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Top Ten Creepy Kamen Rider Children

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 I've mentioned before that Toei tends to revisit the themes and character types it really likes, and it's pretty obvious that for Toei, and especially Kamen Rider, creepy children rank up there. They rank so high that though this list was originally meant to include both Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, by the time I'd finished counting all the creepy children populating Kamen Rider I'd completely run out of space for, well, Kibaranger.

 "Children", in this sense, means any character under the age of eighteen, albeit with a focus on characters towards the lower age range. With that aside, let's view the nanny's nightmare gallery!




 10. Shizuka (Kamen Rider Kiva)
 Generally, Shizuka was actually a pretty inoffensive character. So inoffensive in fact that sometimes even the writers forgot she existed. Then Wataru hooked up with his love interest Mio and suddenly the normally sweet, slightly bland Shizuka went insane. Suddenly lit in an eerie fashion usually reserved for camp pantomime villains and, well, the Devil, and sporting horns and a tail, she began actively trying to break Wataru and Mio up (the part where she started claiming Wataru was engaged to her was a particular highlight, because she was about thirteen).

 Then just as suddenly she forgot all about her crazy jealousy and returned to normal, for no readily apparent reason. What just happened? Did she suffer a minor psychotic break and everyone was too polite to ever mention it again?


 9. Mezuru (Kamen Rider OOO)

The face that launched a thousand nightmares.

 Technically Mezuru isn't a child at all, but since she decides to take the human form of a thirteen year old girl we'll roll with that. The really creepy thing about this is despite looking like a prepubescent girl she still acts like the adult she is, including having strange quasi-oedipal scenes with her fellow villain Gameru. Unless you're Humbert Humbert there is something unsettling and upsetting about seeing a thirteen year old girl screaming "I want all of you inside me!" at a massive monster... thing.


 8. Kitazaki (Kamen Rider 555)
 The first of two 555 characters on this list, Kitazaki is only so low because he was pretty inefficient. He certainly didn't lack in creepiness, walking around with a worrying lack of empathy or compassion, and more interested in entertaining himself than anything else. And while it's this childish disposition that made him creepy, it's also the reason he wasn't as much of a threat as he could have been, because it's difficult to get truly worried about someone who you can save yourself from with just a well-timed paper aeroplane.


 7. Philip (Kamen Rider W)
 Hang on just a second, I hear you saying. Why is Philip creepier than Kitazaki? Kitazaki spent most of his time either being weird or trying to kill someone or doing both at the same time. And to that all I have to say is did Kitazaki ever try to elope with a member of his own family?

 "That's not fair, Philip didn't know Wakana was his sister when they made that plan!"

 No, that's true. But after he did find out they were related, do you remember the first thing he said? It was pretty much "that explains why I feel this connection to you then". What kind of sicko responds to "you're my brother" with "that totally explains why I want to bone you!"? You'll also notice Philip was still keen to elope with her even after that; it was basically only her attempted murder of him that put him off.

 Oh, and the whole being a psychic reanimated dead person thing too. That is quite scary.


 6. Lost Ankh (Kamen Rider OOO)

I'M A BIRD I'M A BIRD I'M A BIRD

 When we first meet Ankh's other half (or, more accurately, other 95%), he's in his real form, an adult-sized fabulous multi-coloured bird... thing. However, one of the first things most of us noticed was that this mysterious character had a high, cute voice (the same voice as the non-threatening chirpy teenage hero of Kingdom Hearts, actually) and referred to himself as "boku" (whereas our Ankh uses the informal "ore"). He wasn't the scary, intimidating figure we'd been expecting. Then at Kazari's suggestion he took on the human form of the cutest little plaid-shirted boy since Goseiger's Nozomu.

 If you showed the paragraph above to someone who's never seen OOO their first thought would be "there are talking birds in this show? What a trip". But their second would be that Lost Ankh isn't a villain. And here's what makes him so creepy: despite the cute appearance, way of talking and almost kind of endearing brother-esque relationship with Kazari, Lost Ankh is still a villain. Not just because Kazari is shepherding him either; this isn't some "sweet little boy has misunderstood which side is the right one" kind of deal. Lost Ankh doesn't do much or say much right now, but the two things he does want to do are decidedly villainous: 1) create Yummies (he even attempted to do this with Kazari), and 2) get his arm back, regardless of the fact that it's developed a personality of its own and is for all accounts another individual.

 He also wears red with purple, which any right-minded person will tell you is basically a crime. A crime against fashion.


 5. Alternate Wataru (Kamen Rider Decade)
 The first questions most people asked upon seeing the Decade version of Kiva's world was "where is IXA? Where is Saga? Where is Megumi?" The Kiva world we saw in Decade was a strange, lonely one where Wataru is Prince of the Fangires and Fangires and humans seemingly live in peace.


 Why do they live in peace? Because the second a Fangire tries to feed themselves, Wataru has guards kill them. To be fair, he's obviously not thrilled with this solution, but never do we see anyone mention trying to find an alternate energy source for Fangire like Taiga does at the end of the Kiva series. Nor does anyone mention creating a prison for these Fangires. No, obviously the best option is execution, without a trial first. You know what we call the mass slaughter of a group of people based on their race or ethnicity (or, in this case, species)? It begins with "g" and it ends with "enocide". And dead people. It ends with a lot of dead people.



 4. Ramon (Kamen Rider Kiva)
 It's easy to forget Ramon, because Kiva's Arms Monsters didn't do very much, and the little they did do was usually down to Jiro. Ramon, the creepy fish monster who moonlighted as an even creepier sailor-suited little boy, usually faded into the background. The thing is, what he was doing in the background was usually kind of creepy.

I'M A FISH I'M A FISH I'M A FISH

 Remember when Jiro first hooked up with Yuri and was planning to get her to bear his half-werewolf children? (I swear this plot point happened, even if most people have understandably repressed it.) You know who thought that was a great idea? Ramon. You know what he thought was an even better idea? Following Jiro's lead and knocking up someone else with his demon fish sperm. At no point did anyone say "how is someone inhabiting the body of a thirteen year old boy ever going to manage to knock a woman up?" That would be the first thing I'd ask.

 Remember the time the Arms Monsters kidnapped Wataru so he could yank a sword out of his pet castle dragon's insides? (Again, this happened.) Do you remember what Ramon said as the boy they'd sworn to protect lay unconscious and helpless on the floor? He suggested they kill him. Oh, but the moment Wataru wakes up it's all "hi Wataru!" and "can I help you, Wataru?" and "is that thirteen year old girl you hang out with capable of childbirth yet, Wataru? No reason".


 3. Teruo (Kamen Rider 555)
 555 had so many villains coming and going that it was hard to know who the final villain was going to be. It was quite a surprise when rather than being Kitazaki or Smart Lady or even turn-coat Kiba, it turned out to be some random kid. So random, in fact, that when writing this list I had to look this kid's name up. Admit it, for a second when you saw the name you had a moment of "Who?" as well.

 Teruo is an orphan who suffers from black-outs. It's when he blacks out that the personality of the Orphnoch King takes over and begins trying to grow stronger so it can complete its plans to wipe out all of humanity. Teruo himself is largely incidental to this, being more of a vessel for the King than an active participator, but unfortunately that makes him ten times creepier. Obviously the Orphnoch King needs to die, but how can you get rid of him when killing him means killing an innocent kid? This wasn't a moral dilemma 555 spent a lot of time on, because obviously Kiba and Takumi's anguished telephone calls were more important, but it's a pretty chilling one to consider.


 2. The OverLord of Darkness (Kamen Rider Agito)
 This kid's already been mentioned in Five Things Toei Loves but no mention of creepy children in Kamen Rider is complete without bringing up a character who is essentially the closest thing Kamen Rider has to a depiction of Satan.

 So if he's meant to be the Devil, you may ask, why isn't he at number one? It's hard to get much creepier than the actual embodiment of all evil.

