Funny, I was JUST talking to a friend this past weekend about how long it's been since I checked in on one-time BIG fave Girl Group Morning Musume, and here we are with their latest single "BrainStorming" which not only successfully incorporates dubstep into its tune (a feat that many have failed at, I might add) but offers up an INTENSE and ELECTRIFYING dance routine with it as well! I was properly BLOWN AWAY, these gals still got it!!!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Morning Musume (Still) Rocks!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Funny, I was JUST talking to a friend this past weekend about how long it's been since I checked in on one-time BIG fave Girl Group Morning Musume, and here we are with their latest single "BrainStorming" which not only successfully incorporates dubstep into its tune (a feat that many have failed at, I might add) but offers up an INTENSE and ELECTRIFYING dance routine with it as well! I was properly BLOWN AWAY, these gals still got it!!!
Funny, I was JUST talking to a friend this past weekend about how long it's been since I checked in on one-time BIG fave Girl Group Morning Musume, and here we are with their latest single "BrainStorming" which not only successfully incorporates dubstep into its tune (a feat that many have failed at, I might add) but offers up an INTENSE and ELECTRIFYING dance routine with it as well! I was properly BLOWN AWAY, these gals still got it!!!
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The T-ara Dilemma
I’ve been watching the Mainichi T-ara (Everyday T-ara) clips on the T-ara site following the girls (minus Hyomin, where IS she???) as they make their way across Japan promoting their new single “Bunny Style”. In the clips I've heard the song numerous times and seen them perform it on various stages and conventions, and Hmmm…I dunno.
Anyway, as you may recall, when the single was first announced, it said it would have a staggering 10 versions, and at the time I mused about getting not only the Deluxe Edition, but the editions with the covers of Hyomin and possibly Eunjung, too. But after actually hearing/seeing the song, I decided ONE copy would suffice, and only ordered the Deluxe Version with the bonus song by Hyomin/Eunjung/Jiyeon.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Moving On Over
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Friday, February 22, 2013
My K-Pop Posts Get A Little Love
I know that I've always written stuff here mostly for me, and anyone kind enough to read what I've written about has my eternal gratitude, but I have to say that the first time one of my K-pop essays made it to my "Most Popular Posts of the Week" stat counter, I was BEYOND pleased! Though I'm sure the hits came more from the pics I uploaded than any insight I'd written about, it still made me happy that my entries were being SEEN!
So you can imagine how stoked I've been lately with my recent Running Man post constantly making it to my top viewed posts, and just this week, I began to see my ages-ago penned ode to SNSD love suddenly appearing on the list- and rather than quickly dropping back off, it stayed on, fluctuating in the lower halves- then just this morning I was ecstatic to see that it had become my number one most viewed post of the week! DAEBAK! I knew it was gonna dtop back down and eventually disappear, so I quickly screencapped this minor milestone in my ongoing interest in the world of Girls Generation and K-pop in general!!!
PS, Say, Why has my Mayumi Wakamura been getting so many hits this past few days? That's another post that I've been surprised to see in my Most Viewed posts- surely there can't be THAT many fans out there that lust after her like I do, can there? And speaking of lusting, I've also noticed that my Most Viewed Post of AL TIME, Mirei Kiritani, has strangely been AWOL for the past few weeks...very weird times!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
The Sexy As Hell Saeka Tanaka
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Cutey "Hani"
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
This is completely off Topic, but have y'all ever seen this fanshot video of Hani from EXID as they do "I Feel Good"? My God, she is so adorable and sexy, so energetic, and when she makes her eye-smile, I gotta smile, too!
This is completely off Topic, but have y'all ever seen this fanshot video of Hani from EXID as they do "I Feel Good"? My God, she is so adorable and sexy, so energetic, and when she makes her eye-smile, I gotta smile, too!
Funny, I had downloaded it and watched it a few times, later that night I wanted to watch it again and clicked "play"on the video, but no sound came out since I had forgotten to turn my speakers on, But I was just too lazy to get out of my chair and turn them on. But as the video played without sound, I found myself just mesmerized by Hani and her super happy dancing, in the end, I watched the WHOLE THING without sound and you know what, I STILL enjoyed it, THAT'S how cute she is here!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Let’s Play! 2NE1 DVDs and More Come in!
