Subatomic Brainfreeze

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: WHAT I THINK ABOUT JAPANESE TOYS AT THIS POINT

I've been nerding on Japanese toys for a long time, but the Astro Toy gig has really forced me to look out at lines beyond my particular interests and all around the business. It's been really interesting! Originally that last post was supposed to just be a listing of what I thought of the respective lines, but it really quickly turned into a "how and why" of the column that was much too long not to run on its own. So here's the post that was originally intended, as a part two instead. This might also function as a buyer's guide.

Figma: Boy, I have a lot to say about Figma. This is now the dominant action figure for the modern otaku, to the point where pretty much everything in otaku-world that doesn't belong to Bandai (Gundam, Tiger and Bunny, many others) becomes a Figma. Because they're the winners, it's easier to be hard on them.

Main points: Figmas are small, cheap (but not kids' toy cheap), and while very playable, their design philosophy values looks more than play. Given market trends, subjects are mostly girls. The line is perfectly average: like Revoltech, you can tell there were times when the people making the toy gave a damn (Golgo remains the best Figma I've looked at for the column by a long distance) and times when they didn't really.

Right now the review of Figma Guts is up and I found it passable by Figma standards. The reader response has been "No way! Look at that face!" There are a lot of elements that are a little cheapo-looking on that figure-- legs, detailing on the stuff strapped to the body, the mechanical arm-- but all of this falls under typical Figma for me. I don't expect amazing detail from a Figma, and as much as people don't like that face I think it's one of the better Figma faces considering how spotty they usually look. I have to wonder if my eyes are just gradually getting used to the line's middling quality.

Nendoroid is really straightforward: it's less an action figure and more a display figure that you put together. Kaiyodo used to do an Eva line like this, but it wasn't super-deformed. Pretty simple, and I can't even imagine how you'd get the idea wrong. These are fun to do columns for, but because they're so limited I try to buy two or find ones with lots of extras. Only drawback is that the stands are complete shit.

If you want to buy Figma or Nendoroid or any other Good Smile product you'd better be happy with what's out right now, because GSC's business plan is to make everything in small numbers and only do one production so that fans are compelled (or, in many cases, forced) to preorder if they want the figure. Online buyers in particular get screwed, as really popular characters like Homura sold out to preorders months in advance and were then never made available again. Figmas aren't good enough to pay insane collector markup (I've seen them go for $200) so seriously, don't even bother looking. I'm just glad I got the Kaiji figure while I could.

Revoltech: Revoltech is kind of the anti-Figma: toy first, everything else second. Heavy on visible joints and action features, something meant for the owner to actually sit and play with rather than set up for display just once. Mostly male characters and robots, given the nature of the toys. However, sculpts on these can get really ugly, especially lately. The "Fraulein" line exists but was, by all indications, a failure.

I admire these toys for the purity of their vision (Kaiyodo also sells a completely original line that's a clear attempt at Microman in an age when there are no kids left to buy that stuff), but that isn't necessarily folks' priority. Note, however, that I haven't bought a Revoltech in months because Figma has all the popular characters. This will change later.

Bandai stuff: Obviously Chogokin is my favorite. The modern Chogokin stuff strikes a balance between obsessively faithful detail, high-quality construction and playability that's just unbeatable. Every one of these I see is top-shelf, even in the scaled-down Super Robot Chogokin line.

Figuarts is a line that wildly varies in quality, to the point where I would only be able to recommend pieces individually. It is hard to believe that Figuarts' terrible figure of Kazuma from Scryed is in the same line as the wonderful Tiger and Bunny figures, for example. I'd be careful with these and take a close look before buying, but they seem to do costumed heroes (sentai and Kamen Rider) better than other stuff. They're fun to buy for the column because I have no idea what I'm going to get. I have Figuarts Fourze on preorder for my own personal enjoyment.

