Garo Hagane 12 released

[takenoko]

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Last week's average rating: 4 (5 votes)

I love everyone reacting to the shaking in unison

I don't think I've seen a toku villain that could be more immobile. And I've seen Go-Onger RObo G12

Where's Koyori during this part? Oh there she is. What a fancy hair thing she has

Suddenly Garo and Souma are fighting the space queen

lol, the faces she makes. What a good sport

How'd Souma get free?

Back in the black suit

I'm shocked. Shocked that the thing Souma's dad told Ryuuga about is the key to beating this boss. That's so weird, I was so sure that Ryuuga was going to turn his armor into darkness, and then Souma would absorb that to turn it back into light using his dad's technique. I didn't think Ryuuga would just use the dark blade to kill Mutsugi

Wait, is this place big enough for there to be boulders to be behind? lol. That stage looked pretty darn small

Souma, time to fulfill your character arc

Ryuuga with the aggressive shoulder grab lol

Ohhhh. Wait what? I was wondering why they were setting up Souma to do the technique, since Ryuuga could just do it himself...

Wait, what? Why did Souma just take Igus's sword out of the grave? How was he carrying it? Was he using that the whole time, if so, where's his normal sword?

Wait, can Makai Knights just reset their timer/armor purification by using another knight's sword/armor? I feel like this raises so many questions about how all this works

What. That's not Igus's armor. Igus had red eyes and those eyes are orange. Also the orange ball and orange thing on the groin are new. Just checked, they all have the ball and the tassals, but most shots previously were torso and higher so they weren't obvious before. But yeah, Igus is red, so the armor turned orange for garo

Finally, a steel knight uses their grappling hook backpack. Wait, didn't Garo Shou always have the ability to do the grapple hook too? Isn't that part of the flight part of Shou?

How nice for Souma, he has a new dad in Ryuuga

Souma still looks like an asshole even when concentratnging lol. Why didn't Souma take the Zango armor so that Garo could be in the steel armor alone?

Rip the Gate of Destruction, I've seen bigger gates. I don't tthink Messiah could fit through such a small gate

Of course Souma fell on his face whiel Ryuuga lands like the main protagonist he is. My favorite part of Souma is that he's kind of a perpetual fuck up

Three force ghosts for Souma. What was that look? Mutsugi is Souma's mom, right? Just conservation of detail

Is the Gate of Destruction supposed to just be the moon? Sure looks like the moon in that shot

Bye Ron and Obi. You guys just stood by and hung out with the civilians while Ryuuga and Souma did all the fighting

Please let someone from a previous Ryuuga series show up here

Wow, this ending sequence is fucking wild. Well done!

Wow, even fucking Shippu and Reppu get a credit here lol

I mean... I guess Ryuuga looking at a Rian thing (I'm guessing her hair thing?) is better than nothing. But you could have just paid Rian's actress to show up for like 5 seconds too, since she was on the set...

Overall, I'm left feeling more positive than anything else about this series. It's clearly a series made on a budget, with limited guests, regular characters, special effects, and focusing more on this small town of Knights and Priests than anything else. Despite it's padding problem, it's surprisingly solid in terms of writing. It had some great monster designs (that admittedly wre used up the first 2-3 weeks)

I like that Souma starts off as a stunted asshole who gets better over time. He's never quite heroic enough to earn his father's armor, but maybe he will over time. It feels like every Garo series is about someone working out their daddy issues, but this one felt particularly thoughtful?

The scenes of Ryuuga hanging out with Souma's dad was cool. I thought Mutsugi's villain turn was believable in a way that a lot of toku are kind of lazy about writingwise. And when she does go full villainess she's a lot of fun, so it's good she can play both parts equally well

Not to beat a dead horse, but the down side is all tied to the budget. The long recaps and lengthy repeated scenes after the commercial break. We probably could have used one or two normal monster battles to show case the three knights (who only transform once in this series, I think?) Probably would have cut down on Ryuuga and Souma playing tag with Raul the forest trickster

I'm not sure how to fix the pacing problem with the Horrors, since old time viewers are used to a monster of the week time frame. So it'd probably have made more sense to start it off slower or more story focused up front, then have the Horror attacks up in frequency to show the deteoriarting effect the Gate of Destruction had on the town

And Gaera was the last real Horror fight we had. She was a real boss with a cool mechanic, but she was placed at the mid boss time frame of episode 7. Then we don't really get another fight till 11-12. So the back half is filled with story and character stuff, which isn't bad, but it needed to be meted out better since that's the last half of your series

I really wonder what the cursed statue at the top of Creacity is supposed to be

Edit
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5F7TeOLDP1/
A post from Oshino Sara talking about her role as the seductress

She thanked everyone for the big response, talks about how people love Garo. She mentions not really playing a "heel" before, which is a wrestler term for the villain

"刺激的でした"
It was really thrilling

[takenoko]

https://pastebin.com/1FXnmGVM

00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:35,090 RYUGA slashed the HORROR.

