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April « 2010 « My God, It's Full of Nerds!

Random Thoughts On Pop Culture by Scott Hamilton

Archive for April, 2010

Kamen Rider J (1994)

Apr 29

Posted by Scott Hamilton in DVD, Kamen Rider | 7 Comments

I’m going to take one more detour before I get back to Kamen Rider Decade. For whatever reason the Kamen Rider franchise seems to have lost steam in the 1990s and existed as a series of specials, none of which did well enough to spawn even a single full sequel. Kamen Rider J was a theatrical movie (presumably part of a double feature), and like all of the 1990s stories it strays quite far from the established parameters of the Kamen Rider mythology. That’s saying something, considering one earlier Kamen Rider series is about a Japanese foundling in the Brazilian jungle who is transformed into a Rider by a combination of cybernetics and Incan magic. The series was already pretty flexible.

The story of Kamen Rider J is very simple. So simple, it requires only five actors to appear on screen during the 45 minute running time. The villain here is Fog Mother, a semi-mystical evil being who travels through space in a gigantic bio-mechanical fortress. Her “children,” slimy things with lots of teeth, eat everything in their path and were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. In order to release her children she has to perform a ritual. The ritual involves sacrificing a human, and Fog Mother’s three disciples (an older man, a younger man, and a woman in matching white suits) spot the perfect one while the fortress lands on a mountain in rural Japan. That sacrifice is Kana, a little girl who is camping on the mountain with her family (I assume), though we never see them. When the fortress comes down Kana is visiting the camp site of Koji, a nature photographer. Fog Mother’s disciples appear at the camp and kill Koji in the process of kidnapping Kana.

Koji is resurrected by the “Earth Spirits,” and given a magic belt and annoying animal sidekick in the form of Berry, a large grasshopper that yells all her thoughts out loud. The belt, of course, allows Koji to transform into Kamen Rider J, though it’s left unexplained why the Earth Spirits have a fetish for green leather and dirt bikes.

Koji heads for Fog Mother’s fortress, and along the way he’s attacked by one of Fog Mother’s disciples, who transforms into a dinosaur/lizard monster. Kamen Rider J finishes off the monster with a flying punch to the brain.

Soon thereafter Koji is attacked by the female disciple, who turns into an insect creature. During the course of the battle the disciple carries Kamen Rider J into the heart of Fog Mother’s fortress.

Breached, the fortress starts rolling around the countryside, crushing buildings and blowing up highways. Inside Kamen Rider J faces the last disciple, who transforms into armored cobra monster.

Kamen Rider J is triumphant, but Fog Mother is able to trap him and keep him from getting to Kana, who is hanging over a pit full of Fog Mother spawn. Faced with this impossible situation Kamen Rider J does the really unexpected: he teleports out of the fortress and grows to Ultraman size! Kamen Rider J (for “jumbo”?) punches a hole in the fortress and rescues Kana, but Mother Fog fights back with the fortress’ various cannons, drills, and saws.

It does seem like a big part of this movie was an attempt to reposition Kamen Rider as an Ultraman type hero, which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense because Ultraman was a dormant franchise at this point. Kamen Rider J’s sleek design is even vaguely like that of an Ultraman character, though obviously the coloring is two tones of green instead of silver and red. There’s also a strange environmental theme here, with Fog Mother seemingly representing pollution. It’s a little odd, because Fog Mother is presumably a being of magic, but her fortress looks like industrial equipment.

With its short running time and minimal cast I’m a little surprised this was shown in theaters. It feels more like a straight-to-video episode. On the plus side, the lack of any supporting characters means that the movie gets straight to the action. In fact, there isn’t much here besides action. If you like the HK wire-fu epics of the early 1990s you’ll find something to enjoy in Kamen Rider J.

As I mentioned earlier, there was no sequel to Kamen Rider J. The character did appear in a short 3-D film with Kamen Rider ZO, and has been featured in some of the later movies, but beyond that never had much effect on the Kamen Rider franchise.

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Hanuman and the Five Riders (1974)

Apr 20

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Kamen Rider | 9 Comments

A quick detour in my Kamen Rider writing to an older, and far stranger, entry in the series. Sort of.

Allow me to throw in a little back story. In 1974 Tsuburaya Productions, the makers of Ultraman, teamed up with the Thai studio Chaiyo to make a movie featuring the Ultraman characters meeting a Thai hero. The new hero was called Hanuman, after the Hindu monkey god, and his origin was tied directly to Ultraman continuity. The movie was called Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen in Thailand, and The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. The Monster Army in Japan. The discrepancy in the number of Ultramen comes from the Thai movie counting Mother of Ultra. I can’t imagine the movie went over well in Japan (and decades later it became central in a bizarre legal saga that resulted in Tsuburaya losing the rights to Ultraman for a while), but I guess it did well enough in Thailand that Chaiyo went ahead with a sequel. That sequel featured another popular Japanese superhero group, the Kamen Riders.

Wikipedia is of the opinion that Chaiyo didn’t get the rights from Toei to make a Kamen Rider film. I have no reason to doubt that, but damn, that must take guts. Even worse, Chaiyo’s film features chunks of the real Kamen Rider film Kamen Rider X: Five Riders vs. King Dark (1974). Between this theft and the Ultraman rights fiasco of later decades I get the impression that Chaiyo’s management philosophy falls somewhere between Enron and Latveria.

The movie opens with the five Riders (Kamen Rider 1, Kamen Rider 2, Kamen Rider V3, Riderman, and Kamen Rider X) leisurely driving their motorcycles around Bangkok, occasionally passing in front of local landmarks to convince us that, yes, this is Thailand. My favorite part is that the local traffic doesn’t seem to be very impressed by these superheroes, and twice they get passed by Volkswagen Beetles. That’s just funny on so many levels.

This goes on for a while. A long while. With Thailand firmly established as our setting we cut to the secret headquarters of King Dark. King Dark was the villain of the Kamen Rider X series, and as I understand it he only appeared as a giant reposing statue. For example, here he is from some of the stock footage.

But in the Thai production they must have wanted a villain who could interact with his underlings a bit more, so King Dark appears most of the time as a guy in a costume that is literally coming apart at the seams. His henchmen are guys in ski masks, complete with pompoms on top. Except one guy didn’t get to the store in time to get a ski mask, so instead he’s got a luchador mask.

I should mention that I watched this movie with subtitles, so I’m guessing when it comes to things like names of characters and finer plot details. So from what I can tell King Dark spends his time drinking blood sucked out of women using an amazingly complicated machine. In stock footage he also sends a bunch of monsters out to kidnap children, though all these kidnappings are foiled by various Kamen Riders showing up and delivering a heaping helping of kung fu to the bad guys.

After this setback King Dark has his henchmen shove one of their number in a cage with three cute dogs. The shovee fights like his his life is at stake, but I’m not really sure why. Lookatthepuppies!

After this bizarre scene the movies progresses through an even more bizarre progression of scenes, especially for what I assume was supposed to be a kids movie. We see paintings depicting what I assume is the Thai/Hindu version of hell, with men and women being mutilated by demons. Then it jumps to live-action versions of such scenes, including naked women being chained to thorny trees and men being boiled in oil. Finally we arrive in what I assume is the throne room of the god of the underworld (Yama, perhaps?). Three men are being judged for their sins and OMIGOD it’s the three temple robbers from Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen!

The movie treats us to another chunck of stock footage, this one from the previous Hanuman film. We see the thieves steal a head off a statue and shoot the orphan boy who tries to stop them. Then a hand reaches from the sky and resurrects the boy as Hanuman, the giant monkey god. In the previous movie the hand was Mother of Ultra’s, but that’s left out here. Hanuman chases the thieves down and kills them all in gory ways.