Bandai has a direct ripoff line of Nendoroid that's been coming out in force with Tiger and Bunny characters but I haven't had space to look at it, and it also kind of looks crap.

We have barely even done Gundam in two years. It's like this: most good Gundam stuff is in plastic kit form, and, real talk, they don't pay me enough to put in the hours involved in putting together a kit. I used to do Gunpla, and I know it won't even look good unless it's painted! Maybe if some nice diecast comes out for AGE (nice diecast Unicorn sold out a while back) we'll talk. The SDX figures are awesome though.

Myth Cloth is a pretty cool line but I doubt I'll be able to ever slip Saint Seiya into the column again, just sayin'. The huge Sagittarius figure is completely out of our range, even though it's 40% off at Amiami right now.

Other lines: Medicos' Jojo line does everything possible better than comparable lines for the same price. I was amazed to see how well-served Jojo fans are by the figure business: they must buy a lot. I keep trying to see if Griffon's Figutto line will get better, but they're basically medium-grade 1/8 PVCs with joints. Nowhere more evident than with that Marisa figure.

I am really looking forward to what Sentinel does going forward and I have a few things of theirs on order for the column (one is sitting next to me, actually), including an obvious and popular character I absolutely can't wait to get.

If all goes well with it, I'm buying something from CM's for the column soon. They only do stuff from old robot anime so it was really hard to find something of theirs for Astro Toy!

Evolution Toy's Squid Girl is the only time I've bought something so bad for the column that I'd never trust the company that made it ever again.

Astro Toy goes to Year Three: THE GUIDELINES

It's been two years on this column! I'm sort of shocked it's gotten this far, and we don't do anniversary celebrations or anything like that, so I thought it would be fun to just talk about it on the blog for a while.

It was a complete happy coincidence that ANN found me, but I've been buying toys from Japan for long before I took up this column. I was into Gunpla back in high school, but eventually I didn't have room for a "workshop" anymore as those kits required to look good. That led me into Japanese action figures, and because I love robots and wanted high-quality stuff, I was led towards the high end lines like Chogokin and so on.

The last thing I bought before I stopped buying toy robots was a Max Factory Gaogaigar. At that point I was completely satisfied. By the time I started this blog I was more or less done with figures, so there was never anything on here about it.

And then a couple years ago I was recommended to write Astro Toy, and by sheer coincidence I happened to have a history with the subject. My shelves have been cleared off, and most of my old toys put in boxes to be sold off one day. My shelves are stocked again with "keeper" toys and the rest are in more boxes to be sent off to ANN or given away at cons. I'm more involved now than I was before.

Couple things about the column, straight up: I'm free to pick what I want for the column, but my choices can and do get rejected every once in a while when management doesn't think the audience would go for them. (if you've ever seen me post a figure a lot on Twitter or something and it doesn't turn up in the column, then, well...) I aim to balance a couple of factors:

-quality of toy. No gashapons, no trading figures, no cheap stuff! This is important to me because this is inherently a nitpicking column, and the low-grade stuff usually doesn't deserve to be nitpicked. Yes, the sculpt on that gashapon set is poor. The paint doesn't hold up to inspection. Of course they're crappy, the figures cost 300 yen each! "Look at this crap" is only fun when it's something egregiously terrible, like a bootleg or something.

-popularity of character. If there's a decent, Figma-or-higher piece of a character from a really popular show coming out, we're always gonna buy it. However, it must be something decent. The popular Jump series are perfect examples: yes, you can easily get a figure of Ichigo or Naruto and yes, those guys are about a thousand times more popular than anything I post about on Astro Toy. It's probably a piece of crap six-dollar toy you distract a small child with, though. If it doesn't make for an entertaining read, or if it's obviously a product that isn't worth the money (I've mentioned the Alucard Revoltech in the column: I'm still considering buying it for the column but it really does look terrible), I just don't buy it.

