Castlevania Season 3 review

I remember when Castlevania season 3 hit last year, I didn’t know what to think. Season 2’s ending was quite a bit different than what was expected and it left the doorway open to various possibilities. Whatever would be in the third season would escape any possible confines of the games, tangentially only using concepts from Curse of Darkness. What ultimately resulted is something of a mixed bag, but we’ll get to that in due time.

The third season can largely be broken up into four main areas, picking right up about a month or so after season 2’s ending.

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe Review.

Gamera’s something of an interesting Kaiju if nothing more than the often perceived notion that he was simply little more than a Godzilla Rip-off. While this is certainly a degree of truth to that, it never prevented the character and film series from taking off, often rivaling the Godzilla Series at the box office and even on American television throughout the 60s.

But that success wasn’t meant to last. Gamera had been long dormant by the time pre-production began on GOTU, the last full film being 1971’s Gamera vs. Zigra. That same year, Studio Daiei went into bankruptcy and plans for a 1972 film were scrapped. 1974 saw the revival of Daiei after being picked up by Tokuma Shoten, but only as a production company and producer. They would have to rely on others for distribution. Daiei actually managed to do quite well, all things considered, even co-producing some international blockbusters like The Go-Masters in 1982. But by the early 90s it had dwindled into Hentai. A surprising amount of Hentai.

As for Gamera, he was only afforded a very embarrassing outing in 1980 with Gamera: Super Monster, of which ⅓ of the film is stock footage. It was so bad that Gamera co-creator and director Noriaki Yuasa requested that Gamera be killed off at the end of the film, believing that the series would never recover.

Gamera’s 20th anniversary in 1985 came and went with little fanfare, while long-time rival Godzilla already had a successful 1984 revival and would return once again in ‘89 with nearly yearly entries until December 1995. It wouldn’t be until the 30th Anniversary when Gamera finally got to shine once more on the big screen, fittingly, in 1995. Although Gamera would release in March.


However, the lead-up to that was bumpy. The film was originally envisioned as a 60-minute parody or comedy, something which greatly disappointed director Shusuke Kaneko. Thankfully, writer Kazunori Ito and special effects director Shinji Higuchi managed to convince the higher-ups of a much more grounded and bolder direction, opting for a full feature film in line with the Heisei Godzilla series. One additional advantage was that once that decision was made, the production team had a great deal of freedom to do whatever they wished. The only hard rule was that Gamera’s redesign and general depiction wouldn’t be terrifying to children, the rest was carte blanche. The downside is that the budget would be an insultingly low 500 million JPY or 4.5 million USD, about ⅓ of the average Heisei Godzilla production. For a team that wanted to reach new heights, they sure had their work cut out.

Gridman Blu-Ray: Translation Trainwreck.

This is not going to be a typical review. I’m not even sure what to talk about aside from the massive stain that is the subtitles. So I guess think of this more as a warning or PSA.



For those that aren’t aware, Gridman has a rather infamous reputation when it comes to its subtitles. The initial release was handled by TokuHD, reading something more akin to a bad parody than a translation. Mistranslations, misspellings, grammar issues, you name it. Eventually MillCreek would acquire the home media release, and that raised the question on if the subs would be changed.
Well a few months prior to said release, there was word that Gridman received an overhaul by MillCreek and that the team was working hard to make sure the new subs were good. With that in mind, I decided to pre-order.

They did not.

Kamen Rider ZO review.

 ZO was quite an ambitious project when it was proposed. Following the success of Shin Kamen Rider (and yes, contrary to the still widely held belief that Shin Kamen Rider was a failure, the film did insanely well on home video and was well received) there were talks of a sequel to Shin which would have incorporated the previous 11 riders, but that fell through and it was decided a new original Rider would be created.

Toei Video president Yoshinori Watanabe, and Bandai Visual president Makoto Yamashina, met with the intention of a joint operation. Bandai would assist with multiple campaigns to promote the movie and merchandise, while Toei focused on the production in-house. The initial vision was to release a 90-minute feature film during Golden Week in Japan, as Toei had great success doing that in ‘91. But after some shaky performance by other Toei Productions in ‘92- likely due to the bubble bursting that same year- it was decided that a shorter direct to video method would be safer than a box office release.

Early story ideas for ZO ranged from the outlandish to the more traditional. Ishinomori wrote a short synopsis where ZO was an extraterrestrial in origin, and this even got as far as concept designs for a spacecraft by Katsushi Murakami. But this was shot down for budgetary and scheduling reasons.

Keita Amemiya’s take was more familiar and even went as far as incorporating Hongo undergoing a new operation that would become ZO. Amemiya wanted to create a Rider for the Heisei era and in doing so literally recreate the original. This was also dropped, but the finished product more closely resembles this concept with a Rider that goes back to the basic premise of being modified. It's funny how that original idea was sort of incorporated for the Rider 1 movie, though.

With a 90 minute runtime out of the question, it was decided the best manner of premiering the film would be at a festival. This led to the creation of the Toei Super Hero festival in which three short films would be shown. ZO would be joined by extended “film” cuts of Janperson and Dairanger episodes.


But that’s enough backstory, let’s get into this properly.

Kamen Writer's block 21/8

Alright so bit of an update for the blog here and it's not something I typically do but there's been some noticeable changes around here I haven’t addressed yet.

First off, big overhaul on the aesthetics and a change in branding. Years ago I titled this blog 'Stranger's Showcase' after DC's Showcase line and of course the Phantom Stranger. The idea was I would showcase various shows, toys, and whatever else I wanted to. As the blog has primarily become (although not exclusive) to tokusatsu I've since decided I wanted to move away from the initial comic aesthetic and make use of an original character.

