Post by supnitle on Apr 9, 2011 22:02:06 GMT -5
So I watched Kamen Rider Decade. And then I ranted about it. If you don't like reading, here's an audio version.
www.sendspace.com/file/trnudt
If you do like reading, here's a boatload of text without my voice.
So I just got finished watching Kamen Rider Decade. This was supposed to be it. The great, awesome finale to the first 9 heisei riders. I had watched all 9 of them in preparation, becoming increasingly awed by how surprisingly complex and epic most of the series were. How likable the characters were, how detailed their development was, and how (usually) satisfying their closing actions were. I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm an enormous fan of Kamen Rider and literally did not dislike any of the first 9 series. But Decade was supposed to be the best. It was supposed to, in my mind, outclass all of them as an epic adventure with an enormous scale, crossing over all 9 previous Heisei riders. It had an interesting concept, with the main rider supposedly being the "Destroyer of Worlds." I was incredibly excited when I started episode one.
That excitement would wane, and turn into rage as I went through the series.
As I sit here, having finished Kamen Rider Decade, I am so completely dissatisfied with this series that I am going to pretend that it's a shitty fanfiction someone wrote that Toei decided to make out of sheer boredom, and it isn't canon with anything every because it fucking insults the previous stories. Kamen Rider Decade is a giant goddamn joke of a series that doesn't deserve any of the praise it gets, and deserves to be forgotten as an utterly forgettable, terrible series that happened to be in one of Toei's premier franchises.
Let's go over the pros and the very few cons.
Cons.
The Characters: Jesus christ, WHERE do I begin?
Well, the titular rider, obvious. Kamen Rider Decade, Tsukasa Kadoya, did not have a good start considering he started off, in the very first scene, killing off all the other riders. No seriously, that's not a good way to endear your protagonist to the audience, Toei: Showing them MASSACRING ALL THE CHARACTERS WE ALREADY KNOW AND LIKE. It only goes downhill from there. Tsukasa is nothing but a gigantic Mary Sue, able to do fucking everything (Cooking? Check. Play the violin? Check. Oh, he can't take photos, but there's an IN CANON EXPLANATION AS TO HIS ONLY FLAW. FUCK YOU DECADE.), act like a complete douche and yet have everyone like him, and oh, HE HAS THE POWER TO KILL ALL THE OTHER KAMEN RIDERS EVER. Giant. Fucking. Mary sue. And he shows little to no development, which is annoying, because the previous series all had very good development for their titular characters that actually made sense. Wataru (Kiva) became a lot more determined and grew a spine, yet still remained himself. Ryoutaro (Den-O) grew from a child to a man in his series with the help and support of his friends, and Tendou (Kabuto) had some very subtle growth, but was clearly becoming nicer to all his friends by the end. TSUKASA, on the other hand, starts off as an arrogant prick and ends as... an arrogant prick. Oh, there's some shit about comrades or something but NO, FUCK YOU DECADE, YOU BARELY KNOW THESE PEOPLE but I'll get to that later. TL;DR: Tsukasa is a giant sue and the worst Kamen Rider in the history of the franchise.
Yuusuke. Oh, Yuusuke. I have four words for you, unidentified lifeform number form.
YOU'RE FUCKING KUUGA, IDIOT.
Holy shit, did he just FORGET that he's a goddamn Kamen Rider throughout half of the series or something? HE TRANSFORMED, LIKE, FIVE TIMES. YOU'RE KUUGA. WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS. He was bland, just generically nice, nothing really that interesting and oh he turned evil later I guess cool story bro too bad I have no emotional attachment to any of these characters at all. Yuusuke is Yuuseless, boring character, horribly done, an insult to the original Godai motherfucking Yuusuke, let's move on.
Natsumi. Fuck off, you stupid, stupid bitch. You are so goddamn bland and annoying. One second she's all "OH NO DICKAYDO WAHHH I'M SO OBVIOUSLY CRUSHING ON YOU" and another second she's all "LAWLZ I CAN CONTROL TSUKASA BY PRESSURE POINT MAKING HIM LAUGH BS I'M SO FUNNEE LOLOLO" stuffing her into a generic character mold that she never breaks out of. Oh, she's a female rider. Great, the only female rider who doesn't die is in fucking DECADE. GREAT.
