Kamen Rider Drive Ep1: First Impressions

So I’ve put off writing this post for a bout a week, because I wanted to take the time to really think over my opinions and not let my first-watch hype color how I present the first episode of Kamen Rider Drive. I watched it last Monday, first thing in the morning, and I was a mess of joy and happy girlish screams, but figured that to present this from an analytical standpoint as I’m doing here on BNLS, I want to take the time to calm down and look at things bit by bit and present the good and bad and form a more solid opinion. I’m going to kind of do a play-by-play of the episode along with my opinions, which I don’t intend to do every week, but because there are so many concepts and characters to be introduced to in episode one, I feel it’s a bit necessary. so just bear with me as I make my way through.

None the less, I want to start off saying I was thrilled by this episode, and I’m looking forward to what this year is going to bring. I’m looking forward to Drive and the thoughts I am bound to form and share about it here with you all.

Our cold open gives us a lot of the set up we saw in the trailers with the Global Freeze, but brings in a lot more of the specifics of how it affected Tomari, with his accidentally causing his partner’s injury/death (At this point, I’m not sure which it is.), and the introduction of a previous Drive as well as the t that the Shift Cars themselves have some form of agency and sentience. This is a little unexpected, as none of our pre-premiere material seemed to suggest that the Shift Cars themselves were alive. I’ve heard mixed opinions on the little roads the Shift cars drive on, but personally I like them, tiny streetlights and all. I think it makes it much easier to follow the action of tiny things zooming around wide shots, especially for young children (who are the target demographic). All in all our cold open, taking place 6 months before present-canon, sets up a very engaging world for Kamen Rider Drive to take place in. We have a global disaster, and a hero who helped  fight the situation. We don’t yet know what happened to Original Drive but I’m sure that’s a mystery we’re headed toward.

Who are you, Mystery Drive?

We then jump right into 6 months later with Tomari driving around in the Tridoron expositing on how the Global Freeze has affected people’s lives and the day-to-day culture of the world. there are posters that describe the affects of what people have come to know as “Slowdown”, and phone apps where you can check if there’s been Slowdown or report is the way you would with traffic accidents. The Global Freeze is something that affected people’s lives and is something everyone is aware of, which is rare in contemporary Tokusatsu and really gives it the feel of very early Heisei such as Kuuga and Agito. The dire situation our Rider fights is not a secret, which is something that always bothers me when it is. These attacks are always major and always affect people’s lives. why in shows like W, Den-O, and OOOs, are people not more afraid of these things when they’re shown to keep happening? Why does the news never report on it? It’s nice to see Drive taking the alternate route of it being a well-known event that has changed the way people live.

Tomari then immediately connects their fear to his own. The Global Freeze cost him something and he still doesn’t feel right. the first line we hear him say out loud, instead of in voice-over, is “That’s enough. I’ll stop thinking about it.” Going over the show multiple times, and realizing that the central focus of Tomari right now is his guilt over what he couldn’t do, this is an amazing line. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that they don’t like that Tomari is sort of a slacker, but I think this behavior is really interesting. Tomari is lying to himself. Tomari is pushing it down. He can’t push it away. It’s clearly haunted him for six months no matter what he’s done, but he pushes it down to pretend it’s not a problem. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a Rider using pretty unhealthy coping mechanisms. This isn’t even the first time in recent years. (Actually, it seems to be pretty common in post-Decade Heisei.) But I think this might be the first time it’s centered around guilt instead of loss. there is Eiji in Kamen Rider OOO, but I’m not fully on board with how Eiji was handled. A post for another day. None the less, Tomari is putting it out of his head, as if that can change anything, and at least telling himself that if he doesn’t think about it, he’ll be fine.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

And it’s at that very moment, when we’re introduced to Kiriko. Tomari sits up to stretch, and Kiriko sneaks in and handcuffs him and demands that he come in to work. Tomari tries to escape, and she hurls her shoe at him, subdues him by taking out the back of his knees, and puts him in a lock. She apparently keeps very meticulous notes of Tomari’s habits and where he runs off to (complete with very cute drawings) which she claims is part of her job. I’m hoping that Kiriko has notes on the shift Cars and Mr. Belt too. I want to believe she has a series of notebooks on everyone like this. We’re also told that both Tomari and Kiriko are Sergeants, which in context, puts them on equal ground. I expected Kiriko to be a rank or two lower to present the joke of “I’m technically your superior and you can’t boss me around.” from Tomari, so I’m really glad they made Kiriko his equal to give her more legitimacy.

