i can’t remembeer, it has been many years since i watched it ;_;
Of the first disc of the ultraseven bluray I think Dark Zone is my favorite for its concept and dramatic weight behind to watching the choices Ultraguard and the Pegassan make. Were they actually seeking peaceful solutions or did they just give it up once they found out they overestimated Earth technology level and decided to live with their defacto superiority and sequestered themselves thinking it’d all blow over.
The Targeted Town is probably the stand out for direction. Best framed fight sequence with the red sky and sun in the background in the middle of an industrialized residential area shot in one perspective for the most of it after a fly away sequence. Also the best closing line that you shouldn’t be scared of loosing trust in people because we haven’t reached the ideal future where everyone can trust everyone to not pull a gun on you.
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Im only two episodes in but Ultraman Blazar feels a tinge darker than Trigger or Decker. Rather than some goofy new recruit, the Ultraman host this time is the veteran captain of the unit. There’s even a hint of Shin Godzilla/Ultraman with a scene of SDF guys setting up or breaking down a bank of telephones at a base in the second episode.
As a first, Tsuburaya is posting this series on YouTube with both Japanese or English audio tracks and subs on the same upload. I didn’t even realize YouTube could have multiple audio tracks.
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Is this the right thread to talk about Sukeban shows? If not then may God smite me down
I’ve been sort of binging my way through all the available 80s sukeban shows, starting with Sailor Suit Rebel Alliance a couple months ago when the translation dropped, and just now finished watching all of Sukeban Deka sans series 3 (waiting for the translation to finish before starting that) as well as Hana No Asuka Gumi.
I think the original Sukeban Deka is still the best one. I love how despite the inherently silly premise, it takes itself completely seriously and comes off sort of like Dirty Harry but where Clint Eastwood is a schoolgirl. It goes pretty hard for what I assume was a show aimed at teens and has a pretty high body count as well. Yuki Saito is the best Sukeban Deka as well, she has a look in her eyes like she’s seen hell itself and so when she’s threatening someone, I feel like I can believe it more. I also kept thinking that tonally it somewhat reminded me of the Yakuza games and so now I want RGG studio to make a sukeban game.
Sukeban Deka II on the other hand, goes completely bananas right from the get go. It’s less gritty crime drama and more comic book wackiness with plots that seem more like something out of Kamen Rider or something with Themed Villain of the Week type of stories. My favourite villains are the creepy masked gymnasts that just walk around twirling their ribbons at people.
If series one is like the story of a Yakuza game, series two is the sidequests, which of course means it’s great. Though it does sort of feel a bit scrappy in places, like they messed up some special effects or stunts but just decided fuck it, lets just leave it in.
The movie is pretty great too I think, and feels much more grounded than series two. It’s kinda like the movie The Rock, but with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage replaced with schoolgirls. I did kind of feel like some of the characters were just shoehorned in and didn’t get enough to do though. I need to find a better quality version to watch it again because the one I got off Internet Archive is not too good.
Sailor Suit Rebel Alliance is probably the next best series after the first Sukeban Deka. It’s got some really fun stories. The balance between serious drama and comedy feels about right, although the battles at the end feel a bit too formulaic so after a while you know exactly how it’s going to play out and it starts to feel like the episodes have already ended and the fight scene is just a formality.
Hana No Asuka Gumi feel like it’s aimed at a younger audience and thus is much more lighthearted and comedic. It’s still pretty good though, there’s some really crazy concepts for weapons and themed villains in this, like a girl with a flamethrower and a girl who fights with her soccer shoes on her hands to try to stab people with the cleats. I like the main villain, who is a sort of victorian goth girl with a porcelain doll who gives out orders by just throwing printed cards at her underlings with “the useless must perish” on them or something.
I also watched the Asuka movie, which is like the complete opposite of the TV series. Instead of being a family friendly comedy about overcoming bullies with the power of friendship, it’s an R rated fusion of Streets of Fire, The Warriors and Blade Runner with a moody ambient industrial soundtrack mixed with the Rolling Stones. I like the villain in this one as well, instead of being a goth girl with a doll like in the series, she’s kind of like a doll herself, just sitting dead still at a table and occasionally raising her hand to summon her attendant to whisper orders, and yet everyone is terrified of her.
It’s feels like it’s got surprisingly high production values for an 80s Japanese movie, although it does feel a bit like it’s all filmed inside one big warehouse with only a few different sets and not enough extras to fill them. It’s got some real good atmosphere to it though, I feel like it’s one of those hidden gems that I’m surprised isn’t more well known.