Now that any children watching are guaranteed to never be capable of feeling human emotions again, we go back to the underworld. Things aren’t looking good for the thieves, but as they are about to be judged an earthquake strikes hell! In the confusion the head thief escapes. He then magically appears in King Dark’s throne room, sporting a really fashionable purple outfit and inexplicable magical powers. I need a name for him, so I guess I’ll call him… Prince. Yeah, that works.

Prince was either working for King Dark all along, or he’s decided to now. Prince teleports away, and, using magical disguise abilities, kidnaps a scientist and his girlfreind. The scientist, I note, is the same actor who played the scientist in Hanuman and the 7 Ultramen, though I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to the same character. For the sake of simplicity I’m going to call him Doctor Khan, which I’m fairly sure was his name in the earlier movie. I’ll call the girlfriend Tulip, because that’s close to the Thai name they say in the movie.

In more stock footage we see Kamen Rider X fighting Gengis Khan Condor and Toad Goemon (oh, if only Starfish Hitler had made this movie!), and King Dark uses his high tech computer to analyze the fight.

Now King Dark wants Doctor Khan’s help in making a new monster to fight the Riders. They torture him in various ways, including tickling him, but he won’t capitulate until Dark’s henchmen start draining Tulip’s blood.

In the only example of the characters from the current movie being integrated into the Five Riders vs. King Dark stock footage in any way, Doctor Khan works some computer consoles while in the stock footage we see the creation of Bat Franken, a bat/Frankenstein’s monster combination.

The new monster doesn’t fair any better against Kamen Rider X than the previous monsters.

More attempts are made to kidnap children, again stopped by various Riders. After one these attempts the Riders have a confab, and then Rider X drives off into an ambush by Bat Franken and ton of monsters. Then the other four Riders show up, and a big fight breaks out. (This is all still stock footage from Five Riders vs. King Dark.) The Riders drop kick all the monsters into a big pile which, unsurprisingly, blows up.

That’s about the end of the stock footage. Now we get to see the Thai versions of the Rider costumes in action. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference, especially with Riderman.

Now Prince blackmails Doctor Khan into making more monsters. This time the monsters are made using a booth sitting out in the middle of a field.

Oh, the suspense! After an hour of all the monsters being from Japanese stock footage, we finally get to see the full creativity of the Thai filmmakers given life! How cool will these monsters be?

You have got to be fricking kidding me. Guys in breech cloths and paper-mache animal masks? And I wonder why Toei didn’t want to work with these guys.

The scientist manages to get a radio message to the Riders, and when Prince tries to move all the various prisoners Dark King has collected in a cart (for reasons I can’t figure out) the Riders ambush them. Prince and the new monsters have a long fight with the five Riders. Um, don’t ask what’s happen in the next screencap.

The monsters defeated, the Riders confab with Doctor Khan. The Riders then run off, and immediately get blown up.

King Dark appears on the scene and recaptures all the prisoners and resurrects his monsters. The Riders are left behind, apparently dead.

Wasn’t Hanuman supposed to be in this movie? Oh, there he is, at a temple, doing what Hanuman loves most: dancing.

Hanuman teleports to the Riders and does a dance that resurrects them.

Hanuman hugs each of the Riders in turn. Then the Riders ride off, and Hanuman stays behind to dance some more.

The Riders raid King Dark’s headquarters, and there’s a big fight between the Riders and the monsters, Prince, and King Dark.

The monsters are defeated and Prince Flees. King Dark grows to gigantic, Tokyo-stomping size.

Not to harp on this,but are we supposed to be able to see Riderman’s face? How lazy were they in recreating these costumes?

One of the Kamen Riders (V3, I think) absorbs his compatriots and and attacks King Dark with his flying motorcyle, with not much effect. Luckily, Hanuman shows up in his giant form.

Hanuman stabs King Dark in the throat.

Hanuman then chases down Prince and sends him back to hell. Evil defeated, Hanuman waves to the Riders and dances some more.