What Toei thinks Satan looks like.

 The OverLord of Darkness sits in second rather than first place because the reveal of his identity is one of the most hilariously silly things I've ever seen in Kamen Rider, and I've seen Starfish Hitler. Agito spends so much time carefully building up the tension and the atmosphere around this child, around why he could possibly be doing the things he's doing, about what terrible motives and powers he might have. Then finally, we come to Agito's grand climax, and all is revealed:

 "He wants to kill everyone."

 "...and?"

 "And that's it. Just kill everyone. Kill all the people, kill all the things."

 "But why?"

 "What do you mean, 'why'? 'Kill everyone' has been a good enough motive for every other Rider villain, why are you suddenly pitching a fit? Look, um, he doesn't understand them. He thinks they're weird and possibly have cooties. There, is that good enough?"

 "I just thought... after you made such a big deal of it..."

 "Look, leave me alone. He's the Devil, okay? Killing everything is just what the Devil does. Where's my prune juice?"


 1. The Nogami family (Kamen Rider Den-O)
 Just... the Nogami family. Okay, so Ryoutarou and Kohana are not mentally children, but they've both been de-aged to be between the ages of around ten to sixteen (depending on what part of the series or movies you're watching). And they have been creeping me out ever since.

Manlier at fifteen than at nineteen.

 Think about it. One day you're about nineteen. You've got issues as it is; like your whole world's blinked out of existence, or you're surrounded by four (sometimes five, on a bad day) brightly coloured dudes who want to use your body for who knows what. Plus you spend most of your time on a train, and the amenities on trains aren't that great, time-travelling or not. The next thing you know, you're prepubescent again. You will now have to go through puberty for the second time, while still remembering everything that sucked about the first time.

 Wouldn't you be just a little bit bothered by this?

 Ryoutarou and Kohana barely even mention the fact that their respective testes and breasts have suddenly retreated back into their bodies. As he matures through puberty for the second time Ryoutarou seems bizarrely unfazed by the fact that not only is his voice getting deeper, it's getting deeper than it was the first time around. Kohana doesn't care that her hymen is more like The Cat That Came Back The Very Next Day than a functioning part of her body.

 Okay fine, Den-O is a kid's show and I don't expect Ryoutarou to suddenly interrupt a fight scene with important news on the state of his returning wet dreams but jeez, you guys. At least look a little bothered.

Five Top Kamen Rider Trolls

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 Kamen Rider, like any other long-running franchise, has a number of character types that pop up again and again. The asshole who thinks he's right and everybody else is wrong (see: 555's Kusaka, Kiva's Nago). The gentle, sweet-natured hero who wishes we could all just get along (Agito's Shouichi, Ryuki's Shinji). And, in more recent times, another type has become increasingly common: the troll.

 You know that annoying guy who sets up camp on your favourite forum and does nothing but post anime macros in the middle of a serious discussion? Or the one who responds to your nine hundred word essay on why Ultraman is totally underrated with just "u mad?"? Toei loves that guy. He's become a pretty common fixture in Kamen Rider, to varying levels of success. Let's talk about the rise of the Kamen Rider troll and btw, you sound fat.


 5. Sieg (Kamen Rider Den-O)

Every girl crazy 'bout a man in a feather boa.

 Have you ever noticed that when Sieg enters a scene the other characters in it seem to deflate with barely concealed disappointment almost immediately? Despite the fact that he's only slightly more irritating than the other Imagins (Deneb excluded, everyone's got plenty of time for Deneb ♥), everybody hates this guy. They try to push him off on other people, like the time he somehow ended up possessing Tsukasa and none of the Den-O crew really cared, they just wanted to get out of there before Tsukasa and co gave him back. Maybe it's because he keeps hitting on the pre-pubescent girl they have travelling with them. Or maybe it's because he moults feathers everywhere. But I personally believe it's because Sieg seems to exist purely to troll the already ridiculous henshin sequences in any Den-O media.

 Kamen Rider villains are a patient lot, being used to waiting for the Riders to finish their poses and speeches before they attack, but the Den-O crew really push their luck. They spend so much time letting everyone pose and preen and recite their catchphrase, and then in The Onigashima Warship Sieg wanders in to ruin it all, capping the dramatic line-up off with a pat "I already said my line". Is it any wonder they all hate him?


 4. Jun (Kamen Rider Ryuki)
 Judging the men in Ryuki who choose to join the Rider War isn't an easy thing. Many of them have serious, heartbreaking reasons like "I need to save the life of the person I love most" or "I only have a limited time left to live". Jun's reason for joining the War is "there's nothing on television right now and 2chan is down".

 Despite being an intelligent university student, Jun seems to think he's a 13 year old from 1998, uploading a childish virus on to the hard drive of ORE Journal's mainframe and laughing as it does its job. Before that he sets up, and I'm not kidding, his own version of Fight Club where members kind of swoosh about in big cloaks. What is wrong with this guy? Why is he only able to re-enact bad nineties cliches?


 3. Kitazaki (Kamen Rider 555)
 Kitazaki, despite a lot of fandom's great dislike for him, actually contributed a lot to not just 555 but the Kamen Rider franchise in general. Because of this man, we are able to refer to "that time a Kamen Rider hero only survived being killed because the villain got distracted by a paper aeroplane" in total seriousness.


 2. Kazari (Kamen Rider OOO)
 For someone who disappears for big chunks of the series at a time and spends a good deal of what little screen-time he does have just chilling out in other people's cars or random internet cafes, Kazari has managed to ruffle quite a lot of feathers.

Pictured: responsible for the entire plot.

 Kazari's favourite target seems to be Uva, who he goes out of his way to torment. In episode 23, Eiji and Ankh dash to a spot where Ankh senses Kazari and Uva, only to find an incensed Uva trying to remove Kazari's intestines through his nostrils. Why? Pretty much just because Kazari felt like annoying someone that day.

 In fact, roughly 90% of the problems Eiji faces as OOO happen because Kazari felt like annoying someone that day. How many men can say that?


1. Daiki (Kamen Rider Decade)

This is Daiki in a nutshell.

 Daiki has turned trolling into an artform. Lazing around contributing little more to the plot than "TROLOLOL TSUKASA HATES SEA CUCUMBERS" wasn't good enough for him. Stealing the only thing that could restore Natsumi's soul just to annoy Tsukasa for half an hour wasn't good enough. Showing up in The Onagashima Warship for literally no other reason than to inconvenience the Denliner crew wasn't good enough. Daiki's finest moment came in Decade's finale, when he seemed to have had a change of heart. He poured out an emotional speech to Tsukasa, tears in his eyes, swearing eternal loyalty and friendship.

 Then five minutes later he shot him in the face.

 This was trolling at its finest, an effort so momentous that it went beyond simply trolling the characters Daiki shares the canon universe with into some incredible meta attempt at trolling the viewer. I sat in stunned silence barely hearing Toei's announcement that the true ending to the Decade series would be shown in a movie later that year. I could see only Natsumi's shocked face as Daiki shoved the barrel of his gun into Tsukasa's face. I saw myself in her eyes, our jaws hanging at the same distance from the ground. What is truth? What is life? Somewhere a snake walked on two legs experiencing the human condition. I... had seen forever.

Five Kamen Riders Who Suck at Their Jobs

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 One of this blog's most read posts is Five Reasons Not to Date a Kamen Rider, presumably because there are a lot of people who feel as strongly as I do about the future of their love lives in relation to fictional Japanese guys. But you know, it's not just romance that Kamen Riders generally fail at. They're pretty equal opportunity in their failure, which is why I'm presenting this new list to you.

 Listen, say what you like about Takumi but he did some serious laundry during 555. Agito's Hikawa did very little but his police work. Even the Blade Riders, who are otherwise doing pretty badly in the game of life, managed to convince me that their employment wasn't a total disaster.

