Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

Here's what I thought were some minor stuff I wanted to happen in Ryuki's Alternative Ending: The ultimate battle between Ryuki and Ouja.  Made me think that it would be really epic if Ouja got killed by Ryuki himself considering that he made Ryuki's life so torturous one way or another.  It's like "Ouja you may be a Rider but you're one evil Rider!" resulting to a climatic battle.  Then I can have Ryuki do a Final Vent on Ouja to avenge all the people he killed.  Made me think that with a guy as crazy as Bilgenia, why not let the hero kill him?  I could really imagine Ryuki with a victorious roar.  Then again, Femme killing Ouja was still good considering the latter was killed by a weaker opponent who used her wits against him. Just a thought also on the role of Natsuki Kato as Miho/Femme.  So yeah she starts out as a con artist but she later had genuine feelings for Shinji/Ryuki.  I thought that Inoue does like killing people in his script...

If one thing intrigued me so much in Kamen Rider Ryuki was how Yasuko Kobayashi and Toshiki Inoue wrote the endings.  For Yasuko Kobayashi she's not that notorious for finales compared to Toshiki Inoue (considering Faiz had the worst finale!), now moving... a thought of the two finales: Finale #1- Reset Button Finale The finale written by Yasuko Kobayashi for me is kind of really left me mixed.  So Shinji dies after he's injured leaving Renn as the final hero to fight.  He defeats Kamen Rider Odin and gets the final wish.  So what happens?  After that wish isn't made or made, whatever it hits a reset button that somehow saves the world but leaves everybody WTF?  SO all the participants of the Rider War are back to life but also bringing back that dangerous villain Takeshi who may still be a threat to society (but at least no longer a threat to the world), their minds wiped out of the horrible memories and then Renn and Shinji don't remember each other....

I finally figured out that the reason why I really can't like Faiz for myself personally was the whole thought it's reality bites.  How?  Well I'd like to share my thoughts that it's not what I see as bad writing but all these reality bites stuff makes it hard for me to like Faiz which all of these I am pretty mixed on to like or dislike these elements which are some ups and downs of Faiz: Masato is one of those characters I really love to hate because he seems to be the embodiment of "humans are bastards" trope making him very painful to watch.  All he does is whine about how much he hates Orphnochs, reminds me of the time I used to whine (or overly whine) about how much I hated certain races or shows like I am really guilty of overly whining of how much I hate much of American TV for instance.  And I'll admit I grew up having racist tendencies which this guy is also a mirror of me in some way- that is my  old self.  But not only me but also other peopl...

Well it's time for another movie review.  After some de-stressing I have found out that I may want to review this fairly passable film.  So it stars Isabella Leong (please don't mistake her to be Rina Akiyama) as Moon who is supposedly some kind of "mutant" and there are "mutants" in this film.  Nope it's not like X-Men, these mutants here seem to live peacefully with the humans except some can find them weird.  For Moon, her character is somebody who can talk to insects while she suffers a drawback that she is color blind.  She has her love interest in Hyland who has some problem with body contact for some weird reason.  What I thought was that since this wasn't a serious film so I guess it's normal for her to have a crush on him.  For one, I thought that the CGI insects (one is her friend Coochie) makes this quite cartoony. So here's the deal- Moon runs into a group of "mutants" who have various powers.  There's Smarty, Egg...

Well it's time for me to say something about Decade.  Okay I don't like the series but I thought about it why it was popular to children during its airing even if it really had some issues like messy plots and execution.  Here's my theoretical reasons: 1.) Nostalgia factor.  Decade had the nostalgic factor to where he entered into various Alternate Worlds featuring a different version of the Kamen Riders.  Children would realy like that and it contains some of their favorites like Kiva, Agito, Den-O and Kuuga to name a few.  In fact, it would actually be for them in my view a very great way to honor all their favorites during the Heisei era and some introduction to the Showa. 2.) The concept itself of Alternate Worlds is cool.  Okay I may find all this Alternate Reality worlds to be giving me a headache but little kids may be the type to get infatuated with it.  As a child, I did enjoy that concept though as I grew up, I kind of get "logic headach...

While I was at first having a hard time accepting Kuuga or what, I realized I am now able to appreciate it more than the first time.  I just thought I might want to talk about the "realistic approach" to which our hero Yuusuke Godai doesn't immediately learn about his superpowers and new forms, he even needs Sakurako to unlock the powers of Kuuga which does make this one huge positive plus- Naruhisa Arakawa has made the hero more human thus viewers can relate to the person.  In fact, every time he gains a new form, he doesn't immediately beat the monster but rather he tries to learn that new power and then he learns it, then he defeats the monster.  That makes him less superhuman and more human, which might actually symbolize the step by step process to ultimate success where he finally defeated the Grongi after a series of trials he had to encounter.  Kuuga or not, Yuusuke is still the same person he is even with the superpowers he had attained. As I thought, thi...

