Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

I remembered watching The Outsiders on ABC-5 before it became TV-5. I remembered it was a late night program and didn't get to finish it because of college classes that started at 7:30 A.M. -- I had to get enough sleep or risk losing lots of stuff! So I did watch it but never got to finish it. Then I thought Netflix does something by bringing in some 2000s series that I haven't finished together with some new school. I currently put Ashes of Love on a halt to watch some old school Taiwanese TV series. Sometimes, when bored with what's new then why not temporarily watch old school? I did that with Super Sentai (and right now, I'm watching more new school Super Sentai until I get bored) then I might as well watch some old school TV drama then check new ones out later. There's still Vagabond later this year so maybe, I just need to watch some old school in order to to avoid getting taste fatigue with new school drama.  So far, Outsiders has been what I'd...

The final conclusion of my Decade rants. I really have to admit that somehow Shogo B'Stard probably had a stronger stomach to rewatch Kamen Rider Black RX which is a show he dislikes so much. Then I have Kamen Rider Decade which is what I'd call the black sheep of the Heisei era of Kamen Riders. It doesn't mean that I like a franchise that I won't point out what might be called as the lowest points of the franchise! The show itself ended in 31 episodes with a cliffhanger on August 30, 2009. Then fans had to wait for December 12, 2009 -- that would be the Kamen Rider W and Decade movie where the final ending was shown. Once again, bravo to the fact that Shoji Yonemura really has been causing all the decline in the series. I always felt that the World of Amazons is best described as Decade didn't know what to do anymore. Black and Black RX already had the Shocker villains showing up. Well, it's reimagining Amazon but I still bear in mind -- I didn't eve...

If there's another reason why Decade tends to bring up Saban's Mashed Rider to my head involuntarily (and the show isn't at fault) -- it's because it's the first Kamen Rider that got a TV crossover with Super Sentai. The stage shows were the start then you had Saban creating such a disaster. I still remember " A Friend in Need " in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and how it aged badly. We all have our Old Shames. However, Decade as a "successor" and "sequel" of Mashed Rider -- it still has a lot of positives such as better acting AND how it handled its crossover with Shinkenger. The crossover is ten years old. Fortunately, Ninninger VS. Kamen Rider Drive (which was a TV movie) managed to improve on the idea by reversing the situation (Ninningers landed into the world without Super Sentai instead) and adding a giant robot battle scene to top it all - something that's missing in the Decade and Shinkenger crossover. Middle, I sti...

Is it me or does Toei have a bad habit of burning out its writers? One of these writers I like to raise up is Toshiki Inoue who Shogo B'Stard terms as the "Frank Miller of Tokusatsu". He got so good and got so bad and undid himself. Though I seem to want to blame Toei more than Inoue. 2008 was the bad burnout of Inoue with Kamen Rider Kiva -- he's probably not so proud of it! Do you remember when he showed up in Kamen Rider Faiz's ending in a cameo! Kiva was where Inoue had really no idea on what to do. Later, he would later write the Kiva arc in Kamen Rider Zi-O .  Inoue went into four episodes straight. These two arcs involve the trope "Too Good To Be True" trope. The first two episodes involve Natsumi thinking she's arrived at her own world and finds out something else about it. Then we have Daiki where Inoue does something favorable by adding layers to that character who seems to be just an evil version of Herbie from Saban's Mashed Ri...

I remembered watching Kamen Rider Kabuto AFTER seeing Kamen Rider Decade. What's my reaction? I thought about how Kabuto is said to be Shoji "Patrick Star" Yonemura's one-shot wonder. I saw the whole Kabuto series and found it passable and sadly Yonemura is in the levels of Bruce Kalish and Jonathan Tzachor! But the Kabuto arc wasn't written by Patrick but by Kenji Konuta who isn't a major writer. Maybe I need to cut some slack but I still think Gordon Ramsay would probably still be a mad chef if he saw it and had translations to go along with it! I know I've read through Shogo B'Stard calling Souji Tendou an unlikable prick. There are some of my favorite shows full of them. A lot of Timeranger's characters tend to be jerks like Tatsuya or Yuuri. Kamen Rider Agito has Hojo Toru. Kabuto itself does have some kind of Hollywood feel with the Worms as a possible reference to the Harvesters in Independence Day. The series itself had some decent a...

It's known how Kamen Rider Hibiki had its controversial second half. Remember when the producer was changed from Shigenori Takatera to Shinichiro Shirakura and the writer was changed from plain boring Tyuyoshi Kida (who'd handle Kamen Rider Wizard making it another season I dislike) to Toshiki Inoue. Now you might want to brace yourself because Patrick Star is playing the drums. All that's needed is for the cast of Hibiki to play the instrumental of "Twinkle, Twinkle Patrick Star"... Yup, this song would have probably "helped" the World of Hibiki and I'm being sarcastic. Hehe! It turns out that A.R. Asumi is currently Kamen Rider Hibiki. It even has me thinking WTF as if forcing a child version of Kamen Rider Kiva wasn't enough . Is this the second time that we'd get a forced insertion of "Justin Stewart" from Power Rangers Turbo? I guess people know by now I compare Yonemura to Jonathan Tzachor and Bruce Kalish in more...

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...