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| 2NE1 Concert DVDS, Sistar "So Cool" and Rainbow's "Rainbow Syndrome Pt.1" |
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2NE1 2011 Nolza Live In Seoul Case Unpacking
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2NE1 Nolza DVDs and Photobooklet details
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2NE1 New Evolution Unpacking
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2NE1 New Evolution Posters, Photobooklet details
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As if this haul wasn't enough already, i also got the new Rainbow release "Rainbow Syndrome Part.1" (with packaging that looks almost exactly like a peach-colored version of KARA's "Pandora" release, and a pretty SISTAR CD for "So Cool" which came with not one, but TWO photobooks inside!
MAN, Can't wait to dig into these goodies!!!!!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The Wings Of The Kirin
Just finished watching the Hiroshi Abe movie KIRIN NO TSUBASA (The Wings of the Gryphon), a crime drama that I originally grabbed becasue I mistakenly thought it was a Yui Aragaki Movie. Aragaki is in the movie, but she was more part of an (admittedly stellar) ensemble cast than a starring role, but it didn't even matter because I was captivated thoughout the movie anyway! If there's one thing that's been proven, when times are tough and things seem hopeless, Hiroshi Abe is THE MAN when it comes to cracking the cases and bringing the guilty to justice!
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| Mizobata Junpei and Abe Hiroshi |
Kirin No Tsubasa follows the mystery of a Factory Owner who is found dying on a bridge in front of a huge Gryphon statue. At first no one knows where he came from or who the assailant might be, but soon a suspicious young lad is discovered hiding in some nearby bushes with the murdered man's briefcase in his possession!
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| Miura Takahiro |
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| Aragaki Yui |
The cops give chase, but before they can get any information out of him, he is struck by an oncoming vehicle and later dies from the injuries. Despite the evidence, the suspect's girlfriend (Aragaki) firmly believes him innocent, and as the force begin digging deeper into the people connected to the case, they find more and more secrets and lies, til they've stumbled upon another crime buried beneath the surface!
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| Kuroki Meisa and Abe Hiroshi |
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| Nakai Kiichi |
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| Matsuzaka Tori |
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| Mizobata Junpei, Takitomi Seika |
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| Tanaka Rena |
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| Mizobata Junpei, Matsushige Yutaka |
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| Aragaki Yui |
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| Mizobata and Abe |
Strangely enough, though I really enjoyed Abe's crime drama SHINZANMONO, I had no IDEA that The Wings Of The Kirin was a Movie featuring the characters from it! I simply thought Hiroshi Abe, Junpei Mizubata, etc, wre playing stereotypical crime drama roles that I've seen them play a hundred times before! You would have thought the characters NAMES would have tipped me off, but honestly, I didn't remember what any of them were! LOL
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| Tanaka Rena and Aragaki Yui |
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Life, The Demolition Corps, and Everything: Musings On The Last Great Kikaida Arc (Episodes #38-43)
Most shows, superhero or otherwise, have a tendency to keep going on and on ‘til funds and interest have all but died out, but the Japanese Superhero Kikaida show ended on an absolute high- those last nine episodes that make up the final story arc of Kikaida remains the absolute best Tokusatsu ending I’ve seen, EVER. As a kid of the 70’s, I grew up in a world of Japanese superheroes like Rainbow Man, Kamen Rider, Goranger and the like, but the final storyline of Kikaida is the one that I still marvel about and can enjoy fully to this day!
Kikaida was like most TV hero shows, whether they be ones like The Incredible Hulk or even detective shows like Dragnet or Hawaii 5-O: introduce the bad guy, have him commit his crime, bring on the hero and wrap up with the case solved! Kikaida’s story as the Heroic Android created by Dr. Komyoji to fight the Dark Demolition robots followed pretty much the same routine each episode, in fact it was these familiar elements that made it so cool to us as kids- you KNEW what was going to happen and actually anticipated and relished it! (And oooh, how we enjoyed re-enacting it on the school playgrounds!)
