#kamen rider (tos)

[nat-20s]

No matter what I personally believe that guy (gender neutral) in a rubber (or foam or latex or whatever) suit will ALWAYS be in the top 3 types special effects if not straight up the number 1 type of special effect

[fictionalmedicshowdown]

Emu Hojo (Kamen Rider Ex-Aid)

Sick costumes, really good development.

vs

Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Star Trek: The Original Series)

in one episode he says “Look, I'm a doctor, not an escalator” and i’ve never gotten over how funny that is

[captpanopticom]

Greetings!

Welcome to the USS Blenderpies headed by Captain Si Panopticom, aka stpaulofsuburbia. As the description says, this will be my sideblog to dive into the sci-fi and other speculative fiction I love and share it with others.

Along with likes, reposts, and random thoughts, I'll be using this opportunity to truly dive deeper into certain fandoms I've neglected for too long. This will start with a proper watch-thru of the whole Star Trek franchise, alongside a slower look into the Godzilla movies and other Japanese media like Ultraman and other tokusatsu mainstays.

Those who want to join are welcome to! This should be fun ^_^

[kchasm]

Let’s Watch: Kamen Rider: Episode 6: The Deadly Chameleon

...Those kanji clearly say "shinigami," not "deadly," but that's the perils of localization. You can't just assume your typical English-language Kamen Rider watcher is gonna be a weeaboo who knows what a shinigami is. I mean, they probably will be, but you can't assume. That's not how localization works. Eat your hamburgers, Apollo.

This is former Lieutenant Commander Tatsuo Sunada of the also former Imperial Japanese Navy. He runs the Sunada Gallery and has awesome taste in paintings. Look at that there. I wouldn't even have space to hang that anywhere and I still want that.

Anyway, Tatsuo looks up from his gallery-jobbing and notices someone's painted a fresh swastika on one of the works in the few seconds he's had his head turned. While he's all concerned about that, a voice begins speaking nearby... but there's no one there, except for another awesome painting.

The voice demands that Tatsuo give up the location of the "Nazi secret" that was buried 26 years ago, Shocker having uncovered that Tatsuo is the last man alive with this knowledge. Tatsuo pleads ignorance, though, even after this guy—

—threatens his hospitalized daughter.

The Chameleon proceeds to choke Tatsuo out and go invisible again, puppeting Tatsuo's unconscious body so it looks like the man's walking around by his own power. I mean, it doesn't look like he's walking around very well by his own power, as evidenced by when Shiro, Hiromi, and Ruriko take him for someone who's had a bit too much to drink. Hiromi and Ruriko attempt to help, but are repelled by a mysterious force! (The Chamelon, obvs.)

Shiro is amused at this, up until the three of them notice something real odd. Tatsuo is one guy... but there are two shadows!

"But KC, if something is invisible, that means light would pass through it and it wouldn't cast a shadow—" Yeah listen if you're going to complain whenever one of Shocker's endeavors breaks the laws of physics, you'll wear yourself out. Leave it to me.

Shiro, Hiromi, and Ruriko come to the totally reasonable conclusion of "ghost" and, totally spooked, hightail it to Amigo, where they tell Takeshi all about it. Takeshi, apparently smelling a plotline, goes to the scene to investigate, where his enhanced cyborg hearing picks up something inaudible to common ears: The sound of a person being dragged.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Tatsuo's daughter, Yumi, is working on some embroidery as a present for her father, mostly because handheld video games consoles won't be on the market till 1979 but also because she knows her fragile constitution puts him through a lot of trouble, so this is her way to thank him. We know this because she picks up a framed photograph of her father from her bedside and tells it so.

Suddenly, though, her papa stumbles through the hospital room door—except, of course, it's not just Tatsuo, but also the Chameleon, and a couple of Shocker mooks I guess he picked up somewhere along the way!

The Chameleon wakes Tatsuo up and restates his offer—either Tatsuo spills about the Nazi secret, or he'll have Yumi tortured. And you know he means it because the Shocker goons immediately start giving Yumi some unapproved chiropractics.

With his daughter being threatened right in front of his face, Tatsuo has no chance to indicate the model ship that Yumi's also got at her bedside. But before the mooks can get more than their grubby little Shocker mitts on it...

And here's where I need to tell you that I had a bad pun here that had to do with ships, something about Takeshi ruining someone's OTP, but tonally it didn't really fit with the recap so I junked it, except now I've told you about the joke anyway so it's like I'm eating my cake and having it too, and for that I deeply apologize.

Anyway: There's a brief fight scene, which Takeshi's well on top of, up till the lights go out. When they come on again, the Chameleon and the Shocker goons are gone—and so is Tatsuo.

Takeshi promises Yumi he'll get her her father back, to which she is immediately all smiles despite everything she just went through in the last five minutes.

The ship, it turns out, can be taken apart. When Takeshi removes the bottom, he reveals—cheese!

I mean, a map! (That was a joke and is much funnier if you know enough Japanese.) The upper banks of the Tama River, Tobee identifies it as, which means Takeshi knows where to investigate next!

Takeshi heads to the marked location, but it's already occupied—there are a bunch of construction workers there, working on building a dam. As Takeshi watches, they set up an explosion which, just in time for Takeshi to see, reveals a mysterious cave. The construction workers take a curious look inside, but are driven out by... gazooks! A g-g-g-ghost! Or, you know, something burning in midair, but apparently this is traditionally what some Japanese supernatural stuff looks like, so chalk that up to differences in folktales. Also there's a mysterious box with a swastika on it, but the workers fail to notice that because they're too busy skedaddling.

Takeshi is less unobservant, though. After hearing out the workers' supernatural concerns, he retrieves the box. Unfortunately, the Chamelon has been watching all of this, which means he knows where the Nazi secrets are too, now. Bummer.

"But KC, how is the Chameleon looking through the binoculars if his eyes are all like—" It's Shocker science don't worry about it.

(Incidentally, Takeshi refers to the swastika as the "Hakenkreuz," which is another name for it in German that literally means "hooked cross." This isn't really important but I thought you might like to know.)

Takeshi's motorcycle ride home is interrupted by one truck coming at him from in front of him while another truck comes at him from behind, which seems to be a variation of a common Shocker maneuver—they pulled this in the first episode, remember? Takeshi deals with the problem the same way: By somehow jumping his bike significantly despite being at a standstill, which I'll remind you is something he could do before he became Kamen Rider. I assume now that he's got the cyborg strength it's a lot easier. Looks like he's gonna, et cetera.

As an added bonus, the jump apparently provides enough wind to facilitate a Kamen Rider transformation. A fight scene ensues, with Takeshi also doing the thing where he's got a Shocker mook contained and tries to interrogate him, only for the mook to be killed by someone else. This episode's method of getting around showing a corpse on Japanese children's TV is "just straight up disappears."

Mooks eliminated, Takeshi heads off, with Chameleon—who's been watching all of this without helping, by the way—swearing vengeance.

At Shocker HQ, the Big Shocker Voice is a bit irked at Kamen Rider having gotten all up in his business so much, and as such has gathered some Shocker scientists to figure out how to defeat him.

One of these dudes is surprisingly white, for a Japanese TV show. Also he's wearing a giant Iron Cross necklace. Call it a leap, but I suspect he might have had some connection to Nazi Germany (which at the time of the episode's airing would have been less than 30 years disassembled).

For the viewers just tuning in, the Big Voice lists off some Kamen Rider stats for the scientists to take into consideration:

Kamen Rider's power comes from the windmill dynamo in his belt.

The skin on his chest is completely bulletproof.

The slits on Kamen Riders chest that give it that whole segmented look are radiators.

He can jump 15 meters (49 feet and 2.551 inches, or 8.814 smoots).

His arms and legs posses "incredible destructive power."

The Shocker scientists talk about themselves, discussing this important matter. Finally, the Nazi Shocker scientist comes to a conclusion:

The genius of Shocker, ladies, gentlemen, et cetera. I guess they really took the leftovers after Operation Paperclip, huh. Even the Big Shocker Voice sounds incredulous, asking if they're sure sticking Takeshi in a locked room is enough to stop him.

To be fair—and I shouldn't be fair, dude's a Nazi and thus better off dead—this is basically what Mantis did, one episode ago. Remember? He had Takeshi pushed into a very narrow hole in the ground and everything, and Takeshi couldn't build up enough speed to get his dynamo to spin and start up the transformation. The only mistake Mantis made there was lowering a bomb after Takeshi, and then when the bomb exploded the force of the explosion set off the dynamo, which I still feel like isn't how that should work but I still don't know enough about physics to refute it. So it really is a solid plan when you take into account the known information on Kamen Rider's capabilities, one that's even already been tested in the field and everything.

Aight, says the Big Shocker Voice. Get that ready.

(And the Nazi scientist responds, "Ja." You know, in case you haven't caught on.)

Takeshi leaves the mysterious Nazi box with another scientist friend—this one's named Abe (that's Japanese, pronounced "Ah-beh"), so I'm pretty sure he's a different scientist than the bat virus guy.

From his initial observations, Abe's figured that the box is made of some sort of "special alloy." More important, he's not sure he can open it, as the box has no lid, which as you know means it can't be penetrated in any way. (Okay, okay, that's probably where the "special alloy" aspect comes in; I assume the implication is that it's something you'd have a devil of a time piercing or cutting into.) Takeshi leaves the box alone with Abe for him to do further research on, which is a brilliant thing to do when an international terrorist organization is after it.

Takeshi and Ruriko hail a taxi to ride to Shinohara Hospital, where Yumi is. Ruriko feels a bit of sympathy with Yumi—as someone who lost her father to Shocker, she doesn't want what happened to her to happen to Yumi. Unfortunately, these two aren't going to get to the hospital any time soon.

So this is something else the Chameleon can do, I guess? Fine, I'll accept that.

The Chameleon raises the divider between him and Takeshi and Ruriko and gasses them to knock 'em out, and you know what? It works. Before Takeshi can break out—or do anything else, in the cramped car interior—he's rendered unconscious, which neatly solves the whole wind turbine issue. Congratulations, Chameleon, you've actually defeated Kamen Rider! What are you going to do now?

I see, you've decided to go full Snidely Whiplash and leave them tied up on the train tracks. Chameleon. Hey, Chameleon. Does this look like a meter-by-meter-by-meter room to you? There was a plan, Chameleon. This is a serious divergence from the plan, Chameleon.

Indeed, the narrator informs us that though the sleeping gas knocked Takeshi out, his enhanced constitution grants him recovery speeds ten times faster than an ordinary person. Which means Takeshi wakes up just in time to break his own chains, grab Ruriko, and get to hanging from the underside of the bridge the train tracks go over while the train thunders overheard. And then the Chameleon doesn't even check his work, so he thinks Takeshi's dead. Always for check the body, man! This is Evil 101. But instead, the Chameleon and his mooks head off to relift the Nazi box.

Meanwhile, at the university, Abe wraps up for the night, bumping into Tobee and Shiro on the way out. Or is is Tobee and Shiro? We just established that the Chameleon can make himself look like not the Chameleon. Disguising yourself as the dude you're supposed to be okay with handing the box to and then coming in and going, "I'm here to get the box handed to me," is a passable plan, right?