 The Riders on this list, however, should never have been hired in the first place.




 5. Tendou (Kamen Rider Kabuto)
 It's kind of unfair of me to include Tendou on this list, because I'm not actually sure if he even is employed. But let's say he is, because it might drive me into rage overdrive to imagine Tendou somehow has tons of money sitting around for no good reason. Unless this guy's job is being a smug dick in coffee houses, I think it's fair to say he's a crappy employee.


 4. Eiji and Gotou (Kamen Rider OOO)

Seriously guys, can I get some coffee?

 This, Chiyoko, is why you interview employees before you hire them. So your only two waiters don't just drop everything you're paying them to do and run out of the restaurant several times a day, okay? Okay, it's fair to let Eiji off the hook sometimes, he's saving Tokyo from destruction and everything but Gotou doesn't even do anything! Are you seriously letting your otherwise most competent employee leave in the middle of a shift so he can go and watch some random stubbled guy beat up a fish?

 Oh right, you're probably coming up with the restaurant's next ludicrously expensive theme. Can someone please explain the concepts of "revenue", "expenses" and "Chiyoko should be bankrupt by now" to Toei?


 3. Ryoutarou (Kamen Rider Den-O)
 Ostensibly Ryoutarou also works as a waiter, this time at his sister's coffee house. I say "ostensibly" because I think I saw him serve someone coffee about two times in the entire series. The rest of the time he was making mess for the Doctor to undo later down the line.

Nepotism.

 I know, if Den-O had been about Ryoutarou's exciting adventures in filling an order for cappuchino and a double latte for the women at table four the series would have been boring as heck. And he's got a time machine, so it's not like he can't just pop back to the moment he left and do his shift, unlike Eiji who slopes back at six in the evening and expects to be paid for spending the day hanging out with Garudamon's cousin. It's just even when Ryoutarou does return to his normal timeline, what does he do? He doesn't serve coffee, I'll tell you that for free. What he does is more in the realm of "bothering random strangers to have a touching epiphany" or "letting strange men inside him", and unlike more business-savvy individuals, he doesn't even charge money for that latter option.


 2. Wataru (Kamen Rider Kiva)
 Wataru has a rather unusual profession: he makes and repairs violins for a living. Now, call me crazy but that's something of a niche market. It's the kind of thing you need to advertise, you know? Put up adverts online or in the paper, have a sign outside so people know where to find you. Maybe even set up  a shop so it's easier for potential customers to reach you. When you live in an intimidating mansion with iron gates and barely ever leave the house, only people who either a) already know about your services or b)  need a violin and are prepared to hire a private detective to find a violin maker are going to reach you.

 And I just don't think the number of people in Tokyo who really desperately, like medically need violins is that high? How do you even pay your utility bills, Wataru? Last time I checked nobody was handing out cash for having moody teenage crises of identity. I mean let's face it, if they were most characters in Kamen Rider would be hooked up.


 1. Ryu (Kamen Rider W)

TERUI SAD FOR FAMILY. TERUI SMASH.

 Everyone in Fuuto seems to be completely insane, because they all believe that Ryu is a fantastic policeman. Upon Ryu's first appearances we get lots of remarks from characters about what a fine detective he is and how good he is at his job. Then he shirks police dress-codes, does a few unnecessary somersaults in the middle of a very important suspect apprehension and tries to kill a couple of unarmed civilians. This is what is known in the real world as "police brutality", or sometimes, "being a total wingnut".

 Happily, Ryu himself is redeemed by the series and eventually stops trying to bludgeon half of Fuuto with his nightstick, but my real question here is what is wrong with the Fuuto police department? Why is this guy still employed? They promoted him, even!

 In a way, Akiko ruined Ryu's career. If she hadn't taught him the value of not being a psychotic asshole he might have made Inspector for kettling someone by now.

Five Sentai Heroes I Would (Not) Take Home to Mother

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 My mother is a pretty chill, laidback sort of lady. When I told her I spend a significant chunk of my time watching and writing about Japanese kid's shows she basically took it in her stride and shrugged (though she's getting old, so she might not actually have heard me). And she's mellow about who I date too. She'll welcome into her home and family whoever makes me happy, so long as whoever makes me happy is a tall, well-spoken type who makes six figures a year.

 Hot off the heels of my declaration that I'd never date a Kamen Rider, I started wondering if I'd date a nice Sentai hero instead. And maybe I would, but here are the ones I would probably (not) take home to meet my mother.




 5. Ahim (Goukaiger)
 Is this unfair, declaring she'd never get to meet my mother only a month after the poor girl shows up? Ahim's a princess with impeccable manners and some lovely taste in big frilly dresses, so she and my mother would probably get on pretty well. Plus my mother loves to travel, so I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear that Ahim's done some travel herself. "Oh, you went on a cruise?" my mother would say, and tell that story about the time she and my father went on a cruise that doesn't really have an ending and isn't actually about anything except that once my mother vomited into the Atlantic.

 I just don't think the clarification that Ahim didn't go on a cruise, she went gallivanting around space with a hoarde of pirates would go down so well.


 4. Takeru (Shinkenger)

I just don't know how I'd explain this.

 Come on, Takeru's classically tall, dark and handsome and incredibly rich and has neat servants who could fetch my mother's TV Times for her after she throws it out of the window to make a point in an argument. What's not to like? My mother would adore him! She probably wouldn't even mind if he wore those hideous jeans with "MASSIVE EVIDENCE" emblazoned across his ass.

 The thing is, my mother's kind of a traditionalist. She's always believes that two people is the way to go as far as love and marriage is concerned. At a stretch she might accept three people. She definitely would not accept six people, a talking paper lantern, plus me - and I just don't think I'm strong enough to fend off Takeru's harem (or "vassals", as he so quaintly calls them) by myself.


 3. Ban (Dekaranger)
 Tall, good. Policeman, good. Has stopped styling his hair like a Dragonball Z character now, good. I really think my mother would warm to Ban. And don't you have to be super smart to even get to go into space, let alone do it as an occupation? Dude, my mother would probably want him for herse--

 "Oh, are we meeting your ma today? That's so awesome!!! Is she old? I'll talk extra loud so she can hear!!!!"
  
 Change of plan, I'm dumping him.


 2. Nakadai (Abaranger)
 He's a doctor. What neurotic, controlling mother doesn't want her daughter to marry a doctor? And he loves children! He's good with animals! On paper Nakadai sounds like the perfect man. My mother herself could create a more perfect specimen.

 There's just one tiny fly in the ointment, and that's the small fact that Nakadai is a raving psychopath with creepy pedophile vibes and a pet pterosaur... thing. I mean, my mother might actually be able to forgive this, but the final cherry on top is that his pterosaur... thing isn't even polite. It's got the manners of, well, number three on this list. I think that's just the final straw.


 1. Hant (Go-onger)
 Fine, he's not tall or rich and he thinks his favourite work experience so far was dressing up as a maid and giving strange men things to eat. But he's so cuuuute! He looks like a lovely chubby frog, who could resist that? My mother loves small squeaky things, she'd think he was precious.

Don't wink at me. Or my elderly relatives.

 Well, until Hant started trying to play footsie with her during dinner. The thing about Hant is he likes older women. During a Go-onger special, he said himself to Saki that he likes "the nee-san type". Okay, fair enough, everyone has their preferences. Then in Go-onger vs Gekiranger, Hant admits he once hit on Miki. This is the Miki who's old enough to have a daughter roughly a few years younger than Hant himself. But let's say we let that go, because Miki's still a fine looking woman, even if she is literally old enough to be his mother. Maybe my mother would even be flattered that someone Hant's age was flirting with her! (She wouldn't, she would upend the gravy sauce on his head, but let's pretend.)

 Unfortunately Hant kind of lets his whole "nee-san" preference get out of control, to the point where it's not really a thing for nee-sans anymore as it is... massaging an elderly woman while wearing her dead granddaughter's skirt. I mean, my mother's an open-minded lady, but she's not that open-minded and frankly, neither am I.