Knocking The Formula: Playing with the Kikaida Routine
A show where each and every episode is the same except for a new Monster each week was great for us kids with limited attention spans, but I’ll say one thing about those Kikaida writers: they really knew what to do with a formula and have FUN with it! A basic premise is established in the early episodes of the show, which go something like this:
1. Monster appears and creates havoc. Monster’s name is a color and an animal.
2. Jiro arrives, and the monster reveals his weapon/power.
3. Either Jiro is defeated or the monster runs away.
4. Mitsuko and Masaru arrive in town with a vague hint of finding their father, Dr. Komyoji, who is suffering from Amnesia.
5. Komyoji IS in town, but remains hidden from them.
6. Monster returns, attacking Mitsuko, Masaru, and Hanpen
7. Jiro Appears…then Gill Blows his flute, preventing him from changing into Kikaida!
8. The sound of the flute is blocked, and Jiro transforms into Kikaida.
9. Kikaida fights with monster, immobilizes monster’s power, destroys him.
10. Everybody celebrates, Jiro leaves them in the dust.
This basic formula is loosely followed throughout the first half of the series, but by episode 27 they were already playing with the basic structure of the setup- the Violet Top Shell/Red Okoze Fish/Green Sponge episodes introducing us to our first ever Three-Parter, (and Green Sponge’s power of falling to pieces instead of blowing up when hit with the Denji End was really something new!), the bickering Robot Crab Brothers, the Father Black Needle Mole and his child Baby Needle Mole(!); taking off from the template, the writers THEN began to go even darker with their experiments, with ideas like:
What if Kikaida’s “Denji End” simply bounced off the villain?
“What would happen if Jiro still was affected by the flute even AFTER he changed into Kikaida?
And the deadliest one of all:
“What would happen if NO ONE stopped the sound of the flute?”
Well, we found the answers to all of these questions in the last great Kikaida Storyline, the infamous and legendary HAKAIDA STORY ARC that began in episode #35 of Kikaida and would slowly grow and become bigger and bigger til it became the closing story of the entire series!
The Arc Begins: Black Crow and the "Denji -End" Fail!
When we kids saw the sneak preview at the end of Episode 34, we already KNEW we were at the beginning an EPIC tale- through the grapevine, (as well as evidenced on the various Kikaida records we were buying) every kid in school was already buzzing about this mysterious “Hakaida” character that was set to appear soon, and when the preview began NOT with the traditional "Tatakae Kikaida" Instrumental, but the sinister kettle-drum pounding HAKAIDA Theme accompanying a threatening glowing silhouette of the Villain to come (and NARY a Commentator’s voice to explain what you were seeing, mind you) My GOSH, it was ALL we TALKED about at school that ENTIRE WEEK, for we knew: HAKAIDA WAS COMING!
The Hakaida story arc began with BLACK CROW, a Dark Monster I quite enjoyed drawing as a kid (He’s a crow…with an electric drill for a beak!), but his arrival signaled a drastic change in the tone of the show. From here, the show became a lot more serious, with themes of Loyalty, Betrayal, Despair and Redemption all on the line- pretty heavy stuff for a 3rd grader! But the progression seemed so natural to me, it didn’t seem like a change at ALL, just simply the storyline getting better and BETTER!
The Dark Monsters have been getting stronger and stronger, and it’s here that Kikaida finds his trusty Denji End won’t work on Black Crow. As things get more desperate, Jiro ends up shocking himself to give himself boosted powers which eventually overthrow the Crow, but the seeds of self-doubt are already beginning to plague Jiro which sets the stage for the next few episodes where even his beloved friend Masaru begins looking at Kikaida as an outdated bodyguard who can scarcely keep up with the newer, more powerful monsters coming up.
Moody Monster Music
At this point, I should point out that a HUGE part of what made the latter half of the Kikaida series so much spookier was the introduction of darker, more somber theme songs (like Bokura No Kikaida and the Hakaida/Saburo themes) and chilling new OST background music, especially this one piece I always referred to as the “Dirge”, GADS whenever this song came on, you had SUCH a feeling of…helplessness, really, to this day It still seems so serious to me. But for a feeling of absolute despair, you can’t beat “Akuma ga Kyomo Fue o Fuku”, a paean to Professor Gill and that evil flute of his, which was coming in the NEXT episode with the arrival of the Blue Beetle…
Gill has sent out his latest minion the Blue Beetle out robbing various banks all over Japan to fund their Hakaida project (heck, where did you think the money for that organization come from , anyway?), Ironically enough, Dr. Komyoji is working nearby as a guard, and when the Blue Beetle sees him, we get to see exactly how those Robot memory banks work! He attempts to seize Komjoji, but he manages to escape when Jiro intervenes.
When it is learned that Komjoji is being held for questioning in his involvment of the Bank Robberies, another Dark Monster, Purple Starfish is dispatched to pick up Komyoji, and it is here that the story really begins- After defeating Blue Beetle, Jiro shows up in time to battle Purple Starfish, but during the melee, Dr. Komyoji strikes his head on a wall and passes out. When he comes to, unbelievably, he has REGAINED HIS MEMORY!!! HOLY CRAP! I have to tell you, as a kid, I NEVER thought this was EVER going to happen, I really thought his amnesia was going to be a PERMANENT plot device, and when it DID return, it was just more proof to me that this storyline was going to be the one to END all of them! (and in fact, that’s exactly what it was!)
Sadly for Komyoji, while he was down hitting his head and regaining his memories, Jiro had been fighting off the blaring, penetrating sounds of Gill’s evil flute, and here the writers of the show bring the next scenario into play: “What would happen if NO ONE stopped the sound of the flute?” Whereas they’d always had SOME KIND of distraction to block the sound of the flute and give Jiro a chance to change before, this time, there’s no break in sight- Jiro can’t ignore the flute forever, and after a seeming eternity of fighting off the sound, Jiro loses the battle, and succumbs to the dark side (literally), hypnotically reverting back to into a “Dark Robot”, and turning on his creator, Dr. Komyoji.
I will never forget that episode’s end. Against the strains of the aforementioned Gill song “Akuma Ga Kyomo Fue O Fuku” singing of the devilish powers of Gill’s flute, Jiro struggled in vain to fight against the hypnotic sound, I remember being amazed to realize after a few minutes of Jiro agonizing- the flute was STILL blowing on the background. It had NEVER gone on for SUCH A LONG TIME, and you knew Jiro’s conscience circuit couldn’t fight it any more- The good side of Jiro and the bad side were fighting a fierce battle within him, and when Jiro explosively short circuits, you knew that the battle was over.
And Now, the Dark Times…
When the next episode begins, a Short-Circuited Jiro is locked frozen holding onto the lapels of Dr. Komyoji, and as Purple Starfish casts him aside like broken piece of equipment, a tear is shown trickling from his eyes, aw man, even as a kid, I KNEW what it meant- that somewhere deep inside of him, his heart was breaking for the evil he’d done.
Later, Mistuko, Masaru and the gang find a still-frozen Jiro laying on the ground after the terrible inner battle he’d just gone through, but after regaining consciousness, he has a whole slew of NEW problems to face- a photographer has taken pictures of him attacking Komyoji which puts the law on him and casts him in an ugly light with Komyoji’s kids, especially Masaru, who is convinced that Jiro’s malfunctioning and should be put to rest.
Even worse, Jiro finds that after the short circuit he experienced, his vocal chords no longer work, and he cannot even explain himself! Attempts to protect the kids from a new villain in Purple Starfish only make him seem MORE crazy, and soon he finds himself estranged from them.
My memories of Purple Starfish, (who had GOT to be the Charles Nelson Reilly of Dark Monsters) were always of a mediocre monster(who can forget the tip of his head hitting the Doorframe in the Dark Base or the Venitian blinds falling on his head , LOL), but when I look at it now, they didn’t NEED a strong villain with all the HUMAN DRAMA going on at the time! Not only that, but the VILLAIN of ALL villains was about to be introduced in the very next episode…
Enter: Hakaida!!
