KR Ex-Aid 01 released

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Ratings

Poll ended at Mon Oct 17, 2016 12:38 am

☆☆☆☆☆
15
30%
☆☆☆☆
12
24%
☆☆☆
14
28%
☆☆
3
6%
6
12%
 
Total votes: 50
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KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by takenoko »

Wiki
Next Ep >

Bonus files released:
[*]Commercial pack
[*]Poppy's Room Promo and Poppy's Room 1
[*]Virtual Operations AND UNSUBBED GANBARIZING FOOTAGE UNSUBBED
[*]Gamer Driver 30s CM
[*]Junction 1

Hmmm, it's just the first episode, but it suffers from tone issues which ails a lot of Heisei Rider shows. I feel like I'm being led somewhere, by someone who doesn't know where they want to go. Like take a series like Agito, for example. In Agito, you've got dramatic bits and you've got comedy bits. And you always know how you're supposed to feel in a scene. In Ex-Aid, there's no pretense that there's any sort of drama, it's basically presented as a dumb kid show for dumb kids. It's not that I hate humor, but it can't be nonstop. The bit at the beginning with the trolley and running into Asuna, sure, that's fine since there are no stakes.

But when the boy is at risk of turning into a monster, maybe flip the switch to drama? I mean, we get like 2 seconds of Emu being depressed because he thinks he lost a patient, almost as if the producer were scared of showing any sort of threat/consequence to kids. But then a few minutes later we're just bouncing on blocks, running around with our pink buddy. Slashing away at the monster kid. Hey, Ex-Aid, how do you know that doesn't hurt the kid? I guess building up the world doesn't matter, as long as we get to the special effects.

And I like the special effects. I think they're fitting. But I also don't care about them when compared to the story/drama. I want a good story and would rather have that than watching minutes of your CGI wankery on screen. The tone doesn't work, they don't set it up so you care about the kid. There's more interest placed in Ex-Aid jumping around on CGI blocks and grabbing power ups than telling a story.

To compare to Agito again. I'm surprised to learn that the fight scene in Agito was 8 minutes. Eight minutes on one enemy! Yet it felt a lot more faster than the one in Ex-Aid, because the fighting had me sucked in more. Like the worst thing to ever happen to the Rider series was the addition of the mooks for the Riders to waste time cutting down. Aside from Gokaiger and some choice fight scenes in Sentai, I hate these scenes, because they're so boring to watch. Ex-Aid's fight scene is like 5 minutes, but it feels longer.

The director looks like he eats the flesh of his patients.

I skipped Ghost, but was excited about Ex-Aid because a Rider medical drama is kinda new. Underline the word "drama". Oddly enough, they seemed to get it right with Karino's character. When she's doing doctory stuff, she's serious and on the job. When she goes in the game, she becomes goofy. I just wish they made that distinction with the main character, who's like 99% jokes and maybe 1% serious.

What does CR stand for in Ex-AId? Computer Rescue? Computer Relief? Why are people so excited about Mighty Number 9, I mean, Mighty Action X? It looks worse than Mighty Number 9. How'd that take 5 years to produce?

First episodes are hard to pull off. I guess they set up a world, but I'm going to need some convincing that this will be a place worth visiting. 3 of 5 stars for me.

==Bonuses==
A lot of bonuses this time. Toei is really utilizing Youtube.

Poppy's Room seems fine, but I hope it's not really a weekly thing. Virtual Operations seems like fluff, but at least it's only 4 minutes. Again, hoping this isn't a weekly thing.

I decided not to translate the Ganbarizing stuff because it didn't interest me. But I left it in, in case people wanted to see it. Please don't bother our Twitter and Facebook asking why it's not subbed or if we plan to sub it. Thanks!
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Zychotic »

As it is a first episode, I was a lot more lenient on the rating. It did what the first episode needed to do. It introduced the main character, showed the enemy and had a pretty cool fight to start off with. I am definitely a fan of the gaming theme and I'm interested to see how far they go with it.

I find it pretty cool that Ex-Aid officially has two suit actors, one for the Level 1 costume, then Takaiwa Seiji for the Level 2 suit.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by takenoko »

I think Riders is getting kind of lazy with the intros. Like another show would have to work hard to sell you on the world they're building. I guess they're also aiming for a lower age group nowadays. Just an hour before, we have an anime show that's literally named fart bot on the same channel. I just think that you can make things entertaining for a wide range of ages without pandering to kids. Like I used to say that it was great to watch Japanese kid's shows, because they don't treat their kids like they're fools the way American shows do. But maybe that's kind of flipped around nowadays?
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Phoenix512 »

The sad thing is that Gundam Unicorn RE 0096 was airing in the spot that Fart Bot is on now.

