Recently Watched Shows

[lhb412]

The fact that many of these '70s shows have shorter episode counts makes me pretty excited.

[lhb412]

Kamen Rider V3 opens especially strong. Love the two-parters; made me get myself up just 10-15 minutes earlier so I could be sure to get two episodes in before work. Problem is, after the first dozen or so episodes we get to the point where sometimes they're two-parters and sometimes they're not and that's throwing me off!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ If you want to plan accordingly, the only episodes of Kamen Rider V3 that aren't part of a two-parter are episodes 13, 16, 19, 22, 23, 24, everything from 31 to 42, and then 49 and 50.

Have you watched any of the Marvel Studios shows made for Disney+ post-Avengers: Endgame? I'm still getting caught up. The last one I posted about was Moon Knight more than a year ago and I've just recently watched the second season of Loki. I have to say, for all the (often justified) critic complaints that the MCU movies stick to formulas or that they're built around VFX-heavy action sequences, Marvel really has taken full advantage of using these limited series and one-off specials to explore different characters, new types of stories and things that they haven't done before.

Ms. Marvel is a six-episode family drama adventure centered around Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Avengers superfan of Pakistani descent who gains energy-harnessing superpowers from a mysterious old bangle handed down through her family. The Department of Damage Control, first introduced in Spider-Man: Homecoming, actively investigates new superpowered individuals and brings the unfriendly scrutiny of the feds to Kamala's community in Jersey City. I was surprised by how unflinchingly this show takes a hard look at the 1947 partition of British India into India and Pakistan, with all of the family devastation entailed by that forced relocation of entire ethnic populations. Iman Vellani carries the series as Kamala but Saagar Shaikh as her older brother Aamir steals any scene in which he appears.

She Hulk: Attorney At Law is a nine-episode legal comedy series, and as the title indicates, it is very tonally similar to Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law and other satirical Adult Swim cartoons like The Venture Bros. and Sealab 2021. As a fan of both Adult Swim and the MCU since each of them began, I can't believe that a live-action series like this exists as an actual MCU production but I'm all for it. This show is great! Tatiana Maslany is perfect as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, the supporting cast is strong and there are plenty of fun guest stars throughout. Mark Ruffalo returns so we can catch up with Bruce Banner after the events of Avengers: Endgame, as a traffic accident ends with his cousin Jennifer getting his gamma-irradiated blood into her own system and transforming into She-Hulk. Some other memorable guest stars are Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky / Abomination, reprising his role from the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk for the first time; Benedict Wong as Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme who has to answer for teleporting Blonsky out of prison to the fight club as depicted in Shang-Chi; Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock / Daredevil, reprising his role from the Netflix series and now wearing the classic yellow suit; and Patty Guggenheim as Madisynn, a woman who drunkenly recalls in detail being sent to another dimension and making a bargain with a demon in order to be sent home.

Werewolf By Night is a Halloween special that runs under an hour and it is delightful. It's a total tribute to classic Universal Pictures horror, complete with a black-and-white palette and practical effects. It's the directorial debut of composer Michael Giacchino and it includes some fun surprises.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special likewise is a terrific standalone story running under an hour that will be great to rewatch every Christmas. It's set after Thor: Love & Thunder and before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Drax and Mantis are the main players here and it introduces Cosmo the Space Dog as a new member of the team, voiced by Maria Bakalova.

Secret Invasion is a six-episode sci-fi espionage thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, serving primarily as a spinoff of Captain Marvel as well as a follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame. Lord, the discourse from Marvel fans on Reddit and elsewhere is that this series is just the worst thing ever, which is a tremendously silly overreaction to a solidly good spy caper with shapeshifting aliens that devotes far more to character development than fan service cameos or lore-building. We see a whole different side of Fury and learn things about him that he kept firmly under wraps in all of the movies before this. Jackson and Mendelsohn shine as the leads, as do Emilia Clarke as Talos' daugther G'iah, Olivia Colman as MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth (a demented Mary Poppins), Kingsley Ben-Adir as the villain Gravik and Charlayne Woodard as an old acquaintance of Fury.

