There are times I feel too embarrassed to admit that I do enjoy some messy shows. For example, I was afraid to admit that I liked the unpopular Kamen Rider BLACK RX. I could agree that BLACK RX is a mess but it still deserves some credit for trying out new stuff - just that it wasn't done properly. Right now, I feel somewhat similar to Kamen Rider Faiz. Heck, there are times I feel that Faiz could've potentially been better than the fan-favorite Kamen Rider BLACK. The show may be full of unlikable characters, Toshiki Inoue trying to get as dark as he could (and he even made a cameo here for a reason), and it was the time when Inoue was also starting to lose charge. Eventually, Inoue hit Burnout Ville during Kamen Rider Kiva - a show I enjoy but I also must acknowledge what other fans say that it's a mess. I find Faiz a mess but it's basically a watchable mess!
Faiz has that depressing scenario belonging to the seven nightmare fuel Heisei era riders. It's quite weird if you think that Kamen Rider Kuuga had generous amounts of nightmare fuel while Super Sentai started to become a lot more fun than serious. Inoue was involved with Kamen Rider Kuuga (as a secondary writer), wrote most of Kamen Rider Agito, wrote some episodes for Kamen Rider Ryuk (which the rumor that he and Yasuko Kobayashi had a Writer War when it was more like a writer vs. executive war), and after that we have Faiz. I do have a feeling that Inoue and Kobayashi probably planned to murder everyone in Ryuki and we know how that show ended. I feel that reset button ending was really a copout by the executives rather than what the writer planned. Talk about how both Judd Lynn and Kobayashi were victims of executive meddling. In Lynn's case, I think it was for the best to keep Eric Myers alive (and that injury he got looks believably survivable) in Power Rangers Time Force. Meanwhile, the Reset Button ending in Ryuki was obviously forced and probably never did wonders.
The show is very depressing. This is coming from someone who enjoyed BLACK as a KID or tends to berate Power Rangers for not being that serious (which isn't allowable due to TV-YY-FV standards). The show does have what I might call an unnecessarily more brutal version of the Human vs. Mutant war in Time Force or from the X-Men: The Animated Series TV show. We have evil characters from both humans and Orphochs. For some messy writing, there was a decent effort that made the show somehow enjoyable even with all the glaring errors for fans to see.
We also have a third-wheel villain named Masato Kusaka. If anything, I always say Kohei Murakami is one of the best actors in the show. Murakam's troll face and excellent acting makes me love to hate Kusaka as a character. Kusaka is one who becomes a more active version of Captain Ryuuya from Mirai Sentai Timeranger. Both also met their grizzly deaths in a less conventional way such as being shot. Kusaka's neck was broken by Yuji Kiba (played by the late Masayuki Izumi) later on. Yet Kusaka seemed to have more of an excuse to be evil since he was experimented on. However, that doesn't excuse his behavior to become Ryuuya 2.0 in any shape or form. Murakami practically got so famous doing the role either he resumed playing the character or got a guest role whenever he could. Kento Handa was good but not as good as Murakami.
What did tick me off though was the whole Pass the Belt game. What in the world are we thinking of passing the belt around? The Kaixa belt did kill several people. Was it trying to take Timeranger's Time Fire identity passed around. It turns out that Ryuuya was the original Time Fire and he soon allowed Naoto Takizawa to die in his place. I really hated how gadgets were passed aroud a lot. I could care less about the Pass the Belt game in Kiva though. The IXA belt getting passed was nowhere near as annoying as that Kaixa was for me. I did like how the two-time period story worked with the IXA belt. There's the prototype and the most recent version. I feel the IXA belt getting passed around worked with Kiva since it was Inoue trying to be less serious. Here, it seems that the pass the Kaixa belt game can become unnecessarily funny.
The Orphnoch plot was a scary gray area
I think the Orphnochs being shades of gray has symbolic meanings. It's because not all Orphnochs are bad. We have Smart BRAIN which could potentially be darker than Gorgom. Gorgom was meant to be scarier though they were still stuck with the mandatory convoluted plans for world domination. The Heisei era Rider formula was more like an action TV drama. The episodic format was gone and we get cliffhangers almost every episode like a TV drama. It reminds me of what someone said that the new Kamen Rider series (they call it Masked Rider instead) is very much like telenovelas. The Orphnochs have some who want to have peace with humanity.
The others are with Smart BRAIN which seeks to have Orphnoch superiority. There are none of the scenes like Super Sentai's hammy villains or any of Time Force's hammy scenes that made a fan-favorite villain. Instead, every bit of it just tries to be as dark as possible. I think SMART Brain's Kyoji Murakami is just sheer sinister behavior. Murakami has none of Ransik's antics that worked well in Time Force. Instead, Murakami continues to become a sheer force that seeks to forcibly mutate all of humanity into Orphnochs. Murakami is pretty much like Magneto in some way from the first X-Men live-action movie. Magneto tried to mutate all of humanity. Murakami was trying the same. Except that Murakami was later dealt with in a very non-satisfying way. I think Murakami as Rose Orphnoch symbolizes the beauty and deadliness of his plans. Though, I dislike how anti-climatic Murakami became in the face of the finale arc.
There's also the Renegade Orphochs. Yuji, Yuka Osada/Crane Orphnoch (Yoshika Kato) and Naoya Kaido/Snake Orphnoch (Mitsuru Karahashi). The show did kill off Yuka and Yuji later on. It was nice to see a nicer side of Mitsuru playing Naoyo when he was that bloodthirsty Juzo Fuwa in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger - which is Lighter and Softer. They show the moral grayness of the war since there are also good ones. Yet, Yuka does also snap every now and then like her status as an unfavorite or how she was bullied. Yuji took over SMART Brain and became an anti-villan before playing Redemption Equals Death. They became the moral grayness of the Orphnochs.
Maybe, I could also talk about the final part. I think some things were too random. Sure, I can accept Takumi is Wolf Orphnoch. That alone can prove not all Orphnochs are bad. Yet, I do have my beef about Teruo Suzuki's role. Yes, Teruo is JUST A FREAKING CHILD. Teruo houses the essence of the final antagonist. Was Teruo just a vessel or were they one and the same? What in the world was Inoue thinking? Was Inoue thinking of a lame plot twist because he was already burning out? It's no different than how Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters started to get weaker as Kobayashi was beginning to burn out. It almost feels like how Parasite Eve 2 made the Eve clone the true final boss even if No. 9 was the more active antagonist.
Was Inoue trying to conflict the emotions? It's almost like how some horror movies show a child that's actually some devil seed. that's the whole role of Teruo since he was presented as a Creepy Child of sorts. Yet, there's also the Literal Split Personality that's different from Teruo. Inoue was carrying some serious adult horror movie tropes writing the Arch Orphnoch. What were Inoue's reasons behind this? I feel that Arch Orphnoch was too anti-climatic. Yet, part of me still wants ot praise this plot to be a daring attempt to be an unpredictable series.
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