Kiriko then brings Tomari to the office of the Special Crimes unit (Which seems to be in a driving school instead of a police station for some reason.) and we’re introduced to the rest of the Special Crimes Unit. Honganji, the unit chief, and Saijou, the network specialist, still seem like awkward caricatures to me, and I’m not really on board with them yet. They just seem like weird silly gag characters and I’d really love to see them grow into something more relevant. they do, however, set up the plot for the episode, describing a series of murder cases that Special Crimes is going to help investigate. These crimes are tied to the Slowdown, which Rinna, the unit’s electrical physicist, has renamed the “Density Shift Effect”. Rinna seems to hit a great balance between Enokida from Kuuga and Midori from Hibiki. Rinna clearly takes her job seriously, but we later see her teasing Lieutenant Otta, who we’re shown has no interest in the Global Freeze to the point where he refuses to even believe in it, showing that Rinna still has a sense of humor about things and likes to remain light-hearted when she can. This is a character type I’m really into, so I have very high hopes for some good story involving Rinna.

We then cut to Tomari, out in the Tridoron again, talking to himself about how maybe a case will help him move on, meaning he clearly hasn’t out it out of his mind at all. Even though he said he would stop thinking about it, he never did. He has a short flashback, which he has to shake himself out of, and he tells himself that lie again. He won’t think about it anymore. He’s clearly going to keep thinking about it, but as long as he tells himself that he wont, he can pretend it doesn’t bother him. And at this moment we’re introduced to a disembodied voice inside the car, asking Tomari if he’s decided to become a warrior yet. Tomari calls the voice persistent, indicating they’ve talked before, and the voice exposits that he had the Tridoron given to Tomari, and had him transferred to Special Crimes, supposedly to become this “warrior”. We see more of Tomari’s guilt surface as he calls himself a lazy washout, clearly trying to joke about his own guilt, but the voice doesn’t buy it. Tomari finds the Drive Driver in the console, deducing it’s where the voice was coming from, and we see the first glimpses of the driver and Mr. Belt before he attaches himself to Tomari and Kiriko reappears to inform Tomari that there’s been another murder and they need to go. For some reason she’s in another car? I guess this is to hold off on the fact that she already knows about Mr. Belt. Tomari refuses to go, until Mr. Belt explains what’s up with him, and Mr. Belt decides to just drive the car on his own. I find this relationship fairly amusing, and a little reminiscent of Wataru, the reluctant hero, and Kivat, the talking belt-partner who sassed him around a bit but genuinely cared for him. Right now there’s still a lot of mystery behind Mr. Belt, and I know a lot of people have different theories. I’m personally going with a Mr. Voice theory, that there is someone communicating through Mr. Belt with Tomari and Kiriko in some way. None the less, I’m curious to see how Mr. Belt plays out. He makes so many cute faces though that it really makes me want to buy a Drive Driver. Well played, Toei. Well played.

Sorry to break it to you, but you’re adorable.

So at the crime scene, we’re introduced to Lt. Otto, who is a big grumpy stick-in-the-mud who doesn’t believe in all of the supernatural junk going down even though it is, as mentioned, a world-wide crisis. But okay, man, whatever you want to do. Talking about this on UnKamen-Cast RX earlier today (though this post will likely go up before the podcast episode), it was mentioned that he might be used to kind of explore toxic over-masculinity and kind of displays of obsessive control through denial and that would be an AMAZING subject to explore, but I don’t really trust Toei to go through with it. As I said on UnKamen-Cast, the last time they tried that was with Shun in Fourze, and look how that turned out for us. but Tomari and Kiriko show up in a ridiculous helmet with a radar (designed by Rinna) that is supposed to help detect particles left behind by the Slowdown.

We see the body, which is a bright red color, and apparently still alive though in a comatose state. the four other victims are said to be the same way. We see one of the Roimyudo cause this later in the episode, but it’s still not clear what exactly has been done (which I assume will be cleared up in episode 2, as Tomari and Kiriko investigate). Otto basically dismisses Tomari and the Slowdown, and Tomari continues his investigation, finding a shred of paper that he believes to be a clue. He later finds a small bit of foil, and bags that as well. I’m really curious as to what he believes these mean, especially since he’s able to put together a composite of the criminal’s face and get an identity fairly quickly.