Back in hell we see that the temple thieves have been decapitated, ending this delightful romp for children on an appropriate note.

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Kamen Rider Decade/003 “Transcendental”

Apr 15

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Kamen Rider Decade | 5 Comments

The episode picks up where the previous left off, with the two new armored guys attacking Decade and Kuuga.

After a short fight I guess Stupid Hat Man calls in another dimensional riff, the new guys jump “into another hell,” as one of them says. Stupid Hat Man vows that this is just the begining, and walks away. I have no idea what the point of any of this was.

With tempers cooled, Tsukasa, Natsumi, and Yuusuke finally get to talk like civilized people. We find out that Tsukasa is convinced that by stopping the ritual in the previous episode he’s saved the world from the “Ultimate Darkness” that is sleeping under a nearby mountain. For his part Yuusuke explains that when he received the belt that transformed him into Rider Kuuga he was told that someday a devil called “Decade” would appear and destroy everything. Who told him this? None other than Stupid Hat Man.

After this revelation the conversation is interrupted by Grandpa’s TV. Black smoke is coming from the nearby mountain, signifying that the Ultimate Darkness awoke anyway. Ane, who was investigating the mountain, is fatally poisoned and taken to the hospital. The smoke rolls into town and everybody who chokes on the gas turns into a Grongi. The rest of the episode is very much like a zombie movie in tone. Yuusuke sits at Ane’s bedside while Tsukasa transforms into Decade and heads off to fight the growing horde of Grongi, headed by Ultimate Darkness himself.

Initially Decade gets his plastic chaps handed to him, but Yuusuke (as Kuuga) arrives to help with the fight, having been convinced by the dying Ane to fight for the good of humanity. Actually there this whole weird thing about fighting for smiles that carries through the rest of the episode, but I’m going to gloss over that.

After fighting the horde for a little bit Decade swipes the card for “Final Form Ride: Kuuga.” Kuuga transforms into a giant robot beetle.

The Kuuga-beetle grabs Ultimate Darkness out of the air. Decade swipes a card for “Final Attack Ride: Kuuga,” gives Ultimate Darkness a flying kick and that’s the end of U.D.

Tsukasa and Yuusuke arrive back at the hospital and find out that Ane died while they were gone.

Tsukasa and Natsumi go back to the photo studio. Tsukasa explains that the world has been saved. Then Grandpa accidentally drops another background the studio, this one showing the dragon/mansion combo from the first episode.

I guess we’re off to the next world.

The Flying Saucer (1950)

Apr 12

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Movies | 6 Comments

In keeping with my reading on the Roswell incident I decided to take a look at one of the first, if not the first, movie to deal with flying saucers in a dramatic way. The Flying Saucer is a crappy movie with very little actual flying saucer action, but it is important for highlighting a certain truth about how flying saucers were perceived at the time. This truth explains a lot about the whole Roswell incident, and has been all but ignored by the UFO community.

The Flying Saucer was produced and directed by Mikel Conrad, who also stars. Conrad plays Mike Trent, who worked for the U.S. government in some capacity never explicitly described. He retired and has been living the life of a playboy in New York, but he’s called to Washington by his old boss. Uncle Sam is worried about the flying saucers that have been spotted over various parts of the country. Trent’s boss explains that the only use for a craft like a flying saucer would be to deliver an atom bomb, and therefore the U.S. must find the flying saucer before any foreign power. Mike was originally from Alaska, and because the most promising lead they have is up there, Mike is to pretend to have a nervous breakdown and hole up in his father’s hunting cabin north of Juneau. The government sends a pretty female agent, Vee (Pat Garrison, beginning a rich career of one movie), with him to pretend to be his nurse.