... But no, it actually is Tobee, which makes this, what, zero for two for thinking Tobee's involved in something nefarious? My bad. Tobee moves in to get the box, while Shiro tries to dial up Takeshi, and that's when Chameleon and the Shocker mooks burst in. Tobee, sadly, doesn't get to even throw a punch before he's overpowered and the box is taken, but Takeshi also arrives—not in time to stop Chameleon or save the box, but just quick enough to knock out the mook in the back of the fleeing mook squad (an alarm's gone off, see) without anyone else noticing.

Next scene: The inside of a truck. The Chameleon, with the box on his lap, is riding alongside his Shocker mooks, which is a bit weird, if you think about it. Shouldn't they have noticed that one of them's missing? Did the Chameleon not do a post-mission headcount? Did nobody in the mook squad notice that they were one mook short?

Oh. Oh! That's really clever, Takeshi! And neatly demonstrates the potential downside of using a team of faceless mooks. If you don't know what faces they've got, you don't know what faces they don't got. And then you get an infiltration and it's all goodnight Irene. Which, of course, is Takeshi's plan.

The entrance to the Shocker lair turns out to be this building on Lake Biwa, which makes it the second time we've seen a Shocker lair disguised as a religious structure, I think? I can't help but wonder what in production factored into this decision. Who does a building like this belong to, in real life? Did filming the exterior of a building like this cost less?

Anyway, the box—which clearly does have a lid don't worry about it—

—is now in Shocker hands, and the Big Shocker Voice calls for Dr. Heinrich, who turns out to be the scientist from earlier, the one who was wearing the Iron Cross necklace. I didn't recognize him at first, here, because now he's wearing a suit and I cannot recognize faces, but it turns out he's still wearing the Iron Cross necklace, which is a big help. In other words, I have the pattern recognition skill expected of this show's target audience, i.e. very young children, which I actually already knew but it's still kind of a bummer to have proven outright.

With the Box, Dr. Heinrich says, Shocker will be able to take control of the world's economy! But how do you open the box? Dr. Heinrich explains! The box contains a device that emits a specific wave frequency. Emit the same frequency/wavelength toward the box, and the box will automatically open! And fortunately for Shocker, Dr. Heinrich has just the sort of wave-frequency-emitting device that would come in handy in this sort of situation.

He's a Nazi. Don't know if you caught that, yet, but it's good they made it clear.

... Say, do you think that American wave-frequency-emitting devices get little American flags stamped on them? Or maybe bald eagles or portraits of George Washington or something? Someday, someone's going to think of stamping their wave-frequency-emitting device with some other country's national symbol and deliberately leave it about the place to sow confusion.

"But KC, why would they stamp it with anything at all—" Oh, look who's trying to be Mr. Clever Clogs here.

Anyway, before the Doc can finally open up the box and reveal to us, the viewers, what's actually in the danged thing, the Big Shocker Voice interrupts. He's just received an emergency transmission. One of the Shocker mooks that left with Chameleon Man (that's his name, apparently) never made it back, despite the apparent not-change in numbers! Which means...

Takeshi, rumbled, throws off his mook outfit. Swearing to expose Shocker's plans, he makes for a frontal attack—

—and promptly falls down a trapdoor.

To be continued.

Wait, to be continued? Huh. I honestly didn't expect that. I kept thinking, "How are they going to wrap this up in so little time?" And the answer is: They weren't gonna in the first place. To be continued.

Anyway, competent episode. See you next week, I guess. Or later. I don't know; I'm not a TV show. I don't actually have a schedule. See you.

[stpaulofsuburbia]

New Sci-Fi Blog!

The USS Blenderpies has entered flight with Capt. Panopticom (me) at the helm. I'm still working out the kinks, but it will cover my sci-fi interests, especially Star Trek, Star Wars, tokusatsu, and any other sci-fi and speculative fiction I'm into atm.

Go check it out! I'll be starting a series covering my first full watch of the Star Trek franchise!

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

The important thing to understand about Ishinomori is that he was a very angry person who had every right to be angry, and whose anger did come across in his work. Yes of course the funny goofy 70s TV shows based on said work tip-toed around that a lot but the core of his work, and especially Kamen Rider; was in response to fascism and the complicity of government and people in power in that fascism; and especially in his later years this is bent towards a prioritization of industry over environment and the systems that benefit the rich directly resulting in this. Kamen Rider having themes of his humanity being taken away is interesting in its own right, but it’s written as a direct result of what fascism will do to you and is a commentary on that. It’s about a man who has become a monster, but only because in such an environment there is little else a man can become.

This is where Shin Kamen Rider misses the mark for me. It is very happy to dive into Hongou’s horror at the monster he’s been turned into and much of the first half of the movie is extremely effective at that; but on a wider thematic level it fails at speaking to what environment produces that monster and why it’s interesting to talk about that. Shocker, in being reduced from a more widely fascistic entity with direct links to the Japanese government to instead a small cult of vaguely-defined villains; lacks character and any clear ties to what Hongou and Hayato are. Indeed, in teaming up with government agents and Hongou’s Marvel movie-esque declaration of “I don’t want to change the world!!” as a response to what’s wrong about what the main villain is doing, as if the issue with Shocker here is that they are trying to pervert a perfectly peaceful and lovely status quo rather than being agents of it that infect every corner of society; the opposite message of what Ishinomori was trying to get across is portrayed. It feels an immense disservice to his work for what is supposed to be the big 50th anniversary celebration of his seminal story, and lacks a core understanding of what the man was trying to say and which is still relevant today, if not MORE than it was 50 years ago.

I still on the whole feel this is a good movie, despite everything. As said I think it is extremely successful at portraying a man’s response to his humanity being ripped away from him and how he navigates the world going forward. But as an anniversary work that seeks to be the ‘definitive’ take on Kamen Rider as a story rebooted for a new age, I can’t help but find it fails in many key areas to the point it defeats the purpose of the story in the first place.