Another slowdown happens and we get a look at our first Monster of the Week, 029. With everyone stuck in slow motion, Mr. Belt calls on the shift cars to distract 029 and get the action moving. It’s amusing how the Roimyudo don’t really seem to know how to fight the Shift Cars, as they’ve otherwise been running unopposed after the Global Freeze, so 029 fumbles a lot and the Slowdown is broken.

We cut back to the investigation office, where Rinna is interviewing Otto about his encounter with the Slowdown and 029, which he still refuses to believe happened even though he was there for it, and Tomari compiles a composite of the suspect. We then get this season’s signature mark, Tomari straightening his tie, and Kiriko declares that it’s a sign that Tomari has gotten serious — Possibly serious enough for his “engine to start”. He catches up to 029 close to a gym. Apparently he’s identified a person who looks almost exactly like 029 that went to that gym. 029 attacks a gym patron, a friend of Matsuda, the man 029 looks like. This seems to imply a very Worm-like appearance-stealing on the part of the Roimyudo. the fact that they can slow down everything around them, is also similar to how the Worms could speed up themselves to attack. and much like the Riders in Kabuto could Clock-Up up match the Worms’s speed, the Shift Cars allow Tomari (or anyone holding them, as Kiriko is also unaffected by the Slowdown while she has Funky Spike and Midnight Shadow) to be unaffected by the Slowdown. Apparently one car isn’t enough to handle more than one Roimyudo causing a Slowdown, though as two more show up and Tomari is stuck again. Theoretically, one car can overpower one Slowdown. This is actually pretty nice, as one car canceling all Slowdowns seems a little broken for his early on. though once in suit, he seems to be unaffected by any amount of slowdown entirely. Tomari struggles as he watches 029 do… whatever it is he is doing to the civilian until Kiriko shows up with the remaining two shift cars, able to fend the other two Roimyudo off with just her handgun.

I really hope Kiriko was offered the Drive Driver and declined because she’s already too busy being the only one getting anything done in this show.

It’s really nice seeing the police be effective against the monsters again this year. I’m hoping that over time, the rest of Special Crimes will become aware of Drive and that Rinna will follow in Enokida and Ozawa’s footsteps to develop weaponry for Kiriko to use to fight the Roimyudo herself. But man, Kiriko’s throwing herself into the fight, I thought was great. She was unafraid. There was never even the slightest hesitation from her in protecting Tomari, and then demanding to know why he isn’t fighting himself. She knows the gravity of this situation, and she knows that Tomari has to be the one to fight (even though we don’t know why it has to be Tomari yet) so why isn’t he fighting? Prior to this scene, Kiriko was very serious and reserved, and int his moment we see her break the “robotic” label that pre-premiere press gave her. I’m glad to see we’re doing that right away. I’m so glad to see Kiriko have emotions instead of just being cold and blank. Kiriko fully believes in the mission, and what has to be done, and in Tomari and if he isn’t living up to her expectations she will make it clear. She’s been reserved but leading up to this we’ve seen little moments of anger and excitement, and then this scene brings it all together with her fury and desperation and annoyance. I hope to see more of this from Uchida Rio.

Mr. Belt explains that Tomari has to transform, and how to do it, as Kiriko activates the belt for him. Mr. Belt gives a motivational speech that is very much punctuated by Kiriko watching Tomari with full confidence. Tomari decides that if he can save this person being attacked by 029, then he’s not going to think about the past and he’s just going to do it. It’s the third time we hear the line “I’m done thinking about it.” from Tomari this episode, and I think it’s the first time he really means it. Hayase will still haunt him, but this isn’t the time or the place for it. Someone needs him right now. So Tomari transforms and we get our first fight of the season, set to our opening song, “Surprise Drive”. We then have the different tire types shown off, Max Flare the fire type, Funky Spike, the close combat type, and Midnight Shadow the ninja-based projectile type. The Type Speed tire i think is pretty okay, but these other three seem very “plastic” and very much just an accessory swap toy gimmick. Yes, i know all Riders are a toy gimmick, but at least make it look decent. Our previous five Riders (as much as I dislike Gaim from a story perspective) at least had very cohesive suit changes for their gimmicks, where Flare, Spike, and Shadow all seem to not really fit Drive at all. though I do like that when Drive shifted to Flare, not only did Speed fly off and hit the monster, Tomari ducked out of the way of Flare the first time it tried to land on the suit, because who WOULDN’T duck away from a giant flaming wheel flying at their head? Very nice touch.