Mike is generally sour, unlikable, and basically the worst secret agent ever. When he arrives at cabin and finds a creepy new (German!) caretaker the first thing he asks the man is, “Have you see any Russian spies around here?” Vee wants to follow orders and stay at the cabin until their local contact shows up, but Mike grouses and eventually sneaks away to Juneau, where he proceeds to get roaring drunk for no good reason. After trying unsuccessfully to take a ride on the town whore, Mike runs into an equally drunk guy he knows, and finds out that someone is renting the other guy’s boat for a hundred dollars a day. Obviously these are Russian agents, and the next day Mike sobers up enough for all the information he needs to know about the flying saucer to just fall into his lap. As it turns out the scientist who built the saucer is actually in the lower 48, trying to sell the design aeronautical companies, but the scientist’s assistant is going to sell the craft to the Russians. Mike rents a plane, finds where the saucer is hidden, then flies back to the cabin. After he lands the caretaker tries to kill him, either because the caretaker is a Russian agent or because the guy is just fed up with Mike being a jerk. The Russian agents manage to kidnap Vee and the scientist (who arrived back in Alaska when no one was interested in buying his designs), and Mike flies out to the hidden flying saucer to rescue them. He confronts the Russians in an ice cave, takes one of them hostage, and in a truly hilarious moment, uses the man as a human shield when the chief Russkie empties the entire clip of a machine gun at him from about 6 inches away. Apparently the hostage was wearing his kevlar thermal underwear, because Mike is untouched. There’s a cave-in, and Mike, the scientist and Vee escape. The scientist’s assistant reaches the flying saucer and takes off, only to have it explode. Seems the scientist booby trapped it, meaning nothing Mike or Vee did really mattered. The end.

There are only three or so shots of a painfully cheesy flying saucer model flying around, though Mikel Conrad tried to pass this footage off as genuine flying saucer footage. The movie opens with a card thanking the “those in authority” for helping the movie be a reality, and the following article ran in the Long Beach Independent in the months before the movie was released.

I assume that describing Conrad as “husky” is a nice way of saying “pudgy and looks nearly twice his actual age.” Mikel Conrad’s career never took off, despite this vanity project. His last screen appearance was as George Lawrence in the American scenes of Godzilla, King of the Monster.

So what makes this film interesting as it relates to Roswell? Notice how I never mentioned aliens. Never in this movie does anybody even hint that a flying saucers are alien. This reflects the general thinking on flying saucers in the first couple years after that terms was coined in June, 1947. People might not have known what flying saucers were, but the debate was generally between people who thought they were Russian airplanes intruding in U.S. airspace and people who thought they were the U.S. army testing secret aircraft. This movie reflects that. The Roswell incident occurred a scant three weeks after original “flying saucer” report, so when the Roswell AFB press office announced they had found a flying saucer in early July of 1947 they weren’t admitting they’d found an alien spacecraft as UFO believers claim, but rather that they’d found a Russian secret aircraft of some sort. The alien identification of of flying saucers didn’t start to become popular until 1950 or so. As far as I can tell the first fictional take on flying saucers as alien spacecraft was the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Maybe I should revisit that movie.

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This is a selling point?

Apr 11

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Movies | 5 Comments

Are they hoping to get this shown in medical schools or something?

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Hangar 18 (1980)

Apr 9

Posted by Scott Hamilton in DVD | 10 Comments

I’ve been reading Witness to Roswell, one of the most important books that argues that the government retrieved an alien spacecraft from the New Mexico desert in July of 1947. Watching Hangar 18 seemed like a natural, because it’s the earliest fictional take I could find on the Roswell myth, coming only a couple years after the first stories about an alien spacecraft being recovered. It’s also a movie I remember seeing as a child, and never since.

So the plot. The space shuttle is in orbit (the movie was made before the first successful shuttle launch), preparing to launch a satellite into orbit. As the satellite is launched a UFO parks itself right in front the shuttle, and the satellite smashes into it and explodes. Though the UFO is undamaged, the explosion knocks the helmet off an astronaut who was in the cargo bay, killing him. The UFO makes a soft landing in the Arizona desert, where it is found by the U.S. government and moved to secret hangar on a fictional airbase used by NASA. Meanwhile, the shuttle lands safely with its two remaining astronauts.