Loki, though? Oh man, Loki is magnificent. I admit I was skeptical of giving the character a spinoff series after his noble death in Avengers: Infinity War and I certainly didn't expect this show to be one of the best things Marvel Studios would ever produce but it absolutely is. The first season was already fantastic, and not only is the second season even better, it actually enhances the first season and brings the whole series full circle into a 12-part masterwork. Without going into details, because everything is revealed brilliantly, this show follows the variant of Loki depicted in Avengers: Endgame who escaped captivity with the Tesseract at the end of his 2012 invasion of New York as a result of the Avengers' time-traveling shenanigans. That Loki, who strayed far away from the established path of the timeline depicted in the movies, quickly gets apprehended by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), the time-hopping police force who were also depicted in last year's film Deadpool & Wolverine (which I haven't seen yet). Through time-travel, alternate timelines and introducing different variants of Loki, this series explores the character so profoundly as he goes through one of the most riveting and meaningful journeys of any character in the MCU yet. It's amazing. Tom Hiddleston and the entire cast and crew are at the top of their game. This is Marvel at its best.

[lhb412]

^ I'm afraid I've almost entirely checked out of the MCU, but I should really make time for Werewolf By Night, as it's right in my wheelhouse and, yes, I've been spoiled as to what major Marvel monster appears in it alongside the titular werewolf. Wonder if Giacchino's remake of THEM! is still in production? I believe this project was a kind of proof-of-concept of his directorial abilities.

I should also make time for the Guardians special and the third film! Superman is the only cape film I'm really interested in seeing this year, so I should at least put a bow on Gunn's Marvel output.

Thanks for the list of V3 single episodes! I'm about to get to the Doctor G's final two-parter, then it looks like singles for a while. I'll plan accordingly!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ The last update that Giacchino provided on his THEM! remake was in an interview with TheWrap last May. He said the script was still being written, after previously telling Collider in October 2023 that they were just then closing a deal with a screenwriter after the WGA strike ended that year. He told TheWrap how seeing this project through as director is such a longer process compared to knocking out one film score after another but he's still able to keep scoring other movies while the script for THEM! is coming together. His music really punctuates the new teaser for The Fantastic 4: First Steps, especially when the choir chants "FAN-TAS-TIC FOOOOOUR!" as the title appears!

I totally feel you about the MCU. I haven't been keeping up with it since the turn of the decade. The first Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk both opened in the summer of 2008 at the end of my freshman year of college, and from then through the year 2019, the only MCU film that I didn't catch in a theater was the first Thor. Heck, to this day the only two movies that I've ever seen in 3-D have been the first Doctor Strange and the second Guardians. I did a good job of keeping up with the MCU movies back then, and I never watched any of the shows that aired on ABC or other networks but I did watch all of the shows that were made for Netflix. Then in this decade, the prospect of covid has kept me almost entirely away from movie theaters because my lady is immunocompromised, and we've always watched MCU movies for the first time together so now I'm always waiting until she's ready to watch the next film or show on Disney+. I don't mind that at all because I've got no shortage of other things to watch but that's why I haven't kept pace with the MCU like I did before. We did keep up with the shows that debuted in 2021 but we quickly fell behind on the movies and then everything since 2022, and since Marvel has produced more content than they did before between the films and the Disney+ shows, it's taking us that much longer to catch up. Now it's 2025 and we haven't even finished everything from 2023 yet!

Guardians Vol. 3 is every bit as good as the first two, definitely worth watching. If you ever do give any of the MCU shows on Disney+ a shot, Loki really is the best of them and WandaVision is a very close second.

[lhb412]

Kamen Rider V3

Continuing directly from the original Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider V3 has a new evil organization, Destron, pop up to menace the original Double Riders. When Shiro Kazami's family is killed by Destron he asks Riders #1 and #2 to make him into a fellow cyborg to avenge their deaths, they refuse, but once he's mortally wounded they capitulate. When the Double Riders are presumably killed (don't worry, they get better) Shiro must take their place atop older mentor Tobee Tachibana's support network of Kamen Rider helpers and assistants (mostly kids) stopping Destron's evil schemes and army of evil monsters, fighting as Kamen Rider V3.

V3, as the very first Kamen Rider sequel series, has a distinct advantage over its predecessor: Kamen Rider had to experiment and reboot itself over the course of its run, sometimes out of necessity, but after two years the production knew what the show was, Kamen Rider had an identity, so Kamen Rider V3 really hits the ground running as a perfected version of the concept. Not that Kamen Rider V3 stays exactly the same throughout its run. I was especially fond of the format of the first dozen or so episodes, which are all two-parters (complete with cliffhanger) where Destron's plot would involve two different new monsters who V3 would challenge concurrently, which is very fun because you don't know which will get got first and which'll be the final boss. The plot would also hinge on V3 discovering some previously unknown power his cyborg body has (Riders #1 and #2 left without giving him a manual). I was disappointed to see this format abandoned, as a more traditional monster-of-the-week format is soon adopted, but I understand that this was in itself a highly restrictive format that might've be difficult to adhere to over time, and might've become repetitious in its own way... but I still really dug it when they did it!

By this point the staff at Toei had gotten great at turning out a weekly series of cyborg on monster action, but you can't rely only on that. A series like this has to have a charismatic lead to hang everything else atop, and they lucked out with Hiroshi Miyauchi, who plays Shiro with an extraordinary intensity and sincerity. I mean, this is a show that's largely a vehicle for guys in colorful costumes walloping each other with expository bits in between, so being able to project this level of interiority is amazing. He could've been a major movie star, but instead he became a tokusatsu icon, playing major roles in several hero shows to follow. He's excellent in stunt performing, apparently making management nervous with his willingness to make things look extra dangerous. I mean, we live in an age of CGI and wire and harness and net removal, so it can take you a moment to clock that all these performers (many in cumbersome rubber costumes) are fighting along the edges of cliffs or partially constructed buildings or some other edifice, but even with this common vertigo-inducing spectacle nothing makes me as nervous as Miyauchi's go-to transformation into V3, which involves him standing on top of his moving motorcycle to strike a pose. Yikes!

Something I've noticed with these tokusatsu shows with year-long runs is they sometimes run out of steam or even change dramatically due to audience reaction or the production being stretched thin. That never fully happens here, but by the midway point I felt a bit of slippage as the series' sharp edges feel like they're sanded off a bit. The Rider Kids Corp, the network of child Rider fans who act as the hero's informants and support (i.e. a self-insert of the kids watching the show) become heavily emphasized and the series feels a bit softer. The original Kamen Rider series had Taki, a non-superpowered special agent sidekick memorably played by Jiro (brother of Sonny) Chiba. Briefly, they try giving V3 an interpol agent sidekick and this kid just pales in comparison to Taki to the extent I almost felt bad for this actor! I'm not sure if the idea was to make this series a bit friendlier and more similar to the previous series but these reversions towards the mean don't last, and by the final third or so the episodes regain the kind of dramatic edge that characterized the earlier ones and Miyauchi's performance as Shiro resumes it's prominence. This sets up V3's most iconic and influential storyline, the Riderman arc, which is the last 10 episodes.

Riderman is Destron scientist who's betrayed by the organization and makes himself into an erstaz Kamen Rider to fight against them, but he's conflicted as he grew up within the organization, a true believer. This conflicted character and the initial friction between Riderman and V3 before giving way to friendship and loyalty is exactly the right kind of complication and added complexity to take a show like this (remind you: a series about guys in colorful costumes clobbering each other) and really take it over the top, and this ended up being prototype for many Toei heroes and antiheroes going forward. Takehisa Yamaguchi is great selling Riderman's inner turmoil, but it's Miyauchi who really shines as the interaction between the two gives him a chance to, we'll, act more and not just look cool and brood (he can, and does, do it all!).

Although I find the climax of the final episode a bit slapdash, the overall momentum of the final arc is very satisfying, and the series leaves me with a feeling of excitement about seeing more of these '70s Toei hero shows, both Rider and non-Rider alike, which it seems boutique home video label Discotek Media are intent on releasing over here. We've come a long way from the smattering of poor quality bootleg tapes I had as a kid!

PS - not included on Discotek's Blu-ray is a "movie" (really a slightly longer episode originally presented theatrically) that is up in gorgeous HD with subs on Toei's official YouTube channel. Seeing the production on vibrantly colored 35mm film instead of the somewhat crunchy and washed-out 16mm of the series really hammers home just how beautiful these objects are, especially the V3 costume itself! Seeing that red and green costume flip through the air with the clear blue sky in the background... well, I wasn't expecting to have my breath taken away, but that's how I reacted!

[lhb412]

... and now back to Ultraman Mebius and those loveable kids in Crew GUYS.

[Benjamin Haines]

Yes! Kamen Rider V3 is fantastic! It really is a perfected version of the original show's concept, kind of like what Return of Ultraman was to the original Ultraman. Hiroshi Miyauchi carries this series.

Kamen Rider X and Kamen Rider Amazon aren't as good as V3 but they're both really good too. I haven't watched the rest of the Showa-era Kamen Rider shows yet. Android Kikaida is another '70s highlight so it's great that Discotek is releasing it later this year. If you want to check out any '70s tokusatsu with no home media release in sight, Toei's Spider-Man is awesome and so is the original Himitsu Sentai Goranger.

[lhb412]

Very excited about seeing Kikaider, and I'm generally excited that a lot of these '70s Toei shows have slightly shorter episodes counts! I hope Discotek gets Inazuman and Zubat.

I actually watched quite a few Spider-Man episodes back when Marvel hosted them in their own site!

[lhb412]

Ultraman Mebius

This is such a sweet and sincere show.

The selling point is that this goes back to the original continuity of Ultraman shows made from 1966-1980. Practically every episode follows up on something from the classic shows, either in general (the basic setup of a junior Ultraman being sent to Earth to come of age is taken from Ultraman Taro) or in specific (a famous Return of Ultraman episode gets a direct sequel, the abandoned school storyline from Ultraman 80 is wrapped up).

... but, honestly, who cares? Sure, I can pick out all the references to Ultraman Ace, but fanservice is cheap fuel. Ultraman Mebius is delightful because the characters are delightful. I'll let you in on a secret; Ultraman isn't a series about a giant superhero who fights giant monsters, it's a series about an investigation/defense team that deals with a new weird thing every episode. Sure, one of the team turns into Ultraman at the end of the episode, but that's not the majority of what you're getting. The team here, Crew GUYS, is the most adorable collection of dorks to ever weild sci-fi laser pistols. We've got the quiet, coffee sipping captain; the hothead; the soccer pro who played in South America so he punctuates his Japanese with "amigo;" the motorcycle racer; the preschool teacher; the nerd who knows all the monsters names already; and then there's Mirai, Ultraman Mebius in human form who's sweet and naive and he just knows nothing about anything, making him one of the most clockable "alien disguised as a human" in history! Occasionally Ultramen from the classic shows arrive and give characters pep talks.

Series is episodic but has mini-arcs as well as an overall series arc that is seeded throughout. New monsters have that '90s/'00s aesthetic but the classic ones are meticulously recreated and retro. This was made in the standard definition era, so unfortunately it'll never look as good as the classic series which style it apes (all shot on film, natch).

It's a very satisfying, fun series. Sure, being an Ultra-expert will enhance your viewing, but a 7 year old kid who's never heard of Ultraman can get it. The barrier to entry is not that steep.

Some extra spoiler-y observations:

- Love that the captain has two great "reveals" in the story and they both hit (and Kenji Sahara!)
- Some real storytelling confidence in the end there with Serizawa allowing himself to "die" by transferring Ultraman Hikari to Ryu (who was about to be killed). It happens quickly and the fact that Ultra/human fusion is always vague makes me think if they tried to explain in just a little more it wouldn't work.

[Benjamin Haines]

Ultraman Mebius is the whole package. It has one of the best ensemble casts of any Ultra series, it builds on the lore of all the Showa-era Ultra shows as a 25-years-later legacy sequel, and it builds its own lore with memorable story sagas and character arcs. And the tie-in movie rocks!

I like how Mirai is Mebius in human form instead of a human who merges with Mebius. UltraSeven set the standard for that approach with Dan being Seven disguised as a human, including the episode that reveals why Seven took that particular form. The Mebius episodes that explore how he came to take the form of Mirai are gripping, creative and poignant.

Gaia is still my favorite of the '90s-'00s Ultra shows but after that I'd say it's a dead heat between Tiga, Dyna and Mebius.

[lhb412]

^ It's a bit bittersweet reaching the end of Mebius, because it's the capper at the end of a decade of material where the Ultra series was operating at such a high level. I mean, I think Tsuburaya is doing pretty good now, but that 1996-2006 era was just them knocking out heater after heater. Despite Mebius going back to the Showa continuity, it contains all the storytelling innovations that they cracked in that previous decade and does them all well.

I do have all the spinoff specials to watch, but I want to wait a while to give finale room to breathe in my mind.

Love Gaia. Gaia, Nexus, and Max were all shows that had me glued to my laptop when they popped up on Crunchyroll a decade ago, and now that I own the Mill Creek releases it's high time I rewatch them. Speaking of which; I realize I still have a solid chunk of that initial Mill Creek deal that I purchased but have not seen yet: Cosmos, Neos, Ultraseven X, Mega Monster Battle...

Been watching Space Sheriff Sharivan, finished the first disc. I think as a production it might be slicker than Gavan, but unfortunately it misses the extraordinary star charisma of Kenji Ohba. No offense to this actor, but how can you compete!?

Maybe I'll knock out some of the shorter shows I've been meaning to get to before the end of next month when the the next round of Discotek's toku offerings is released (I'm pretty excited for those).

