#that design was really dumb looking imo but it was also probably pretty early concept art for a game so i dont blame it much

[arielluva]

drawing my time traveler character bc she was the only good thing to come out of my concept art/3d modeling class (i learned nothing about character design or 3d modeling and this character was the only assignment actually about character design that we did (i did my senior project on character design and learned way more about it than a whole semester long class that was supposed to teach me it))

im also going insane trying to track down the shoes i used for inspiration for hers but alas i cant find them

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider Zero-One Episodes 01-09

The biggest gag of this whole thing is that I don’t have a punchline to talk about a show with a comedian as the main character.

⚠ ⚠ Warning! Very long post ahead, be prepared. ⚠ ⚠

Yes, I’m bringing something weird, kinda unrelated, and very random again to the blog, but seeing that precure is taking a break this week and that I had some free time I thought, why not?

Kamen Rider was something I always wanted to get into but I never did just because of the huge amount of things in this franchise (much like what keeps me away from Idolm@ster, and pushed me from Doctor Who for so many years). But I was babysitting in the weekend and I had to sit down through 5 hours of power rangers on netflix, and that kinda revived this flame on me. And seeing that he newest season of Kamen Rider is still in its early days I thought it was a good time to start.

I’ll go back and watch the older seasons (at least the ones from the Heisei Era) because *spoilers* I enjoyed Zero-One quite a lot, and it also would fit with a project I’m planning for next year, but I won’t give much detail on that just yet. For now, let’s just focus on the task at hand and talk about Kamen Rider Zero-One.

Since this is a review/first impressions post instead of talking specifically about each episode I’ll talk about some specific topics. Starting by the plot.

This setting is very entertaining, I don’t know if it’s the future, or if this is some kind of alternate reality where humanity has progressed faster than our reality or whatever, but I like the futuristic vibe. The concept of Humagears isn’t anything new, it’s what you expect from a futuristic show, but it is somewhat decent. I don’t know if talking about machines getting conscience is a concept that’s easily palatable to kids, and I have a feeling that the show will lack in this discussion, but I’m okay with it.

I’m okay because this show does an amazing job when it comes to being emotional. In every episode, they make us sympathetic to at least one character and when this character gets caught between fire or is turned in the MOTW we feel for them. I was especially touched by Mamoru in Episode 2, the kid from episode 4, the seiyuu Humagear played by Karen Miyama and her father in episodes 5 and 6, and especially the coach and the basketball team from episode 7. In a very short amount of time, they made me feel attached to these characters and I was really invested in their stories and that’s a huge plus for me.

The plot regarding the company is probably the least interesting and the less believable IMO. Maybe it’s just me being dumb, after all this is a show where dudes transform in mecha armors with animal motifs using belts, but I find hard to believe that in any parallel world a successful and respected businessman would hand their very important company in the hands of someone unprepared for the business. Yes, the protagonist being the head of the company gives him an interesting plot point in episodes 8 and 9, but that was really the only time I saw it as being used in an interesting way in all of these episodes.

A.I.M.S. is a thing I have mixed feelings. First they seem to be the police, then they seem to be like a third (shadier) private organization, still they seem to use things as if they’re the government, they seem like they can play a very interesting role but this beginning is just so confusing I don’t know what to think of them. Though I have a major problem being that they seem to be huge, very important, smarter than the other, above everyone else, Still on episode 8 they let themselves be invaded without offering that much resistance resulting in loss of equipment and valuable data, and after all shit is done, they didn't run any kind of scan in their giant robots to see if nothing happened to them. That was really dumb.

The part I like the least is the villains' plot, they are boring as hell and I can’t care enough about them. The reveal on episode 8 that they’re also humagears is very rushed and very dumb because it shows that the protagonist has been wrong all of this time. I genuinely would like more if this was a revolution created by a maniac with a god complex rather than another story of machines rebelling against humans.

I can’t talk about Plot without talking about Characters. While this is a show that does one-off characters wonderfully, the majority of the main cast I have issues with, at least for now.

Aruto is the regular protagonist of any sentai show, I feel, so I don’t have strong feelings about him so far. Though, the characteristic that is supposed to differentiate him from the others makes me not like him as much. I don’t know if it’s because his jokes are lost in translation or if it is the style of comedy that doesn’t resonate with me personally, but to me he’s not funny he’s just very cringe. I also don’t like how this is overused and more often than not it ruins beautiful, touching or emotional moments. Though Aruto has something great in his favor that is his companion Izu. Izu is a delight and she makes Aruto be way more bearable as a character. Yes, her gag when she has to explain Aruto’s jokes is overused and after nine episodes I don’t think it’s very funny anymore, but I still enjoy her a lot and episodes 8 and 9 showed a lot of potential for her.

A.I.M.S flagship characters once again show my mixed feelings about the organization. While I love Yua (she’s probably my favorite character), I hate Fuwa to death. Yua is very interesting, she shows signs of humanity but she’s not afraid of using the resources she has at hand to fulfill her missions, she’s the gray character in the sea of blacks and whites and I love this, it’s still very shallow but it gave her character some level of complexity that put her above the other to me. Fuwa on the other hand… I may be wrong about him, he may pull a Bakugou on me and make me sympathetic towards him later on, but for now his hot-blooded, hard-headed, stubborn personality gets under my skin and seeing him loosing in Episode 8 was probably my favorite moment of him so far. (PS.: I know Fuwa’s first name is Isamu but I don’t think he was ever referred by his first name so far so I’ll stick to calling him Fuwa)

Like I mentioned before, I don’t care for anyone in MetsubouJinrai.net. Jin had something going on for him in episode 6, but instead of using that to build him as a character the show just threw that away by revealing that he’s not actually Horobi’s son, he’s just a Humagear he made and they took away all the things that made him interesting. Horobi seemed like just the generic villain, then he raised his status with the whole “I made you Jin” thing, but once again they lost any kinda of dept to his character when they made him another Humagear instead of a human going against society.

Tied in with the characters talk there’s the Rider aspect of the thing. I can’t judge them in level of efficiency or anything since I don’t really have some reference point to compare them to, but I can talk about designs!

Zero-One has a pretty efficient design, when you look at it you can immediately recognize that this is from Kamen Rider yet it’s still unique enough to differentiate from its predecessors. His power-up forms are also very decent, though I wish in some of them we had less of the grasshopper design and more of the animal the power-up is evoking. My favorite forms are Flaming Tiger and Freezing Bear since these are the forms that keep less from the original design. I don’t know if he giant mammoth mecha is considered a power-up but I’ll mention it here, that thing is very goofy I can’t take it seriously.

Vulcan and Valkyrie are pretty similar and bland in their basic forms, though I enjoy the touch of half of them being more mechanized and the other half share more similarities to their animals. In terms of power-ups, Vulcan’s Punching Kong isn’t very imaginative and there are not enough changes for me to like it. Valkyrie’s Lightning Hornet, however, is my favorite form of all of them, I love how it feels like a completely different design from the original and the colors work pretty well together.

I don’t know if they’re also considered Riders but I’ll talk about them anyway. I love Jin’s Flying Falcon, the shade of pink is very pretty and to me it has a better design than Zero-One’s form. Horobi is basically just a recolor of Jin, but it works I feel, maybe it’s just my love for purple and the fascination for scorpions and poison-related powers but I enjoy it. Talking about the Magias I feel that their designs are very hit or miss, more misses in my case, but I can’t deny that some of them are very funny.

The transformation devices all look kinda silly, if I was a kid I wouldn’t see myself interested in any of them. Though I’m all here for the progrise keys designs, it’s simple, it’s colorful, it’s fun, they look like cassette tapes and I love them. The briefcase weapons I also dislike, they seem like a very fun design for a toy in scale of a figure, but in the show hey seem way too big and don’t work as well for me, though I like Horobi’s arrow version. Zero-One has a very cool looking bike, but I gotta admit when it falls down from sky looking like a cellphone I can’t help but crack at it because it just looks way too goofy.

The last thing I have to comment on is production. Though I don’t have the knowledge to give a proper analysis I gotta say the show looks very well produced.

The locations are very pretty, the action, for the most part, is very impressive, the soundtrack is decent, and sometimes they take some styling decisions that are very impressive – like the “attacks animations” and when they’ve put these comic borders during a portion of the fight in Episode 5 to seem like it was part of a manga. The characterization is also pretty spot-on, we have the futuristic elements yet there are this similar present days vibe that makes things more relatable and easy to connect with this world, I especially love the earphone thing the Humagears have, is such a nice touch.

The actors are all pretty good as well. Yes, there are some moments where they go way overboard IMO, but overall they do very well with what they’re given to work with. Props to Noa Tsurushima for being able to pull out an amazing Izu that is very robotic but still has this very human aura to her. I also checked them out in their social media and it seems that the cast get along very well and they always seem to be having a blast in the backstage pictures. Also, did you know Fuwa’s actor has a youtube channel and he apparently does lives every single day? I was very shocked when I found out about that.

And the biggest thing that deserves praise is the special effects and CGI that, aside from a few moments like the giant mechas fighting in Episode 9, are amazing and a delight to the eyes. It’s very rare for me to find a show that is heavily dependant on CGI that doesn’t tickle me off and this one managed to pull it off wonderfully and I can’t wait to see more of it.

And these are my thoughts on the first nine episodes of Kamen Rider Zero-One, I really enjoyed the show and this is now part of my fixed weekly schedule of shows to watch. Have any of you seen it, what are your thoughts about it? One of the things I liked the most during the symphogear season was interacting in the comments and discussing the episode and I haven’t seen much of that recently so please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts as well. In any case, thank you so so much for sitting through this very long post, and I’ll see you a next time. (guess is finally time for me to aikatsu again after an entire month)

[venus-says]

Kiratto Prichan Episodes 52-58

K-A-W-A-I-I~♪

Surprise~da-mon

I wasn’t going to do this. If you know me you know I don’t have the best track record with everything related to the pretty series. But since the begining of this year, as I saw myself getting more angry at Aikatsu, I’ve grown found of Prichan and saw myself enjoying the show quite a lot. So here we are to follow season 2.

I don’t plan on writing as much as I do for precure or aikatsu, because even though I like the show I wouldn’t call it a favorite and I’m not that attached to it, so my eager to shower it in praises or think of ways to make shitty things better isn’t the greatest. But talking a lot is part of my being so let’s see how that goes. XD

Before I start talking about this episode here’s a quick summary on my thoughts from Prichan’s season 1: For the most part I don’t care for the plot, specially when it regards to the main trio. Meltic StAr is my shit and I would say I love them just as much as I love Honey Cat. In general the beginning is boring but the show gets way more interesting in the second half, that’s when good songs finally start to come out. Mirai is as bland as any protagonist, Emo annoys me, Rinka I don’t have an opinion on her, Anna is hilarious, Sara is bae, Mel is my favorite (even being the most stereotypical character EVER), Anju is a goddess and she carries it.

And I guess that’s all you need to know of how I feel about season 1. Now to season 2.

Episode 52 doesn’t have a lot going on. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t amazing neither. Mirai’s new song is meh but is better than her solo from last season. The idea of doing everything on the jewel pact is pretty dumb, but I can give that a pass (I think). Meganee being annoyed at Dear Crown’s popularity was amazing, probably the best part of the episode.

In just a few minutes I already love Maria and Suzu more than I ever liked the main trio in the past 51 episodes. I love their looks and personalities and I can’t wait to see more!

One thing that I like is that this episode lays down everything we need to know for this season and they set all of the objectives nice and clear from the start. Is nice to know what to expect and what to look for. There’s no mystery, they go there, make their show, do a live, if they’re worth of it they get a jewel coord and when 10 are chosen they’ll compete to get the diamond dress, simple and easy.

The Designers 7 are now the Designers 10, which means there won’t be no new characters added other than Maria, Suzu and Daia on her non virtual form. Which is kinda good and kinda isn’t, and hope they make a good use of this shorter cast. While talking on designers I’m kinda disappointed because I thought Anju was going to follow along Aria and start her own brand and I was really excited about that but judging by the numbers she’s still with Precious Muse. But that’s not really an issue, just me being me again.

I have just one word for Episode 53: KAWAII~

Maria is annoying as hell and her love for cuteness is way too unreal to be true but I still love every second of it.

I think Mel may just have lost her spot as my favorite in this show. I love Maria’s personality, I love her song, I love her coord, I love EVERYTHING. I don’t even have anything else to say, just this. All I did through this whole episode was laugh and press the screenshot button non stop for 22 minutes straight.

There’s one thing that concerns me though. I hope they don’t make Maria just a flat character that all she has going for her is her love out of this world for cute things. I don’t need a serious character development or anything, I just want her to be more than just “the cute girl” and I hope they can deliver this.

Not a lot to say about Episode 54. I’m glad they’re already making “normal Daia” a part of the group so later on it’ll be more natural to have her join the gang. Also very nice that they at least acknowledge the similarities between the two Daias, is a much better way of dealing with it than what they’ve done last year with Anju and her sparkling lady persona.

Rinka recording their show in the pact is just the weirdest thing EVER, bring pricast back please.

Jewel Chance was weirdly short for some reason, Kiratto Chance seemed to last longer last season. Not that I really care for it since this concept never appealed to me, but it was weird. But I guess in this season they’ll at least have a more meaningful purpose to it, kiratto chance last year seem to be there just because it was a mechanic in the game.

Side note: while Suzu is dancing on the streets they have an amazing song playing in the background and I hope it’s the instrumentals for her solo and if it is I CAN’T WAIT TO LISTEN TO BEST SONG OF THIS SHOW.

What do I have to say about Episode 55? I don’t really know, it was pretty boring to me. Like I said before I don’t care for Miracle Kiratts so the plot of them trying to make a video to call more costumers to Prism Stone didn’t caught my attention. The little bits of Meganee, Maria and Suzu, plus seeing SUPER CUTIE SUPER GIRL (the best song from Kiratts, including solos) were the only things I enjoyed on this episode.

We of course also have the problem of the protagonist getting the super special coord of the season SO EARLY ON.  I’m not gonna repeat myself, yall know what I think about this, I’m just disappointed. Now we’ve only seen one priticket with Mirai which may mean she only has one piece of the coord and she will have to work to get the other two as well and this may save the whole situation, but for now I’m just rolling my eyes and asking why they do this kind of stuff.

Episode 56 was surprisingly good! I've gotta be honest but when I saw Emo would be in one of the main characters in this episode I thought it would be garbage as much as Maria would be in there too, but I was wrong. It was amazing, I wasn't expecting to be this good.

I don't really have a lot to say, but I'm glad they used Maria's love for cuteness for something good. Even though her dream of bringing world peace using cuteness seem unrealistic she is still doing good for the world by using her cuteness to change lives. She was very nice to that little girl and it made me feel all fuzzy inside. As annoying as Maria is she is a very good person, she is one of those people who makes you believe there's still hope for this, and this makes me like her even more.

PS.: What the hell is her family, they're so weird. Now I understand how she's so crazy, who wouldn't be if they were raised by this family? XD

PS.2: If anyone did a drinking game taking a shot every time Maria says "Kawaii" this person would be in alcoholic coma by now and I'm sorry for you. XD

57 is our first episode focused on Suzu. AND WHAT A GREAT EPISODE IT WAS. There's not a single thing I dislike in this episode.

Getting to know more of Suzu was great, and I loved to watch as she started to grow fond of Maria even though she annoys her to death. They form such a great duo, it was great to see more of them together. I believe this is the first time we see them interact in a more complex way than just Maria following Suzu like crazy, and they did a great job at it. I like how natural it was, Suzu didn't just started liking Maria from nowhere, we had a build up and it was something gradual. It feels rewarding to see that they're closer, and if I already liked them before I feel like I'm even more in love with them now. I confess I would've like it more if we got to see Suzu perform, they teased with that same instrumental again and I'm just like AAAAAAA I NEED THIS SONG. I know Suzu's song hasn't been added to the game yet, but prichan releases song before they're in the game so I think they still could do it. But I'm happy with Maria's song anyway so, is all good.

I don't know how I feel about episode 58. I think I would have more strong feelings about it if Rinka was a character that I like, but as I said I don't really care for the protagonist trio and Rinka is probably the most bland of them in most of the situations so I don't really care for her.

The whole situation that makes this episode happen is good, Meganee is so stressed out by Dreamy Crown that she's breaking and she needs to rest. But then when it comes to Rinka and Yuzuru taking over thinks just get boring. I admit that huge part of this may be because I never liked Yuzuru and seeing more of him just makes me roll my eyes, but still as much as this episode tried it just didn't hit me.

The other big event on this episode was Rinka's new song and i'm a little disappointed. First because they give the most generic coord they could for her to wear, second because the stage is basically just a copy & paste from Netemo Sametemo Dreamin' Girl, and last because the song is just bland. It starts great like a callback from Rinka's solo from last season but then it comes the chorus and just kills the vibe. Also I don't think Rinka should've got Jewel Chance that time, she hasn't done anything exceptional on the episode to get it imo. But I like her dress design better than Mirai's so maybe that's a positive side.

And that’s it for the first few episode from Prichan Season 2! All in all I’ve enjoyed them, it was a great start and I’m sincerely excited to see what will comes up next!

Thanks for your time and till the next time~da-mon ♪