-features, playability. This is pretty much why we don't do fixed-pose PVC on the column. It's not that I dislike them at all, I've got quite a few: I'm just expected to write a good-sized article, and there's little you can say about PVC other than the obvious comments about sculpt and paint. Heisei Democracy did great, insightful PVC reviews and they did them in 400 words. I have to say a lot more than that. Nitpicking a PVC just isn't a full article, and stretching out your nitpicking just to get more words on the page is one great way to write a shitty, boring piece of work.

I want to avoid, by all means, the column becoming an endless, boring parade of Figma, Revoltech, and Nendoroids of popular characters. It's not that those lines are bad, it's that they're very consistent at a certain medium level of quality, and there's only so much to say about one toy line no matter how many characters it produces. Readers will get tired of it, I'll burn out on writing it. I already repeat myself so much as-is, you know?

We all have to have fun here, myself included, or what's the point of doing the column? Unusual and lesser-known toy makers and lines, classic and cult characters, figures with fun gimmicks, and sometimes indulging my own weirdo personal tastes: all of that stuff is important to mix things up, and I do go out of my way.

This makes certain purchases obligatory (the great action figures for Tiger and Bunny, the wave of Madoka figures from Good Smile, big-in-the-West properties like Trigun) and certain figures infeasible no matter how much I like them (most super robot toys, the upcoming Saber and bike PVC).

The budget is covered by ANN--I would absolutely not spend this kind of money on toys myself-- and it's pretty comfortable, in large part because of the bad exchange rate sending the prices of even average Japanese toys out of control. The added cost of international express shipping  is tremendous too. When I started, a Figma was $35 or so shipped. They're now $50-60. Anything above that level starts to get into crazy land really fast. Barring big sales, really high-end lines like Real Action Hero or Soul of Chogokin are just out of the question.

When there are holes in the schedule, I try to fill them with deliberately wacky choices that the crowd either loves (nobody loved that near-defective Squid Girl, but the article was a success!) or hates (robots elicit near-total silence from the ANN crowd, but I buy one every couple months anyway). Again, I think it's really important to cover this weirdo stuff to give people a view of things that aren't even commonly found in Japan. It also means that since I'm constantly looking through toy listings, every once in a while I see something I really want for myself but can't possibly justify for the column... so I wind up spending my own money on it (Alter's Dizzy, Kamen Rider Fourze). Honestly, though, that's pretty rare. Last thing I bought for myself was Weissritter to complete the set with Alteisen: can't really justify buying the companion piece for the column when the readers didn't care about the hero!

Speaking of which, I'm always curious about my crowd reaction. I don't know anything about my pageviews, so I definitely use the forums as a microcosm of audience interest. Of course, given the very niche nature of the column, going by number of comments isn't a great idea... but when you get a crickets-chirping response you definitely take it into account for later. Only very rarely do I get hostile responses ("this column should be about PVC instead of ugly, boring crap!" was as bad as it ever got), so I think I'm running things alright.

So it's been a lot of fun, and I plan on continuing to run Astro Toy until either I no longer have time to run it or ANN gets rid of me. Thanks for reading the column, and an additional thanks to those of you who actually stuck it out through this mega post.

I'm FINALLY GOING TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT REDLINE

That is, I'm going to say something other than "see Redline immediately, it's great." Mind, that statement still stands.

Last weekend I invited about a lot of friends of mine out to see Redline, which is running in New York City as we speak (dub, probably projected off a Blu-Ray), go see it right now before it's gone! Everybody in attendance loved it. I don't think enjoying the movie is an "anime fan" or a "not anime fan" issue, I think it's a matter of whether you like to be entertained and you don't mind if your entertainment isn't too serious.

And I want to draw a line here. "Not too serious" doesn't mean "not too good". A lot of people have seen Redline's breezy attitude and beautiful visuals and gotten the impression that the movie's some shallow light show and that its story isn't worth telling. That couldn't be further from the truth.

