Kamen Rider The Movie 40th Year Anniversary project

[Lynxara]

This situation is different though, considering how Toei actually removed part of the staff, rather than just putting pressure on them to take the show in a different direction. So, this case probably isn't so simple.

Yeah, I've seen the Brave shows you mention above and it's a pretty different situation. In Might Gaine, for instance, I recall the criticism of Takara is literally only present in the last half of the last episode. J-Decker and Goldran are straight-up silly parodies that are mostly light comedy, save for a J-Decker episode that rips on G Gundam really hard.

In Daimajin Kanon, I am not exaggerating when I say that the entire plot dwells on the horrors of Toei. The first eight episodes or so are devoted purely to how the main character is emotionally devastated because her ex-boyfriend, who is a blatant parody of Toshiki Inoue, stole her song and rewrote half the lyrics to create a horrible but extremely popular hit.

And it gets more bitter from there!

I remember that the old annual numbers were posted around here somewhere a while back, but I didn't save them and I'm probably just misremembering them. Do you have those numbers?

They're from a Japanese wiki-- maybe buried somewhere in the tokusatsu Wiki-- that my far-more-fluent friend showed me. They were part of a footnote explaining why Den-O's ratings could be so low and yet it could have so many sequels. I didn't bookmark it but I'll try to get her to dig it up for me again over the weekend.

Basically the merchandise numbers as I remember them (and my mind is far from a perfect machine), dwindle slowly downward from Kuuga, dive off a cliff with Hibiki, improve substantially with Kabuto, then spike way the hell upwards with Den-O before diving ing off a cliff again with Kiva. I don't think it listed Decade numbers at the time and for Den-O, you had to add separate movie merch numbers in for it to pass Kuuga.

I can see your point regarding Kuuga, but Faiz?

Was the show you saw a Faiz-only one? I seem to recall that it got at least one stage show that respected TV canon a lot more than stage shows usually do. I think it was about time-travel?

Anyway, your point stands for the human actor's personality, but I was kind of thinking purely in-suit. Stage show Faiz always struck me as really toned-down from proper Faiz, more of a generic "hot-blooded yet passionate" type.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/仮面ライダー電王#.E8.A9.95.E4.BE.A1

I believe these are the figures. Kabuto wasn't a huge improvement over Hibiki, oddly enough, but I have always heard it sorta bombed and that Toei was really looking for hit with Kamen Rider after more or less three failed series with Blade, Hibiki, and Kabuto.

 

[Forever Knight]

I'm considering setting up a nice tribute to the 40th anniversary shelf in my room for KR beside my HDM Rider collection.

I'm really interested in the Medicom Eiji and OOO TaToBa. What do you guys think?. Those 2 on a shelf, side by side, in the exact same pose to show the henshin....


I think I like.

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

Expensive, but hey if your wallet lets you, why wait ;p

 

[Lynxara]

This isn't the chart I originally saw, it definitely wasn't on Japanese Wikipedia. I bet it's the same basic data set, though, since it still stops at Kiva and only departs from memory in places where it would make sense.

 

[Forever Knight]

Expensive, but hey if your wallet lets you, why wait ;p

Well, I'm already booked for Jan. Feb = ALL Kamen Rider & Ultraman Movies on Blu-ray. So March would be the soonest.

 

[NeonZ]

In Might Gaine, for instance, I recall the criticism of Takara is literally only present in the last half of the last episode.

Well, it's only explicitly in the last episode, but the criticism there goes on about the entire show, calling out the convenient developments and escalation of the conflict and how even the main characters background was just an artificial excuse.

Aside from that...

J-Decker and Goldran are straight-up silly parodies that are mostly light comedy, save for a J-Decker episode that rips on G Gundam really hard.

Goldran has writing in a single frame about how it's a robot anime created only to sell toys to children.

Not really very strong words, but animes don't usually feature something like that slapped on the screen.

Was the show you saw a Faiz-only one? I seem to recall that it got at least one stage show that respected TV canon a lot more than stage shows usually do. I think it was about time-travel?

I saw only one that focused on Faiz himself, and I don't think the entire video had been uploaded for it, but even that one also featured other Riders. The other ones were all for later Riders with a Faiz participation added in. So, no, I never watched a solo Faiz one trying to follow the canon.

Anyway, your point stands for the human actor's personality, but I was kind of thinking purely in-suit. Stage show Faiz always struck me as really toned-down from proper Faiz, more of a generic "hot-blooded yet passionate" type.

Well, now that we're talking about suit acting, I thought tv series' Decade Faiz was pretty bad.

Up to that point, they had been able to at least keep the suit acting close enough to the originals. Although there were different suit actors for the main Riders, they tried to recreate the original's performances. Decade tv Faiz was just generic, exactly like you describe above.

