Bazukinier

it's kind of funny to me that every week I see the same rechosts/likes on my happy Earth Garon Ultraman Blazar hype chosts. If you're reading this I appreciate every single one of you regardless of whether or not you conceptualize me as "that Earth Garon person"

tsuchinoko real

can't believe they made my boy into an Armored Core

I find it incredible how well King-ohger corrected its course from day one.

I mean, sure. It was coming hot off the heels of Donbrothers - a show of all time, and probably still my favorite thing I've seen in sentai so far. But it didn't help that the start was rough. The gambit of putting it all on visual effects instead of relying on the practicality that worked for the genre for years on end seemed to be a very bad call. The environments looked fake, the actors looked like they barely fit, and still to this day there are shots where the green tint of the stage is apparent on the costumes. The necessity to shoot on digital background also came with baffling direction choices - like how you couldn't have a shot where 70% of space wasn't taken by an extreme close-up of an actor's face, because that's how you distract from the artifice of it all, and how the suit or big robo action ended up being an incomprehensible mess of CGI.

And yet, and yet. King-ohger simply can't stop winning because of all the personality that's been creeping up behind all that clear artifice. Like its characters, often relying on deception and appearances in their plots, the show reveals its heart once it sets up all the pieces on its board - and it's a magnificent heart to behold. The selfish monarchs stand as competent and awesome to behold characters with internality and drama to them, without losing the levity of their day-one archtypical quirks. Their supporting cast, while less fleshed out, gives more context to them, as supporting cast is supposed to. Being a sucker for trickster god characters, Jeramie Idmonarak ne Brasieri is a man I absolutely adore (and puts Kamen Rider Geats' Ukiyo Ace to shame by being his "Cooler Daniel"), but I also am weak for Rita Kaniska, a superfically self-serious monarch whose fatal flaw is caring way too much about a children's show. Still, the rest of the cast is also compelling, each in their own way, and the mythology of the show, which turns out to be less preoccupied by the divine right of kings (as it was in the beginning), and much more about how people exemplifying their people's virtues stand up for them in the battle against capricious cosmic horror of an overlord so incomprehensibly authoritative - and so incomprehensibly childish, in turn - that only the power of friendship and defiance against all odds can stand up to it, is even more fuel to follow where the show ends up. Honestly, the way this show presented the conundrum of "you can't fix racism in a day" and then used it for drama is something I absolutely adore, even considering this is a story that is largely targeted at young audiences.

The Royal Sentai, simply put, rules. I'm so happy I stuck with this show.