Anyway I think once I get through Sukeban Deka III, I’ll try to hunt down Shoujo Commando Izumi and watch that too (I think it’s been translated now?). I watched a few bits of Pro Golfer Reiko but I don’t think I’ll bother with more of that one. I don’t think there’s actually many more of these shows besides maybe the Sailor Suit and Machine Gun series if that counts?
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shoujo commando izumi is fully translated.
as for other shows, stepsisters partially translated and is sukeban-adjacent.
as far as i know, that covers all the vintage sukeban shows. there’s a bunch of movies from the 70s, but you should be aware that they have significantly more sex and violence than the tv shows of the 80s. definitely seek out a movie called blow the night: lets spend the night together. it’s a dictional movie, but stars real life delinquents and is based on their stories.
for more tv stuff, but from the modern day, i recommend the first two seasons of majisuka gakuen. the first season is about faction wars at a girls school, and the second is about that school warring with another. i liked the third season too, but it shifts setting to a futuristic prison. there’s more seasons after that too, but i haven’t seen them, so can’t vouch for them.
however! there’s a spin off called majimura gakuen about antifa sukeban staging a revolution against a right wing student council
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I’ve never heard of most of those, so I’ll have to check them out and see what they’re about.
I’ll probably skip the 70s movies since I’m not really into the pinky violence stuff. I did see the Stray Cat Rock movies though, which are pretty cool.
One thing I forgot to mention about Sukeban Deka series 1 was that after the first few episodes it started reminding me of Eko Eko Azarak a bit due to the format (girl transfers from school to school to solve mysteries, but here it’s crimes and in the other it’s occult stuff), and then immediately after I started thinking that was the episode that was literally about satanic worshippers, complete with the ‘Eko Eko Azarak’ incantation. Thanks to that episode I also now know that the protagonist of that series’ name means ‘Black Mass’ since I could hear them saying ‘Kuroi Misa’.
So anyway, now I kinda want to watch the 90s Eko Eko Azarak series but as far as I know, only a couple episodes were translated.
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i saw sukeban deka before i saw eko eko azarak, so i had the opposite reaction!
also yeah, only a couple of episodes of eko eko azarak are subbed, and they’re hard to find. i think all of the movies have had subbed dvd releases at some point, though! there’s also an episode of kamen rider fourze that’s a little homage to eko eko azarak
which reminds me: i have a dvd of a super low budget sukeban movie from the 00s called “kirenji combat girls high school”, and it sucks. don’t buy it.
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Yeah I’ve got the first two Eko Eko Azarak movies on DVD but the quality is pretty poor, like low res with some sharpening effect applied which makes it look like an artifacted mess.
The aussie DVD case for the first one also has “Satanic worship, lesbian orgies and buckets of blood” emblazoned across the top, which got me a weird reaction from the guy at the counter when I bought a second copy for a friend.
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there are SO MANY clips of no budget straight to video crap in this, i’m having such a good time watching it
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finding it funny that the first time billy left power rangers they literally did the “i have to go back to space now” poochie thing including using a hastily added fake voice and then on the 30th anniversary special he also went back to space BUT it was a tie in to the new space show which he is the zordon of
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no “go go power rangers” call back in the theme is a good sign. also, i thought they weren’t going to be using any super sentai stuff for this season?
i’m glad they are though, as well as what looks like new suit footage with lord zedd and his goons.
honestly the only real negative i can see here is haim saban’s name in the credits
not sure how it’s gonna work since yeah those are still the dino fury/ryusoulger costumes. but since this is the first proper sequel show that is a non-“SUPER whatever” i suppose they are trying to have continuity until they change into the new costumes we’ve seen
next year’s sentai is EXPLOSION SENTAI BOOMBOOMGER
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I’ve watched this now along with Sukeban Deka III. I’d heard Izumi is considered bad, but I found it enjoyable enough, although I’d rank it below the other Sukeban shows. I think the characters and stories just didn’t resonate as much, although it gets bonus points for Izumi’s cool jacket.
It’s pretty funny how you can really tell SDIII was originally supposed to be an unrelated series about ninja girls that had the Sukeban Deka stuff shoehorned in, and how Izumi was supposed to be the 4th series but had the SD stuff stripped out.
You can also tell the scriptwriters of SDIII took a lot of inspiration from a certain popular American Sci-fi franchise. Tell me if you’ve heard this before:
Plot Spoilers
Evil villain is a ghoulish pale dude in a black robe who shoots lightning. His lieutanant is a samurai in black armour who turns out to be the father of two of the main characters. A princess turns out to be the main character’s twin sister. A mentor named Yoda and another ally named Reia.