Curiously, they tried to match up better during All Riders, in the 30 or so seconds of screentime that Faiz had there during the battle with Ikadevil. The characteristic gestures and stances were there at least, but the movements were rather off when the suit actor was actually moving.

I believe these are the figures. Kabuto wasn't a huge improvement over Hibiki, oddly enough, but I have always heard it sorta bombed and that Toei was really looking for hit with Kamen Rider after more or less three failed series with Blade, Hibiki, and Kabuto.

That's probably the one I saw before.

Ryuuki's numbers were that high? And Faiz still beat even Kuuga? When I was getting into fansubbed toku, I remember finding some old sites that talked about how Ryuuki struggled initially, but, looking at those numbers, that seems really unbelievable.

I remembered Kabuto not being successful, but I thought it had done better than Blade at least. Obviously, I was wrong. I guess that's why we haven't gotten any series with a large number of Riders again afterwards...



By the way, I found updated numbers that include 2009... Unfortunately, I guess they don't answer the matter of Decade's merchandising vs other series, considering how Decade's and Double's 2009 products are lumped together.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/仮面ライダーシリーズ#.E5.95.86.E6.A5.AD.E8.A9.95.E4.BE.A1

Either way, it seems that 2009 was the best year ever for Heisei Rider, merchandising-wise. I wonder how close 2010 will be to it. That should at least help understanding how much Decade contributed to that number.

Although... I guess having two series starting in the same year might have helped too, and that would hurt comparisons if 2010 ends up lower than 2009.

 

[Lynxara]

Well, it's only explicitly in the last episode, but the criticism there goes on about the entire show, calling out the convenient developments and escalation of the conflict and how even the main characters background was just an artificial excuse.

Sure, I've seen the ending of Might Gaine. It doesn't come off as bitter in the actual episode as it does when fans describe it, because all this stuff comes out of the big villain's mouth and he's immediately defeated after he says it while Gain shouts heroic things I don't quite remember. (It's to the tune of, "You don't really control me!")

Japanese fan-pages I've looked at have interpreted this ending as basically Sunrise being angry at Takara over some stuff that had to do with production of the prior series, Da Garn. That show has a really complicated plot with a lot of memorable characters that Takara thought cut into the toys' screen time too much.

The rumor goes that Takara actually asked Sunrise to make Might Gaine a worse show, using the "we just want a simple show to sell robots to little kids" line of logic. So the Might Gaine villains are all basically flatter, simpler versions of the Da Garn villains and where Da Garn has an epic world-spanning plot, nothing much ever happens in Might Gaine.

If this old story is true (and Japanese Brave fans seem to assume it is), then the Goldran moment you mention to me also comes off more as Sunrise snarking at Takara than the sort of intense bitterness that comprises Kanon. After all, it'd be pretty weird if such prolific Sunrise staffers honestly disliked making toy-selling shows.

Curiously, they tried to match up better during All Riders, in the 30 or so seconds of screentime that Faiz had there during the battle with Ikadevil. The characteristic gestures and stances were there at least, but the movements were rather off when the suit actor was actually moving.

This was a pretty big problem I had with enjoying All Riders. It was pretty clear that a loooot of the Riders on-camera were being played by relatively inexperienced stuntmen who weren't quite sure what they were doing. It stands to reason you'd have to do it that way, but it made a lot of the cameos feel inauthentic.

I figure the All Riders Faiz tried a bit harder since All Riders marketed harder on nostalgia, so Toei was probably thinking some actual older Faiz fans would be in the audience. (Given the Faiz merchandise figures, though, I find it weird that Decade!Faiz feels so... phoned-in to me, now. You'd think they would've put the kind of effort into Faiz they did into Agito?)

 

[NeonZ]

Sure, I've seen the ending of Might Gaine. It doesn't come off as bitter in the actual episode as it does when fans describe it, because all this stuff comes out of the big villain's mouth and he's immediately defeated after he says it while Gain shouts heroic things I don't quite remember. (It's to the tune of, "You don't really control me!")

Immediately, afterwards though, while the villain is dying, he realizes that he was just another piece in the game, rather than the true puppet master.

Although I see your point overall. If the story of Kanon really had several bitter references throughout, it sounds like a bigger problem.

 

[Lynxara]

Although I see your point overall. If the story of Kanon really had several bitter references throughout, it sounds like a bigger problem.

This is more or less it. Only I have to underscore that it's not bitter references like in Might Gaine. The entire plot is pretty clearly an allegory for what the producer probably felt he went through when Hibiki was "stolen" from him and "mutilated" by the new producer and Toshiki Inoue.