Five Sentai Teams I Think I Could Take in a Fight

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 As I currently lack the ability to spontaneously clad bright coloured spandex armour at will, I probably wouldn't challenge most Super Sentai teams to a match. One small British person who considers writing a stern letter the height of aggression against five or more armoured soldiers with copious combat experience is probably going to turn out pretty badly for me.

 Having said that, I think there's a couple of Sentai teams I'd have a good chance of taking. I'm not saying I'd seek them out for a fight, but if for some reason we were to meet in a dark alley I'd be pretty confident about my chances.




 5. Shinkengers

Yeah, but what doesn't?

 Okay, to be fair, the Shinkengers are not that bad at fighting. They have Takeru and Ryunosuke, who have both been trained for combat their entire lives, and Genta, a genius capable of inventing his own transformation device. Even Chiaki, who is kind of an idiot, is able to come up with risky but effective schemes to outwit the enemy.

 It's just they're so moody all the time. Can we get a count of how many times a Shinkenger couldn't fight because they were having a personal crisis? Chiaki, how many times are you going to scream "UGH I'M NOT A SHINKENGER ANYMORE, I HATE YOU ALL" and flounce off because Takeru looked at you funny? Kotoha, why does everything make you start crying about how much you hate yourself? Ryunosuke, are you aware that you sometimes resemble Eeyore?

 I could take all of these suckers down for the count just by aiming a few well-timed insults at them. (And can I just mention that someone already tried this and it would have worked if not for, basically, the power of how much Kotoha hates herself. More issues than a subscription to Time, guys.)


 4. Go-ongers
 I actually hesitated to include the Go-ongers on this list. They're certainly a bunch of idiots, and watching them come up with battle strategies often feels like I'm watching a bunch of five year olds try to open a kiddy-locked cupboard, but they usually got the job done with time to spare.

 The thing is, I could take out 80% out of the core team by putting on a dress that shows a moderate amount of cleavage. 100% if I then told them I was a boy (hi Gunpei).


 3. Gaorangers
 The Gaorangers are actually extremely capable in combat situations most of the time, in addition to having some of the most vicious, hands-on attacks of any Sentai team. They also have roughly five kazillion mecha to back them up in times of need. So why are they on this list?

And then I'm like, "but how does he smell?"

 When a member of a Sentai team dies, it's a big event. Sentai team members don't die that often. It's especially rare for 4/6 of a team to be brutally murdered within the space of three minutes. And yet this is exactly what happened to the Gaorangers, mid-way through the series.

 In fact, if you look to your right you can see the face of the hideous foe that slew the Gaorange--wait, is that a giant green clitoris hood? The Gaorangers got quickly dispatched by something that doesn't even have a nose?

 Dude, I totally have a chance here!


 2. Carrangers
 Remember that time Minoru lost the ability to transform because he was too busy posing?

 Yeah.


 1. Hurricangers
 The only reason the Hurricangers had to keep their identity secret is because if the world had been aware of what colossal idiots were between them and certain death there would be a mass panic.

 These are the so-called ninjas who stampeded after their target lisping "stealth!" at each other as they "hid" behind lamp-posts and other architectures smaller than themselves. Other Sentai teams choose a leader based on how is the most competent fighter, or who has the best instinct for guiding others. The Hurricangers gave this a shot too but because they're the Hurricangers, had difficulty with the concept that their leader might be someone other than the guy who stands in the middle. And so they ended up with a leader who throws himself off trees in the belief that since he has some extremely limited control over the element of air, he can fly.

 Let's face it, if not for the Gouraigers and Shurikenger helping them out, the Hurricangers would have been dead before episode fifteen. Heck, if I'd been the villain of the week? Episode five.

Kamen Rider OOO 23 Review

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Kamen Rider OOO
Episode 23: Beauty, the Egg, and the Sleeping Desire
A review

I’ll admit a certain amount of trepidation about this episode set in when the preview started reminding us who Uva, Kazari, Ankh, Date, Gotou and Eiji were. Was this going to be a massively important and groundbreaking episode that warrants this slightly unusual reminder?

In other news, Thursday will come after Wednesday this week.

 No. Not really. Unless you count Date tormenting the good Doctor Maki as ‘groundbreaking’ I suppose.


 But like any good episode of Kamen Rider, though, the plot is simmering away, even if it’s arguably not the main focus of the episode, and there are several interesting developments: We get hints towards Date’s condition, and are shown Kazari’s shiny new abilities courtesy of pilfering Mezuru and Gameru’s cores.


 Truth be told, however, this is something of a mediocre episode. For people wanting action, excitement and explosions, we get very little apart from a few one-sided battles between Kazari and various others. The battles all end pretty much inconclusively, and really only serve as a first look preview of Kazari’s new abilities – which granted are not uninteresting. It’s genuinely fascinating to see Kazari combine his wind abilities with Mezuru’s water abilities, and use Gameru’s gravity abilities in a way their original owner never did (seeing as he never actually used his powers. Ever. Which made sense for Gameru – he was never meant to be the brightest crayon in the box), in the same way that it’s always interesting to see Eiji’s combinations.

Although you'd think an octopus-legged hawk-headed gorilla would be pretty damn scary.

 People wanting new and amazing combinations, this episode also falls short. Apart from a brief look at the octopus legs (whose powers seem to be the supernatural ability to stand up, but the preview for the next episode promises some more body-horrific uses), there’s really nothing new in terms of OOO’s powers. The writers have shown they can make combinations of new and old medals, or even old and older medals, into a spectacle worth watching – the Hawk-Tiger-Condor combination of the last episode was proof of that – but were not so much on form this time. Maybe Octopus Legs and Gorilla Arms are just not an interesting marriage of abilities.


 People wanting sweeping, epic plot developments won’t be keen either. We’re given hints about Date’s condition (which rumours say is an incurable disease of vagueness – possibly Sudden Onset Manly Collapsing Sickness, the male equivalent of Pale Complexion Disease, but we’ve yet to see any manly collapsing), and as mentioned multiple times, we see Kazari testing out his new powers, which raises interesting questions as to what happens when he absorbs that Zou Medal and that Kamakiri Medal we know he has. But apart from that, the episode is rather light on plot, especially compared to TaJaDor’s introductory arc.


 People wanting a strong, engaging episodic plotline about the Yummy and their host will probably be the least disappointed, but may still find this episode lacking. The Yummy host in this episode is Sakura Yumi, a make-up technician working for her sister, Sakura Rei, in a situation that would not be out of place in a Charles Perrault story. Yumi’s desire is to be beautiful like her sister, a desire compounded by her sister’s cruelty and a chance meeting with Date, an old friend.

Most teen comedies lack stingray-firing beachballs but no genre is perfect.

 Actually, unlike some previous Yummy hosts, Yumi is a pretty likeable character, which is a welcome change after a man who went around having his Giant Grasshopper Friend beat people up while dragging his exceptionally irritating child in tow. But the plot suffers from the episode being spread altogether too thinly, and from its culmination in a ‘Beautiful All Along’ scenario that would not have been out of place in a teen romantic comedy.


 It probably sounds like I’m slating the episode, but I enjoyed it. It served its purpose – namely, to set things up for the next episode – and did so while still having some good moments. Eiji and Date’s chat, Maki and Date’s exchange at the beginning (which is hilarious right up until you realise that you’re watching a large, physically powerful man torment his smaller, weaker, mentally ill colleague by preying on his illness), Kazari and Uva’s meeting and pretty much any scene with Yumi in were all highlights.


 It just suffers the same problem as most odd-numbered episodes: It leaves you wanting more partly because you want to know what’s going to happen, and partly because you didn’t really get the pay-off of your week’s wait in this episode.