Daiki. You're stupid. Your resolution in your world made no sense and wasn't even a resolution, since you didn't LEARN anything. And you didn't know whether you were a villain or a hero. One second you were one, one second you were another. THAT'S NOT HOW A SECONDARY RIDER WORKS. Take IXA. He STARTED as a bad guy, wanting to defeat Kiva, but grew into a good guy. Zeronos was neutral at first, but grew into Den-O's stalwart comrade. Gatack was always Kabuto's friend, but torn between his duty and humanity and his loyalty to his friend at times. DIEND WAS JUST SOME RANDOM SHMUCK WHO HAD AN UNEXPLAINED RIDER SYSTEM WHO DID WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTED. He was completely unlikable, and honestly, he didn't develop. At all. At the very end? Maybe, but by then, it was too late considering that the SERIES WAS ALREADY OVER. AND HE'S STILL STEALING SHIT IN EPISODE YELLOW. FUCK YOU DECADE.
The Plot: So decade is like, the head of Dai Shocker or some shit- yeahno tl;dr BAD FANFICTION SHIT, COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTING, DESTROYER OF WORLDS MY ASS, NEXT.
The Designs: What the fuck is this shit? They look STUPID.
The Villains:WHAT VILLAINS?
The most obvious villain like character is Narutaki. Narutaki is a fucking joke. If he's not comedically ONORE DICKAYDO'ing, he's being ~ohsomysterious~ or generally USELESS. All he did was TALK. DO SOMETHING NARUTAKI. DO SOMETHING. Oh, he summoned Ryuga as the "perfect rider to defeat decade."
..WHAT. WHY RYUGA. WHY WOULD YOU PICK RYUGA. I'M SO ANGRY I CAN'T EVEN FINISH MY ELLIPSIS SERIOUSLY. IF YOU'RE PICKING AN EVIL MOVIE RIDER, PICK CAUCASUS. HE HAS HYPER CLOCK UP. HE COULD KILL DECADE BEFORE HE COULD DO ANYTHING. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS NARUTAKI GO DIE IN A FIRE WHILE SHOUTING YOUR INSIPID CATCHPRHASE ALREADY.
Apollo Geist? Dai-Shocker? More like "easily beaten by decade's mary sue powers and never really winning any victories or appearing intimidating at all." They existed only to say "oh there totally is a big bad gaiz" and were never a fucking threat, considering that apollo geist was, spoilers, not ever actually fusing the worlds at all and it was all decade's fault.
Diend? Go ask him if he's an antagonist, it changes every week because the writers can't seem to decide.
The Passage of Time: Here's a big complaint. So Tsukasa, Yuusuke, and Natsumi are all stalwart comrades, standing by each other through thick and thin, through their darkest ours, and lasting out any threat as long as they're together.
... what.
Here's the thing: In decade, immediately after one journey, they go to another. It seems to be without stop. If that were the case, Decade would only know Kuuga for a few days, a week at most. HOW ARE THEY BEST FUCKING FRIENDS? THAT MAKES NO SENSE. THEY'VE ONLY KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR A WEEK. IT'S NOT ORIGINAL GODAI, THIS KUUGA WOULDN'T TRUST HIS LIFE TO A PERSON HE'D ONLY KNOWN FOR A FEW DAYS. THIS IS STUPID, TERRIBLE WRITING TOEI AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES FOR MAKING THIS SHITSTORM OF A SHOW.
IT'S NOT A FUCKING CROSSOVER: Decade is not a crossover. That's its entire shtick, but it's not a crossover for the most part. Let's define crossover, shall we?:
Urban dictionary defines it, quite simply, as thus:
"The characters from one story world meet with the characters of another."
This barely happens. When it does happen, it's the characters of an old rider series crossing over with decade. Usually though, it's the characters from Decade's alternate reality rider worlds meeting up with... Decade. The AU world riders themselves don't crossover until the last few episodes.
... THIS IS NOT A FUCKING CROSSOVER.
A GOOD CROSSOVER WOULD INVOLVE THE OLD RIDERS MEETING UP AND ACTUALLY INTERACTING, NOT DECADE'S FUCKING SHTICK OF HIM TURNING INTO OLD RIDER SUITS AND FUCKING AROUND WITH COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE DRESSED LIKE RIDERS.