In a concept that was beyond COOL to every elementary school-kid I knew, the Dark had kidnapped Komyoji and taken his brain to put into the robotic form of what would be born as Hakaida- To see the brain with all the tubes of blood circulating between the circuits was just MIND BLOWING, and I’m sure I’m not the only one whose first introduction to the word “Cyborg” and its meaning came from this show! Completely throwing out the Color/Animal scheme, the “Destroyer” was an almost mirror to Kikaida, and is, at first sight, CLEARLY INTENDED to be Kikaida’s ARCH-ENEMY!
Hakaida explodes onto the scene in episode #37, and this is truly a villain’s villain, for he attacks Kikaida not only in costumed form- but also psychologically in his human guise as Saburo. Saburo! Even in their human forms he and Jiro were as different as night and day- while Jiro was clad in humble denim, Saburo opted for black leather, boots and a scarf. Jiro looked friendly and compassionate while the other looked cool, tough, and slick as hell- who can blame Masaru for gravitating towards the latter?
When Saburo introduces himself to Mitsuko and Masaru (who have NO IDEA he’s also the deadly Hakaida), he claims to be Jiro’s brother, made by Dr. Komyoji to “replace” Jiro. This is another theme I thought was just brilliant, because it MAKES SENSE. When Jiro is seen harming Dr. Komjoji and his voice box is failing, it is not a far stretch to believe Saburo when he shows up on the scene proclaiming himself Mitsuko and Masaru’s NEW protector, as Jiro is obsolete- Remember that old Betamax that served you so faithfully for so many years? Then when the machine started to wear down and malfunction, (and eat your precious tapes!) weren’t you THRILLED at the idea of getting a brand new VHS player?
But for all his strengths, Hakaida had one BIG flaw, and that was that he needed to get a blood transfusion every so often (that's the problem with machines: they just can't make their own blood!) and he'd always end up leaving the fight scene just before delivering the killer blow to Kikaida, ARGH, SO MADDENING TO US AS KIDS!!!!!
Brown Angler Fish and The Usefulness of a Comedic Relief.
Every show has got to have its comedy relief, and Kikaida found theirs in bumbling shleppy gumshow Hattori Hanpei. As introduced to us as a self proclaimed genius detective and descendent of the great Hattori Hanzo, he was there primarily to get the kids in trouble like BAT MITE or run screaming, scared out of his wits from the monsters like SHAGGY in SCOOBY DOO.
But little by little, they started making him more and more useful- first as a genuine friend to Mitsuko and Masaru, and then (in various comedic ways), he’d even help Kikaida foil the bad guys (think Hanpei as the blushing bride to be in the YELLOW ANT LION episode, a pseudo-Jiro in the Blue Beetle Episode (above), or in this episode as a junior fireman who extinguishes BROWN ANGLER FISH’s flame as he’s about to broil Kikaida’s head. “Arigato, Hanpen!’ says Kikaida, before having to save him from getting swallowed by the monster himself!
Before you knew it, the gang was regularly relying on Hanpen to drive them places in his temperamental compact car that never quite ran right, and accompany them in dangerous situations. They say you can really tell who your true friends are when the going is tough, and indeed, in the next few episodes he really shows what a true friend he is; in fact, as an adult, I find he's one of my favorite characters!
Gray Grasshopper#40: Resolutions
A particularly heart-wrenching episode, the rift between Masaru and Jiro comes to a head and is concluded here. The Dark have brought out their latest monster, a very cool looking villain named Gray Grasshopper whose mission is to destroy anyone with knowledge of their new radio tower. Masaru had befriended a young boy who coincidentally has just painted a picture of that very tower, and when Gray Grasshopper comes in to retrieve the painting, Saburo is the first one Masaru calls on to help. Saburo arrives to not only take care of Gray Grasshopper, but to fight Jiro as well. When Jiro finally tells Masaru he’d rather Saburo destroy him than go on without Masaru’s trust, he tearfully realizes that Jiro has always been there looking after him all this while, and gratefully embraces him.
Frankenstein's Monster/The Hakaida Show
One VERY interesting aspect of this part of the story is Hakaida's strange code of honor- while swearing to destroy Kikaida as his manifest destiny, he also spends a great deal of time protecting Masaru and others against the attacks of the Dark Robots, going as far as to tell Professor Gill to leave Kikaida to him and NOT interfere!
A scolding from Professor Gill doesn't go as planned when the rogue cyborg bursts into his chambers asking "You wanted to talk to me?" When Gill tells him he's heard that the other monsters have been complaining about him, Hakaida makes it clear that he doesn't give one damn about either the monsters OR Gill!
Faced with this insubordination, Professor Gill realizes he now needs to get rid of Kikaida AND Hakaida! He's causing Gill so much trouble, he may as well be one of the "Good Guys", and in fact, so much of Hakaida's time is spent fighting the Dark Monsters, one feels like he is watching "The Hakaida Show", LOL! Besides Purple Starfish and Gray Grasshopper, another one of the Dark Destructoids Hakaida does battle with is the next Kikaida Villain, Red Mine Bullfrog, and remember I was telling you about incredible cliffhangers? Well, here comes a MOTHER OF ONE in the following episode!
Whenever a Dark Monster is introduced, soon enough, his power is made clear to us, and it’s a given that if it’s an acid-sprayer, Kikaida’s gonna get sprayed, or if it’s bullet thorns, Jiro’s gonna get shot. So when new villain Red Mine Bullfrog’s weapon of choice was, you guessed it, MINES, you knew you were gonna see some sh*t blow up! And so we did, but no matter WHAT I thought I knew, NOTHING could have prepared me for that ENDING, when Red Mine Bullfrog exercised his right to bust out his weapon- and TOTALLY blew Kikaida UP into PIECES. Once again, there I was, a kid staring at the TV screen with my mouth wide open, thinking HOLY CRAP!!!! How the HELL were they gonna get out of THIS one?
As I’ ve mentioned earlier, the Red Mine Bullfrog episode ended with Kikaidaa literally blown to bits after making contact with the bufo’s ballistic bombs, and as the dust settles and Red Mine Bullfrog and his androids depart, it is Hanpei who sneaks down and rescues all the still smoking parts, and I remember thinking how serious it was when Hanpen picked up Kikaida’s severed head and moaned with desperation before the words “To Be Continued” appeared. Ho Le To Le DO!
The Last Chapters, The End of The Dark
Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Hanpen, Jiro's parts are successfully smuggled to Mitsuko and Masaru, where Mitsuko has the impossible task of trying to put him back together again. At first all seems hopeless, til she remembers that Jiro has his schematics recorded in his brain. She repairs his vocal chords and has him painstakingly instruct her on how to reassemble his body.
In the meantime, Hakaida has made quick work of Red Mine Bullfrog and is now insane with rage at having his adversary Kikaida killed, now wondering "why he exists", he decides the person responsible for all his anguish is mean old Professor Gill himself!
I’ve always been a fan of the Shokka Generals in KAMEN RIDER, but never understood why they had to revert to monsters at the end of their reigns, because why transform? In the real world, there isn’t ANYTHING scarier than what they originally were: Evil, Petty Old Men with Delusions of Grandeur and lots of Power at their hand. And I'm telling you, NO ONE embodies the "Evil Old Man" better than Professor Gill!
When it got to the point where you saw Hakaida burst into Gill's lair and turn on him like Frankenstein’s Monster, striking him and strangling Gill’s neck as he shrieked like a terrified old lady, you knew that this was the END of the GAME- NEVER had you seen him so…desperate! You KNEW the end was coming soon! With his “creation” flying totally off the hook, a beaten Gill activates the very last Dark Monster, the creepily cackling “Skeleton Flying Squirrel” to not only take care of Kikaida but Hakaida as well!
Skeleton Flying Squirrel is intended as a Doomsday weapon, and by having the last monster named after not a color but a SKELETON, THIS Dark Monster seems more along the lines of Kamen Rider’s Destron Monsters than the more “Playful” looking Monsters of earlier Kikaida episodes, indicating that when Gill tells Skeleton Flying Squirrel “If You succeed, we can rebuild”, it would have been a FAR MORE SINISTER organization than what we’d seen before!