Five Reasons Not to Date a Kamen Rider

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 Whenever a Kamen Rider I particularly like comes along I'll often gush to my friends that I "would so totally marry him eeee" but actually, when it comes down to it? I wouldn't date any Rider. It would be a supremely bad life decision. Why? Well, I'll tell you.

Why Goseiger Failed

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  As another Sentai season ends and we look forward to Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger, very few of us seem sad to watch Goseiger go. Think back to last year, when we watched the hand-off from ShinkenRed to GoseiRed. So many people spoke about feeling sad as they watched the torch pass hands - I even spotted a couple of fanboys sheepishly admitting to shedding a manly tear. Even a year before that, when ShinkenRed clashed Comically Oversized Swords with Go-onRed, there were people getting misty-eyed at saying goodbye to the Go-ongers (who weren't even that popular with fandom in general).

 But as we say goodbye to Goseiger? Nobody, save for a handful of loyal fans, seems that bothered. This is the series that has aired every weekend for just over a year now, and as it came to a close most of us were dry-eyed and impatient for the Goukaiger preview afterwards - that is, if we even watched the finale.

 Where did Goseiger go wrong?



 As the series began, fandom reaction was tentatively hopeful. The angels concept was a new one, and seemed to suggest that we might see something fresh and unusual from our new Sentai heroes. Many pointed out an old-school vibe from the series, and toku fandom loves nothing more than nostalgia. But as the series went on, more and more viewers began to drop it. It's nowhere near the first time fandom hasn't liked a Sentai. As I previously mentioned, Go-onger was just a few years back and is looked upon by many fans as the worst Sentai of the decade, if not ever. But while Go-onger inspired exclamations of violent dislike and passionate debates between those who liked it and those who seriously didn't, in contrast Goseiger was barely discussed. Fandom's interest in it ended not with a bang but a whimper.

 I'll admit it upfront: I'm one of those people whose interest in Goseiger slowed to a standstill somewhere around episode twentysomething. As far as I'm concerned, there are three big reasons Goseiger didn't do as well with fans as it could have.

 Reason: Shallow Heroes
 When Goseiger began, I was instantly in love with half of them. Alata was small and sweet - but with a bite. The transformation from cute and chirpy to fierce and furious in fight scenes was a joy for me to watch. I still think Yudai Chiba handled the dual aspects of Alata perfectly - I believe absolutely that Alata's Princess Sparklepony personality is genuine, yet at the same time I would be terrified to go up against him in a fight.

 Eri, meanwhile, was in some ways a stereotypical ditzy Pink, but the first couple of episodes also established her as one of the most capable members of the team in battle. She was at an Umeko with a Sakura's fight skills. Our other heroine, Moune, was a refreshing return to the tomboy Yellow tradition, after a good few years of sunny, mostly harmless Yellows. Most interesting was her genuine excitement for battle: it's not often we see a Sentai girl who really enjoys being aggressive.

 Hyde was the calm, dignified straight man, with a glaring lack of clan partner that promised a juicy backstory. And Agri... well, his personality was surely on its way.

 It was such a good start. Apparently it was such a good start that the writers sat back, kicked off their shoes and decided they didn't need to actually go any further. Alata remained Sweet But Not To Be Messed With. Moune never developed from Enthusiastically Aggressive. And Agri's personality was still stuck in the mail somewhere.

 Don't get me wrong: I like the Goseiger's core personality traits. I just wish they had been given more than two each. It's not a good thing when I can completely, comprehensively describe a character in one sentence. And heck, I couldn't even manage that for Agri. Who the hell is this guy? Is he impatient? Is he shy? Is he extroverted? Does he spend a long time in the shower? Just give me something, anything beyond "he smiles when he's angry", which could just be Kyousuke Hamao's inability to act anyway. There are random strangers I've passed on the street that I could tell you more about than Agri.

 To be fair, Hyde's backstory showed up as promised. And it was... underwhelming. After the excitement of a GoseiGreen suit wore off, I realised all Magis had given me was more questions that the series would never answer. How did Hyde and Magis meet? Did Hyde know him very well or were they still getting to know each other?

 How did any of the Goseiger partners meet (I can gather how Agri and Moune met, before you say)? Alata and Eri were childhood friends, and we were treated to a few sparse clips of their childhood, but I came away feeling as if I hadn't learnt anything. What's Skick culture like? Do the Gosei clans all live separately or together? If separately than what do their homelands look like? I'm not asking for incredible feats of CGI here, Toei, I'd have completely accepted it if you'd stuck Agri and Moune in one of your many abandoned quarries and declared it the Landick homeland.

 Or what about their families? Okay, Moune clearly has mummy issues but that's all I really know. Is Hyde an only child? Does Alata have any siblings or has Eri always taken that role for him? With no knowledge of their history or their culture, I was left feeling like the Goseigers were just islands, floating untethered with no context.

 But let's be generous and say that maybe that was intentional. Goseiger is about a group of people living outside their own homes and history, after all. Maybe we were left with so little information about them to make them seem all the more foreign and alien to Earth. Except that theory falls down once you take a look at Nozomu.

 Sometimes I felt like the writers forgot Nozomu was there. Essentially the mouthpiece for the audience, Nozomu could have asked the Goseigers all the things I wanted so badly to know. Or if the Goseigers were meant to be the mysterious creatures they ended up being, then perhaps Nozomu could have driven the point home - by being the fully realised, fleshed out person that the Goseigers couldn't be.

 But then he just kind of wandered around in green outfits that consistently made fanboys wonder if he was Dairanger's Kou Mark II and did very little other than occasionally lip wobble at GoseiKnight.

 GoseiKnight is the only hero in this series I cannot criticise. Ironically when he first showed up I was Not Keen. I thought the concept of him being a Header was a tired merchandising device and his stoic personality was even more tired. I was completely wrong: GoseiKnight's development from hard-headed and ruthless to a true hero was the best thing about Goseiger, and his being a Header brought about one of the best moments of drama of the entire series. With GoseiKnight the writers proved they could do satisfying character development... they just didn't bother with the other five Goseigers.


 Reason: Shallow Villains
 Fine, Goseiger is not the only Sentai series to have two-dimensional, lifeless heroes. Gekiranger, which I actually consider one of the best written Sentai shows of the past decade, never bothered to develop any of the Gekirangers who weren't Jan, leaving us with a rather flat and uninteresting team. What Gekiranger did instead was develop its villains.

 Goseiger did not.

 Okay, Goseiger was at a disadvantage. Gekiranger had the uncommon advantage of human villains, a rarity for a Sentai series. With human actors you get varied expressions and nuances (unless you have employed Tori Matsuzaka) that we react to, because as social animals we're trained from birth to read facial expressions and tics. With rubber suits that element is removed, and the voice and suit actors have to work that much harder to make up for it. Sentai villains need to have big, larger than life personalities because it's so difficult to communicate the subtleties of identity when you're dressed as a giant slimy blob. Go on, test it out: go and rent a massive green blob costume, stand on a street corner and attempt to express something like "ambivalence".

 So did Goseiger's villains have the big personalities they needed? They didn't even get the "personality" part right, let alone the part where it needs to be a big one. Try and tell me something about Robogog or Kinggon, go on. It didn't help that Goseiger switched villains every five seconds. Maybe the writers thought that a big climactic show-down against the villains was what the series needed to boost its drama, but it didn't interest me for the same reason none of us wet our pants every time a sports match, any sports match at all, is on television: a show-down between People We Don't Care About versus People We Don't Care About is not that interesting.

 The single constant in Goseiger's villains was Bladerun. A crafty character who was clearly up to no good from the very first time we saw him, fandom as a whole managed to work up some enthusiasm for him. He seemed to promise something more than simply the Goseigers soundly defeating villainous group after villainous group. The revelation that he had soundly manipulated Robogog and his subsequent callous betrayal of Metal Alice gave us a truly juicy episode.