RIDER SUITS =/= RIDERS. It's the fucking CHARACTERS that make the riders, not the suits and abilities. Who the fuck is this generic douchebag you got to play Garren? THAT. IS. NOT. TACHIBANA-SAN. Tachibana was an incredibly badass, well developed character who I grew to goddamn ADMIRE for his tenure in Blade. Hibiki isn't this lazy old man, he's a down to earth nice guy who focuses on hard work and training. IXA wasn't even given a fucking character, he just shows up and dies. THESE AREN'T THE RIDERS I KNOW.
These are just random fucking people who are barely given any development, or even character at all, who pop up in the Rider suits and expect us to get behind them as characters. I couldn't. I couldn't at all. If they had said it actually WAS Tachibana-san/Hibiki/Nago in the suit, even if it was a slightly different voice and actor, I WOULD HAVE BEEN BEHIND THEM EASILY. There was NO EXCUSE for making Decade NOT A GODDAMN CROSSOVER. Even if they had chosen different actors, if the actors had done a decent job, I would have been okay with it and Decade would have been great if the riders all interacted with each other and it was done WELL.
But no. Instead, we get the mary sue destroyer of worlds travelling around to worlds of people I don't give a shit about and dicking around with them. Fuck you Decade. Fuck. You.
Pros.
LITTLE TO NOTHING. The fight scenes were decent overall, although the end fight scene in all riders vs daishocker was awesome, but other than a few cool moments sprinkled throughout, (THE ORIGINAL KAMEN RIDER BLADE, IN KING FORM, BEATING UP ON DECADE~~~ it's sad that I'm happy whenever decade gets beaten up) there was NOTHING GOOD I CAN SAY ABOUT DECADE. AT ALL.
No seriously, fuck this show. It's terrible and an insult to the franchise in general. I thought I would be recommending Decade as a starting point to people who had never seen Kamen Rider before, but now that I've seen it, I'm not recommending it to ANYONE.
tl;dr:
Want good story? Go watch Kuuga.
Want good epicness? Go watch Agito.
Want good mindfuck? Go watch Ryuki.
Want good music? Go watch Faiz.
Want a good ending? Go watch Blade.
Want good characters? Go watch Hibiki.
Want good action? Go watch Kabuto.
Want good humor? Go watch Den-O.
Want good designs? Go watch Kiva.
Want to kill yourself? Go watch Decade.
www.sendspace.com/file/trnudt
If you do like reading, here's a boatload of text without my voice.
So I just got finished watching Kamen Rider Decade. This was supposed to be it. The great, awesome finale to the first 9 heisei riders. I had watched all 9 of them in preparation, becoming increasingly awed by how surprisingly complex and epic most of the series were. How likable the characters were, how detailed their development was, and how (usually) satisfying their closing actions were. I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm an enormous fan of Kamen Rider and literally did not dislike any of the first 9 series. But Decade was supposed to be the best. It was supposed to, in my mind, outclass all of them as an epic adventure with an enormous scale, crossing over all 9 previous Heisei riders. It had an interesting concept, with the main rider supposedly being the "Destroyer of Worlds." I was incredibly excited when I started episode one.
That excitement would wane, and turn into rage as I went through the series.
As I sit here, having finished Kamen Rider Decade, I am so completely dissatisfied with this series that I am going to pretend that it's a shitty fanfiction someone wrote that Toei decided to make out of sheer boredom, and it isn't canon with anything every because it fucking insults the previous stories. Kamen Rider Decade is a giant goddamn joke of a series that doesn't deserve any of the praise it gets, and deserves to be forgotten as an utterly forgettable, terrible series that happened to be in one of Toei's premier franchises.
Let's go over the pros and the very few cons.
Cons.
The Characters: Jesus christ, WHERE do I begin?
