hanzawa Naoki, Nodame, Lucky 7 sp, 20th century boys) 

well, not him, but his character who is a nasty sh*t bag with a gimpy leg after some hard earned revenge of the gimpy leg man type of vengefulness. Grammatical writing genius win. 

There are some other people in it... 

But Im at work so I feel less bothered right now to do a cast list. 

I liked Tanaka Tetsushi (Akumuchan, ataru, yokai nengen bem, hanawake, quiz show, lost time life, sunao ni narenakute, last friends, bloody monday, Pacchigi), who plays Koga (the screen shot below). His character was funny and over the top as usual. He is bound to crop up in this sort of drama eve if it was only a cameo. But this time its part of the main gang. 

I think he is hanging his head in shame at my writing. dont you think?

It all centers around the main two guys and their accidental comradery when they are thrown together as a father and sun team even though they had been estranged for years. They do become kind of close in a way but mostly through their mutual dislike of the other. 

I love Sato Takeru. I think he is one of the best people ever in anything ever amen and will never get over his awesome multiple Kamen Riders, and well, everything else he's ever been in was great. Just great. Rurouni Kenshin anyone? yes well. So shut up. 

His comedy these days is a far cry from Princess Princess D, but whatever style he goes for its worth a quick fan girl flail squeal. So there was mine. 

Anywho. *gah it really annoys me when people give advice before asking any questions. I posted something just now as a statement on another site and got a load of advice i didnt ask for when no-one asked for context first. People, you are stupid. Tangent much.

Im not doing to well sticking to the point here. I feel so bad for writing this while at work. 

I don't feel comfortable shirking this way, but Ive seriously got nothing to do. To be honest I am far from the only one I think. 

So, the review! God damn you sir. I will get back to the point. Ive completely lost the thread.    

Stupid rage in my head about internet explorer because at work that is all im able to use - what generation do these people belong to?? Blog spot is not supported *insert rant at Ruku-chan here* ...actually i will insert it. have it. 

...its not fast enough, my old browser isnt supported by blogspot or blogspot isnt supported by my browser or which ever way round it is - basically there is no support, no love, no faith in this heartless marriage between blog spot and my browser... 

my rant went on like this for over 70 paragraphical message box alertified notifications. There was a lot more but i wont included it because as ive said before on here, i dont want to get sectioned. 

This review is looooong and so far ive only told you that they are father and son. believe it or not most of the rambling in this review is the bored at work me rather than the tw*tted on painkillers editing at home me. so yeah. thats a great thing to know about myself. 

oh i really cant be arsed to explain anything. its funny and you can go all boo hisssss at the bad guy (im starting to love Oikawa Mitsuhiro) and hit your head on the desk in frustration at the will they wont they thing with Maeda. Oh i havent said anything about her yet. oh for f*ck sake. this review. seriously. 

the other rookie working along side these idiots is played by Kutsuna Shiori (apparantly she was in Beck and Mei-chan no shitsuji but i dont really remember). 

She reminds me of Ishihara Satomi's character in voice a little bit. I didnt really feel anything either way for either of those characters. so yeah, this has been an awful review. I can think straight, i should never do this again. but probably will.

Now that Im editing this starting to feel spackered on pain killers this is reading as complete nonsense which i guess is appropriate for the program. sorry for the lack of grammar and punctuation and real words in this post. i will try harder next time to not be drugged up or distracted by pain. 

I feel woozy. 

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Bloody Monday ブラッディ・マンデイ [series]

doll faced terrorists and computer hackers, guns, back stabbing, an awesome sound track, AND a mother f*cking second series. 

most of my screen shots are from the second season because SILVER HAIR and thats all you need to know.

Narimiya Hiroki, Miura Haruma, Kawashima Umika, Sato Takeru, Fujii Mina, Takashima Masahiro... you know what? i cant even be bothered, there are so many characters and amazing actors in this - i just cant even - with this - here is the link to the drama wiki, look them up if you want to know who else is in it. absolutely f*ck doing a cast listing. 

this chick is so hot. my god. seriously.

first off, this will be a utterly pants review. im telling you now. i watched it a long time ago, so i dont have any details fresh to mind to spoil for you - so thats good, but also i cant remember sh*t about it so it might not make much sense. 

also, i just so love this show. that sometimes doesnt help my reviews be particularly coherent. but nevermind! shoganai ne.

It is cheesy. yeah, i cant deny that one. but of course it is a bit over the top. proper tense computer hacker stuff always is - you know the plot - young kid hacker genius called in by police to help against terrorist, gets caught up in a load of stuff he shouldnt have to deal with, but does it brilliantly because he is Miura Haruma and awesome. 

fantastic cast - you just couldnt ask for much better than these two, then along come the rest and it just spirals off into a whirlwind of - oh god its everyone i love from everything ive ever seen all at once in the same drama.

Sato Takeru plays his friend, Narimiya Hiroki plays a mastermind terrorist, the wonderful Kichise Michiko from liar game, hanawake, boss, pandora, nodame, bla bla bla... uh how did i start this sentence? well, her anyway, she plays a - uh - sort of -    ...  i dont really know. she's just badass.

Mitsushima Hikari comes into the second season *swoon* oh god i love that girl. christ i just want her a Narimiya to make a swarm of the most charismatic babies that ever lived. 




aside from all the fan girl fodder, it has a really solid story and is shot really well. yeah its cheesy but you know that sort of panic stricken story line kind of has to be. 

its always a race against time to stop the world from blowing up in an insane fight with code name: puff the magic dragon on crack, while the whole of the world watch, and only one small boy and his dog - i mean - laptop can save humanity... 

there are lots of camera shots close up of staring eyes and weird angles, dramatic music to accompany the countdown to explosions and death and such...

and of course the obligatory changing of sides from baddie to goodie and goodie to badass mother trucker that you never expected or you kind of did but then thought it was someone else but then the music made you think it might be them again and then - bam! yep, they screwed everyone over and no-one ever saw it coming. 

the second series is awesome. i watched it in about 4 days. it is too good to just say, oh i'll watch it later, seriously guys, if you havent watched it already make this your next one. if only for the silver hair. oh god. the silver hair. i died over and over again. 

~

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.

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