The theatrical showing marks the third time I've watched this movie in its entirety. Though I wouldn't maniacally drive myself to watch Redline over and over again, it hasn't gotten old for me at all. The movie is so alive, so densely packed with character and world-building detail, and none of it is directly spelled out. Really take this movie in. Look all over the frame. You'll find things. They've built a universe here. It's a universe gone completely mad, but that's my style anyway.

It's not unusual for anime to have large amounts of backstory, but what's unusual about Redline compared to its peers is that the storytelling is almost all visual. This is an especially sharp contrast because ironically, anime does a lot of telling rather than showing. It's just always much cheaper, especially in animation, to say what happens than to show it happening. Think about it in Durarara!! when they go to those chatrooms, or anything in Fate/Zero, really. And this isn't just in novel adaptations: look at how shonen anime love to explain the mechanics of the battle taking place-- be it a battle between ninja, cars, or spinning tops-- in technical terms. We could talk about all the different examples for hours, but then we would be anime exposition characters.

What I'm saying is that Redline, contrary to many reports, has quite a complex universe and fleshed-out principal characters: it just tells us the things we need to know and quietly shows us much of the rest. It hides away points in the background at blink-and-you-miss-it moments that an anime TV series would spend two or three episodes on. This movie offers you so much in every department that you're not even going to see it all in a single viewing. In the conversations online I've seen a lot of anime fans come to Redline looking down on it, leave looking down on it, and that's their loss. Don't miss out yourself: if you can't see it in a theater, the Blu-Ray is out in a week or two. Enjoy.

So then I watched the Nanoha movie-- FOR WORK RESEARCH

So when you're reading this, the first Astro Toy column of the year will be up. This week I took a reader recommendation and bought a figure of Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. This was a really big series with otaku a couple of years ago, but I had zero interest.  I like to know what I'm talking about-- at least the very basics-- when I look at a toy, so I went a little bit out of my way and watched the movie that was recently released.

I'm heard a couple of descriptions of this show say "it's like shonen fighting but with magical girls" or "it's like Sunrise mecha but with magical girls." I guess you could say that, on a surface level: this two-hour movie has little going on but flying, laser-blasting magical girl action, and the transforming, English-speaking weapons are probably the coolest thing about it.

The plot is about some magic macguffins, but the movie is really about the meeting and eventual friendship of the two main characters, Fate and Nanoha. They start as enemies, they team up, in later series they shack up. The characters are really weird in this movie, in a very otaku kind of way. They're supposed to be ten-year-old girls, but they don't act anything at all like children, or even humans, for that matter. I was talking with Ko (who also just got picked up at ANN) about it and he joked that they were "lesbian friendship robots".

Yeah, that about says it, huh? These characters stare at each other longingly, struggle and fight against a villain whose motivation is "Rarr! I'm evil!" (twenty minutes is spent on this thrilling backstory), and they cry when they're reunited at the end of the movie, but they've got zero humanity.

That said there is a lot of magic and flying and shit exploding. Looks pretty nice. In conclusion, the transformation scenes are pretty uncomfortable and if someone walked in on you watching those scenes they'd probably call the cops.

Treasure Island Sports tricked me into buying an empty box AND I DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN TO YOU

Alright, time for a toy public service announcement. After Christmas I found what I thought was a fantastic deal on a Soul of Chogokin Gold Lightan, a figure that's long out of production. $20 for this was too good a deal not to look into for a gold-plated transforming cigarette lighter robot, and so I put in an order on the suspiciously named:

Gold Lightan GX-32 18K Plating Figure Exclusive Wooden Box

The seller was Treasure Island Sports, and not to spoil the ending of this story, but Treasure Island Sports is to be avoided. The photo on Amazon was just a black box with the Saint Seiya logo on it. I assumed it was a placeholder.

