So the most recent season of Kamen Rider ended last week, and I love to think too much about these guys. So how does Geats turn out?
Honestly, to me this is easily the best Rider show we've had since Build. It's cool, it's slick, it's got fun characters and some of the best action I've seen in Kamen Rider, and feels pretty standout in the franchise just for the direction it takes things. If you wanted to check out a season of Kamen Rider you could do a hell of a lot worse than Geats! I don't know if it's cracked into my big favourites like OOO, Fourze, and Build, but you don't gotta come first place to still be real good.
If you're reading this, and haven't watched Geats: People are recruited into a secret game where they get superpowers to fight aliens to earn points, one surviving winner gets a wish granted, then they refresh the ranks and run another game for another wish. If you read that and wonder why they need to run a competition in order to fight aliens: You're asking the right questions, and I'm gonna get into spoilers openly beyond here.
This setup leans heavy into a pretty strong message: Systems that pit us against one another are the real enemy. We may have to compete to survive and to get what we want, and sometimes those people are assholes, but we should never mistake those people as the reason things are bad. Which is... shockingly leftist for a children's toy commercial? Don't get me wrong, it's no communist manifesto, but this is a show where the right answer to problems is to look at the people in charge and tell them to fuck off, and to unite with the people around you. It's about the injustice of those with power taking from those without, and fighting against that. It's about working together to make a better world. A scene that sticks with me a lot is the first Game Master trying to pit them against each other over "frivolous wishes", and the response being, to paraphrase, "If we're putting our lives on the line for this, it's meaningful to us, you have no right to judge."
For a really on the nose example, the early episode where the cast lose their Drivers and so can't transform. With not enough Drivers left for everyone still in the game, it's a race to find one for yourself before they run out. Musical Chairs. The cool strong guys all run around looking for monsters... and the two new folks to the game instantly find theirs by asking people around them for clues, with one asking her online following for sightings of the target, and the other with his family and workplace, leaving all the strong guys in the dust until Ace decides to ask THEM for help, because, well:
It's not perfect at this, of course. It's a toy commercial, and as some kind of anarchist adjacent person I am PROBABLY projecting a lot of what I want to see here, and even if I'm not, this show isn't gonna really commit to it. Mister Toei gonna stamp down on that. There's plot points like "There's limited happiness in this world, and the powerful are taking more of it than they need for themselves" which, if you take this as a metaphor for Wealth being used to get Privilege... on one hand yeah the rich are taking more than they need. But one argument a lot of folks give for why we don't just, give people food or shelter or money or whatever is the idea that like, "we don't have unlimited money to just GIVE people" and I can't tell how intended it is to sound like that. The show also relies a lot on how Ace is the coolest bestest guy, everybody love him, and generally it comes down to him to solve most of the problems, which skews into Great Man type thinking... which I don't THINK is the intent, as his ultimate power requires getting people to believe in the cause, but it's at the very least messier than it needs to be for the message. There's also a section where a bunch of criminals get let out of jail and go do a bunch of arbitrary violence crimes because Criminals and like... come on.
The real failure to commit though, comes at the very end. Someone mentions they wanna do another DGP, but it'll be like GOOD this time! And that's... clearly "we want a reason to use these guys in future stuff like movies and crossovers" but oh my god you can't just do "What if the system... but Good This Time!!" you can't just do "Capitalism 2 This Time It's Nice".
I think main main takeaway is, though I wanna say it's left leaning values overall, I can imagine some right wing guys looking at it and projecting what THEY want to see on it the same way I am. So, you know, grains of salt on my take here.
Even aside from the themes, there's a lot to enjoy though!
The cast is, overall, pretty good! No huge standouts for me, but it's solid. Keiwa is very much a traditional basic-ass Kamen Rider protagonist, but he's NOT the lead, so he gets to be uncool and fuck up which makes him infinitely more engaging as a character. Neon suffers from some "Standard Woman Character" stuff (kind of an Idol, motivated by Love) but I think there's enough wrinkles and nuance to her arc that it works out. Michinaga is my favourite kind of stubborn edgelord. And Ace himself is everything you want out of a smug kitsune man. The extended cast ranges from "Fine" to "Functional", though I gotta say that Tsumuri was kinda basic and lacked much connection to anybody besides Ace, I think she needed more Juice for someone who is so core to the cast, but although a lot of other characters are similarly basic, that works fine. Like, Sueru, the final villain, is real light on details, but that works for a guy who is basically the representation of The System The Riders Are Fighting.
And holy SHIT is that fighting a treat. Geats has CONSISTENTLY some of the best fights I've seen in Rider, I don't know that my words could do justice. Characters are using their weapons and abilities creatively CONSTANTLY (shout outs to Buffa's Zombie Chainsaw Sword Activation Slide Thing) and the action is framed wildly cool with great camerawork, and shockingly clear readable action and storytelling within the fight despite the wild amounts of special powers. They even have characters use unique styles while using other people's weapons!! Everyone involved is bringing their A-game. It's hard to capture this in uploadable gif size so if you haven't watched you'll have to look at these brief moments and just trust me:
I would love to include more but it's already so hard to trim single standout moments. Just trust me, this stuff I'm showing is some pretty basic stuff by Geat's standards. Some of the scenes get John Wick (on a budget)-esque. They made me get excited about a guy having a Sword, a weapon literally everybody gets.
There's a few little odds and ends I gotta mention here, nothing too specific just... thoughts.
- Neon's story has... a lot of weird ups and downs. Overall I really like it, but... it STARTS scary (Only female character motivated by finding true love? Uh oh) but eventually evolves into exploration of her lack of familial love, even if romantic love is ALSO something she wants. Any kind of love is important to her. Eventually, her shit-ass father is given a "redemption" arc, which I'm always wary of... but it works here because this isn't a show ABOUT redemption. I just lack a better word for this sort of arc. He realizes he's been treating Neon like shit and she learned to find love in the world without them, and decides to do right by her going forward. It helps that the dude ACTUALLY loses everything for a bit, unlike other Kamen Rider shows attempting to "redeem" shitty people. I'm lookin at you, Thouser.
- The show in general has a lot of... weird character turns. Ultimately I think it evens out in the whole, but for example Keiwa's heel turn felt REALLY forced, but the point of "we can fuck up and still choose to be better" kinda stands important enough I see why they wanted that arc for him.
- I really like that the main three characters for most of the show (Ace, Neon, and Keiwa) are represented by a Kitsune, a Cat, and a Tanuki, traditional tricksters of Japanese mythology... with Cats being a weird foreign animal that eventually made itself at home there in their mythology. Buffa doesn't fit here he's just good.
- I love the old man Rider who is around for a little bit:
So yeah! Geats! It's pretty good. There's probably a lot more I could say but, I gotta end this SOMEWHERE. I kinda wanted a reminder that I actually like Kamen Rider after recent seasons, and Geats has really delivered. It's nice to watch a show I like that tells me to wish for a better world, and to fight for it hand in hand with others. And sometimes that's all I need.