There were some instances of Fangires loving humans and some of them were quite focused.  Here they are: Ryo Itoya is one though it's more of lust than love.  In 1986, he developed a crush on Yuri Aso and then in 2006, why does he shift the attention to the daughter?  Really I find this kind of plot development GROSS.  So far as concerned, I wonder why of all girls did he eventually fall for Megumi when I mean, there are a lot more hot girls he can stalk if the purpose was all but LUST?  For me, this attraction was funny and creepy, sometimes it just freaks me out.  I thought that Megumi kicking his balls was one of the best things to ever happen.  Miu the Queen of 2008 eventually killed him after his several episodes of just mindlessly wanting to have Megumi. Shinji Takeuchi/Grizzly Fangire- One of those surviving Fangires loving humans storyline and quite touching.  For me, I really loved the drama that built up between him and his wife in...

Well I didn't expect I would do this but as part of learning experience, I will do this.  I thought the concept was really cool but sadly, the show Faiz was too painful for me to watch.  Now I'd like to analyze them: I would say that compared to most monsters, I find them to be well lacking color for some reason.  In fact, they're like an army of living gargoyles.  IMO I didn't like their designs that much due to their lack of color.  I really thought that the concept was interesting but POORLY implemented. Now for the Smart Brain, one behind them: The head is Kyoji Murakami (Rose Orphnoch) who is the President of Smart Brain.  I pretty thought he's one really survival of the fittest maniac as he views Orphnochs as the "next step of human evolution" where some dead humans were later revived as Orphnochs.  It's pretty disappointing he wasn't the final villain in the series. Eichi Toda the temporary head, well he's really forgettable. ...

I've done reviews on Kamen Rider Agito, Kamen Rider Faiz, and Kamen Rider Ryuki now for a run-through on them. Where was he good at and where did he mess up? Well, it's time for a critique summary of these things: Kamen Rider Agito Definitely Toshiki Inoue's masterpiece well-written from start to end. Everything in this series was what I'd call finishing the work that Naruhisa Arakawa started with Kuuga. With how the mysteries and complexities were written together with characters that aren't there for just being there and then dying for dying's sake, this is his top masterpiece. For the finale, I pretty much think that it's passable but not awesome since that whole "I can jump that high do that rider kick." against the Overlord of Darkness can make anybody go O_o in some way. However, nobody was getting unnecessarily killed except if it was for plot and everything was close to perfection. Overall, too bad Inoue didn't maintain this kind o...

Well it's time for another review and I'm afraid this isn't a very pleasant one.  Just tell me if I've gotten into some bad mood swings here because this is one series I was thinking had really had me mixed.  So I get pretty mixed about this series.  Sure there was the good concept of the human/Orphnoch war or the conflicts going on but really, I would say this series is where I would practically think Toshiki Inoue needed to rethink what he did to write good and how he could write better.  Now where do I start?  So pretty much we are introduced into the world of the Smart Brain who I think is more on the stupid side, since really why are they forcing evolution on people and why do they want certain people to discard their humanity?  Also Takumi is kind of an idiot though I can tolerate him.  Along with him is that he's with Mari and the laundry boy Keitaro who does get on my nerves. So the real issue has to be with the whole get the belt, lose the ...

So this blog doesn't have enough posts yet but I will try these critiques soon: Kamen Rider Faiz review- I would really say I'd say this is really where I'm pretty mixed at.  I will do a detailed review like I did with Agito and Kiva, two of Toshiki Inoue's other works.  Well, I'm now drafting the whole Faiz post as well as the comparison.  So far, I'd like to really think about Inoue's strengths and weaknesses in the second post.  And for everything else, I would share my thoughts on the series as a whole then the comparison of the three Riders by Inoue and where's the bad mix then?  Maybe I'll jump in and compare it to Jetman.  Overall, I thought about the first two reviews on Agito and Kiva, now it's time for Faiz.

I do like the Rurouni Kenshin film but I wished the following were cast instead: Tori Matsuzaka as Kenshin- Reasons are too obvious because of the shout outs he had in Shinkenger.  Duh.  Well not only that, I think he's a better actor than Takeru Sato but he was probably too busy with other projects so he may have refused the part.  I thought he's even closer to Kenshin than Takeru Sato will ever be. Rin Takanashi as Kaoru- Well I thought that Emi Takei was probably better off playing Misao or Megumi, but better Misao.  Now why I choose Rin Takanashi is that aside from her features that resemble Kaoru Kamiya (having those large eyes and long hair) in Rurouni Kenshin, he does carry on the bad cook gag rather well which I think I'd rather see Emi Takei throwing shurikens or cooking good food to please everyone.  That stare of hers during her bad cooking moment can really drive some degree of laughter for me.  Plus, she and Tori Matsuzaka do have some ch...