Samurai Equine

Hello there, my crowd! Welcome to my Weekly Musings: Orange Edition. 

[I ❤ JAPAN] -- [I ❤ THE COLOR RED] -- [I ❤ CELESTIA]

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Pull the car over, I think I saw some treasure on the side of the road.  Sorry this is a day late, my crowd. I did so much during the weekend that time got away form me, and I didn't have time to type out my weekly summary.

 I guess the biggest thing that happened last week was St. Paddy's Day.  Well, wasn't THAT big for me, honestly. I did the same thing I always do; I got a Shamrock Shake from McDonalds. Though honestly, I think I prefer the Mint Shake from Arby's; they actually put a chocolate swirl in theirs. Maybe next year, if I go back to McDonalds, I'll ask them to put some Oreos in it or something.

 For some miscellaneous news, Toei Animation got hacked, putting their bigger cartoon shows on temporary hiatus. As we wait, I've been seeing trailers dropping. Tokyo Vice looks right up my alley. Ms. Marvel looks way better than that Captain Marvel movie we got. Did you know that there was a Beetlejuice Musical?!  Apparently it happened during the height of COVID. Must be why I was uninformed. I gotta see that! And there has been an increase in live action anime movies in Japan. Fullmetal Alchemist is getting a sequel. Makes me wonder if a certain American voice actor will return once more to reprise his role as Ed...

 MOVIE TIME!  I recently saw... Encanto! I was not ready for this, I knew nothing going in, and I was pleasantly surprised in the BEST way possible. Lately there has been a concentrated effort to make cartoons and fictional media more diverse, promoting representation for people of many different walks of life. It's made me cautious. Some productions manage to knock it out of the park, but others fail and ultimately insult their target audience for a quick cash grab. I was afraid of where Encanto would fall, but thankfully Disney did good with this one. The music hasn't struck me as hard as Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, but I definitely will be listening to some of the songs on my own. Best of all, the movie manages to break away from many old Disney tropes, the biggest of which is having an enemy character. These characters are wonderful, the story is impactful, and it definitely makes me want to reconnect with my Hispanic roots. Is it too late to rebrand as Sombrero Equine?  Check this out. The Disney animated movies have been going through a renaissance in recent years, and this is a wonderful addition to a series of unforgettable movies.

 SUPERHUMAN SAMURAI SYBER SQUAD!  There are so many things to say here, so I am going to break each episode up into bullet points:

• Episode 2, Jennifer (the random popular girl) is a reoccurring character after all, Malcom can scan monsters from paper on top of making them directly on his computer, the MOTW is from Gridman 34 but the story is a less extreme version of Gridman 16 or 37 (they even reuse some footage from that episode too, in the most interesting way), connecting the computer to Servo gives it an upgrade (tough luck, Team Gridman), Sam can insert discs into his Acceptor (is that a feature left over from the JP toy?), the teens came up with the term “Samurise” (seems oddly specific...), Sam turns into Servo by strumming his guitar (Not as cool as Access Flash), they put in the grow-gigantic sequence after all, Drago is piloted by Tanker (points to the adaption for paying homage to Ultraman) even though the recycled Assist Weapon screen CLEARLY said Dynadragon (although they did remove the D in God Tank), Tanker figured out Servo's name ...somehow, Samurai Phormo (King Gridman) debuts, they cut out the healing sequence and gave us filler and some silliness instead. Tough to judge with all the jumping around, but SSSS Episode 2 is WAY better than Gridman 34 and only slightly more toned down than 37, meaning SSSS is the winner. Gridman 16 is a better episode than this, but if we're comparing this to Gridman Episode 2 (which wouldn't be fair since that's not the material they used here), then Gridman wins again.
• Episode 3, not sure why but we are just now learning that Team Samurai is actually the name of the teens' band (and I think they might all secretly be weeaboos), we meet the principal and Jenifer's best friend as reoccurring characters, some family friendly sexism is always funny (kill me now), the MOTW is from Gridman 13 but the plot is somewhat similar to Gridman 6, more technology-doesn't-work-that-way shenanigans, Syd has very messed up priorities, the Assist Weapons are Borr, Vitor, and Tracto, Samurai Synchro (Thunder Gridman) debuts, Servo and Kilokahn can openly communicate with each other yet somehow don't know know how to find each other, again no healing scene, and we don't even get to hear the song that the plot was building up to.  This episode is better than both matching episodes of Gridman. I will no longer try to match SSSS episode numbers with the same Gridman episode numbers (1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc.) if they aren't using material from said episodes. I will only make direct comparisons from now on.
• Episode 4, the first MOTW is from Gridman 32 (it's only there for the first few minutes) and the second one is from Gridman 33, Kahn's attacks are similar to one of the final episodes of Gridman (minus the silliness of the main story), again no healing scene, and the main story ends in the dumbest most predictable way ever. It's hard to judge one brand of silliness against another, but... This episode is better than Gridman 32, but it can't quite beat Gridman 33. Also, the last episodes of Gridman are better than this, but that's an obvious and not fair comparison.
• Episode 5, the first MOTW is from Gridman 21, we get the premiere of Jamb & Torb (Dragon Fortress), the next MOTW is from Gridman 9 but the main plot is from Gridman 33, Kilo is more capable when mobile than Digifer is, horn-- thirsty teenage antics are always funny (kill me now), for the first time ever we have a virus that is dumb enough to openly reveal itself to our heroes (because the writers decided not to make them smart enough to figure out the obvious?). By comparison, Gridman 21 is better than this episode and so is Gridman 33. However, this episode is definitely better than Gridman 9. Also, this will be the last time I compare episodes if they are only going to use a few minutes of an episode at the beginning.
• Episode 6, the MOTW is from Gridman 29 but the plot is somewhat similar to Gridman 6 (Wow! We're episode-matching for once), BTW I use to have this episode on VHS, the heroes finally figured it out on their own (yay!), Team Samurai has a laptop thus making them more capable than Team Gridman (Does this mean the laptop also got a super upgrade as well?), so far Kilo actually cares more about defeating Servo than Digifer cared about defeating Gridman, Syd apologized to Malcom for bullying him and actually made a human connection with him (that's WAY more than Yuka or Team Gridman did for Takeshi!). By comparison, this is just barely better than Gridman 6,  but it definitely ties with Gridman 29 for different reasons (though I almost want to say SSSS is better since there is less dog endangerment).

 ReVice 22: Left To Your Own Vice!  My jaw is on the floor. We went from a nice tribute to Zero-One all the way to an evil possession. Didn't I just say this show far outshines whatever Den-O was trying to do? And if that wasn't enough, we have a new mystery on our hands! Though I must say, it is quite the sudden flip to see Lady Aguilera rescue Julio in one episode then abandon him in this one.

 ReVice 23: Laughter & Tears!  That was so wholesome, it nearly gave me diabetes. It's nice to see Vice is still good after all, Aguilera is secretly good after all, and this Jack Revice form just keeps getting better and better. I'll never get tired of hearing those old school attack names like “Rider Punch”. Best of all, we still have a mystery! George is close to finding out about the Weekend, and the Weekend has a surprise leader! The only thing that I am in the dark about is the reference they made to the movie Beyond Generations. I'd watch that now, but it's not out yet.

 DonBrothers meets Senpaiger: Thank you, Seniors!  Eh, I saw the Den-O specials, why not this too? Going into it, I wasn't expecting much other than non-canon filler. I got that, and yet this is way better. I almost feel like Oni Sister explaining these previous Sentai was done better here than in all of Zenkaiger, and it's nice we got to see a legit preview of what the show was going to be like! If you have to see any of these “Meets” specials, see this one.

 DonBrothers 02: Training Your Heroes!  I liked this episode, and I don't have much to say beyond that. It's cool that they are taking their time letting us see the other Rangers and building them up as an eventual team, and I'm okay with how Oni Sister still hasn't figured out the obvious yet. It all makes for good build up. This time, we met Inu Brother, the falsely accused outlaw. I figured out why there are two CGI characters, because Momotaro's legendary animal companions, but it's still dumb, kind of like Don Momotaro's tiny Alter form. Also just noticed that the monsters of this show are based on previous Sentai and that they release Sentai gears when defeated. Even the motivation around the MOTW seems to match with the Gear. It may be the sequel to an anniversary series, but I am still excited to see more.

 And now, it's... TOKUSATSU MOVIE TIME!  I just saw Kamen Rider OOO 10th: The Core Medals of Resurrection, and... Wow, I have not been this disappointed in a LONG time! We've waited years for the eventual return of Ankh so that he and Eiji could have their fated reunion. We've been teased and promised, so this should have been something special. This movie squanders all of that. There was tons of hype around the movie, but I guess in the end, it was all hype and little substance. The world has gone into another apocalypse because the 800 year old king (the original OOO) is back. How exactly? Never explained! We don't even get to see his face. Ankh is back. How? Again, never explained! If I were to read between the lines, I'd say Eiji spent all this time trying to discover and bring back the ways of Alchemy; and in his dying breathes, he used all he learned to restore Ankh's main Core Medal. They don't actually explain any of that, so who knows if I'm right. And worst of it all is they killed Eiji for NO reason! There were plenty of narrative reasons to keep him alive, but they killed him off anyways. The only thing we got to see was Ankh and Eiji being fused as one being, possibly the best thing in the whole movie, but Eiji for SOME dumb reason cast Ankh out. Why?! He could have been healed! Did Eiji suddenly have a death wish?! The movie creates a brand new Greeed from Eiji's desires that was completely unnecessary. Birth has a new upgrade form that gets almost no screen time, with new Core Medals that are never explained. OOO's new TaJaDor Eternity form gets a better amount of screen time. However, the King and the new Greeed get way more screen time than they deserve. My brain hurts trying to make sense of this movie's plot, which ultimately kills any emotional impact they were going for. I hate that it ended this way. OOO was a good show, the movies and specials kept us waiting for the final chapter, but this movie was not worth the wait. What a sad let down. What a sad day to be an OOO fan. And to add insult to injury, we didn't even get a new theme song out of it.

That's it for now, my crowd.  Take care, and take the good with the bad.

I hope posting this doesn't break any rules. I can switch it for a different video, if need be.  Of all the uses for gelatin/Jello, this was not one I was expecting. And yet, it's so fascinating, you just can't quite look away. This is "sharpest jello kitchen knife in the world" by kiwami japan.