I have not much to say about the first episode. After Pokemon Dance Battle that started off in Gaim, Ex-Aid can go anywhere.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Yaiba »

I don't know, I love this first episode. It caught my attention unlike the previous three years (Ghost, Drive, Gaim). Those show totally lost me in their first episode.

I think comparing it to Agito is unfair. Agito is a dark series, no joke-in-your-face comedy, and had hardy any new forms/gadgets. Kamen Rider has taken a different approach ever since, I don't know, maybe Den-O? They focus more on a younger audience and have ten million forms and gadgets for toys selling. It's a Kamen Rider show, but not the same Kamen Rider show, if that makes any sense. It is the art of balancing between the story drama and toys advertising that will separate a professional writer to an armature writer.

And I am very interested to see how this go.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by takenoko »

I don't think comparing it to Agito is unfair. Agito's a police procedural with some comedy bits. This is a doctor drama with video game bits. Again, I think it's totally up to managing tone. Shouichi is a also a goofy protagonist, but in the first episode he does more than "jokes jokes jokes jokes, because I'm quirky". He acts like a regular fucking dude and then sometimes he lets his goofy side show. And he didn't transform into Agito and go "yahoooo, Imma Mario". I'm not asking the series to be a dark drama. I want it to take itself with a little, teensiest bit of fucking seriousness when appropriate.

But again, it's the first episode. Hopefully it's just one bad episode, and that the appearance of other Doctor Riders will shape up the drama a bit more.

There's a bit of false advertising if you consider the ads are like "Here's George Clooney from ER" and getting "Here's George Clooney from Batman" in the actual show.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by PHurricane »

I was wondering if Takaiwa Seiji was still the primary suit actor. It really is amazing how he can convey totally different characters year after year.

I’m feeling a lot more forgiving of the episode on my second watch-through. My criticism of Rider in recent years isn’t so much that it’s aiming younger or has more of a comedic tilt - mostly it’s the camera effects/visual gags that turn me off, plus the whiplash I get when the writer/director realizes they’ve gotten “too” serious in a scene and throw in nonsense in what I assume is an attempt to lighten things up. Aside from some camera foolery during the cart scene, there wasn’t much of that, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Plus, my first impression of Emu was that he might be accident-prone on a scale we haven’t seen since Ryoutarou. That lends itself to comedy without needlessly throwing it in viewers’ faces. Although I kind of agree with Asuna - intern or not, Emu seems like a terrible doctor, particularly when it came to “treating” Souta.

It took me almost through my second viewing before the name pun of M/Emu clicked. I am disappointed in myself.

The battle was pretty fun. Honestly, I was glad to see the grunts because that initial monster form looked terrible. It reminded me more of old claymation than just bad CGI. It was interesting to see so many of that monster form in the intro’s flashback...or more likely, flash-forward.

I get a Kougami vibe from Director Kagami. That...may not a good thing. On the other hand, I got the feeling that he might be the surgeon that saved Emu as a kid. And the other Rider candidate is also "Kagami-sensei"? Could we be getting some family drama to add to the medical drama?

I was surprised when they revealed at the end of the episode that Asuna is Poppy. From the trailer, I thought we were going to have a Mai/First Woman mystery for a while. I’m not sure if we’re releasing the web extras with the episode, but I highly recommend checking those out. I think I warmed up to Poppy much faster having gotten some insight into her character in that bonus footage.

Hands-down, my favorite part of the episode is still the game footage during the sponsor bumpers. Makes me want to play a Mighty Action X/Ex-Aid video game.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Kurokage X »

I like the episode but it's not without flaws

The flaws: Asuna is really Poppy however you pronounce that last name, puts Bobobo-bo bo-bobo to shame when it comes to tongue twister names for me, killed her sexy factor for me for now anyway, though she is better than Yurusen hate that cat ghost thing. Emu's treatment doesn't go with real doctor treatments but whatever and I hope he's not consistently clumsy because Ryotaro doesn't need to be reincarnated in this series, though I like Ryotaro don't get me wrong. Facial jumps from normal emotion to another emotion bugs me because I'm getting whiplashes from it.