 But was Bladerun really that great? Certainly, he was one of the best things about Goseiger and easily the most interesting villain of the series, but would he have been so compelling a character if he'd been the lead villain in Timeranger, with its detailed heroes, or Gekiranger, where most of the main villains burst at the seams with rich inner lives and motives? We liked Bladerun because he was a break from the monotony of the   characters around him, not because he was inherently that great a character.


 Reason: Shallow Story
 I touched on this briefly when I was talking about the lack of backstory for Goseiger's heroes, but let's return to it, because in many ways it's Goseiger's biggest disappointment: where is the story? We've got the basics: the Goseigers are stuck on Earth and need to protect it from outside forces, while also looking for a way to restore the Tower that will allow them to go home.

 And that's it.

 There's nothing wrong with Goseiger's main plot, but such a premise could easily have been used to branch off to other stories, other ideas. Tell me more about Gosei World. What does it look like? What are its citizens like? Is there tension between the clans, as Moune and Agri's constant little jabs at Hyde's Seaick nature would suggest, or is everyone a big happy family?

 Failing that, tell me about the villains and their worlds. Or heck, tell me more about Nozomu and his life. We were given one fleeting mention of his mother, and then she was never heard from again. What was Nozomu like before he met the Goseigers? What's his school life like? Does he own any items of clothing that aren't plaid?

 Rather than taking the opportunities its premise gifted it with, Goseiger instead relied on a steady diet of cliche filler (which I actually don't mind in small doses) and Show-downs Nobody Cared About. Time that could have used to develop the characters further or answer questions that would have fleshed out the universe was instead spent on tired cliche after tired cliche.

 And after fifty episodes, I realised I still couldn't apply a single adjective to Agri's personality.

 EDIT (27/05/11)
 And on the flip side, an interesting post has been made on LiveJournal's Sentai community about why Goseiger wasn't so bad as I make it sound here. Check it out!

The Ten Types of Toku Fans

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 The tokusatsu fandom is an interesting place to be. We may be small, but we've got plenty of personality and variety to make up for it. But though a fandom is always made up of individuals, you still find that the same opinions and "types" will crop up again and again - and tokusatsu fandom is no different. With the fandom stretching from Japan to America, and crossing all age ranges, I still keep coming across similar views and traits. Let's talk about those then, the ten most common types of tokusatsu fans I've seen in my travels. Get out a bingo card and see how many you've spotted too!


 10. People who think Shioya Shun's acting in Hurricanger was top notch
 Just kidding, nobody thinks this.





 9. People who get very upset if you call Super Sentai "Power Rangers"
 Okay, we've all met that person who looks at our Sentai videos and exclaims "it's Power Rangers!" Maybe you've even taken the time to explain the difference. But this particular kind of fan goes far beyond that into straitjacket territory. It's as if they have some kind of radar that lets them know whenever anyone has uttered the words "Super Sentai" and "Power Rangers" in the same sentence. Don't believe me? Pick a Sentai video on Youtube - any Sentai video on Youtube - and you will find them, making sure everyone there knows that a) Super Sentai is better than Power Rangers, okay, and b) they've seen Zyuranger.


8. People who know what Metal Heroes is

Worst Kamen Rider costume ever.

 Never mind that guy who's seen Zyuranger, have you seen Winspector? Because this person has, and it's very important everyone knows that. Despite the fact that a Metal Hero series hasn't aired on Japanese television since around roughtly the same time prohibition in the United States ended, these people are extremely distressed by the news that some other people haven't watched Shaider. Here's a fun experiment: tell them you don't even know what Shaider is and watch them only just escape a heart attack by the skin of their teeth.


7. Male idols angling for a part in Kamen Rider
 After witnessing what Kamen Rider has done for the careers of the likes of Odagiri Joe, Kaname Jun and Sato Takeru, there are plenty of male idols after a bit of that spotlight. But when you're up against so many other guys in the auditions, how do you make yourself stand out?

 I know! Post constantly on your blog about how much you love the series! Post pics of yourself fondling or licking Kamen Rider figures! If one of your friends is lucky enough to get himself a part, then start trailing him around the set for hours - and then post pictures of that to your blog too (perhaps after cropping out your now ex-friend's annoyed grimace)! You're on the right track now!


6. People who take suit actors very seriously
 Quick, tell me who performed the suit acting for NinjaBlack! And what colour underwear he wore on his first day! If you can't tell me within five seconds then we can't be friends anymore. Or at least, that's the kind of attitude you can expect to get from number six. While lots of us have particular suit actors who we admire or enjoy watching, there's a line, and that line is a dot in the far distance to these people. As far as they're concerned, tokusatsu is all about the suit acting; heck, you might actually manage to surprise one of them if you point out there are parts of the show where nobody's even wearing a suit.

Oppressed.

5. Disgruntled Ultraman fans
 It's a funny coincidence that this comes in at number five, because worldwide there are only about five people who watch Ultraman. But they are loud. From listening to the way these fans talk, you'd imagine that The Man (read: Toei) has been keeping Ultraman down since the dawn of man. Sure, it's annoying when you love something and nobody else is interested, but Mebius didn't get the praise and accolades you think it deserved because it wasn't all that, not because there's a great Toei conspiracy to keep the huge alien man down.


4. People who will only watch Toei productions
 The natural enemy of a disgruntled Ultraman fan, number four is a more common creature. Behold the magnificent beast as it stalks through the message boards and LiveJournals of its peers; the look of blank disdain and slight worry on its features as it stumbles across a discussion of the Tomica Hero franchise. Then, with bright eyes, it discovers its prey hiding in the tall grass: the Takara fanboy.


3. People who think everything after 2001 was crap

Well, it's okay, but it's no J.

 According to number three, there's actually a quality forcefield in time, and it exists between 31st December 2001 and 1st of January 2002. You see, after 2002 the prophecy foretold that no tokusatsu would be good ever again - or something like that. Sure, not every modern toku series is going to be a winner, but to hear it from these fans you'd think everything pre-2002 was Academy Award worthy material, and everything after has basically just been written in Inoue Toshiki's vomit.



2. Sexually frustrated housewives
 Picture the scene: it's a Sunday morning and your husband's either working overtime at the office (again) or having the only lie-in he gets all week (again). And now your four year old wants you to watch his kid shows with him. But what's this? You weren't aware he'd started watching shows about pretty young men on motorbikes! Is that young man seriously wearing tight leather pants? Hallelujah!

 Seriously, look at the audience for a Kamen Rider event some time. Half the kids only came because their mothers dragged them.


1. Japanese children
 Well, they are the intended audience after all, no matter how much we'd all like to forget their existence. Stupid kids, ruining our kid's shows.

Ten Most Hated Kamen Rider Characters

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 When you watch any series there will be characters you love and characters you hate, and Kamen Rider's no different. Every once in a while though, along will come a character that it seems everyone hates. I'm going to try and cover Kamen Rider's most hated - and get to the heart of just why everyone seems to dislike them so much.

 Coming in at number ten, we have:

 Ten: Narumi Akiko (Kamen Rider W)
 From the moment she appeared, Akiko was not the most popular of Rider girls. Loud, bossy and with a number of physical and vocal quirks, she was very much the kind of character you either love or hate - and a lot of people fell on the side of hate.

 It didn't help matters that Akiko was commonly found tormenting W's hero, Shotaro - a character uniformly adored and identified with by many fans. However, in a rare moment for a character on this list, as W drew to a close it seemed many had warmed to Akiko, having got used to her shouting and slipper-smacking. I almost didn't include her on that list for that reason; ask your average W fan now and more often than not you'll find an appreciation for Akiko's contributions to the character development of the other protagonists and general active role in W's storyline. However, she still retains a good deal of detractors, so here she is starting our list.