Well, the titular rider, obvious. Kamen Rider Decade, Tsukasa Kadoya, did not have a good start considering he started off, in the very first scene, killing off all the other riders. No seriously, that's not a good way to endear your protagonist to the audience, Toei: Showing them MASSACRING ALL THE CHARACTERS WE ALREADY KNOW AND LIKE. It only goes downhill from there. Tsukasa is nothing but a gigantic Mary Sue, able to do fucking everything (Cooking? Check. Play the violin? Check. Oh, he can't take photos, but there's an IN CANON EXPLANATION AS TO HIS ONLY FLAW. FUCK YOU DECADE.), act like a complete douche and yet have everyone like him, and oh, HE HAS THE POWER TO KILL ALL THE OTHER KAMEN RIDERS EVER. Giant. Fucking. Mary sue. And he shows little to no development, which is annoying, because the previous series all had very good development for their titular characters that actually made sense. Wataru (Kiva) became a lot more determined and grew a spine, yet still remained himself. Ryoutaro (Den-O) grew from a child to a man in his series with the help and support of his friends, and Tendou (Kabuto) had some very subtle growth, but was clearly becoming nicer to all his friends by the end. TSUKASA, on the other hand, starts off as an arrogant prick and ends as... an arrogant prick. Oh, there's some shit about comrades or something but NO, FUCK YOU DECADE, YOU BARELY KNOW THESE PEOPLE but I'll get to that later. TL;DR: Tsukasa is a giant sue and the worst Kamen Rider in the history of the franchise.
Yuusuke. Oh, Yuusuke. I have four words for you, unidentified lifeform number form.
YOU'RE FUCKING KUUGA, IDIOT.
Holy shit, did he just FORGET that he's a goddamn Kamen Rider throughout half of the series or something? HE TRANSFORMED, LIKE, FIVE TIMES. YOU'RE KUUGA. WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS. He was bland, just generically nice, nothing really that interesting and oh he turned evil later I guess cool story bro too bad I have no emotional attachment to any of these characters at all. Yuusuke is Yuuseless, boring character, horribly done, an insult to the original Godai motherfucking Yuusuke, let's move on.
Natsumi. Fuck off, you stupid, stupid bitch. You are so goddamn bland and annoying. One second she's all "OH NO DICKAYDO WAHHH I'M SO OBVIOUSLY CRUSHING ON YOU" and another second she's all "LAWLZ I CAN CONTROL TSUKASA BY PRESSURE POINT MAKING HIM LAUGH BS I'M SO FUNNEE LOLOLO" stuffing her into a generic character mold that she never breaks out of. Oh, she's a female rider. Great, the only female rider who doesn't die is in fucking DECADE. GREAT.
Daiki. You're stupid. Your resolution in your world made no sense and wasn't even a resolution, since you didn't LEARN anything. And you didn't know whether you were a villain or a hero. One second you were one, one second you were another. THAT'S NOT HOW A SECONDARY RIDER WORKS. Take IXA. He STARTED as a bad guy, wanting to defeat Kiva, but grew into a good guy. Zeronos was neutral at first, but grew into Den-O's stalwart comrade. Gatack was always Kabuto's friend, but torn between his duty and humanity and his loyalty to his friend at times. DIEND WAS JUST SOME RANDOM SHMUCK WHO HAD AN UNEXPLAINED RIDER SYSTEM WHO DID WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTED. He was completely unlikable, and honestly, he didn't develop. At all. At the very end? Maybe, but by then, it was too late considering that the SERIES WAS ALREADY OVER. AND HE'S STILL STEALING SHIT IN EPISODE YELLOW. FUCK YOU DECADE.
The Plot: So decade is like, the head of Dai Shocker or some shit- yeahno tl;dr BAD FANFICTION SHIT, COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTING, DESTROYER OF WORLDS MY ASS, NEXT.
The Designs: What the fuck is this shit? They look STUPID.
The Villains:WHAT VILLAINS?
The most obvious villain like character is Narutaki. Narutaki is a fucking joke. If he's not comedically ONORE DICKAYDO'ing, he's being ~ohsomysterious~ or generally USELESS. All he did was TALK. DO SOMETHING NARUTAKI. DO SOMETHING. Oh, he summoned Ryuga as the "perfect rider to defeat decade."
..WHAT. WHY RYUGA. WHY WOULD YOU PICK RYUGA. I'M SO ANGRY I CAN'T EVEN FINISH MY ELLIPSIS SERIOUSLY. IF YOU'RE PICKING AN EVIL MOVIE RIDER, PICK CAUCASUS. HE HAS HYPER CLOCK UP. HE COULD KILL DECADE BEFORE HE COULD DO ANYTHING. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY ARE YOU SO USELESS NARUTAKI GO DIE IN A FIRE WHILE SHOUTING YOUR INSIPID CATCHPRHASE ALREADY.
Apollo Geist? Dai-Shocker? More like "easily beaten by decade's mary sue powers and never really winning any victories or appearing intimidating at all." They existed only to say "oh there totally is a big bad gaiz" and were never a fucking threat, considering that apollo geist was, spoilers, not ever actually fusing the worlds at all and it was all decade's fault.
