This one moment in Gekiranger ruined me. This one little thing right here. Because this moment was so telling about Miki. We learn so much about Miki entirely via context over the course of the whole show, but especially during this whole thing between Rio and Gou. The concept of a three-part team has always been important in GekiJyuken. Before the Jan-Retsu-Ran triangle, there was the Rio-Gou-Miki triangle. They all trained together and were part of one unit. Three parts of one whole. The show does a lot to play up the friendship and rivalry that there had been between Rio and Gou as it builds toward it’s climax, but other than Miki commenting on it, this one old photo, and her reunion with Rio when he finally switches back to the good guys, her feelings on the subject of Rio’s betrayal and Gou’s disappearance are never really addressed.
The original triangle reunited.
But look at the photo Miki is holding. Miki is the one with her arms around both Rio and Gou. She obviously cared a lot about both of them. They were her teammates. Even if they bickered, Miki probably did her best to put them both in line. And this photo is clearly very old. Miki has kept it all this time, which is a clear signifier of hoe important her relationship with Gou and Rio was. Remember also at Miki comes from a rough background. In her teens, she was a delinquent and lead a gang. It’s very likely that Jyuken was her way of straightening out her life. It’s entirely possible that, being in the same role in the triangle that Ran is, and because she would have been the one who needed the responsibility the most to straighten herself out, she was named the leader of the squad.
A young delinqent Miki already wearing her Gekichanger.
From all of that it’s easy to assume that Gou and Rio were very important to Miki. they were her teammates, and potentially people she felt responsible for. Then Rio turns against what they were taught and only wants power and goes on to kill their mentor, and then Gou just vanishes without a trace. The two people that Miki was supposed to take care of, she was unable to protect, and the person she probably admired the most and looked to for support and validation was dead.
Think of what that must have done to her mentally, and then then about the person Miki is in the present canon of Gekiranger.
Miki embracing her daughter Natsume after helping Natsume break out of being controlled by the Unicorn-ken user.
Miki is happily married and raising a child. Miki’s daughter Natsumi leads a very fulfilling life and she doesn’t seem to want for anything. She is a strong girl who knows how to stand up for herself, and even though she’s a bit rough around the edges she has a genuinely good heart. Miki is an executive at SCRTC, and likely one of the founding members of the company or at least the one who incorporated training GekiJyuken into it. She designs and builds all of the Gekirangers’ equipment and training materials herself. Miki did, in spite of her team abandoning her, master Leopard-ken and is a fully realized user of GekiJyuken. She laughs and smiles and jokes and enjoys her life. Miki rose above so much pain in her life, and did so much with herself.
And then we get these little moments where we’re allowed to see that wound never fully closed. What’s worse than her not knowing what happened to Gou is the fact that she knows exactly what happened to Rio. All through canon, Miki knows exactly who the Gekirangers are fighting. And it doesn’t seem to be any secret that Retsu is Gou’s brother. Miki has all of these constant reminders of the friends she lost around her, and it never causes her to so much as bend, much less crack or break.
Masaki Miki is a brilliantly written character and easily one of the strongest in Gekiranger. While it wasn’t really necessary to get more of her story than we did in Gekiranger, I feel like it’s sort of a shame she was as pushed aside as she was since she was so closely tied to Gou and Rio, who played very large roles in the plot.
When Sailor Moon Crystal first aired, we got our first glimpse of Queen Serenity, Usagi’s mother from her previous life as the Princess of the Moon. I had been thrilled to see how Crystal would interpret the elder Serenity, because she had always been a much beloved character for me when I’d grown up on the series, though I’m not really sure why. Though looking at my lists of favorite characters these days, it’s a bit less surprising since I’m almost always drawn toward mother and motherly characters. Especially ones that have to balance their role as mother with something much larger.
Then we got our first glimpse of the new Serenity in the final moments of Moon Pride, and I was deeply disappointed.
Just an Usagi in Serenity’s clothing.
For some reason, they had changed Serenity to the same blonde, blue-eyed girl as Usagi. She had become a carbon copy of Usagi in Queen Serenity’s dress. I fixated on this that first episode, and I’ve quietly seethed on it every episode since. It just nagged at me because it just felt so wrong for Serenity. The silver hair and darker eyes she’d had in the first anime gave her age and wisdom and a regal quality to Serenity that the change really took away from her. Queen Serenity is not the shining, innocent girl her daughter is. She doesn’t have the impulsiveness, the sudden spark of adventure and romance. Queen Serenity is past that time in her life. She’s got the moon’s gentle glow, an old wisdom. She is patience and serene love.
This week, six episodes later, they have completely redrawn Serenity, to not only give her back her original color-scheme, but to correct the full drawing itself. This isn’t a mere recolor of the Usagi!Serenity into her proper colors. This is swapping out Usagi and putting in the Serenity that I have been waiting for.
The true Queen of the Moon.
Please compare Usagi!Serenity to actual Serenity. Aside from just the obvious change to her hair and eye color, which is probably the biggest deal here, it’s really important to note that they didn’t just recolor Usagi!Serenity and call it a day, which they could have and I would have been plenty satisfied.
But look at the care and detail with which she was entirely redrawn for Moon Pride. Her expression has changed from a calm sadness, to awe. Her eyebrows, instead of furrowed slightly in worry, are now arched in surprised. The folds of her dress now fall properly over slightly wider hips. Her shoulders are a little more defined. The scallop of her wings aren’t as perfectly even, and are more transparent. You can see extra lines at her breast and where her arm meets her shoulder. Her jewelry sparkles. Her line weight even fluctuates slightly in places.
This is my Queen of the Moon, and I am thrilled to see her, and what it will be like to see her in action when we finally reach the episodes in which she appears.
Earlier this week, we got the full trailer for Kamen Rider Drive, and it gave us a good look at the show we’re going to be spending the next year with. Let me tell you, I’m pretty damn excited and I want to go over some of the things we saw and what they might mean for Kamen Rider Drive.
We open up with just how wide the scope of the attack by our villain/monster group, the Roimyūdo, is. We see many different people being attacked, and connect this directly to our central protagonist, Tomari Shinnosuke, by seeing him screaming and running toward an attack. We’re then graced with several large explosions among city buildings, and then we cut to a much wider shot over Japan and part of China where we see both countries lit by many simultaneous explosions. Our first look into this world is one that presents just how vast the scale of our enemies are, and just how very dangerous they can be. The tone of our world has been set. This is on the level of the Grongi from Kamen Rider Kuuga or the Undead from Kamen Rider Blade. This is something that can, and will, affect the whole world if it’s not handled. Given that this is a hero show, showing us right away what we need to be protected from is a really effective way of starting the trailer.
We then cut right to Shinnousuke, complete with stern, heroic expression, starting the Tridoron and driving off, cementing him and this vehicle as what will protect us from the several hundred massive explosions we just saw. We’re then given a short glimpse of the back of Drive’s helmet among shots of Shinnosuke, giving us that connection, and then brought immediately into the fact that this is a police drama by seeing Shinnosuke’s badge and him looking at clues before tying him back to Drive with the signature “Henshin!” After that we’re immediately shown Shinnosuke happily washing Tridoron’s windshield, and a little of him goofing off before seeing him back to work. there are a few shots of him straightening his tie, which looks like it will be this year’s “catchphrase” gesture. (Akin to Shoutarou adjusting his hat, Ankh eating ice cream bars, or Gentaro’s little chest pound and then pointing to declare friendship.) I’m not sure how I feel about that, as it feels a little unnatural, but this is a show aimed at younger children and a gesture like that is a good signifier of when to start really paying attention. Cues like that, in a show following a certain pattern, are pretty important. I guess I’ll just have to see how it flows when the show itself airs. If it’s not overdone, it may just come off as a silly quirk of Shinnousuke’s instead of something kind of annoying.
But Shinnousuke himself feels slightly like Agito’s Hikawa Makoto to me. Serious about his job, but still a bit of a goofball of a human being. I think this is a refreshing archetype to turn back to, since of our past five riders, only one of them had a steady job. (Ironically, it was Hidari Shoutarou from Kamen Rider W, which was also head-written by Sanjou Riku.) While a few of them were goofballs, and a few were serious, and all were generally a little of both, I feel like Shinnousuke is going to bring us back to the feel of earlier Heisei lead riders and I’m looking forward to that as they were some of my favorites.
We see Shinjima Kiriko, this year’s leading lady, watching him adjust his tie, and this leads us to transition to her introduction clips. We are graced with being introduced to Kiriko via her running into action and then doing a flip over what has to be an 8ft high fence. Our heroine this year is one that’s ready for action, and she’s not shy about showing it. She handcuffs Shinnousuke several times, but then we’re shown her giving a slow thumbs up and a little smile. Kiriko was given to us with the description “Reliable policewoman”, and that she was a little scary and robotic, and from what we can see of her here she seems to be a woman very serious about her work and what it means, but that little smile says a lot. It brings me back to feelings of Ichijou Kaoru from Kamen Rider Kuuga, and I think as we move into Drive further and further, Kiriko will really open up as a character.
While I’m here, I want to make a special note of how Kiriko’s costume was designed. Specifically her skirt.
Please make a special note of her pleated skirt.
Kiriko’s skirt looks to be a minimally pleated circle skirt. I find this to be very notable, and very important, because this is not the style of skirt typical to a policewoman’s uniform in Japan. I’m a big fan of police dramas, and have watched a few other Japanese police dramas and remembered a straighter skirt (thought not quite a pencil skirt), and upon looking up the typical uniform the straight skirt seems to be much more common.
Two actual policewomen in Japan, as found on some forum (which I can’t find a name for on the site) via Google Images.
While there are pleats in the skirts of the actual police woman uniform, they’re small, and that is very much a straight skirt instead of Kiriko’s flared circle skirt with much higher pleats that likely go the full way around (two in the front and two in the back). This is notable, and I want to bring it up, because Kiriko’s skirt allows for a much wider range of motion at the hip. She can extend her legs further, which allows for a longer stride and therefore a faster run. It also allows for more freedom of movement while jumping. The only better alternative would have been pants, such as Ozawa in Agito or Rinko in Wizard had, but since Kiriko seems to be on the level of a beat cop, and not an engineer like Ozawa or a detective like Rinko, she may have to wear the skirt. (I am not sure if policewomen in Japan get a choice as to whether they can wear a version of the uniform with pants or not.) If that is the case, where Kiriko doesn’t have a choice, I’m glad that the costume design team on Kamen Rider Drive at least considered the fact that this woman would be in combat and would need to be able to move quickly and freely in order to fight.
We get a quick glimpse at a person who seems to have turned completely red, which as we see later in the trailer seems to be an effect of being attacked by a Roimyūdo, and then Shinnousuke in a weird helmet followed by the same helmet being worn by this year’s genius scientist, Sawagami Rinna. This is really the first good look we’ve gotten at Rinna, and I’m really thrilled with what I’m seeing. She seems to wear lively pastels (pink and yellow) under her lab coat and to be as lively and bright as those colors. It’s great to see Rider putting a woman back into a position of high intelligence, since the last time we got an active woman of science heading up creating things for Kamen Riders was back in Kamen Rider Hibiki with Takizawa Midori, whim Rinna reminds me of in that they’re both a bit more light hearted than the earlier Heisei women of science. (Though all of those women are also wonderful and I treasure each and every one of them.) Seeing her running around in the strange helmet makes me a little worried that Rinna might come off as a joke sometimes, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt for now.
We get very small glimpses of Saijō Kyū, he department’s occult obsessed researcher, and Otta Genpachirō, a lieutenant who is fairly opposed to all of the “occult” things the special unit is related to. Our glimpses of them are fairly brief ad are entirely them making weird faces before we cut to Kataoka Tsurutaro, our Chief of Police, who we also only really see making weird faces and speaking in a funny voice. It’s hard to glean much from these glimpses. Unlike Rinna, who had some very distinct clothing, and was shown as being both excitable and very serious, we only see funny moments of these other three characters. I could see Kyū and Genpachirō being reduced almost entirely to a comedic duo to off-set some of the dramatic tension of the show (though I’d love for there to be more to them than just that), it seems odd that Tsurutaro would suffer the same fate given that he is in such a position of power. We do leave them with a very serious looking line-up, which gives me hope that our four supporting members of the police force will have just as much impact as our two leads, and not suffer the way some of the secondary cast in the Kamen Rider Club (from Kamen Rider Fourze, which Sanjou was a secondary writer on), such as Shun and Tomoko did.
We then jump back to the Roimyūdo, seeing one holding a man by the neck and the man turning red, as we saw earlier in the trailer. We then see Heart and Brain, our villain leaders, and Chaser who seems to be a rival or adversary of Drive working under Heart and Brain. I’m still not completely sold on our villains. Heart is the sassy one, Brain is the cool one, Chaser… was there for a few seconds and had a face, I guess. He existed, and rode a bike. So far they seem a little run of the mill and dull, especially compared to our protagonist cast. The Roimyūdo themselves though look really interesting and like formidable monsters. They’re being designed by Takayuki Takeya, who has a history working on the S.I.C. line of figures, and often collaborates with Keita Amemiya, another very prolific and well known monster designer. Knowing that, and how terrified I am of the S.I.C Kamen Rider OOO figures, I’m really excited to see what sort of monsters Takeya will bring to Kamen Rider Drive.