Nine: Onodera Yuusuke (Kamen Rider Decade)
 Poor Yuusuke. He was doomed from the start: the first sign that the original Heisei Riders fans knew and loved would not be returning in Decade, and an alternate version of fan favourite Godai Yuusuke to boot. Despite this unlucky start, the character might have won fans around with his cheerful, sweet personality had he actually used that belt that being a Kuuga clone granted him.

 It's no coincidence the fan nickname for Yuusuke is "Yuuseless". Yuusuke seemed to simply forget he was Kuuga for much of the series, simply standing back and doing nothing whenever there was fighting to be done. As Decade went on, even Yuusuke's role as emotional support to hero Tsukasa became unnecessary, with Natsumi carrying the brunt of the work on that front.

 Unlike most on this list, Yuusuke's a nice guy, the kind of guy most of us would happily hang out with. But as a functional character, fans were left disappointed.


Eight: Suzuki Mio (Kamen Rider Kiva)
 Here at number eight we have another character who didn't seem to do much. Mio began as simply hero Wataru's shy, sweet love interest, but was quickly revealed to be Queen of the Checkmate Four, Kiva's villain group. From there we saw Mio begin to use her newly discovered powers to kill and intimidate, all the while struggling with her love for Wataru when tradition dictated she marry the Checkmate Four's King. It seemed Mio was evolving into a very interesting character indeed.

Suzuki Mio

 But from there, things went downhill. Mio began to waffle between her identity as Queen and her identity as sweet, harmless love interest, never making a concrete decision either way. As if that didn't irritate fans enough, her schemes to escape marriage to Wataru's half-brother and Fangire King Taiga seemed half-hearted and ineffectual, with little impact on even her own storyline, let alone the plot as a whole.

 Here is another character who fans simply felt frustrated and let down by - because she could have been so much more.


Seven: Narutaki (Kamen Rider Decade)
 At seven we have another Decade creation, the main antagonist Narutaki. While at first Narutaki's vague intentions and origins seemed mysterious and intriguing, leaving fans to wonder and theorise when he simply hinted at some greater reason behind his ceaseless desire to make life difficult for Tsukasa, as time went on and no answers were given Narutaki went from mysterious to annoying with an alarming speed.

 It didn't help matters that Narutaki's villainous actions seemed to be generally limited to moaning to anyone who would listen that Tsukasa was bad news, something which usually ended up only mildly inconveniencing Tsukasa rather than doing any lasting damage.

 It's no coincidence that the line "this too is all Decade's fault!" has become a massive joke within fandom; much like Narutaki himself.


Six: Kazama Daisuke (Kamen Rider Kabuto)
 Truth be told, there were a lot of unpopular characters in Kabuto. Even the hero himself, Tendou, has his fair share of detractors. Daisuke however, seems to be the one who gets a bigger share of hate than the rest.

 Daisuke is a strange character. He drifts in and out of the series randomly, showing up to have a comedic encounter with a minor character (one particular "make-up battle" has been the source of ire and/or mockery for many fans) or a dramatic stand-off with another Rider, then suddenly goes missing for ten episodes for no apparent reason. He seems completely incidental to the plot, unnecessary even - and that's never going to make you a big hit with fans.


Five: Mihara Shinji (Kamen Rider 555)
 Mihara actually is only the subject of fan hatred when fans remember he exists. Though he's the official Delta user of the series, Mihara doesn't seem to do a lot. He's reluctant to fight, a trait which might have been forgiven by fans if he had ever managed to get over it, but such a development never comes. However, what really earns him fan dislike is his blandness. In a series with a lot of unusual and quirky characters, Mihara is simply dull. His cowardice is his only defining trait, and rather than that making him identifiable (after all, how many of us would be eager to fight dangerous, intimidating monsters?) to fans, it simply frustrated many that a suit as cool as Delta was in the hands of someone so unengaging.


Four: Sonozaki Saeko (Kamen Rider W)

Sonozaki Saeko

 Fan opinion turned swiftly and violently against Saeko a quarter of the way throug W, when she killed her husband, fan favourite Kirihiko. That's not to say she was popular before that - her abuse of Kirihiko brought her plenty of dislike, but Kirihiko's death at her hands pushed things over the top. When she started making attempts on sister Wakana's life, fan opinion only plummeted further, leaving her strongly disliked in the majority of fan communities.

 Despite her redemption at the very end of the series, Saeko never quite managed to claw back any regard amongst the majority of fans. Though I personally enjoy the character, even I'm forced to admit: Saeko is one of the most unpleasant people on this list.


 Three: Kamijo Mutsuki (Kamen Rider Blade)
 Leangle is easily the most popular of the Blade suits. With a well-loved suit actor at the helm and the hook of a corrupt system, it's often seen on fan lists of favourite suits. Many saw it as an insult, then, when use of the suit was given to one Kamijo Mutsuki, a moody, slightly pathetic teenage boy.

 It's extremely common for new Riders to be incredibly cool and mysterious when first introduced, then quickly slide downhill once the novelty wears off. Mutsuki, on the other hand, started off as utterly pathetic and only got worse as the series went on. Far too insecure and tempestuous to be given the use of such power, Mutsuki allows it to corrupt him, leading to... his wearing leather and a stupid little earring a lot. Never has a "Rider turns evil" plotline been so anti-climactic. This alone would have made Mutsuki unpopular with fans, but when even after he returned to being a protagonist he remained his moody teenage self, his inclusion on this list was guaranteed. Like Mihara above him, Mutsuki is unpopular first and foremost for being in possession of powers that are simply wasted on him.


Two: Kiriya Kyousuke (Kamen Rider Hibiki)
 Kiriya, to many fans, symbolises everything that went wrong with the last quarter of Hibiki. When the series took on new writers and with them, a sharply different tone and direction, it also brought with it Kiriya. A fiercely competitive schoolmate to Asumu, Kiriya seemed like an unnecessary and jarring addition to the story. This would have been bad enough for many fans but Kiriya as a character didn't endear himself to many. Seeming to live to tease and challenge Asumu, Kiriya was the equivalent of a boil on the back of your neck.

 The fan dislike for Kiriya grew so great that when his actor returned in Den-O as Sakurai Yuuto, the backlash against Yuuto was immediate and surprisingly widespread.


One: Kusaka Masato (Kamen Rider 555)
 When I began composing this list, there was no doubt in my mind that Kusaka would top it. Though I personally rather enjoy Kusaka, I have never met another fan who agrees with me; it seems whoever you ask, everyone hates this guy.

Kusaka Masato

 It's not hard to see why. Kusaka is scheming, sneaky, petty-minded and goes out of his way to make things difficult for the hero Takumi. Not a fan of Takumi? Kusaka doesn't stop at tormenting him; he subjects heroine Mari to extended harassment, simply not getting that no - a lot of no, in this case - means no. In perhaps a defining moment for Kusaka, when faced with a dying man who simply wants a glass of water, Kusaka refuses to help. Handing someone a glass of water is too much effort for this guy.

 Even the moment that confirmed to the audience that Yuji had truly "lost it" was warmly received by fans, because that moment? Was snapping Kusaka's neck.


 Something that surprised me when writing up this post was that there are no Showa era characters on this list. Whether that's thanks to fannish rose-tinted glasses when it comes to Showa or because Showa genuinely had more likeable characters is up for discussion.


 Whatever the case, the list of Heisei's targets seems to span far and wide, ranging from the genuinely evil to just plain old buttmonkeys.

Overview: Kodai Shoujotai Dogun V

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 After the success of 2009's Kodai Shoujo Dogu-chan, 2010 sees the arrival of a new series, Kodai Shoujotai Dogun V. Yazawa Erika returns as Dogu-chan, overseeing a squad of five other Dogu girls.

Kodai Shoujotai Dogun V

 If you watched Dogu-chan as it aired, then you'll have a good idea of what to expect: light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek entertainment, with a sizeable helping of fanservice. Dogun V models itself after classic harem anime and manga, with an ordinary boy - played by Samurai Sentai Shinkenger's Suzuki Shogo - suddenly surrounded by five scantily clad, perky girls.

