Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

Yasuko Kobayashi, well she's probably still well-loved and hasn't reached the status of "public enemy numero uno". I decided to revisit this post from a few years ago and UPDATE IT. Now, it's time to talk about her finales. Before that, you may want to read this post about Toshiki Inoue and his finales . I guess she's getting too much mention (aside from Judd Lynn  who I believe is just overhyped by the fans ) that some older writers may have been overshadowed. Yeah, I feel like Hirohisa Soda was unintentionally overshadowed as fans seem to prefer to mention her name a lot. Again, I don't blame them if their exposure to Super Sentai was based on anything after Mirai Sentai Timeranger .  Kamen Rider Ryuki We have to hand it over to her that this is her first head writer job for the Kamen Rider franchise. Ryuki was most likely intended to be the most serious series yet but was killed by executive meddling. Maybe, it's unfair to blame her for the finale...

Kamen Rider Zi-O reaches the finality of the Heisei era -- except where he gathered the powers of Kamen Rider Drive and Kamen Rider Kuuga in the Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FOREVER movie (which I still need to watch) and the Over Quartzer summer movie which will be on July 16, 2019. So how's the arc? Well, sorry for the delayed review because I was watching Jiban and Denziman. Anyway, let's get started, shall we? Maybe, I can be biased but I think Zi-O's Den-O tribute is better than what happened in Kamen Rider Decade  -- though I have to admit that like ToQGer and Season 2 of Kamen Rider Amazons that the said episode was written by Yasuko Kobayashi. If anything, I think Nobuhiro Mouri is the saving grace of Zi-O in one way or another while Kento Shimoyama is pretty much either he hits or he misses -- though I admit the Decade arc was still interesting. The side story is pretty much soap operatic. It's the typical "I can't let my family know that ...

Well it's time for the first two episodes written by Yasuko Kobayashi who I believe is overrated because of Gingaman, Timeranger (her Magnum Opus IMHO), Shinkenger (which gets tons of praise) and ToQGer (which I think was the lowest point in her career BUT it won the Railroad Day award during its airing). So, how did Yasuko Kobayashi fare in her first two episodes for Decade? Granted, she's the head writer of Kamen Rider Den-O (and maybe she should've been Ryuki arc's head writer and maybe, the A.R. Ryuki characters would have had more personality than Sho Aikawa can offer) so I'd like to give my blunt opinion on the merits and demerits. So what happened to Ryotaro Nogami? He has been de-aged due to some timeline error or did I miss something? Regardless, Takeru Sato didn't reprise his role for a reason. Busy schedule? Too busy getting swordsmanship lessons? What's more interesting is that in the Kamen Rider OOO movie where Shocker took over the worl...

While I'm watching Ryuki, I just thought another article I could come up with was Den-O, the very Rider series that re-opened my mind to Kamen Rider with its J-Drama-esque feel.  Though not exactly awesome but I do so some things to this series.  Now where do I begin?  We have the story of unlucky Ryotaro Nogami (Takeru Sato) who starts out pretty unlucky especially he gets caught in the war against the Imagins that threaten to destroy the past.  So what happens is four benevolent (but can be annoying) Imagins get involved and they are Momotaros who does annoy me a lot, Urataros the "lawyer", the noble Kintaros (gold) and Ryutaros (the dancing dragon) who all become part of his four forms in the series.  Also he has his hot sister Airi who took care of him, she's the older sister.  So the Den-Liner comes one day and fate changes for him as he must combat malignant Imagins that invade the past.  Hmmm does Yasuko Kobayashi love time travel that much? ...