Diend? Go ask him if he's an antagonist, it changes every week because the writers can't seem to decide.
The Passage of Time: Here's a big complaint. So Tsukasa, Yuusuke, and Natsumi are all stalwart comrades, standing by each other through thick and thin, through their darkest ours, and lasting out any threat as long as they're together.
... what.
Here's the thing: In decade, immediately after one journey, they go to another. It seems to be without stop. If that were the case, Decade would only know Kuuga for a few days, a week at most. HOW ARE THEY BEST FUCKING FRIENDS? THAT MAKES NO SENSE. THEY'VE ONLY KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR A WEEK. IT'S NOT ORIGINAL GODAI, THIS KUUGA WOULDN'T TRUST HIS LIFE TO A PERSON HE'D ONLY KNOWN FOR A FEW DAYS. THIS IS STUPID, TERRIBLE WRITING TOEI AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES FOR MAKING THIS SHITSTORM OF A SHOW.
IT'S NOT A FUCKING CROSSOVER: Decade is not a crossover. That's its entire shtick, but it's not a crossover for the most part. Let's define crossover, shall we?:
Urban dictionary defines it, quite simply, as thus:
"The characters from one story world meet with the characters of another."
This barely happens. When it does happen, it's the characters of an old rider series crossing over with decade. Usually though, it's the characters from Decade's alternate reality rider worlds meeting up with... Decade. The AU world riders themselves don't crossover until the last few episodes.
... THIS IS NOT A FUCKING CROSSOVER.
A GOOD CROSSOVER WOULD INVOLVE THE OLD RIDERS MEETING UP AND ACTUALLY INTERACTING, NOT DECADE'S FUCKING SHTICK OF HIM TURNING INTO OLD RIDER SUITS AND FUCKING AROUND WITH COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE DRESSED LIKE RIDERS.
RIDER SUITS =/= RIDERS. It's the fucking CHARACTERS that make the riders, not the suits and abilities. Who the fuck is this generic douchebag you got to play Garren? THAT. IS. NOT. TACHIBANA-SAN. Tachibana was an incredibly badass, well developed character who I grew to goddamn ADMIRE for his tenure in Blade. Hibiki isn't this lazy old man, he's a down to earth nice guy who focuses on hard work and training. IXA wasn't even given a fucking character, he just shows up and dies. THESE AREN'T THE RIDERS I KNOW.
These are just random fucking people who are barely given any development, or even character at all, who pop up in the Rider suits and expect us to get behind them as characters. I couldn't. I couldn't at all. If they had said it actually WAS Tachibana-san/Hibiki/Nago in the suit, even if it was a slightly different voice and actor, I WOULD HAVE BEEN BEHIND THEM EASILY. There was NO EXCUSE for making Decade NOT A GODDAMN CROSSOVER. Even if they had chosen different actors, if the actors had done a decent job, I would have been okay with it and Decade would have been great if the riders all interacted with each other and it was done WELL.
But no. Instead, we get the mary sue destroyer of worlds travelling around to worlds of people I don't give a shit about and dicking around with them. Fuck you Decade. Fuck. You.
Pros.
LITTLE TO NOTHING. The fight scenes were decent overall, although the end fight scene in all riders vs daishocker was awesome, but other than a few cool moments sprinkled throughout, (THE ORIGINAL KAMEN RIDER BLADE, IN KING FORM, BEATING UP ON DECADE~~~ it's sad that I'm happy whenever decade gets beaten up) there was NOTHING GOOD I CAN SAY ABOUT DECADE. AT ALL.
No seriously, fuck this show. It's terrible and an insult to the franchise in general. I thought I would be recommending Decade as a starting point to people who had never seen Kamen Rider before, but now that I've seen it, I'm not recommending it to ANYONE.
tl;dr:
Want good story? Go watch Kuuga.
Want good epicness? Go watch Agito.
Want good mindfuck? Go watch Ryuki.
Want good music? Go watch Faiz.
Want a good ending? Go watch Blade.
Want good characters? Go watch Hibiki.
Want good action? Go watch Kabuto.
Want good humor? Go watch Den-O.
Want good designs? Go watch Kiva.
Want to kill yourself? Go watch Decade.