[toku-fangirl-2015]

Seen these floating around and they seem fun, so:

I don’t know who to tag, so anyone who wants to make their own poll: I am tagging you!

[llamawrites]

I headcanon Both Tos and TAG Brains as a kamen rider fan, at one point he tried to make a belt for himself.

[the-leech-lord]

STIMBOARD MASTERLIST PART 1

Horror

Freddy Krueger

The Fifth Floor

Slashers

Transfem Leatherface

Chop Top

Camp Counselor Jason Voorhees

Harry Warden

Scream

Buck from Eaten Alive

Dr Andover from Fear Clinic

Erik Destler (1989)

Catboy! Freddy Krueger

Kamen Rider Den-O

Momotaros

Urataros

Kintaros

Ryuutaros

Sieg

Deneb

Ryoutarou

Kamen Rider Build

Kamen Rider Build

Kamen Rider Build Hazard Form

Kamen Rider Grease

Evolt Black Hole Form

Bloodstalk

Kamen Rider Revice

Kamen Rider Revi

Kamen Rider Vice

Kamen Rider Evil / Kagero

Star Trek The Original Series

Jim Kirk

S’Chn T’Gai Spock

Leonard McCoy

Montgomery Scott

Nyota Uhura

Hikaru Sulu

Pavel Chekov

Genderbend Spock

Star Trek The Next Generation

Jean-Luc Picard

William Riker

Data Soong

Geordi La Forge

Deanna Troi

Beverly Crusher

Worf

Wesley Crusher

Q

Q (Anti Stims)

Robert Englund characters

Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street

Willie from V

Blackie from Nightmare Cafe

Buck from Eaten Alive

Dr Andover from Fear Clinic

Smiley from The Adventures of Ford Fairlane

Erik Destler from Phantom of the Opera (1989)

Catboy! Freddy Krueger

Huniepop

Aiko Yumi

Audrey Belrose

Beli Lapran

Jessie Maye

Kyanna Delrio

Lola Rembrite

Nikki Ann-Marie

Tiffany Maye

Celeste

Momo

Venus

Kyu Sugardust

Cringetember

Genderbend - Spock

Fursona - Vance

Goth - Tarn

Self Insert - Questionnaire

OC x Canon - Kaon X Cable

Yandere - Erik Destler

Neko - Freddy Krueger

Tumblr Sexyman - The Warden

Crossover Ship - Elsa X Thrax

Niche Interest - Comic Collecting

Hananaki Disease - Flowerfell Frisk

Maid dress - Tohru

Sailor Uniform - Konata Izumi

Scene - TFA Random Blitzwing

Crossover - Star Trek TOS x Green Lantern

Rainbow - Rainbow Dash

Emo - Mafuyu Asahina

Evil Version of a Good Character - Cupcakes Pinkamena

Edgelord - Underfell Papyrus

Gijinka - Parasect

Hetalia - America

Creepypasta - Laughing Jack

My Little Pony - Princess Cadence

Undertale - Sans & Papyrus

Undertale AU - Errortale Sans

Five Nights At Freddy’s - Withered Bonnie

Vocaloid - Big Al

Invader Zim - Gir

South Park - Tweek Tweak

Soul Eater - Death the Kid

Death Note - L

Masterlist Part 2

[dragonoffantasyandreality]

I posted 5,488 times in 2022

That's 969 more posts than 2021!

116 posts created (2%)

5,372 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@janetm74

@captaindibbzy

@myladykayo

@squiddokiddo

@flyboytracy

I tagged 5,449 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#thunderbirds - 1,596 posts

#art - 1,499 posts

#thunderbirds are go - 1,081 posts

#thunderfam - 818 posts

#thunderbirds 1965 - 663 posts

#kamen rider - 608 posts

#scott tracy - 530 posts

#important - 491 posts

#thunderbirds fanart - 459 posts

#virgil tracy - 419 posts

Longest Tag: 128 characters

#fruit jesus i remember seeing weird worm/orb things in my sight when i was younger. i did not know it was relating to my autism!

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Hey guys. Does anyone have pictures (or fics) of TOS Scott and Alan? I really need those boys rn cause I'm feeling frustrated today. (Long story short: I'm just tired of being dragged outside as if I'm an abled person and being told I'm just using Autism as an excuse for being "lazy") -_-

57 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#4

Charles: “Why am I doing this?! I don’t like this! I feel like a peasant!”

Sam: *Wheezing and laughing his gills off*

Charles: “SAMMIE! ITS NOT FUNNY!”

Jeff: *Amused sigh*

I think I am having way too much fun with these three. Sorry Charles XD

@janetm74 @myladykayo @uniwolfcorn @willow-salix @dreamycloud @the-original-sineater @avengedbiologist @tikatu

58 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

#3

"Some things don't change..."

Happy Gerry Anderson Day!🤍🤍🤍

70 notes - Posted April 14, 2022

#2

💚🎉 Happy Birthday Virgil Tracy🎉💚

(@gumnut-logic @myladykayo @cg29 @womble1 @skymaiden32 @uniwolfcorn @flyboytracy @janetm74 @the-original-sineater @willow-salix @alexthefly @misstb2)

72 notes - Posted August 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

🧡💛❤️💚💙✨Happy Thunderbirds Day!✨💙💚❤️💛🧡

(@uniwolfcorn @inertplanetary @skymaiden32 @janetm74 @the-original-sineater @jacksonstarkiller @willow-salix @myladykayo @teapotteringabout @mothmannerly @dreamycloud @godsliltippy @thundergeek59 @cg29)

114 notes - Posted September 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[h3nsh1n]

I just noticed I never made a post like this so here's a little introduction about myself:

●You can call me Azul.

●My mother language is spanish, but I understand english very well, and I speak and write more or less decently (at least well enough to be understood). I'm also trying to learn japanese.

●I use she/her prouns, ella en español.

●I don't like saying my age on the internet but I'm older than 20 and younger than 30.

●I know I may seem distant at first, but that's bcs I'm very socially awkward and anxious. I looooove to make new friends so if anyone wants to interact it would make me really happy.

Other trivia about me:

●I majored in Philosophy at college.

●I absolutely love reading and my dream job would be around books.

●One of my biggest dreams is to travel around the world.

●I have played the traverse flute for 12 years now and I play in a symphonic band.

●Friendship is very important to me and I value my friends a lot :]

●Azul is not my real name, but is the one my father wanted to give me when I was born (they settled for another bcs my mom didn't like it lol).

●I've been on the Internet for almost 10 years or so now.

●I've also been listening to vocaloid for more or less the same amount of time and I'm still really into it nowdays.

●I love jrock in general and vkei.

●I also love horror stuff!

●I'm currently reeeeaaally into Enstars (including Dramatica) and Tokusatsus, specially Kamen Rider (my favourites are Ryuki and OOO), but I also like other things like ORV (I LOVE ORV SO MUCH), Fire Emblem (almost all of them), Disco Elysium, Star Trek TOS, Utena, Mob Psycho 100, Pacific Rim, Alchemy Stars, Metal Gear, Love Live (but only Aqours), BSD, TWST... and a bunch of other animes, videogames and books.

●I also adore RGPmaker games, specially Cell of Empireo, End Roll, Hello Charlotte and Witch's Heart.

●Other random things I like are trains, the sea (as I live near it), fireworks, heighs, making bubbles, amusement parks, pop punk, ouji lolita fashion, archery, flowers (my favs are forget-me-not and blue hydrangeas), anthropology, tarot (although I don't believe in it, I just find it interesting), summer, cats, rabbits, foxes and plushies.

[agoddamn]

I'm not gonna go through the whole TVtropes body snatcher page, but just off the top of my head, body snatcher plots and what they meant to the stories they were in:

Star Trek TOS: body snatcher alien impersonates McCoy's ex. Episode highlights McCoy's emotionality and how he can't believe the woman he loved is dead.

Star Trek DS9: the entire Changeling plot fuels the lion's share of the series, from Odo's identity/alienation issues to building paranoia and unethical behavior from Starfleet to prison camp drama to angst about a character's friends not realizing he was replaced.

Kamen Rider Kabuto: angst from multiple characters about loved ones being replaced by Worms or otherwise being taunted with the memory of lost loved ones.

Blade Runner!

Even Okami has a case of "killed before you got there" but you still get a distinct sense of loss from the place where the murdered priestess lived and the betrayal of trust that her body snatcher inflicted. She mattered. It mattered who that character was.

Consistently, body snatcher plots focus on either empathy for the replacements and their circumstances (the whole "what measure is a non-human" thing, "real boy" type plots, what drove them to sacrifice their own identity, etc) or, in the case of completely unsympathetic replacements, focus on the personal damage done to the loved ones of the people who were replaced.

3H boldly chooses to do...neither. The body snatchers are completely unsympathetic and you're never personally invested in someone they killed and replaced. So what is the point?

[fried-phishy]

Intro and tags list

Hello! This is mostly a rb blog for my own perusal, and my specific obsessions change quite often so I'll advise against following (but of course, if you want to, do go ahead)

So if you have stumbled upon this blog and want to see posts on specific fandoms, I think my blog can act as an archive lol.

-Tags-

Fandoms that have (relatively) significant amount of content reblogged here:

Tokusatsu - Kamen Rider

Ryuki - tatakae

Faiz - horses have feelings too

Blade - kara miso

OOO - furry and coins

Gaim - juicy

Ex-aid - Gameboy

Tokusatsu - Sentai

Gokaiger - Hadeniikuze!

Kiramager - sparkleful

Tokusatsu - Misc

Godzilla - Gojira

Garo - GAROOO

Anime and manga

Jojo - kono dio da

Uma Musume - umapyoi

Dramas

CQL/MDZS - everyday

Hannibal - haggravated lassault

Star Trek - star trek tos, star trek ds9

Misc

Jesus Christ Superstar - jcs (jcs at 2012, jcs bw 2012, jcs 1973, jcs 2000, jcs swedish, jcs misc)

Star Wars - star wars

Avengers - avengers

Ace Attorney - edgey boy

ASOIAF - winter is coming

----

Non-fandom tags

Cats - meow

Science stuff - cool

Art - art

[kulekrizpy]

list your top 10 male characters!

i was tagged by @tohruzu​ and @captainimprobable​ 💖💙

1. Gentarou Kisaragi - Kamen Rider Fourze

2. Karkat Vantas - Homestuck

3. Ravi Chakrabarti - iZombie

4. Ankh - Kamen Rider OOO

5. Bow - She-ra (SPOP)

6. Spock (& Kirk) - Star Trek (TOS)

7. Steven Quartz Universe - Steven Universe

8. Eliot Waugh - The Magicians

9. Adrien | Chat Noir - Miraculous Ladybug

10. Jim Lake - Trollhunters (Tales of Arcadia)

[kchasm]

Let's Watch: Kamen Rider: Episode 1: The Mysterious Spider Man

Kamen Rider is a series of children's television shows where a man is sometimes a robot man and fights against evil people who want to do evil things. It is not a television show that should be scrutinized by some no-fun wannabe-snarker who's a lot less funny than he thinks he is.

I am here anyway.

I have never watched Kamen Rider, but occasionally (i.e. when a new show comes out), a hear about the great enjoyment a lot of people are having, and today the piquement of curiosity has reached a tipping point. I am going to watch (and hopefully enjoy) Kamen Rider. And where better to start with Kamen Rider than the beginning?