One of the oddest things about reading Witness to Roswell is that the authors, and most of the alleged witnesses (whether firsthand, or much more often secondhand), simply assume that if there was a UFO crash, the government would go to any lengths to cover it up. If the book is to be believed, the obviousness of the government’s need for a cover-up was apparent to the soldiers on base, all the people who found wreckage, the lieutenant governor of New Mexico who happened to be in the hangar when the bodies were being wheeled in(!), civilian workers, pilots, etc. In fact, the only person who didn’t think the government would have an interest in covering up the existence of aliens was the Roswell AFB commander, who ordered a press release be sent out saying that the army had recovered a “flying saucer.” But the more the authors harp on the cover-up, the more I couldn’t help but notice that not once does anybody explain why there would be a cover-up. Seriously, why? It’s tough to imagine a reason. And it would be a fools game because the government would have no control over the aliens. Cover up the crash all you want, tomorrow the aliens could land in Times Square and make liars out of all the conspirators.

Hangar 18 does try hard to come up with a reason for why there’s a cover-up, though it ends up being ludicrously complicated and unlikely. The cover-up is hatched by one of the President of the United State’s political advisors, played by Robert Culp. The presidential election is in about two weeks, and the President is in a close race. In some previous election the President finished off one of his opponents by making fun of the fact that the opponent had claimed he once saw a flying saucer; therefore the President can’t admit that UFOs are really alien spaceships lest he be seen as a hypocrite. The advisor convinces the military and the CIA, and apparently NASA, that it’s in everybody’s best interest that the current President stay in power, so the retrieved spaceship must be kept secret until after the election. Well, the CIA guy doesn’t seems to need much convincing. He’s thoroughly evil, and is just champing at the bit to order some of his agents to kill innocent Americans to keep the spaceship secret.

So the plot branches off in two direction. One part of the movie is all about a deputy director of NASA (Darren McGavin) and a team of scientists examining the entirely intact, if inert, spaceship in the hangar. There is a strange disconnect between the size of the alien spacecraft as seen in the hangar and the interior of the ship we see the scientists exploring. Unless the aliens are supposed to be Timelords, the ship would appear to be several times larger inside than out. As this fact goes unremarked on, I’ll assume that either the spaceship prop was made to small, or the filmmakers meant to use forced perspective to make it look bigger and then decided that was too much trouble. The aliens are found dead in the ship’s control room, with no obvious cause of death. (When the cause of death is revealed — suffice to say, it’s goofy.) No little Greys here. The aliens are just bald humans with wonky eyes. Studies of the aliens’ genetics reveal them to be incredibly similar to humans, and some of the symbols in the spaceship’s “library” are found to identical to some of the Nazca lines, dovetailing nicely with the “ancient astronaut” theories of Erich Von Daniken that were popular at the time.

The other part of the movie is the two surviving shuttle astronauts trying to prove that the satellite really hit a UFO. The CIA have managed to cover the whole thing up and NASA has accused its own astronauts of having made a mistake that resulted in the death of the other astronaut. The astronauts, surprisingly unmolested by the press, head to Arizona to find someone who might have seen the UFO land, or failing that, where the UFO may have been moved to. The CIA sends Men in Black to stop them, and there’s a veritable bloodbath.

Movies about the government covering up aliens can basically have only two different endings, and neither are very satisfying. If the government succeeds in covering up the aliens, then nothing changes. I thought that was getting really old by the end of the first season of The X-Files, let alone season nine. The other ending, used far less often, is that our heroes manage to reveal the existence of aliens to the public, in which case the movie ends just when it’s getting interesting. Hangar 18 goes with the second ending, and leaves us wondering how the public reacted to the news of aliens, especially since the evidence in the alien ship seemed to indicate that an invasion was imminent.

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Is the iPad Magical?