We then jump back to Shinnousuke and Kiriko, and we get our first good look int he trailer at Kamen Rider Drive himself. Type Speed seems to be the base form, matching Tridoron, and then we get a look at the secondary forms, which all focus on a change in the tier that wraps around Drive’s torso. I’ve heard different comments on this that make me unsure as to whether Shadow, (the purple tire), Spike (the green tire), and Flare (the orange tire), are just weapon exchanges for Type Speed, which means that we could go into entirely different Types later on, or if these are entirely different Types just like this. The former seems more likely, given that it would give Toei more toys to sell. i like that the tire can come off and be used as an attack though. That’s pretty cool, and really what I was hoping for from it, as a giant tire-sash otherwise seems kind of bulky and awkward.
All in all, we were given a good handful of information. Enough to get me really excited about Kamen Rider Drive and what it might bring to the franchise and the overall semi-cohesive universe of Kamen Rider, while still leaving enough a mystery that I’ve got a lot of questions I want answered. I still have my hesitations. Again, our secondary protagonist cast could easily go very wrong if they’re handled entirely as comic relief, I’m not on board with our villains yet, and after a few weeks Gaim changed entirely from what any pre-premiere information gave us. Right now, the Drive ball is still in the air and I’m just waiting for it to come down to see what it looks like up close.
None the less, I can’t help being really excited to catch it.
So I’ve decided to keep an active list here of the episodes of Moon Speak I do with Ammit on Trial of Heroes, just for any readers I have that don’t cross over. (You should definitely check out ToH though. They are some great people and I doubt I’d have ended up doing this without their influence.) The episodes are all still over there, but this list will bring you right to them. You can also get them from iTunes.
We air Moon Speak over at ToH on the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month and cover our impressions of Sailor Moon Crystal from the perspective of a fandom veteran (me) and someone coming into Sailor Moon almost totally blind (Ammit) on the front of storytelling, animation, and the little details. So please join us twice a month for our look at Sailor Moon Crystal.
This summer I did a ot of walking down by the beach. While walking, I often gave al to of consideration to character analysis and writing. Doing so has become a pretty common hobby for me. One day while walking I thought about Miu and how great she is, and decided to put together my thoughts on an aspect of Miu that I haven’t really gone into discussing as much in my history with discussing Miu even though it’s probably the biggest focal point of her character — Miu’s role as “Queen”.
And don’t you forget it.
The role of “Princess” is very prevalent in Toku, though much more in Super Sentai than in Kamen Rider. It’s a common feminine theme, as “Princess” tends to imply certain things — sweet beauty, grace, elegance. But it diminishes the capacity for power. A Princess really has very little authority. There is the potential for future authority, but “Princess” generally presented in the “fairy tale” way of is generally young, naïve, and waiting for a prince. (Unless the narrative is deliberately and openly trying to subvert that last trope in the way Boukenger and Gokaiger did. A Princess is never just assumed to not be waiting for a prince.) For a high school popularity contest, “Princess” seems much more fitting, doesn’t it?
Instead, Fourze gives Miu the title of “Queen”. A Queen has power. A Queen has authority. A Queen can rule without a King and make rules and laws and decisions. Especially within the narrative of Fourze, more power is placed on the “Queen” than the “King”. Queen is a title that is granted in an election held by the entire student body. Miu is Queen because she earned it. Shun is King entirely because he dates Miu. Normally, this is the other way around, but in this case all of that power is given to the woman. This is super rare for Tokusatsu, and Kamen Rider specifically, especially for a woman who is not the central female of the cast (which for Fourze would be Yuki).
Miu doesn’t have time for a title to affirm that she’s beautiful and graceful. She already has that down. Miu wants affirmation of her power and authority. These are the things that are important to her.
This was also never something Miu had to change about herself. Even after her initial arc where she befriends Gentaro, Miu is allowed to retain all of her pride, all of her power, and all of her ideals. Even after Miu is exposed for being the typical “alpha bitch” who is accepting gifts from her subjects and then throwing them out, Miu is still allowed by the story to win Queenfest. Normally, in this case, it would be because she humbled herself. But that’s not what happened in Fourze. Miu won Queenfest on the back of her own ideals. She didn’t sacrifice her pride and she didn’t apologize. Miu stayed proud and stayed true to what she felt was right. Instead of apologizing for behavior that, by her ideals, was justified, Miu called everyone else on being wrong for treating her as an object on a pedestal. She called them out on only following her to make them feel better about themselves. Miu called the whole damn school out on not treating her like a person.
This was a really radical stance for a show geared at kids to take, and I’m so glad they took it.
Miu didn’t win the title of Queen by turning humble. She won by holding her head up and being brutally honest.
Miu’s power is never diminished in Foruze. “Queen” is never taken away from her even after she starts hanging out with “less popular” kids. She steps away from “head cheerleader” to focus on making sure no one in the school is violently killed by monsters, but she never give up “Queen”. Queen isn’t a title to Miu, it’s a way of being. She simply focuses it on being in charge of the Kamen Rider Club instead of the cheerleading squad.