…I really hope this doesn't go the way it did when I tried to get into Elder Scrolls.

Episode 1: The Eerie Spider Man.

The joke is obvious there, so I'm not gonna acknowledge it.

This is Takeshi Hongo, motorcyclist and pretty good dude.

He's practicing for the grand prix under the watchful eye of his... instructor? Mentor? Mr. Tobee Tachibana.

As Hongo rides off for another lap, Tachibana muses to himself that Hongo's a real ace rider—and on top of that, he's a leading biochemist at Johoku University. This is, admittedly, a rather cumbersome way to unload this information unto the viewer, but what the hey.

Hongo's motorcycle practice isn't going as swell as he thinks it is, though. There's a strange, inhuman being watching him from the forest. And also there's the fleet of dark-suited motorcyclists who are suddenly on his tail. They come out of nowhere, and Hongo takes their sudden, unexpected appearance as some sort of motorcycling challenge, like when you're stopped at a red light and some jerkwad in the lane next to yours starts revving his motor to show that he's prepared to peel out faster.

Which: Fair enough for Hongo. If I were a motorcyclist and some other motorcyclist started stepping on the heel of my shoe I wouldn't expect there to be more than non-issue quotidian douchebaggery afoot.

It isn't until another fleet of motorcyclists starts coming at him from the other direction that he starts to suspect some high-effort nefariousity is happening. Looks like he's gonna have to jump—!

...Okay, I'm going to be real with you. Not only do I not fully understand how he just did that, I also don't fully understand what he just did. And I definitely don't understand why it makes the mooks after him suddenly give up and ride off. Did they lose track of him somehow? Do they not have peripheral vision?

Hongo seems just as perplexed, to be honest. Curiosity flaring, he decides to sneak after this mookfleet as they rev off.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get very far before he's unexpectedly netted by a giant spiderweb.

I swear by all that is good and delicious that I had no intention on landing on the most hilarious frame of this sequence. This is just what happened when I hit pause.

When Hongo comes to, he finds himself chained up, surrounded by doctors who look like they lost their licenses collectively, and a voice welcomes him to Shocker.

Shocker, the narrator of the show informs us, is some sort of vaguely evil organization with a reach that extends to all corners of the globe. Their modus operandi is to recruit folks and "alter" them into soldiers toward a goal of world domination, and Hongo, with his superior intellect and athleticism, has made their list of candidates. In the week since Hongo has been brought in, those backstreet docs have already filled him with cyborg parts.

Hongo's a bit skeptical, up until the doctors put fifty thousand volts through him and he doesn't die. It does him a big hurt, but he doesn't die, because he has... um, the power of wind?

This explains nothing, doctor man. But before they electrocuted him, they also spun some sort of turbine that was on the belt of the suit he was wearing. So his suit is wind-powered? I'm going to take this as meaning that his cyborg body is wind-powered and by spinning the turbine his cyborgousity was charged up, which let him withstand what would kill a normal man.

Anyway, the physical alterations have been completed, so all that's left is to operate on Hongo's mind—they're going to do evil brain surgery, essentially brainwashing him into a loyal Shocker soldier.

Fortunately, they're interrupted by an explosion—someone's destroyed a generator somewhere, which means that Hongo's not as alone in his plight as he might've feared. Once all the doctors have skedaddled, he breaks his chains with his cyborg body and comes face to face with his rescuer.

This man is Dr. Midorikawa. He went missing some time ago, but it turns out he's been here—kidnapped to serve Shocker. Now, with Hongo cyborgized unto super-strength but his brain yet unwashed, Hongo can help him bust out. Looks like he's gonna have to jump—!

Hongo and Midorikawa make their escape by motorcycle (I don't know if it's Hongo's motorcycle or a motocycle that someone just left lying around somewhere near-base), but their win's cut short when a giant spiderweb in their path stops them in their wheels and sends Hongo tumbling apparently fatally down a cliff. The Shocker grunts capture Midorikawa and present him to the episode's monster. It's the first time we get a look this clean of them, though they are Very Zoomed In, which I am beginning to assume was the style in those days.

Dude pronounces judgment. Not only will Midorikawa be killed for his betrayal, but so will his daughter Ruriko. Bummer.

But wait, who's that in the distance?

Hongo's not dead. And he leaps into everyone's business, making mincemeat out of mooks. Mookmeat?

A note on the combat sequences here: Are they cheesy? Sure. Do some of the hits and kicks visibly not connect? Absolutely! And yet, there's something about the entire deal—the choreography, and camerawork—that makes it feel exciting. Maybe it's the triumphant music. Maybe it's the quick and forthright brawling maneuvers done instead of whatever graceful martial arts you might expect.

I think what it might be is the fact that there are less cuts than I'm accustomed to: Hongo will punch and kick and shove and toss a whole team of mooks, and the camera absolutely will not cut to another angle. You can actually follow what's happening, instead of getting bombarded by the disorienting flashes of this angle and that angle and over there and where is everyone standing now, a choice of camerawork that in turn lets my brain appreciate how, yeah, there's definitely a dirty fight happening here.

Anyway, they escape. So that's good.

From left to right, this is Ruriko and her friend Hiromi. Ruriko's uneasy—she's felt eyes on her for the past few days. She's right: The titular Spider Man of the episode is indeed keeping watch, and plans to kidnap Ruriko to draw out her father. The kidnapping attempt comes in the form of a bunch of nondescript men in suits who start to walk threateningly at her from opposite directions while she's on her way to work, which I am just assuming is the classic Shocker Pincer now.

Before they can lay their hands on her, however, a car screeches up to them, and who should be driving it than...