Days pass. My buddy Mike Toole decided to go in on this too, and he suggests to me for the first time the terrible idea that this could just be an empty wooden box. This is possible: the Chogokin Lightan figure comes in a display box itself, and while it doesn't make a lot of sense, maybe the seller only has that part of the item. I would consider this a ripoff, but one where the seller could at least weasel into saying "this is what you ordered".

So here's what happened.

That's right, I got that damn Saint Seiya box in the mail. Nothing to do with Gold Lightan whatsoever. So this is definitely the wrong item, but it's still pretty heavy. Maybe there's something cool in there? Maybe I still got a deal after all?

Yeah, it's an empty god damn box. This is a display box for a Saint Seiya Myth Cloth figure. I believe it's a Bandai Hong Kong product, but there is no Bandai logo on this thing and it could well be a wooden box someone made and slapped the Saint Seiya logo on. It doesn't look like official merch, that's for sure. Again, this item has nothing to do with Gold Lightan. Adding insult to injury, the Saint Seiya logo fell off the front of the box the moment I removed it from the packaging.

So now I have to go through the process of getting a refund on Amazon. Unfortunately, Treasure Island apparently has a reputation for not getting back to their buyers, so we'll see how this turns out. Worse comes to worse, I'm sure that Amazon will refund me as soon as I have to bring this story to their attention: they did it for that defective DVD of Hollywood Cop, after all!

So, as always, be aware when you're shopping online. And don't ever buy from Treasure Island Sports.

 

Comipo is just a toy, and that's okay BUT THERE ARE SOME KEY POINTS THEY'RE MISSING

So I became a webcomic author this past week. Of course, I've no artistic talent and no hope of being as good as the webcomics I like. But never mind all that. I realized I could do a webcomic, and moments after that realization came the comic itself. It's only been a week but it's drawing a tiny Tumblr audience, and these comics are easy enough to make that hey, sure, I can do this for a while. Let's see what happens, right?t The plot summary follows.

"MASAKA THE YOUNG LADY OF HIGH SPIRITS. MAJIDE THE KNOWING OF MYSTERY. THEIR ADVENTURES IN GAMING KINGDOM IT BEGINS TO MOVE WITH LAUGHTER AND E KIMOCHI"

The program I'm making this in is called Comipo, and make no mistake, it's a toy. It works for my purposes-- because I'm making an absurd 4-panel gag comic written in Bad Scanlation English-- but this program isn't going to magically crank out pro-quality work for you. That's not what it's about. That's kind of why my comic is the way it is. Play to the tool you're working with, right?

The fundamental idea of Comipo is that rather than drawing characters (which we all know is totally hard and stuff), we manipulate 3D models and 2D images into the comic we've had in mind. Really simple images like the print club-style avatar I use for the Tumblr (seen above) come out in minutes. All this one involved was picking out facial expressions from a menu, and a little tilting of the models to make it look natural. Working with the models is easy and smooth and fun: you just have to be careful with zooming and expanding the models, as the black cel-shaded lines can come out looking rough and choppy depending on how the character is posed.

You can import any image you like into the comic, but Comipo's very extensive library of premade backgrounds and sound effects actually cover quite a lot of ground. I don't use the many supplied photo backgrounds, for the most part: I think the clash between 3D models and live images is too distracting, especially when they're supposed to be directly interacting with those backgrounds. I use effects and patterns, and Comipo also has a truckload of those.

The characters I'm using for the comic are the exact same as Comipo's default characters. The thing is, you see... you really can't get very far from these defaults. Comipo uses just two base bodies, a male and a female. The two characters you see above share the same body, and there's no adjusting body type or other physical features. The second female model, meant to be a teacher, is the same girl body in a schoolteacher's outfit. The male models are the same way.

In short, in the world of Comipo everybody is made of different parts swapped onto the same two doll bodies. And they're all moe-style highschoolers with only hairstyles and eye colors to separate them. (The guys are really half-assed: imagine a "make your own boring, nondescript lead of a harem anime" generator.) Again, there isn't a huge variety of those distinguishing factors either, and the more characters you try and make with Comipo the more obvious it is that they all look just like each other.

