Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Feb 22, 2014 19:04:14 GMT -5
COUNT THE MEDALS--ONE, TWO, AND THREE!
KAMEN RIDER OOO
SYNOPSIS
Eight hundred years ago, the Greeed, a metallic lifeform that feeds on desire were sealed by a being known as OOO (pronounced "ohze") by absorbing all of the Core Medals (coloured medals representing the central essence of the Greeed, different from the usual grey Cell Medals) that made up the Greeed into himself. The Greeed are a race defines by--you guessed it--greed. Their whole word is dull and lacks much in the way of sensory details and their only drive is a vague gnawing hunger that never leaves them alone.
The Greeed were betrayed by one of their own--Ankh--who is obsessed with a prophecy that says any Greeed that can get all his fellows Core Medals will become the "Multi King" of the Greed. His betrayal was his means to engineer his victory. As you can see, it sorta backfired.
Except Ankh was lucky that not ALL of him was sealed. Namely, his right arm, which gives him more mobility than the rest of the slumbering Greeed, but doesn't allow him to do very much, except open the crypt containing his fellow Greeed (Uva, Mezool, Kazari, and Gamel--all of whom are named after a desire) who awaken and begin feeding on the desires of mankind. There's a group trying to fight them--the Kagami Foundation--who seem familiar with the Greeed and use Cell Medals to activate their Ride Vendor motorcycle, but at present, they're not a viable factor for Ankh's plans.
Plus he's still an arm.
Enter Eiji Hino, a vagabond son of a politician. In the wake of a horrible event wherein Eiji attempted to use some of his wealth to help a village in Africa, he turned his back on his family and name and any desire for personal gain and wanders around, working odd jobs, and, whenever anyone reaches out a hand in need, he will always grasp for it, lest he regret it to the end of his days.
So Ankh ends up reaching out his hand to Eiji, giving him the OOO Driver and three Core Medals that Eiji uses to transform into Kamen Rider OOO. Ankh, meanwhile, takes over the body of a half-dead police detective because, well, he's just a flying severed arm, otherwise, and they can't do much.
For Eiji, who only wants to help people to the exclusion of anything else, this is the jackpot--now he has the power to help more than ever, and a clear mission to do it--given that the Greeed are literally our worst drives made flesh, how could it not be wrong to fight them? But there are two things working against that--one, his desire to help everyone, even though it comes from a good place, is still a desire. Two, given that the Core Medals he uses are the heart of the Greeed and the Greeed feed on desire, how will this affect him, ultimately?
For Ankh, who only ever sought a patsy he could manipulate to destroy the other Greeed, his plan's become a bit more complicated. For one thing, bonding with a human has given him something that no Greeed's ever had before--he can sense things, touch things, taste things, and soon enough, Ankh decides that the thing he desires, even more than being the Multi-King. But it's not easy to change plans in mid-stream, especially when the person you contemptuously used as a pawn becomes your friend.
For the Kougami Foundation, who have been studying the Medals and the Greeed for years, their goals a little murkier, but no less dangerous. The president of the Foundation is a man obsessed with beginnings, who thinks that desire is the spark that ignites evolution and who sees Kamen Rider OOO as the path to godhood. His head researcher, Doctor Maki, is his polar opposite, obsessed with endings and destruction (possibly because he killed his sister by setting fire to her room). The lingering result of his early journey into barking madness is that he carries his sister's doll with him everywhere and talks to it, in an affectation that isn't creepy al all, no sir. Though they start out on the same page to the extent that they create the Birth System and an ally for OOO in the form of Kamen Rider Birth, Maki soon becomes obsessed with studying the Greeed, and this leads him down a dark path indeed that will undo everyone's schemes and possibly bring about the end of the world . . .
ANALYSIS
Kamen Rider OOO made history without meaning to, so much so, that next year's series, Fourze, felt more like a victory lap than a proper anniversary: during it's run, the one thousandth episode of Kamen Rider (over its various series) aired, and OOOs (and Ankh, especially) played a huge part in the the 40th anniversary movie: Let's Go Kamen Riders. But that's not the only reason it's notable: It's generally considered one of the best (if not the best) of the Heisei Rider series and of the entire run of Kamen Rider.
As you might have guessed by now, OOO's main theme is desire. While you would imagine that a show about heroes who selflessly defend a world from the most horrible monsters imaginable would come down on the side of selflessness being good, but OOOs is a lot more evenhanded about it--it examines "good desires" (love, wanting friends, wanting to help and protect people--typically embodied by Eiji) with "bad desire" (getting your own way regardless of the cost, ruining things because there's no value in them to you, selfishness, etc--usually represented by Ankh) gives you a pool of characters who represent every point on that specturm, and sees what happens. It's a really deep series, and one that takes a lot of care with its characters to establish them and make you care about them (even the Greeed are given levels of pathos and depth that Kamen Rider monsters usually don't get) and it actually becomes difficult to see where the endgame is coming from--there are so many plates in the air and so many ways things could go that it really subverts expectations (Kamen Rider shows typically, at their most basic, just do some version of "when we fight the final boss, it's over" and typically, it's set up in the first episode.)
OOOs himself is a smart piece of design that makes maximum use of the toy gimmick for this year--the Core Medals. Any three Medals in the driver create a Kamen Rider, and there are a mind-boggling number of combinations. I'm not even sure they did all the possible combinations in the show, but here's as broad a sample as I could find (turn down your volume before hitting "play"):
Generally, the music for OOOs tends to be a bit ska-flavoured, and despite my usual antipathy for ska, it's really good here (and catchy as HELL), from the title theme, "Anything Goes"
To OOO's base form theme, "Regret Nothing (Tighten Up)"
To GataKiRiba's theme, "Got To Keep It Real"
I should mention before I post too many more music links (more are coming) that the voice for OOO's Driver and the main singer of these themes is Japanese singer Akira Kushida, a man who seems to approach the business of singing about superheroes in the same way that Stan Bush made opening the Matrix of Leadership seem like the most ridiculous and simultaneously most epic thing ever wrought by mortal hands. Witness his lead vocals on the theme for OOO's SaGoZo form, "Sun Goes Up"
and PuToTyra's theme, "POWER TO TEARER"
But the real winner is the one that doesn't have Kushida on it at all, and hopefully will show just how completely thought through the series really is. The theme song for OOO's ultimate form (made from all of Ankh's Core Medals--he is literally putting his life on the line and fighting beside Eiji at this point) "Time Judged All" is actually a debate between their two characters on the nature of desire and encapsulates their characters and the themes of the series. Not bad for something that usually has no high ambition than "Isn't this cool? You should get your parents to buy it for you!"
In all, I totally agree with the consensus--OOOs is awesome and if this is your first Kamen Rider series, you picked a winner out of the box. It's intricate, thoughtful plots, richly-drawn characters, rocking music and awesome design aesthetic make it a lot of fun to watch with some deeper content to make you think as well. I recommend it highly!
NEXT WEEK
Sometimes dead is better. That's what a select few people are finding after particularly violent deaths, they rise from their grave, remade into beings called the Orphenoch. The Oprhenochs can turn into powerful human/animal hybrids and can kill people and turn them into Orphenoch, though they typically crumble to dust soon after. The Smart Brain Corporation is trying to supplant humanity and create enough Orphenoch to dominate the world. But not every Orphenoch wants to dominate the world, and a handful of humans are also working to stop Smart Brain from achieving their aim.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. It's time to look at one of the darkest series in the whole run of Kamen Rider. In seven, open your eyes for Kamen Rider 555: