Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Mar 1, 2014 17:37:24 GMT -5
" . . .The end justifies the means."
KAMEN RIDER 555
SYNOPSIS
Yuji Kiba's story began when it ended--having just hotten engaged to his girlfriend, he dies in a car wreck. That would ordinarily be the end of him, but Kibra resurrects as an Orphenoch, an undead being who can change into a monster. Resurrected 2 years after his death, the world has moved on without him--his parents are dead, his family legacy gone, even the woman he loves is now married to his best friend. Understandably aggrieved, he kills everyone, including his fiancee, and learns of the potential of his Orphenoch nature.
His condition attracts the attention of the Smart Brain Corporation, a group that appears to be just a vast electronics concern, but is, in fact, working on a plot to create more Orphenochs, with an eye towards their eventual domination of the Earth. The problem is, Orphenochs generally have a short life span--those created by other Orphenochs doubly so. Given enough time, they crumble to dust. So it's in Smart Brain's interest to recruit Kiba to their cause.
Additionally, Smart Brain has been working on another project: the Gears. special technology that is designed to be used by the Orphenoch to enhance their power. One of these Gears, the 555 or Faiz Gear (note: all the Gears are identified by a phoneticized version of a Greek letter, hence 555/Faiz=Phi, Kaixa=Chi, Delta=Delta, Psyga=Psi, Orga=Omega. Additionally "555" is the Japanese equivalent to "911" in America) is sent to Mari Sonada, an orphan/budding hairdresser whose stepfather works for Smart Brain. Thanks to a mix-up with their bags, the Faiz Gear comes into the possession of Takumi Inui, a lazy loner who would just as soon not be bothered than to fight, but who soon decides to aid Mari against Smart Brain as Kamen Rider 555.
Meanwhile, Kiba tries to foment his own rebellion among the Orphenoch against Smart Brain and live in peace with humanity. Unfortunately, this runs counter to Takumi's plan to just kill every Orphenoch he comes across, and Smart Brain's plans to awaken the Orphenoch King and conquer the world with the Orphenochs, and soon enough there's another rider--Kusaka, who is the only one who can use the Kaixa Gear without being immediately killed after using it and HE has his own agenda and . . .well, at the end of the series, let's just say that no one gets exactly what they want . . .
ANALYSIS
Kamen Rider 555 is the fourth Heisei series, and largely considered the darkest of the entire run, and not at all without justification. Spoiling as little as I can, in addition to the generally dark atmosphere that hangs over the whole series, it features an pretty alarmingly high body count for a kid's show, a secret that the main character has that upends everything you've known about the series thus far, several nervous breakdowns, betrayals, insanity, a basketball class being killed (barely) off camera, and very nearly a rape scene.
Remember: This is a show for little kids in Japan.
I guess after the preceding series, Ryuki (which we will be getting to very soon) had been a surprising success with with somewhat darker plotline, they decided to push it all the way to the limit. They may indeed have actually pushed it a little too far, as no series since has really been as unrelentingly bleak as this one (even the present series at the time of this wring, Gaim, while incredibly dark, generally clings to a notion that even when things get hard and doom is imminent, you fight that much harder for a better tomorrow) since 555 ended, a fact for which I am exceedingly grateful, for while 555 is a pretty great series and has great characters and the plot does a great job of zigging when you think it's going to zag . . .my GOD is it depressing to watch. Only Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue, one of the 1990s movies, is as grim (though it has the problem of being atrociously awful, too) In short, it's a great series I am in no hurry to ever watch again, as it is a massive downer.
Even more darkly comic, the movies for Kamen Rider 555, Paradise Lost, posits a future where the Orphenochs win and humanity's nearly exterminated which manages to be even more glum than the series. Though we get two new Riders--the English speaking, totallynotmeanttobeJangoFettnosir Psyga and Kiba gets his own Gear and becomes Orga--out of the deal. And, for some weird reason, they pretty blatantly nick the climax from Attack of the Clones:
There's even a damn lightsaber hum.
555 was the work of Toshiki Inoue, a guy who generally tends to write darker stuff as a rule, but as he wrote all 50 episodes of 555 (no mean feat, that--given the volume of work, typically a head writer oversees the general direction of the show, writes a few core episodes, and then freelancers fill in the rest of the schedule), this is pretty much his vision start to finish. Unfortunately, Inoue has a favourite trope--that of massive and usually fatal misunderstandings resulting from people not simply talking to each other--which happens so much in 555 that one begins to be a little bit exasperated.
It becomes beyond played out here. Yes, it's an extrapolation of a cultural thing (typically Japanese people don't really like to impose on people, and so talking openly about things is not really done) but for GOD'S sake, this series would be half as blood-soaked if maybe five people had been able to have three conversations at the proper time.
Honestly.
Obviously, this should not be ANYONE'S first Kamen Rider series, as it's liable to put you off everything. In fact, I'd probably say it should be one of the last you see, after you have a LOT of Kamen Rider under your belt but if you just generally want to see Kamen Rider at its bleakest, then g'head and cut in line and watch this one first. For the rest, it's best to wait awhile before indulging.
NEXT WEEK
We go out of the black and into the stupid, as we look at the first aborted attempt to bring Kamen Rider over here. Someone thought the surest way to do badass superhero action was to bolt it on to the plot of the TV show ALF. Join us in seven, as we try to sort through the mess that was Saban's Masked Rider: