Kamen Rider Take Two: Kamen Rider W (Final Thoughts)

Back again with another look at Kamen Rider. This time I'm watching Kamen Rider W (read as "Kamen Rider Double"). I'm not going to be updating every five episodes this time. I'll only post when I find something worth talking about.

So here's my summary are my initial impression.

Kamen Rider W takes place Futo also know as the Windy City, and follows two detectives; Shotaro Hidari and Philip (there's also a girl who's job it is to be annoying and have everything explained to her). Shotaro Hidari is a "hard-boiled" detective (or at least he tries really hard to be) with a nice collection of sweet hats, and Philip is an amnesiac with all the world's knowledge in his head (though he can only access so much of it at a time). Together they can combine to form Kamen Rider Double. They specialize in crimes involving Dopan. Dopan are humans who use flash drive like devices called Gaia Memories to turn into powerful monsters. Double's whole gimmick is that he uses six different Gaia Memories two at a time (with 9 combinations total) to combine powers. For instance, he (or they, rather) can combine Heat (a fire Gaia Memory) and Trigger (a gun Gaia Memory) to shoot powerful fire blasts.

W is a strange blend mystery, wacky comedy, and action, and it works pretty well thus far.

I really like Double's suit design (it get bonus points for having an awesome scarf).

The soundtrack is great.

W has something Kabuto lacked, good reoccurring villains.

The effects range from "okay" to insanely cheesy looking.

So, six episode in, and I'm having a lot of fun with this.

One of the episodes had a literal break dance battle.

...I love this show!

Okay, 16 episodes in and I f*cking love this show (earlier I said I loved it, now I f*cking love it)!

This show alienates between being being f*cking hilarious, crazy awesome, and a little moving at times. It's just all around fun. This is possibly the single greatest live action show I've ever seen, and I'm not even half-way done.

Oh, I also saw the movie which serves a prequel to W and a finale to the previous series Decade. All I can say is that Kamen Rider Skull (aka the most awesome looking Kamen Rider ever!) was tragically underused.

20 episodes in and this show continues to be awesome. We get some more dramatic stuff, but it works really well.

And we get a new rider, Accel. He's kind of a dick, and his suit design is stupid, but I can forgive that because he carries around a sword so heavy it can cut through a car (yes, not because it's extremely sharp, but because it's so heavy it actually crushes through it) and the fact that he can turn into a fucking motorcycle.

I do so love this show.

32 episodes in. This show is still awesome. Scary as f*ck villain shows up, a shadowy ally shows up, and a f*ck ton of tiny robot animals show up.

Also, W-Extream appears. And he is most awesome.

I just watched the movie *takes a deep breath* Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z the Gaia Memories of Fate (that's a mouthful), and it was awesome!

The action in it was soooo good. Sure it had it's fair share of problems; the driver showing up out of no where, OOOs showing up of no where, Double's final power showing up of no where, the fact that this was filmed in 3D (and it shows), the story isn't as good as your average episodes, but damn it, those action scenes kicked major amounts of ass!

This show is awesome. Plain and simple. I fucking loved every moment of it. The characters are fun and interesting, the story makes you run a full gambit of emotions, the action scenes are awesome, the comedy is hysterical, the suit designs are great, and the whole series is just a blast.

I highly recommend to this to anyone with even the most remote interest in toku. If you're reading this, stop right now and watch this show. Right now. Go!