Despite SDIII being much more lighthearted in tone, it probably has a death count higher than both previous seasons combined. Good stuff. The second movie was good too, although not quite as good as the first. They managed to take the fascist military coup idea from the first one and make it even more crazy. Yui’s sisters barely have anything to do though which is a bit of a shame.
I capped off my Sukeban Deka marathon by watching the 2006 movie and … it’s really not good. Way too edgy and is crammed to the brim with every obnoxious editing technique you can imagine from the post Matrix era. I mainly watched it for the sake of completion and to confirm whether it’s a reboot or continuation and seems like the latter is correct.
Unrelated to the above, I also just watched Legend of the Eight Samurai. Pretty cool fantasy movie with interesting special effects and sets.
Lots of big name actors from the period like Hiroko Yakushimaru, Hiroyuki Sanada, Sonny Chiba and Etsuko Shihome. Although many of the main characters end up a bit half-baked which isn’t too surprising considering how many characters they had to work in. Also found out at the end it’s directed by Kinji Fukasaku which is unexpected since I thought he only really did gangster movies.
It gets surprisingly violent as well, and has a American rock ballad soundtrack which makes the love scene near the end unintentionally hilarious. Stand out scene for me was when the old lady rips her face off and turns into a giant centipede.
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i never mentioned that the villain of juspion looks like a kaiju-sized bootleg darth vader figure
i watched the 2006 sukeban deka movie because as far as i can tell, it’s the only piece of sukeban-related media to have an official uk release, so it’d be rude not to. review is here
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Exactly this: it’s an evolving credits thing.
General Cosmic Fury spoilers:
I dug it.
Bringing back Zedd feels apt for what is, essentially, an attempt to remake MMPR Season 2. Unlike that season, though, this actually works for the most part.
Also, like the Thunderzords from that season, the Cosmic Zords are very much an afterthought.
The usual Power Ranger episodic formula is more or less entirely abandoned, but it’s still very much Power Rangers.
Abandoning the Sentai suits also means setting aside the various the various Sentai special attacks weapons and super-modes; each Ranger gets a trademark weapon, a blaster, and that’s it. I myself don’t generally have a lot of time for excess, so I appreciated the restraint.
The baddies they use to team up with Zedd are fun in their own regard, and do well enough with the abridged screen time.
The new suits suck. I don’t mind the actual design–although in retrospect, I wish they’d used the Kyuranger suits but kept the Dino Fury helmets–but the breastplates look incredibly cheap, and feel utterly unnecessary.
I quite dug the way Zedd was ultimately dispatched–although you’re going to be disappointed if you were hoping for a big martial arts slugfest.
Like Now and Forever, the series uses old Megazords rendered in CGI. It does not look good.
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Shin Kamen Rider is a really odd movie. I’ve never watched any of the series besides a few scattered episodes so I am probably missing a lot of references and context, but it felt like it was written by someone whose main life experience comes from debating philosophy on internet forums and watching anime rather than going outside.
Every scene in the movie is completely devoid of regular people unless they are directly relevant to what is happening in the plot. Which sort of made the whole movie feel a bit like it was lacking some kind of believable sense of place, maybe, I think?
Like at no point in the movie is there just normal people doing normal human things, even in the background. Makes me feel like the movie is about Anno playing with his action figures as a way to debate with himself about how to make friends and relate to people. Which I guess made it more of an interesting film rather than a bad one.
The CG action scenes didn’t do much for me either as they felt a bit too weightless and not really much like an old tokusatsu show.
It did remind me that I want to check out Kamen Rider Black at some point, so at least that is something.
I also watched Teito Monogatari and it’s sequel. The first one is such a bonkers movie, way overstuffed with plot and characters and really hard to follow. But the premise is so interesting that it kept me wanting to see it through. It’s got some cool Harryhausen-esque stopmotion animation as well.
The sequel is much slower paced but easier to understand plotwise. There’s a sequence midway through with some real out of left field Cronenbergian body horror that completely caught me off guard, which was cool.
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something i liked about shin kamen rider is that every shot seemed to have been specifically engineered to look as cool as possible, which i guess is the same thing you describe as something you disliked lol
i really want to see teito monogatari, and the sequel that i only recently learned existed. the doomed megalopolis oav was a favourite as a teen, and i like that whole aesthetic of japanese occultism generally too
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