In a truly coincidental coincidence, Tachibana is not only Hongo's trainer, but Ruriko's boss at the cafe she works at, and seeing her on the side of the road, he decided he'd be a cool dude and pick her and her friend up partway. Ruriko's real relieved at the save Tachibana's effected from the mysterious mooks, but Tachibana doesn't really have any idea what she's talking about—said mooks, having been angled off-frame for more than a solid second, have long vanished themselves into the ether.

What Tachibana does know, however, is that Ruriko's father has been found! He gives her a note with the address where she can meet him, and I am immediately filled with suspicion. He just knows this information, I guess? Somehow? My first thought is that he's in on it—if Shocker can perform Evil Brain Surgery/Evil Brainwashing to make anyone a loyal Shocker soldier, nobody can be trusted.

But when Tachibana and Ruriko make it to the cafe ("Amigo," which is a nice name for a cafe, though I wonder if it actually has anything in the way of Spanish delectables), they are immediately beset upon by Shocker goons, which I suppose means that my distrusting hypothesis was absolutely incorrect and that Tachibana is on the side of angels after all and was simply informed of Dr. Midorikawa's recovery off-screen. By Hongo, I guess?

I'm going to be honest, I'm having trouble imagining how that happened. So did Hongo call Tachibana up and say "Hey, I found Dr. Midorikawa; could you tell his daughter he's alright, please?" Did Hongo tell Tachibana that he and Midorikawa had been kidnapped? Did he lie to Tachibana and try to play off Midorikawa's disappearance as a misunderstanding? Did Tachibana not tell Hongo to tell the police? I feel like if someone's been notably missing and then they turn up, you're supposed to inform the police, so they don't waste any more of the resources they aren't using looking for the dude in question. Like, how much does Tachibana know about Shocker at this point? He can't know anything, right? Because if he had known anything, he wouldn't have been like, "Oh, yeah, Ruriko, your dad showed up, here's where you can meet him." He would've been more like, "Ruriko, your dad's okay, but he escaped after he was kidnapped by some real bad folks; we need to be careful."

So basically, it must be that Hongo didn't tell Tachibana anything, which seems irresponsible, frankly. And then Tachibana was just an Uncurious Motherfucker (pardon my language; that's a technical term, I swear—it originates with John Rogers, a screenwriter who had a hand in Leverage, The Librarians, and Jackie Chan Adventures, among others, and his needling of the tendency of characters in early episodes of LOST to see a Notable Thing and then spend no effort to look deeper into and/or communicate the matter). (That parenthetical was significantly longer than the couple of sentences it parentheticized off of and I'm deeply sorry about that.)

Anyway: Tachibana manages to get a couple of blows in before the Shocker goons have him and Ruriko pinned (a feat which instantly cements Tachibana as awesome to me, which is the quickest turnaround), but surprise! Ruriko isn't Ruriko at all! She's Hiromi, who switched clothes with Ruriko in the car! And Ruriko's still in the car, now driving merrily to the warehouse at Toura pier where her father is!

Wait, now Tachibana and Hiromi have been captured by Shocker. That's bad, huh.

Unfortunately, all this careful clandestinity is kneecapped when Ruriko reads the address to herself on the way there, since there's a spider on the back windshield. It's a literal bug, transmitting audio to the Spider Man. Oops.

At the warehouse, Hongo and Midorikawa are hanging out—awaiting Ruriko, I assume. Hongo tells Midorikawa that it's imperative that he testify to the world about this whole Shocker thing, seeing as it's pretty bad for everyone. He messes with a faucet in the building, I guess to get a drink or spramp his face or something (I wouldn't trust warehouse water, myself), but the faucet breaks off in his hand—ah, he's sharply reminded, he's predominantly cyborg now. His body was permanently altered without his consent. You could even say that he no longer counts as human! I mean, I wouldn't say that. You would have to be a real cyborgist douchebag to say that. But you could say that.

Midorikawa tearfully apologizes. It turns out, shockingly (har), he set this all up. After he was kidnapped by Shocker, he wanted to escape, but he needed someone's cyborg strength to assist him in that. To minimize the risk, he chose the most optimal person to get cyborgized, so that he could interrupt the process pre-brainwashing and skedaddle. In other words:

Midorikawa is the one who recommended Hongo to Shocker.

Hongo is understandably put out by this, somewhat. Voices are raised. Midorikawa pleads for forgiveness. Ruriko, standing right outside the door in a coincidental coincidence of timing, gets a very poor understanding of the situation. It doesn't really last long enough I'd call it an "argument," though—Hongo quickly moves off to stare dramatically at nothing in particular as he ruminates over his circumstances (still counting Tachibana and Midorikawa on his side in his internal narration, if you're wondering whether he's holding a grudge against Midorikawa too badly here). Unfortunately, this means he misses it when a spiderweb starts oozing in through the ceiling, up until it literally wraps itself around Midorikawa and starts strangling him to death.

Hongo moves in to assist, but can't seem to get the webbing off, and of course now Ruriko decides to rush in, misunderstanding the situation all the more and trying to stop Hongo from "strangling" her father. It's all for naught for everyone, though. Dr. Midorikawa dies, to Ruriko's distress. And then the Spider Man pops in and shoots a presumably lethal dart out of his mouth.

(This would be an easy joke, I guess—"I am pretty sure that this is not an ability spiders have," etc.—but many tarantulas actually have specialized barbed, bristly "hairs" on their abdomens that they can "fling" toward threats. More than one tarantula encounterer of the human kind has had the misfortune of getting these bristles straight in the eyes, which I don't know if means that all these cases had the victims looking at the tarantula really close-up, or that tarantulas are just really really good at aiming. The point is, re: spider men having dart powers: I'll allow it.)