The plus side: Special effects are a treat, Emu/Ex-Aid knows how to be a badass once he becomes a rider and use game knowledge to fight the monster of the week interests me, speaking of which while I'm not entirely on how Emu treats his patients, he has some charm that I didn't seen in Takeru. Minor thing but our human general from the bugsters reminds me of one of my relatives and that's funny for me. While the facial jumps from normal emotion to another emotion give me whiplash, I find it funny too because it reminds me of lag, I hate lag but find it funny done in a show.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by gourdcaptain »

On the Agito comparisons, my first reaction after finishing the show to friends was "I miss early Heisei Rider." I have... no idea how to feel about this show at the moment. It's so out there I can't even evaluate it as good or bad until I see more at the moment, although it's not to my tastes either way. Also, I think on the topic of Agito that this is a show that Kaoru Kino (Another Agito)'s goofy (to me) Dr. Strangelove impression on top of being a doctor would fit perfectly in. :P
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by njb »

5 years ago... two things happened right??? I guess they're connected

While the first ep is OK (I think)... the humor parts are horrible >_<
Oh well, let's see what this show has in store for the next few episodes
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by ViRGE »

Zychotic wrote:As it is a first episode, I was a lot more lenient on the rating. It did what the first episode needed to do. It introduced the main character, showed the enemy and had a pretty cool fight to start off with.
Agreed. It wasn't a fantastic episode, but as an introduction episode it needs to get a certain number of things done, and it did so with style. This is a much stronger opening than Ghost's, which is a promising sign. Even if it was mostly goofy, the whole thing was more consistent and better presented.

Take does have a point though that once the series gets into its groove, it needs to get down to business. As a pilot episode, spending most of the time in goofy mode is fine. But it would begin to get grating if this is the style of a normal episode.

That said, I learned my lesson on making early assumptions from Gaim. Sometimes it's important to first setup status quo in order to break it, and if that's what the writers will do here, then I can put up with a couple of episodes of goofiness. Otherwise for the moment the series has my attention and I'm genuinely looking forward to the next episode for the first time since the middle of Ghost.

As for the theme of this series, everything about this is weird right now. Having two gaming-themed Toei Toku shows running back-to-back is weird. Ex-Aid level 2's style still looks weird. And level 1 is just ridiculous. I really hope we quickly get past using that. Otherwise the transformation sequence is better than Ghost's, but I want to see what the shorter version will be like. It still seems a bit plain outside of the background elements. (Side note: the light-up eyes never stop being awesome!)

I admittedly do have a little lot of nostalgia for 8/16-bit games, so I would be lying if I said the theme doesn't interest me. Still, I want to see how far they do (or don't) take it. This could go very well, or it could go very poorly. It depends on what Bandai is cooking up and how the writers work with it. This episode was CGI-heavy, so what are things going to look like when an episode is more grounded in practical action?

Meanwhile, Ex-Aid is Megaman X; my god is he Megaman X. I wonder if the writers gave Capcom a courtesy notification that they were going to make a live-action Megaman TV show? :shock:

Finally, while they didn't use it for the actual opening, the OP, Excite, is every bit as rockin' as I hoped it would be after we got a teaser of it from the previews. This is the best OP since Fourze, without a doubt.:)
takenoko wrote:I guess they're also aiming for a lower age group nowadays. Just an hour before, we have an anime show that's literally named fart bot on the same channel.
Wait, what?! Explain. :?:
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by tr0jance »

Imma like this series!
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by resop2 »

My thoughts:

I wasn't a big 8-bit gaming fan so I spent the whole time thinking "Wow, I don't think I am this show's target audience".

There is already a mysterious virtual/real girl on Youtube called Poppy.

A poop monster?

I'm a Kool Kool Kool Kool (ex) Aid Kamen Rider!
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Phoenix512 »

ViRGE wrote:
takenoko wrote:I guess they're also aiming for a lower age group nowadays. Just an hour before, we have an anime show that's literally named fart bot on the same channel.
Wait, what?! Explain. :?:
He's referring to this show.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/heybot

It's really dumb.
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Re: KR Ex-Aid 01 released

Post by Uzur9 »

Blowing on the cart XD Classic. After finish this Ep. it kinda put me in the mood to play some NES.

resop2 wrote:A poop monster?
Thought it was giant meatballs myself.
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