Apr 4

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Really Random | 1 Comment

Mine is, and I can prove it. How else could it have, on its way to me, arrive in Anchorage before it left Hong Kong?

(I was a little surprised that this caused UPS’s tracking system fits. Does UPS not ship much across the Pacific?)

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Kamen Rider Decade/002 “The World of Kuuga”

Apr 2

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Kamen Rider Decade | 2 Comments

“The World of Kuuga” picks up exactly where the previous episode left off. Kamen Rider Kuuga has appeared to fight to monsters that were threatening a female detective. The police officers refer to Kuuga as “unidentified life form #4,” but the detective convinces them to let Kuuga fight the other monsters.

At the photo studio Natsumi, Tsukasa, and Grandpa deal with being in another world. Natsumi looks around incredulously, Tsukasa gets a little too into the cop uniform he’s inexplicably wearing, and Grandpa is happy the TV is working again. Luckily a plot-specific newspaper has also appeared in the photo studio, and our heroes discover that the monsters on this world are called the “Grongi” and fight the police. Though Tsukasa isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do on this world, the uniform he’s wearing apparently goes with a whole identity for him on this world. He decides that being a policeman must mean he’s supposed to fight the Grongi. He rides off on a bicycle, and Natsumi goes outside to discover that the photo studio is now in an entirely different building.

Back with Kuuga, the fight with the two Grongi has moved inside an empty warehouse. There’s a dead policewoman, a victim of the Grongi from before the police arrived. The one detective Kuuga seems to know tells him that he needs to be fast, so he transforms into a blue form. Tsukasa pedals up, and starts taking pictures with his magenta camera. He also observes that Kuuga can transform regular objects into science-fictiony weapons.

Kuuga batters the more bug-looking monster with his stave (made from a piece of rebar) into exploding. The bird Grongi tries to fly away, but the detective throws Kuuga her gun. Kuuga transforms into a green form, and the gun becomes a kick-ass crossbow. Scratch one bird Grongi.

With the Grongi dead, Kuuga transforms back to his human form, who is named Yuusuke. The female detective is Ane Yashino. The dialogue between the two makes clear that Yuusuke’s career as a Rider is still pretty new, and I’m assuming only Ane knows Kuuga’s secret identity.

At the police station Ane briefs the other cops on her “Grongi Game Murder” theory. The Grongi have only been killing female police officers for reasons only known to them. Tsukasa, in his police uniform, crashes the meeting. Before we find out much more another Grongi is reported. Everyone rushes out of the room.

A Grongi, which has sort of a bull look to it, has attacked a police car on a bridge and killed a female police officer. Tsukasa, as Kamen Rider Decade, arrives on his motorcycle and starts to fight the creature.

Seconds later Ane and Yuusuke arrive. The watch Decade swipe the card for “Final Attack Ride: Decade,” an attack where a series of energy cards appear in midair and Decade jump kicks through them, destroying the Grongi.

Kamen Rider Decade leaves the scene, despite Yuusuke’s demands that he explain himself.

Later that night Yuusuke and Ane arrive at the door of the photo studio, looking for a cafe that used to be there. Grandpa invites them in for coffee anyway. The two guests discuss Decade as “Unidentified life form #10,” and Yuusuke vows to defeat him. Ane notices the similarity Kuuga, and wonders if “#10″ might be there to help fight the Grongi.

Tsukasa arrives at the studio, and suggests that he has a theory about Grongi murders. Yuusuke, miffed that Tsukasa is imposing, storms out.

Natsumi rushes outside as Yuusuke tries to kick start his bike. She implies that she knows Yuusuke is Kuuga, and says that she thinks it’s great he’s trying to help. She also chastises Yuusuke for not realizing Ane cares for him. Yuusuke asks how she knows this, and she says, “Because I have a vagina.” That’s not what she really says, but it’s close enough. This whole scene is filmed very oddly. Every time Yuusuke unsuccessfully kicks the bike starter, the camera ratchets off to the left.