 Momose Misaki's Doji-chan is our main woman this time around, and she plays her role with cutesy aplomb. Doji-chan's four comrades, all with confusingly similar names (prepare to begin straining your ears to work out whether it's Dore-chan, Doro-chan or Dori-chan who's in trouble this week) all embody various "types" of girl sure to appeal to Dogun V's male audience. I can't tell you that the sexy nurse or the lovably clumsy Kansai girl are particularly original character types, but Dogun V isn't pretending to be deep stuff.

 Suzuki Shogo returns to the relatable everyman role that earned him a fanbase in Shinkenger, and for the most part pulls it off. I mentioned earlier that Dogun V takes inspiration from harem anime such as Tenchi Muyo! and Love Hina; fortunately Suzuki's Shota has so far managed to avoid the slightly pathetic wetness of protagonists like Tenchi.

 Don't expect any deep thoughts or philosophical reflections on life, but Dogun V is a fun way to waste an afternoon. If you're a fan of harem anime, 2007's Cutie Honey The Live, or just girls in skimpy clothing then Dogun V is worth checking out.

Past and Present: Gaoranger's Futaro

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 Looking at the career of an actor post-tokusatsu can get pretty interesting. Naturally you've got the alumni we all know about, like Kamen Rider Kuuga's Joe Odagiri or Kamen Rider Den-O's Takeru Sato, both now so famous it's hard to miss them, but what about the alumni who take more unusual career paths post-tokusatsu? What about the ones who go on to do something other than act? Or even the ones who apparently just drop off the face of the planet?

Gaoranger's Futaro

 2001's Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger featured a young boy by the name of Futaro, a cute little guy who popped up towards the end of the series. As a rule it seems like starring in a Toei production as a kid gets you going places, so what happened to this particular child?

Nowadays

 Futaro was played by a young Daiki Arioka, all of ten years old at the time. He went on to join Johnny's Jimusho, Japan's best-known talent agency, in 2003, where he remains to this day. However now he's better known for being a member of boyband Hey! Say! JUMP, who released their first single in 2007. He continues to act in the occasional drama, most recently in 2008's Scrap Teacher.

Five Things Toei Loves

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 Watch a handful of Sentai shows and a couple of Kamen Riders, and you'll start noticing similarities. It's not just you: there are just some tropes and plots that Toei uses again and again. Sure, at a glance the tragic melodrama of Kamen Rider 555 and the feel-good family hijinks of Mahou Sentai Magiranger have nothing in common, but there are some plots and themes that Toei just can't keep itself away from.








5. Creepy Children
 Whether it's The Shining's Grady girls or The Omen's Damien, creepy kids pop up again and again in fiction, and Toei's no stranger to them either. With Super Sentai, Kamen Rider and Ultraman being marketed to children anyway, kid characters are a popular choice - and they can't always be heroes like Gosei Sentai Dairanger's Kou or the more recent Tensou Sentai Goseiger's Nozomu.

Agito's OverLord of Darkness

 Kamen Rider Kiva introduces us to Arms Monster Ramon, actually a 127 year old fish monster in the form of a 13 year old boy. Ramon, although working for the protagonists, is nevertheless vaguely disturbing with his laidback approach to killing. The miniature monster even makes an attempt on Wataru's life, a fact that is promptly (and strangely) glossed over for the rest of the series.

 Or what about Kamen Rider Agito's OverLord of Darkness? A mysterious and powerful villain bent on genocide of the human race, who did Toei choose for the role? A tiny Kamiki Ryunosuke, who hadn't even hit the double digits at that point.


4. Awkward Setting Transitions
 If by any chance, we were to hand over Toei's back catalogue to a spaceship full of aliens who knew nothing about Earth geography, it's very likely that those aliens would come away with the impression that Japan is full of cities with forests and empty quarries sitting in the middle of them. The kings of clumsy setting transitions, Toei loves forests and quarries. Never mind the fact that the majority of Toei tokusatsu is set in Tokyo, why not have the heroes chase a villain out of a busy city street only to find themselves smack bang in the middle of a sprawling forest? Watch just a handful of episodes of Super Sentai and you'll soon discover that in Tokyo, a gigantic quarry is only a backflip away.


3. Weird Families
 At the beginning of this article I mentioned Magiranger's happy Ozu family. However the truth is that for every well-adjusted family in a Toei show, I can give you five utterly messed up ones. How about Kamen Rider Den-O's head-hurtingly confusing family dynamics? The Den-O movies see a teenaged Ryoutarou travelling around with his adult grandson, his pre-pubescent niece and, occasionally, her parents who haven't had her yet.

W's Wakana and Philip

 Kamen Rider W gave us the Sonozakis, a family that Freud could have written an entire book about. The currently airing Kamen Rider OOO introduces Hina and her almost-dead-but-not-quite brother, whose body is being possessed by a monster who has made multiple attempts to kill her. And before you start thinking Super Sentai might be free of this particular oddity, Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger devoted an entire story arc to the problem of hero Jan's father being forced to repeatedly beat him up, while it seems there isn't a single member of the Samurai Sentai Shinkenger team who doesn't have family issues of some sort.


2. Cross-dressing
 Only in the world of tokusatsu can the fans rest in absolute certainty that they will be given at least one episode in which a character cross-dresses for the sake of humanity's continued existence. For Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger's Tetsu, cross-dressing to save the day happened so often that upon seeing him show up to save her in a dress in Magiranger vs Dekaranger, fellow team-mate Jasmine shrugged, "well, it's no different from a usual day". The Shinkenger OVA gave us the somewhat more rare example of a girl cross-dressing, with Kotoha and Mako decked out as schoolboys (and the boys as girls-pretending-to-be-boys, in some sort of strange re-enactment of a Blur single).

 Just to prove that they can multi-task, Toei combined number three on this list with cross-dressing when Kiva's Otoya forced his son Wataru to dress up as a girl and walk around with him in public.



1. Puns
 I thought a lot about what deserved the top spot on this list. I considered the apparently ubiquitous man-eating rivers littering Kamen Rider and the mandatory visits to Kyoto in Super Sentai, but if there's something that Toei loves more than anything else, it has to be puns. If Toei were a person, it would be that guy who constantly plays on the double-meaning of everything and then laughs at his own jokes.

 If the currently airing OOO is anything to go by, Toei's obsession with puns is not showing any signs of dying: our new hero fights Yummys (pronounced "yami", the same as the Japanese for "darkness"), created by the Greeed. If that pun didn't make you groan, then Toei's not doing their job right.


 Let's be fair: any franchise as old as Kamen Rider and Super Sentai is going to repeat itself. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, and for me, part of the fun of a Toei series is spotting the little elements that they just can't seem to resist adding again and again.

Special Filming start-up!

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 Hello there! Special Filming is a new blog focusing on tokusatsu, or as Wikipedia explains it, "any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects". Western audiences: think Godzilla, Power Rangers or even Doctor Who; as far as Japan's concerned, they're all tokusatsu productions. From Special Filming you can expect more focus on popular Japanese productions, namely the genre-defining "Big Three" (Super Sentai, Kamen Rider and Ultraman) and other television dramas, such as Takara's Rescue Force series and Kodai Shoujo Dogu-chan.

 Special Filming is currently written by three tokusatsu enthusiasts:

 Red, a recent convert to the joys of adults in spandex pretending to hit each other.


 Blue, a fan of Super Sentai and Kamen Rider since 2006, and That Annoying Kid who insisted on playing the Pink Ranger at break-time long before that.


 Yellow, introduced to tokusatsu by Blue in 2006 and after half an hour of stunned disbelief, a fanatical Kamen Rider fan.


 Special Filming begins soon, with recaps, articles and general musings over the genre we love. We hope to see you along the way!