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I'd include UltraSeven X from 2007 as the tail end of TPC's turn-of-the-century hot streak. It's a great show, along the same lines as Ultraman Nexus with an even stronger emphasis on human drama and a government conspiracy mystery. However, unlike the heavily serialized Nexus, the stories of UltraSeven X are mostly episodic and self-contained while the main character's journey gradually develops over the show's 12 episodes, more like the other Heisei-era Ultraman shows. Whereas Nexus was originally meant to air in primetime targeting general audiences before being relegated to the usual Saturday morning time slot typical of kids shows, UltraSeven X got to break new ground by airing late at night after 2 AM for adult viewers, so it also has some more graphic onscreen violence than other Ultra shows.

I've watched all 13 episodes of Ultra Galaxy: Mega Monster Battle from 2007-2008 and I can't say that it maintained that quality streak. I haven't yet watched the 13-episode follow-up series Never-Ending Odyssey, nor the 2009 Ultra Galaxy film, but that initial UG:MMB series is about as cheap and generic as can be. This show didn't even air on TV originally as it was made for pay-per-view, and the result is a visibly low-budget production that leans hard on green screen, with all of the monster action set on a barren planet. The concept of an action-oriented Ultra series centered around the kaiju is interesting but the half-baked plot and the obvious promotional nature of the show make it feel more like the old Ultra Fight shorts than anything else.

[lhb412]

^ Would you say I can go straight into the Ultra Galaxy movie (i.e. the first Ultraman Zero film) without having seen the series?

My idea of getting in a few short shows before the next round of Toku Time releases has been thrown into question by the Media OCD score getting me my preorders of Kikaider and Janperson (plus Winspector) over a month early!

In addition to that being really cool, it seems by total coincidence I'm really geographically close to Media OCD's warehouse? This package started at my local post office before going to the central USPS hub midstate than heading back to me, a process that took 2 days. I suppose I'll get orders from there quicker than anybody. I wonder where it is?

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I'm not sure because I haven't yet watched that 2009 Ultra Galaxy movie, so I don't know how much continuity matters there. I still haven't even watched the 2008-2009 series Ultra Galaxy: Mega Monster Battle - Never-Ending Odyssey. I found that first 2007-2008 series to be such a slog to get through in the early part of last year, and then I ended up fostering a bunch of stray kittens for five months last year which put a pause on all of my toku series watching, and I just haven't picked it back up and watched any more new-to-me Ultra content since then.

If you're looking for a short series that you can watch relatively quickly, I'd say go for UltraSeven X. It's a great show that's only 12 episodes and it's not connected to any of the Ultraman Mebius or Ultra Galaxy content released around it.

I'm trying to watch everything Mebius or Ultra Galaxy in release order, so I can then proceed to watch every Ultraman series and movie released since then in sequence. This was the release order:

• Ultraman Mebius, Episodes 1 - 12 (aired 4/8/2006 - 6/24/2006)
• Hikari Saga 1 (side story posted online 6/30/2006)
• Ultraman Mebius, Episodes 13 - 18 (aired 7/1/2006 - 8/5/2006)
• Hikari Saga 2 (side story posted online 8/7/2006)
• Ultraman Mebius, Episodes 19 - 23 (aired 8/12/2006 - 9/9/2006)
• Ultraman Mebius & The Ultra Brothers (movie released in theaters 9/16/2006)
• Ultraman Mebius, Episodes 24 - 33 (aired 9/16/2006 - 11/18/2006)
• Hikari Saga 3 (side story posted online 11/20/2006)
• Ultraman Mebius, Episodes 34 - 50 (aired 11/25/2006 - 3/31/2007)
• Ultra Galaxy: Mega Monster Battle (13 episodes aired 12/1/2007 - 2/23/2008) ← This is currently as far as I've watched.
• Armored Darkness 1 (side story released on DVD 7/25/2008)
• Armored Darkness 2 (side story released on DVD 8/22/2008)
• Superior 8 Ultra Brothers (movie released in theaters 9/13/2008)
• Ultra Galaxy: Mega Monster Battle - Never-Ending Odyssey (13 episodes aired 12/20/2008 - 3/14/2009)
• Ghost Rebirth 1 (side story released on DVD 11/25/2009)
• Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends - The Movie (released in theaters 12/12/2009)
• Ghost Rebirth 2 (side story released on DVD 12/22/2009)
• Ultraman Zero vs. Darklops Zero 1 (side story released on DVD 11/26/2010)
• Ultraman Zero vs. Darklops Zero 2 (side story released on DVD 12/22/2010)
• Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial (movie released in theaters 12/23/2010)
• Killer the Beatstar 1 (side story released on DVD 11/25/2011)
• Killer the Beatstar 2 (side story released on DVD 12/22/2011)
• Ultraman Saga (movie released in theaters 3/24/2012)