One of Hakaida’s greatest “weapons” against Kikaida was the fact that Kikaida couldn’t really do TOO much harm to him because he had Dr. Komyoji’s BRAIN in his dome, and so all of his confrontations had been evasive at best, defensive at worst. Skeleton Flying Squirrel, however, has NO PROBLEM getting down and dirty with Hakaida, and swoops down on him in a flash, using his skeletal jaws to strangle the life out of him before going out to find Kikaida.
Kikaida arrives in time to take Hakaida to the lab where he hopes they can get the doctor’s grey matter back into his own head, and it’s here that I have one of my few problems of this series- WHY couldn’t they have made the brain transferring procedure a SCIENTIFIC one a la THE FLY, where they place eletronic domes on the heads of Hakaida and Dr. Komyoji and then with the flick of a switch, trasnport the brains back? This would make sense since Mistuko is, like her father, scientifically informed, and could probably have used her technical intuation to make her way through the procedure.
Sadly, someone decided that the brain transfer between Komyoji and Hakaida was actually a MEDICAL one, and I have NO IDEA how Mitsuko did it, but she went all George Clooney and managed to surgically reattach Dr Komyoji’s brain back into his head just fine, as if all she had to do was connect several RCA jacks to his skull to get him back ship-shape! Gads, I REALLY have to look away/take with a grain of salt when this scene comes up. But anyway, she’s successful ,and soon enough the whole family is reunited…just in time to be caught by the desperate Professor Gill and prepped to be killed on the cross!
You know one thing that’s usually disappointing about last episodes is that the storylines have become so huge that the old tried and tested “formulas” that had been repeated thought the series is completely gone, but one thing I LOVE about Kikaida’s last episode is that they really went out of their way to bring it back to the formula we’ve come to know and love. One big thing that had been missing for a while was the good old fashioned “DENJI-END” that Kikiada used to blow up his enemies. Since so many of the latter villains were so souped-up with newfangled powers, new ways of destroying them had had to be invented. But for all Skeleton Flying Squirrels’ delusions of grandeur at being the prerennial “Hakaida Slayer”, he’s at heart just another Dark Robot, and we gleefully get the see for the very last time a Dark Robot get his “Pink Glass” shattered the good old fashioned way!! DENJI END!
Once SFS is out of the way, Gill knows the jig is up, and sets the entire Dark Base to go up in smoke. Attempts to rescue the man fail, and the Dark Base is blown up with the insane Professor Gill burning up inside (doing a fair rendition of Nobunaga at the fire at Honnoji), while the Komyoji Family watch the whole thing go down from afar, realizing at last that it is OVER!
Epilogue
We tune in a few days after the fall of the Dark where we see Hanpen and the Komyoji Family happily packing their bags set out to start a new life in Switzerland. And thus comes to the last great touch of the show, (or at least, this is how I always interpreted it)- Throughout the entire series Mitsuko had always believed she couldn’t be with Jiro because they had the Dark Demolition Corps to deal with, and now that the threat was gone, she felt they could finally be together, living in Switzerland as a “happy couple”.
What she never realized was that Jiro always knew that an android and a human could NEVER be together, and so as the plane takes off with the family inside, Mitsuko is stunned to realize Jiro’s not on the plane with them. Without a word to anyone (save his creator Dr Komyoji) he’s simply stayed back, knowing his lot was to ride along alone for the rest of his existence. And as Mitsuko calls out for him, we see the familiar scene of Jiro making his farewells to the departing plane, getting on his motorcycle… and driving off into the distance.
Kikaida was the first series that I’d watched all the way to the end, and after 30+ episode of seeing the hiragana “Tsuzuku” (To Be Contiuned) tacked onto each ending, it was a feeling of EPIC magnitude to suddenly see the hiragana “Owari” (END) appear. Even the 3rd grade me knew what SIGNIFICANCE that had- it was OVER! Kikaida had DONE it! The BAD GUYS were BEATEN! HOLY FREAKING YEAH!!!
Then I got excited all over again when they ran the preview for next week’s first installment of “Kikaidaa 0-1”…but that’s a story for another time..!
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