天下制覇

I miss Garou.

Impressions:

There have been more than a few tokusatsu shows in recent year gunning for the post-modern self aware parody-but-not-really thing (Loser Ranger, Love After World Dom, Kuroitsu), as opposed to just… doing tokusatsu (Garou, Casshern), and perhaps it's because there's a laser focus here on Kamen Rider that I just plain don't get as not being a super fan, but its overture as satire didn't work for me. Firstly, because the production is terrible. I find that really odd because they could've gone for a low budget 80s vibe, but instead it's just cheap and barely animated. And maybe I'm not familiar enough with the music, but they're trying to invoke him being a fan of series from 30 years ago, so the soundtrack really shouldn't be modern techno-rapping. That's… not the hero he worships and is trying to emulate. 

Simultaneous to all that is that it's not doing a Kick-ass kind of thing where he's a regular guy cosplaying haphazardly. He genuinely has low level super powers. He easily beats up like 30 dudes. He punches people over buildings. He judo throws and then beats up a grizzly. That's at odds with the declaration that he's some regular dude. A regular dude who only wants to beat up people cosplaying as the antagonists from one specific tv show from 30+ years ago. And there happen to be a batch of local thugs who do that. Contrivance doesn't even begin to cover it, so it must be satire, right? Because it really doesn't come off to be intended to be absurd. That's an emotional scene of him tearfully finally getting to live out his dream. And you can tell the gags. It's when characters all scream "EEEEHHHHH!?" as one and mug for the camera, as usual. So if that's not a joke, it really is meant to be a dramatic moment? I'm not sure what headspace it believes itself to be in, only that I'm not in the same one as it. I'm not sure it has any real idea either.

Next Episode:

…