The next day Tsukasa explains his theory to the big wigs at the police station. There’s a pattern in the birth dates of the dead officers that spells out a message, but a birthdate ending in “4″ is missing. Convinced he’s right, the police rush off to find female officers who might fit. Meanwhile in the woods more Grongi appear to be preparing to resurrect a demon in a cave.

Back at the photo studio Tsukasa is finding that all his photos of this world are messed up too. Natsumi says that probably means he’s not native to this world. Oh, and she’s finally changed out of those awful yellow leggings, into equally awful pink leggings.

Tsukasa calls Ane and arranges to meet her out in the middle of the woods. When she gets there he explains that he made up the whole thing about birth dates. In fact, the murders were all a certain distance from particular mountain, and he figures the next murder would have to happen where they are now. Yuusuke shows up, having been called by Ane. Tsukasa explains that the murders are ritual to awaken some sort super-Grongi in a nearby cave. Trust in Tsukasa is a little hard to come by for Yuusuke and Ane, because it appears that Tsukasa has lured Ane to the spot to help the Grongi. Tsukasa even yells something in the Grongi language, causing two of them to appear. (One with dreadlocks, another that looks fish-themed.) Tsukasa then turns and punches Ane in the face! But it’s all a trick. It seems the Grongi ritual involved not spilling blood, and now that Ane has a bloody nose, the ritual is ruined. I’m not sure why Tsukasa couldn’t tell Ane before clocking her, but whatever.

Oh, and if you’re supposed to be a uber-cool interdimensional superhero, you should probably leave the girly sweater at home.

Tsukasa becomes Decade, and he transforms his card case into a sword. He fights off the two Grongi, killing the dreadlocks one. The fish one flees.

But when Yuusuke hears the name “Decade” (because no Rider can transform without saying their name at least twice) he transforms into Kuuga and attacks Decade! It seems he’s heard of Decade, and considers him a devil (akuma). He believes that Decade will destroy all the Riders. (Does Yuusuke know about the other riders? How?)

In the middle of their fight the fish Grongi appears again, and Kuuga kills him with one flaming kick. Natsumi then runs up, and seeing Kuuga and Decade together she flashes back to her dream. After all the Riders are defeated, Decade is walking along the battlefield, but Kuuga isn’t quite dead. He transforms into a black form.

Dream Kuuga and Dream Decade fight, with the two of them powering up punches and causing an explosion.

Back in the real world (the present?) Natsumi yells at Kuuga and Decade to stop fighting. They don’t listen, and Kuuga transforms into a purple version, and Decade swipes the card for “Attack Rider: Slash,” which is his sword. (Funny, he didn’t do that the first time he used his sword.) Decade states that he hopes to remember something by fighting.

The two fight, with Decade clearly having the upper hand. Kuuga then grabs Ane’s gun, and transforms into the green form with the crossbow again. Decade blocks his shot, and changes his card case into a machine gun. Decade swipes “Attack Ride: Blast,” with predictably insane results.

As Kuuga and Decade continue to fight a guy with glasses and a stupid hat is watching from nearby.

He recognizes Decade and that he isn’t from this world. Stupid Hat Man summons a dimensional wave, which causes two more armored figures to appear. The newcomers immediately attack the Riders, and the episode ends.

What a Difference 3 and 1/2 Years Makes

Apr 1

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Computers, Really Random | No Comments

Just for shits and giggles I took a look back at what I posted the first month of this current blog, and I was pretty amused by this post from 11/28/2006, entitled “Another Bite at the Apple Rumor”:

There are three rumors about Apple Computers that come up every few months, no matter what.

Apple is working on a Tablet Mac
Apple is working on an iPhone
Apple is close to signing the Beatles up on the iTumes Music Store

Number three is back with a vengeance this week. Check out the article from Forbes.

We’ll see if it pans out this time.

I never would have guessed we’d see both the tablet and the iPhone before the frickin’ Beatles in iTunes.