Poses and facial expressions are better, but here there's interface trouble as you have to slog through a long list to get close to the one you need. I've already started to make note of the numbers of useful poses (like the above). While time-intensive, a manual posing option would be nice for people who really want to work this program hard.

Your subject matter is pretty severely limited by all these factors: it's cutesy high-school comedy or go home. The more strenuous the posing you put these models through, the weirder they start to look. Obviously the biggest request by Comipo users has been the ability to import other 3D models into the program-- the vast world of Miku Miku Dance models will make this very interesting when it finally makes its way into the English version of the program.

As it stands, Comipo is absolutely not worth $50 unless you're just that curious, which I was after toying with the free demo. $25 is the absolute highest this should be going for. With a little more variety and freedom this toy could be a vast playground, but as it is it's a walled-in high school. Of course, that doesn't matter much to me: I already have more than enough here to make the Kawaiikochans go on for a decade or three. But then, I never said I was an ambitious creator!

Mawaru Penguindrum 22: BUT WHAT ARE THE PENGUINS UP TO?

You might have noticed from the shift in subjects lately, but the only anime that I'm currently watching is the mysterious and fabulously adolescent Mawaru Penguindrum. Kunihiko Ikuhara's return to anime has not disappointed in any way. But right now I'm going to talk about some late-series stuff and I'm obligated to warn you about that. Don't even look up Penguindrum online if you're interested in seeing it and haven't jumped in yet. The show's a giant unraveling spoiler from episode one and the best thing you can do is just start watching and let it work its magic. If you seriously want me to spoil you, I'm still going to keep writing like you don't know anything, so this post will tell you what's going on in Penguindrum. Don't do it!

November 13th, 2011: HOW DID KAMEN RIDER FOURZE OWN TODAY?

An essay in screenshots. I don't normally do this kind of thing, but I would have just done it on Twitter otherwise...

Never change indeed, Kamen Rider Club. You're the greatest.

MY FAST NEW YORK COMIC CON REACTIONS

I am aching and semi-conscious, but I really oughta make a NYCC post here before I finish my ANN work and hit the event up on Colony Drop.

There is a point at which the sheer attendance of a con becomes a detriment to it, and NYCC has been at that point for a while now. 100,000 people is simply too many. The entire Javits wouldn't have been enough to hold all these people, and we didn't have the whole Javits. Thursday, when the attendance was capped at 10k, was without question the best day of the weekend. From then on, the show floor was unbreatheable and I'm pretty sure that several of the lines were honest-to-god mile-long lines. As I said to people at the ANN panel, I really felt nostalgic for the relative peace and quiet of the biggest anime cons and their 20k attendance numbers.

If you had doubted my "anime ghetto" hypothesis at all, NYAF was back to prove it in style. Without getting too deep into it-- saving that article for CD-- the intent of this area is much more clear this year. NYAF is absolutely an event designed to corral anime con kids away from the main show floor: the space is little more than a huge lounge-- no open space, only seating, a stark contrast to the rest of the Javits-- and an artist's alley. Sure, there weren't many events or panels to speak of, but you could stay there all day if you were an anime kid-- and many did. The place looked even more like a daycare than it did last year.

I was also doing work for ANN: you can see my writeup of the Yen Press panel, and I gave an interview-- the first I've ever given in my life, imagine my nervousness-- that'll go up in a while. Feeling really "pro nerd" about now.

ANN panel went well: it was nothing more than audience Q&A with us, but the boss had some pretty enlightening things to say about the business end of streaming video. I got the best laugh of the panel, so I'm pretty content. Wish I'd brought more toys to give away: my two figures disappeared at lightning speed.