Let’s face it. That thing is straight out of Okami.

My one major complaint is that there doesn’t seem to be any consistency as to what will completely kill a Roimyudo, and what will just reduce one to being a floating number. 042 and 088 were killed by base attacks (088 almost immediately after it was reduced to a floating number, 042 several minutes after it became a number), but Tomari’s big showy final Rider Kick wasn’t enough to bring down 029 completely. Is there a difference in power between 029 and the other two? There wasn’t one that we could see. I’d really like some kind of light shed on this because it did bother me quite a bit. the Rider Kick though I thought was very cool and exciting, and I was glad to see Tridoron be part of it, since aside from Wizard we haven’t really had the Rider’s vehicle be all that involved in quite a while.

Killing 029 not only saved the partially red victim, but was enough to apparently revive the other four who had fallen under whatever the attack was. the look on Tomari’s face when he saw the man from the gym return to normal wasn’t relief or pride or excitement, it was clear disbelief. He couldn’t believe that he actually managed to save someone. After such a massive, damaging failure in protecting Hayase, Tomari really couldn’t believe that his actions had really saved this man. Takeuchi Ryoma really played that scene well and used just the right expression. I’m looking forward to seeing how he continues to handle Tomari.

He truly can’t believe he actually managed to protect someone.

The episode closes with Kiriko taking Tomari to this year’s secret base, the Drive Pit, essentially a bat-cave under the driving school/Special Crimes office. Kiriko wheels Mr. Belt out on some kind of… I’m not even sure what, that puts him on eye level with she and Tomari. Kiriko reveals that only she and Mr. Belt know about Drive, and not even Special Crimes is aware of them. Again, I really hope they become aware, one by one, and that we get a sort of KRC-like “Team Drive”. I think that would be good and provide our B-List cast with some very much-needed relevance.

So after Tomari decides to revisit his little scraps of evidence, we cut to little goopy 029 flopping around helplessly on some stairs in the Toei Combat Warehouse like an uncomfortable jello mold or something from a credit score commercial, and Heart, the first of our three Boss Level villains, arrives to offer him a new body via what appears to be a black Shift Car. A theory we came up with while recording for UnKamen-Cast today was that perhaps the Shift Cars are former Roimyudo, and that Tomari will be able to sort of “Catch” them to gain new power-ups. It’s an interesting theory that I really like and I’m really curious to see how this plays out.

If Tridoron parks in the Drive Pit, then how has Tomari been getting it for the pat 6 months? Has he just been parking it wherever and Mr. Belt remoted it back to the Drive Pit this one time? This confuses me. I demand an explanation.

So all in all, I’m really pleased with the first episode. It raised a lot of questions in a way that promises future answers, and it hit a lot of the notes of a standard police drama that I really like while still bringing in the fun and excitement of a Kamen Rider show. We have great female characters in practical outfits,an interesting main rider, and a generally pretty neat gimmick. I’m very very excited for what this year will bring.

Environment Design: BuildRessha

By accident, shortly after watching episode 18, I started the episode playing in iTunes when I was trying to get my music started to go to bed and I noticed that Akira has his laundry, his work schedule, his cooking supplies, his tools, old damaged blinds on the windows, workbenches, a little fan (because I’m assuming he doesn’t know what air conditioning is, much less that the probably has one to turn on), a first aid kit — All of his basic living supplies all in the cockpit of his train. He lives there. Akira has made BuildRessha his home.

Do you really not know what an A/C is, Akira?

State of the art train my ass, Ticket. You couldn’t give him one with a separate room to keep his stuff and sleep in?! Akira lives in this one tiny little room. With all of his stuff. And all these ropes and this huge console taking up most of the space. But like… It’s not like the others, where they all seem to have their own rooms and places to keep their stuff and then a dining cart to hang out in. Akira has no other space. He has this one tiny little room. He has to crowd in among all of these things that were precious or important or necessary enough to bring with him when he became ToQ6.

And I severely doubt he cares because he refuses to believe he could possibly deserve more. He doesn’t deserve a big comfortable living space like the other ToQgers get. He doesn’t deserve his food just handed to him and being allowed to eat happily with company. He has to cook for himself on his little electric stove and eat by himself. Everything is somewhat organized and he clearly knows where it all is, but this space just feels so uncomfortable. So crowded as though he’s just pushed into existing in this one little spot at the console. He has workbenches on either side. He can’t even just walk around the console freely. He has to back out and go around the workbenches too. (And even those are cut in half by the pulleys for the operating ropes.) He has to maneuver around his little tables for his possessions and tools. He can’t move freely in this space.