I shoot the darkness!

00:12:25,730 --> 00:12:29,890 RYUGA, you need to be purified before you can wear the armor.

Ryuuga needs a baptizing?

00:14:56,030 --> 00:14:57,940 Get over it, SOUMA.

Finally, Souma gets a talking to!

00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:05,190 I have to purify GARO's armor as soon as possible.

Here the AI recognizes it's the armor that must be purified, not Ryuuga. Weird

00:19:06,420 --> 00:19:12,310 Besides, there are a splendid Makai Priests and three swordsmen here.

Oh Ryuuga, I have some bad news about that first part...

00:19:59,120 --> 00:20:03,010 Because we are all heirs of HAGANE.
00:20:15,620 --> 00:20:20,000 GARO：Heir To Steel Armor .

Right next to each other lol

00:21:17,570 --> 00:21:19,400 KOUHEI MATSUOKA as Zygarus.

Huh. Almost Zagreus (ザグレウス) from Greek myth but not quite, since it's ジガルス here. Doesn't appear like Zygarus is referring to anything real

Oops, looks like the I credited Barano Yuuya as Harano Yuuya

[Yaiba]

I like the story, the writing is straightforward and solid. I enjoyed it overall.

But it's padded way to long by all the recaps. I got so annoyed during the recaps. Was it originally planned to be a shorter series and the higher-ups demanded to stretched it up to 12 episodes

A new ending song. We previously only heard it on the sponsor screen.

That's why they made the black suit instead of just CG it, because they intended to actually fight in it.

Interesting that they put Ryuuga's armor status back to where he originally started way back.

Souma had a large hammerspace to be storing 2 swords in there. I'm kind of glad he didn't use the Zango armor, that would be too big of a leap of character development for that moment.

They credited the suit actors to the characters, that's proper respect. In most toku shows they just put all the names in a big paragraph and you have to guess who played what by the order they're listed. I thought the Horrors, Shippuu and Reppuu were just played by the knights' suit actors, I'm surprised that they had different suit actors for them.

[Mxylv]

That was a good ending. It was certainly satisfying and had everything one could ask for, though it never felt like it went beyond that. Not sure why I want any more; maybe it's just disappointment at no one else showing up? Anyway, I appreciate the amount of screen time the armor gets this time around. Ryuuga using Hagane armor helps complete the motif that a knight's armor doesn't really make a difference (thematically, anyway, if not quite literally). Also complete is the light/darkness duality motif; I'm still not sure what to think here, since I still have no idea what darkness is in this world--inga? Evil? Forbidden fruit juice?--but that's a question for another show.

a) I'm shocked. Shocked that the thing Souma's dad told Ryuuga about is the key to beating this boss. That's so weird, I was so sure that Ryuuga was going to turn his armor into darkness, and then Souma would absorb that to turn it back into light using his dad's technique. I didn't think Ryuuga would just use the dark blade to kill Mutsugi
b) Of course Souma fell on his face whiel Ryuuga lands like the main protagonist he is. My favorite part of Souma is that he's kind of a perpetual fuck up
c) I mean... I guess Ryuuga looking at a Rian thing (I'm guessing her hair thing?) is better than nothing. But you could have just paid Rian's actress to show up for like 5 seconds too, since she was on the set...

a) I was also unsure about that; if Garo was in contact with an extreme amount of darkness and the standard Sword Flash Dance converts darkness to light, wouldn't the normal one be highly preferable?
b) Maybe it's just because of the Easter season, but Souma does feel like the biblical Peter--he wants his heart to be in the right place, but the man can't stop failing to save his life.
c) If nothing else, I'm glad the look on his face implied she didn't die offscreen. That said, something like Rian and a four-year-old kid running over would've brought a tear to many a fan's eye

They credited the suit actors to the characters, that's proper respect.

Much agreed; acting and stuntwork is already hard when you've got a face and full vision/motion range to work with, and those guys often have neither

[Kurow]

Rushed episode... its sad to see it end and that it did not lived the expectations but it is what it is.

I will save my final opinion for the overall series section.

[Saejima Kouga]

Is the armor/wearer cleansing a thing with Ryuga only? I remember Kouga’s sword would be purified often in the first season, which would give us the cool little blades from whatever residual entity was left on the sword from the horror of the night. This is another detail seemingly dropped after season 1. But I don’t recall his armor or person needing cleansed.

After Amon, Jabi, Rekka, Rian, Ryume… Mutsugi was uninteresting and unimpressive even as a horror.