Hongo's got reflexes that ensure the dart misses, but it hits Dr. Midorikawa's body instead. And then we get a sequence that exhibits the actual lethality of this attack.

If you think I'm making fun of this, I absolutely am not. These folks knew they had a budget, and by golly, they found a way to meet it. They got the idea straight across to the viewer: Dr. Midorikawa's body straight up dissolves.

(I am very bad at gifs, by the way. Do you know how long it took to finagle this sequence under 10 MB so tumblr would accept it? Longer than I'd like.)

Irritatingly, even after seeing this happen right in front of her, Ruriko still thinks that Hongo killed her dad, which makes very little sense but I'll chalk it up to her being distraught and not thinking clearly. Either way, she makes a run for it, which of course gives Spider Man prime opportunity. Instead of killing her, though, he just grabs her and hops on top of a truck that happens to be coincidentally passing by.

Hongo jumps onto his motorcycle to give chase (still not entirely clear where he got this motorcycle, by the way), and then flicks a switch on the handlebars, which... transforms his motorcycle? And then also he transforms into Kamen Rider while riding the motorcycle?

The Kamen Rider transformation makes sense—riding a motorcycle creates enough wind for the turbine to power up the transformation, sure, I'll buy that—but I have no idea why his bike transformed, or how. Is this a special bike Hongo stole from Shocker on his way out? Did he tinker with a bike sometime between the escape from Shocker and the scene at the warehouse? He just has a transforming bike now, and this vexes me.

Anyway, having transformed into Kamen Rider, Hongo manages to get ahead of Spider Man, forcing the confrontation of him vs. Spider Man and the mooks Spider Man summoned in the second he was off-screen. Another thoroughly cheesy but nevertheless fun-to-watch fight scene occurs, with Spider Man trying his dart attack but of course only hitting one of his mooks, who dissolves the same way Midorikawa did.

Finally, it's down to a one-on-one, which, of course, Kamen Rider ultimately wins.

Interestingly, upon his defeat, the Spider Man dissolves in the same way Dr. Midorikawa and the mook did earlier. Is this some sort of failsafe so that no evidence is left behind? Is it just some biological side effect of whatever was done to this guy when he was transformed by Shocker? (He's probably more than just a cyborg, right? They've got to have done some biological fiddling in there as well.) No idea, and the episode isn't much interested in answering the question. Fair enough.

Tachibana drives up, and Hongo hands off the unconscious Ruriko, so that he can stand there dramatically and do some staring off into the distance as the episode ends.

(So I guess Tachibana and Hiromi are safe? What, did Shocker just... let them go after they found out they'd been bamboozled? Feels like a bit of an oversight on the part of the Shocker mooks. Were they just super embarrassed about the whole thing? "Sorry, thought you were someone else. Tell you what, you go your way and we'll go ours and nobody has to know. Especially not our bosses, who are probably inclined to murder.")

(See, that's the problem with being the sort of boss who drops mooks into the alligator pit when they fail a mission. The mooks are less scared of failing you and more scared of you finding out they've failed, which is a subtle but important difference. Covering one's metaphorical behind becomes much more important than meeting organizational goals, which can directly lead to actions that run against those goals. It's much better to have your mooks analyze where they went wrong so that they can better pull off their assigned tasks the next time around.)

Conclusion: All in all, this was a fun episode. I don't envy the difficulty in having to set up everything—the protagonist, his origin, the threat, the powers, etc.—in a single thirty-minute episode, and for the rough edges there, I definitely wouldn't be able to do it better.

The character I'm most interested in here, though, is Tachibana. He seems to have just immediately put himself on the line once he found out what happened to Hongo (albeit entirely off-screen). If your student/trainee/etc. showed up after a week missing and told you he'd been transformed into a cyborg by a secret society bent on world domination, you'd probably take him straight to the hospital. I guess with Dr. Midorikawa there corroborating, Hongo was a lot more believable?

But no, wait, does that mean Tachibana did know about the whole kidnapping-and-cyborgizing issue when he gave Ruriko the address to the warehouse? Because that would mean he's the irresponsible one here, just sending Ruriko there without even a warning.

Man, I dunno. I think someone messed up somewhere, and Dr. Midorikawa paid for it. Bummer.

[asknarashikari]

all the secondary rider, the main women, philip and ankh end up in a world where the main rider has a somewhat disturbing personality, a somewhat dark and a bit psychopathic morality and, by the way, instead of W this kamen rider joker !!! ... your reaction please

Why do I feel like you’re that anon who’s been sending me some very odd Shoutaro requests? Idk, the specificity of asking about Joker...

Look, I already mentioned how such requests make me uncomfortable, so I usually am not inclined to answer them. I’m not in the business of making characters miserable, we have enough writers on the show who do that for us. And I’m certainly not doing it to my favorite Rider, and especially to him as the specific Rider I love the most (as Joker is my favorite form of all).

I’ll make an exception in this case, but I’m not going into the specifics of it. 

Seriously though, knock it off, please.

So... basically, we’ve entered Star Trek territory and gone into the Mirror Universe now? 

(Yes, I know Star Trek. I’m not that culturally inept. And no, it’s not because of the JJ Abrams lens-flare-fest - I actually binge-watched TOS and Enterprise when I was recovering from major surgery.)

And, well, as in Star Trek, anyone who stumbles into this alternate universe will be deeply disturbed and want to haul ass outta there. And they’d be doubly thankful that the people they know are nowhere near anything like those monsters.

It also reminds me of the 40th anniversary movie, Let’s Go All Riders, where Ichigou and Nigou got fucked over by Ankh dropping a Cell Medal in the past and screwing over the whole Rider timeline as a consequence. And Taisen GP (aka the reason why Shinnosuke hates Time Shenanigans). In both cases the normal timeline was somehow restored, though.