Miu is the first to admit her flaws. Miu knows she’s a control freak and that she’s stuck-up and proud. Miu knows these are things she needs to work on, but she also knows they make her who she is and there’s no reason to abandon them entirely. Miu’s big revelation as a character? It’s that graduating from school and the club didn’t make her any less Queen. Just because she was moving into a new phase of her life didn’t mean she lost any power. When she wants something she is entitled to go after it. And she came through that lesson by holding on to “Queen” under the guise of “Chairwoman”.
Even as the world was falling down around her, Miu was unafraid to risk her life once she had people she knew she could believe in. Even in the darkest moments, Kazashiro Miu stood proud.
I feel pretty strongly on the subject of Gentaro and making friends. Gentro’s way of doing things is rough, shouldn’t work on everyone, and that many of these people he ended up forgetting about after he helped them, but everyone that Gentaro saved was someone who wanted help. Gentaro feels deeply. Gentaro takes every emotion with 100% of his being. The problems of the people around him become his problem, and while he is trying to help them they are the center of his world. He genuinely believes these people are his friends. He doesn’t see it as him annoying them or bullying them into friendship, but that he is genuinely offering his help and support to people that he sees suffering.
I’ve heard people say that Gentaro dragged people’s private problems into the public, which made it worse for the people he was trying to help. But these were not private problems. These were people who had private problems, and then openly took them out on other people. They aired their private grudges in the form of violently assaulting other people. And instead of condemning them for it, Gentaro offered his support to them. Yes, he sometimes made it worse. That is the result of how deeply Gentaro felt things, and how he approached things entirely with his heart instead of his head. But Gentaro believed in every single person behind a monster that he fought. He believed they deserved happiness and friendship and support no matter how far they’d fallen.
I wish this had been addressed again or even discussed in any kind of detail beyond this brief flashback.
Gentaro believes 100% in his friends. In every single person he’s befriends. But for the KRC, he believes in them even more. It goes above and beyond his feelings toward everyone else. These are his BEST friends. These are the people who not only took his offered friendship and support, but offered their own back to him. So few people do that, that I think it’s really significant to him that these seven people chose to stick close to him, even though he was leading them into danger. Especially Miu, JK, Tomoko, and Yuki, who have no place on the battlefield, but none the less joined him there every time. So I think in Gentaro’s eyes, the other members of the Kamen Rider Club can do no wrong, even wight he fact that several members of the club turned against him over the course of Fourze.
While Ryusei’s betrayal was the most devastating and dramatic, he’s not the only one in the club to turn away from Gentaro over the course of Fourze. JK did it, Yuki did it, Kengo did it. Gentaro never condemned any of them. He never would. He never could. They did what they had to do. for JK and Ryusei, it was to stand by a friend. For Yuki it was because she was afraid. For Kengo, it was because he’d felt betrayed himself. Gentaro could never ever blame any of them for that.
It did always seem odd to me that the rest of the club forgave Ryusei just as quickly as Gentaro though, when he was the one who committed the greatest offense. When JK turned away from the club, he had to get down on his knees and fucking apologize to everyone for their forgiveness. (Though I feel this was mostly for Miu’s benefit, and she and all of them would have forgiven him anyway, but Miu was shown to be ESPECIALLY devastated by JK choosing Capricorn over them.) But after what Ryusei did… Everyone just sort of shrugged it off after Gentaro forgave him, and that feels really awkward to me. I feel like Miu and JK and Shun should have cornered him at some point and threatened to disembowel him if he ever so much as looked at Gentaro wrong again. I feel like Tomoko should have tried to curse him. (But I have issues with how things were handled between Tomoko and Ryusei as a whole.) I feel like Kengo, of all people, should have been completely against keeping him around, and Yuki should have quietly backed him up on it. But none of that ever happened and it always felt really weird to me.
Sometimes it’s awkward supporting new friends when they are competing with old friends. this never stopped Gentaro.
Gentaro made friends with his enemies. He didn’t always continue to be part of the lives of many of the people he helped, but he made an impact on them and encouraged them to do better when no one else did. And we can see that they all care about him and haven’t forgotten the effect Gentaro’s presence in their lives had when we get to “Let’s Go Space!” and all of the people he’d saved stand together for his sake. Gentaro came on strong, but he made an impact on people and offered them support when they thought no one cared. Even if he didn’t stay close to all of his friends, he genuinely did his best for hem when he was close to them and tried to help them be the best they could be. That’s the most genuine sort of friendship there is.
Brand New Love Song 