Skullgirls is gorgeous. Video doesn't do it justice, you need to go see the game on a TV with your own eyes. I didn't get to the other fighting games because even on Thursday, even with tons of cabinets, the lines were unreasonable. The reveal about SF X Tekken-- the gem system, by which the player increases base stats and other properties with equippable items that will very likely cost money-- sounds like an incredible, community-wide disaster in the making. We'll see.

I regret not actually making it to Pony Bar. I try to get a pint there whenever I'm at Javits. Oh well.

MY TV REPORT ON WHY KAMEN RIDER FOURZE IS THE BEST, BY DAVE AGE TEN

So this anime season I'm watching Penguindrum and Kamen Rider. I'm sure there are other things to watch, but I'm pretty satisfied.

I don't often watch live-action superhero stuff, even though I really like it in theory. (I have Ultraman and Iron King and Red Baron sitting on the shelf, after all.) I just very rarely have it in me to really sit through one of these shows. Last time I tried to watch Kamen Rider it was Agito, and it was so mopey that I only gave it two episodes before stopping. You have to be really careful if you're going to do something like this and take yourself seriously at the same time: I'm not saying it's impossible, but there's a line to toe.

Mopey is the last thing in the world you could call Kamen Rider Fourze. The director is a veteran of the US Power Rangers shows (mostly the stunt work), and that shows through. The writer is Gurren-Lagann's Kazuki Nakashima, who was absolutely the secret of that show's success. I probably wouldn't be watching the show if hadn't heard he was on board.

So these guys have made a very different Kamen Rider. For one thing, the Rider himself has an astronaut gimmick going, complete with space suit and rocket bike. For another thing, this show is actually an extremely campy high school comedy.

One day, Amanogawa High School (AGHS, Angel Grove High School?!) recieves the best transfer student ever. "I'm Gentarou Kisaragi and my dream is to be friends with everybody in this school!" The first thing he does is jump into a stream from twenty feet above to retrieve a discarded love letter because you can't treat a girl like that, man! Gentarou is a nice delinquent. I suddenly really want a pair of Chucks with fire on the sides.

So he meets his best friend from elementary school, and she and her buddy happen to have a secret base-- well, I'll let you find out about the secret base. I'm going to stop here for a second and note the screenshot. Look at it. It's not a pose that human beings take. Yuki is not mid-motion, here, they stay in this position. It's a "hey, we gotta go!" pose that you'd only see in a still frame in a manga, or as a two-frame loop in an anime.

The characters in this show are extremely cartoonish, the performances play to that hard, and the direction pushes that further with really weird choices. Like, for example, the football captain here is fond of saluting, and there is always a Mario Brothers coin sound when he does so. Also, the fact that this Japanese school has an American football team and a cheerleading squad. The "here are the cliques in this school" scene is one of the best early gags.

JK is spelled JK, but you pronounce it "Jake." JK is fabulous, and both of these guys are clearly well trained in the use of the hand gun. The show is always like this. I haven't even gotten to the Kamen Rider stuff.

The suit is an astronaut suit. The bike is a space shuttle with a rocket exhaust. The catchphrase is "it's space time!" This rider's gimmick is that he's got an arsenal of 40 switches (not CCG cards, thank god) that he can stick into the belt to make weapons appear. The Rider Kick being used is a combination of a rocket on one arm and a drill on one leg, and much stranger weapons (a pogo stick, a UFO catcher hand) have already shown up. The fights are a lot of fun, and they come up with crazy new stuff every week.

I'm going to go ahead and name Kamen Rider Fourze the honorary best kids' cartoon of the season. Who else is doin' it like this? Who else has combined Saved by the Bell with chainsaw spin kicks? I'm pretty sure the answer is "nobody". If you like having fun, set your worries aside, get your bowl of cereal and watch Fourze.

Also, I have to give the fansubbers extra credit on this one for not being TV-Nihon, doing none of that kisama yatsu shit, and actually translating rather than transliterating. Good work.