This is a piece I commissioned from the very talented Sarracenian, who you should really check out. Dude does some fantastic work. (Seriously, his Samus is amazing. Dude should make prints)

Now the header at the top I made myself, hence the..."quality" of the presentation.

The mascot with the totally clever name is based on a typewriter and a Coffee Locust, also called a Ghost Grasshopper. So I guess he's a Ghost Writer of sorts, which also works as a cute callback to the original branding.

Outside of that, not much is going to change drastically in terms of content. Although I do plan to branch outside of Tokusatsu again relatively soon. Speaking of reviews, there is some news that needs some addressing. First off I will be reviewing Taro and Leo...eventually. I mentioned this in my Ultraman Ace review.

I just don't know when I'll get around to them. I want to break up the monotony of both Ultra and Showa centric reviews. I do know that Leo will likely be a much shorter review because thus far I'm not really seeing much I can talk about outside of everyone being a jerk.

In the meantime I will be reviewing shorter one off projects before then, probably two or three before tackling a full series again. Hakaider is already up if you haven’t seen. Up next I have ZO, and most of that review is done I just have to go over it and get the photos ready, the latter of which is quite honestly the biggest pain in the ass on this platform.

After that I’m not 100% sure. I do know that October will have a long overdue review of Castlevania season 3, and I’m trying to get 4 done as well. Maybe have a review each week if I’m able to figure something out.

For far off future reviews, Millcreek has announced Gridman will be getting all new subtitles for their Bluray release which I am immensely thankful for. As such, I will be reviewing that series at some point, possibly before anymore Showa Ultra. Likewise Ultraman 80 went up for preorder along with The Ultraman. 80, like the rest of the Showa Ultra series, will eventually be reviewed and of course will be the last.

Additionally, Tiga, Dyna, and Gaia, got announced for a release by MillCreek and I...have some thoughts. The notable thing about this release is unlike all prior Ultra releases, these are on standard DVD and not Blu-Ray. MillCreek has said this is because they don't have 1080 masters from Tsuburaya and that they decided on DVDs for this release, indicating that there could be Blurays in the future.
I couldn't find anything on how Tiga-Gaia was filmed, maybe it was DV or even if it was on film it could've been edited on video so 1080 masters might not even be possible. Regardless there's still advantages to releasing on Blu-ray. Most standard definition shows are still compressed to a lower quality on DVD. An SD show on bluray does look (however small) better. Likewise, audio tracks aren't compressed as much and sound much better. Subtitles can also be presented in HD which makes the text very smooth and less blocky and therefore easier to read. Point being there are still advantages to the format even if the show itself isn't in full HD.

But the weirdest thing is that Tsuburaya has released remastered versions of all three shows on Bluray in Japan, and they re-released them recently.

So what the hell?

I'm happy these are finally getting a US release at all given all the rights issues with Tiga and even Dyna, but something feels off to me about this. I also have to wonder if the typical moviespree code will be omitted here. One of the issues with Tiga is that when it comes to streaming, TsuPro has to cut around the star, Hiroshi Nagano. This is something a lot of people probably noticed on the Youtube streams for Tiga during the lead up to Trigger. So having a digital copy of the shows might not be possible and be why Millcreek is choosing this route, perhaps saving a Bluray and codes for whenever that mess can be cleared up. It could also be that a lot of the Millcreek releases are reverse imported into Japan, they're all over Amazon Japan and about the same retail price. Perhaps that was seen as an issue with the recent JPN releases. But all that’s major speculation on my end.

Regardless, I’m going to wait on them because one:I want to know what the deal is, and two: they’re releasing in October, November and December which is way too close together at the end of the year. I gotta buy Birthday and Christmas gifts for folks.

Anyway, that's all the updates for now. The ZO review should hopefully be out this week, and I have a few smaller things I'm considering putting together after the fact, just nothing set in stone.

Oh, just one more thing. I have a twitter now. Not using it much thus far, but I'll likely be live tweeting watching shows or some such.

Mechanical Violator Hakaider: Hyper Destroyer Edition. (Blu-Ray)

 

Well now, this is quite the odd beast. I’ve reviewed Super Sentai, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, anime, and cartoons. But not really anything like this. Hakaider was a one shot film directed by Keita Amemiya and written by Toshiki Inoue for Toei's '95 Superhero fair, where it was shown alongside the movies for Ohranger and B-fighter. What a strange but fun time that must've been.

The film isn't connected narratively to Kikaider and is more of a reboot or original story that simply uses a character from the series, with the assumption that you already know the basic premise of Kikaider. Although outside of Hakider being an android antagonist, there isn’t much one needs to know going in.


Hakaider was notable on several fronts, the most prominent of which was gaining something of a cult status overseas when it was released in dub form on VHS in 2000 by Tokyo Shock. That version along with the DVD counterpart has long since been out of print and is ridiculously expensive. Thankfully MediaBlasters (which owns Tokyo Shock) managed to get a new transfer and release back in March of this year, which is what I’ll be taking a look at today.

Ultraman Ace Bluray review

1972's Ultraman Ace is a series that is simply full of surprises. Of all of the Ultra series I've covered, Ace is perhaps the one with the most divergences from what came before. The series introduced a lot of then new concepts that are common place today. But while Ace starts off unique for the Ultra series by taking the franchise into uncharted territory, where it heads is ultimately all familiar.

Fittingly, the most immediate of these changes are the protagonists and Ace's hosts. That's right, plural, Ace has two, one a man and the other a woman.