Two fans now? Furthering theories that he doesn’t know what the A/C is. But you can see he’s moving things around. He is living in this space.

I think if he did have the space to put things elsewhere, he would use it if only because it has to be harder to actually OPERATE THE TRAIN with all of that stuff there. And doing his job properly would be the highest priority for him. Maybe he’d keep some tools in there, but I severely doubt he’d keep ALL of them and put up blinds and have a fridge and his cooking supplies in there. All of that is in his way, and anything unnecessarily in his way PREVENTS him from properly protecting Rainbows, which he would not allow. If only for the sake of efficiency, I think if he had another space to put things, he would.

The staff could have just left all of hi stuff out of the cockpit and we would have easily assumed that he just had a room elsewhere on BuildRessha. We’ve done that with every single other Super Sentai. Hell, we were ALREADY doing it with the other five ToQger. it wouldn’t have been a stretch. The fact that all of Akira’s things are packed into the cockpit of BuildRessha is DEEPLY significant from a narrative point of view. It openly signifies that he is living in BuildRessha instead of just drifting around living where ever he can or wherever he had been before.

This one room, the only space that truly belongs to Akira, feels deliberately uncomfortable for this poor man who doesn’t believe he deserves even the slightest bit of comfort.

He’s forced to sleep wedged between the wall and the console.

We actually get to see a lot of the transition from BuildRessha as Akira finds it, as a tool of the RainbowLine, to the point where it’s Akira’s train.  You can see that he knew that he was going to have to live in this small space and brought in the essentials first — his work schedule, a place to keep his food, a first aid kit — while he was making the train usable for himself. And then later he brings in all of these little comforts like places to hang his laundry and a fan to keep him cool because summer is coming (and again I’m convinced he wouldn’t know what Air Conditioning is), some shelves, benches to get some work done. The order things appear in is almost as important as the fact that these things appear at all. It’s a visible sign that Akira has accepted being a ToQger and that it’s important to him, even though he is verbally still claiming to isolate himself from the rest of the team. Akira has made this space, the only space that has ever been truly and completely his since leaving the Shadow Line and the only space of his that WE THE AUDIENCE will see, entirely his own.

BuildRessha seems much bigger before you try to fit an entire person’s worth of stuff into it..

Akira didn’t take long to make himself at home though.

You can tell a lot about a character by their living environment, and dear GOD is the ToQ team is showing Akira off to us with this. Noticing this about Akira in BuldRessha as really important because it tells us not only contextually about Akira and the choices he is making personally, but meta-textually that the staff is thinking about this sort of thing. This is a very visible sign that members of the staff on all different levels care about Akira, and about ToQger as a whole, and are trying to put their best foot forward and I’m really glad to see that. I wish we got to see more sets like this. Bedrooms for the other ToQger on the Rainbow Line, maybe personal quarters for the Shadow Line commanders, anything to give us more of a sense of personality for the characters in the way they live.

Masaki Miki: An example of an ideally written supporting character.

Miki was potentially the first GekiYellow.

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.

Sailor Moon Crystal: Queen Serenity v. Moon Pride

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.

Kamen Rider Drive: Full Trailer

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.

Moon Speak Episode List

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.

• Episode 1 – Luna Eclipsed
• Episode 2 – Getting Misty
• Episode 3 – Mars Attacks
• Episode 4 – Dangerous Moonlight
• Episode 5 – Jupiter Is Ready
• Episode 6 – Dream Boat

Character Analysis: Kazashiro Miu’s role as “Queen”.

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.

Long live the Queen.

Character Analysis: Gentaro & Friendship

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.

Podcast: Kamen Rider Drive News Drop

So we’ve been getting a lot of news coming in about the new Kamen Rider Drive set to air in October, and Ammit and I did a quick roundup of the news we had over at Trial of Heroes. Some of what at least I talked about is now a little outdated (as I’ve seen more information correcting some rumors I had heard, but check it out. We cover the lead staff and what we know about the characters I’m pretty hyped for Drive, t remember that this is all pre-show press stuff that we’re reporting on and none of it is really all that set in stone.