Kamen Rider Faiz
Sep. 27th, 2011 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cypsiman2Open your eyes for the next Faiz
Kamen Rider Faiz is a very dark series. It is the story of two forced into a world neither is equipped to deal with; Yuji Kiba's life is going very well until he gets into a car accident, falls into a coma, dies, and then comes back only to find that everything, including the girl he loves, has been stolen from him by selfish relatives and supposed friends. It is at that time that he transforms into an Orphenoc, a monster described as being "an evolved human", and then kills the friend who'd stolen his girl from him. Meanwhile, a young woman named Mari is being pursued by another Orphenoc who is after the Faiz Gear that her father had sent to her, and in desperation she forces lone wanderer Takumi Inui, who was after her for having taken his bag by mistake, to wear the belt and become Kamen Rider Faiz. In their human identities, Takumi and Yuji become friends, but as Rider and Orphenoc they are bitter enemies. And behind it all is the mysterious Smart Brain corporation which seeks to control the Orphenocs for their own sinister designs.
The monster designs and the fight scenes are for the most part very good; the former have a uniform color scheme of either bone-white or ash-grey, emphasizing their deathly nature and yet still have enough of the right sort of detail that you can tell them apart at a glance even if there three or four of them on screen at the same time, and the fight scenes themselves are tactically well composed with a good beat to them.
Unfortunately, that's all I can be fully positive about with this series. There are many flaws that really drag the series down; in particular the rivalry between Takumi and Yuji is dependent on contrived misunderstandings and a staggering inability for the characters to be able to communicate basic and simple facts, tediously dragging out a conflict that was never interesting or engaging to begin with beyond any reasonable duration. It would be ironic that a series where cell phones feature so prominently has Takumi's tragic flaw being his poor communication skills, except that it reaches pathological proportions at times and thus becomes irritating. And really, for most of the series that's all you can really say about Takumi, that he can't communicate simple facts to save his life. He, along with many other characters, has weak convictions and frequently loses the Faiz belt, which gets used by an Orphenoc long enough for Yuji to get pissed off at Faiz some more, and around the mullberry bush we go. In fact, the way the first episode presents things, you'd think that Mari was going to be Kamen Rider Faiz, but nope, the damn belt rejects her, and later another guy named Keitaro who's by far the nicest guy in the whole show, but it works for Takumi who's just a big lump of blah who'd like nothing to do with the whole thing, but coincidence and providence seem bent on him being the Rider, and while we do eventually learn that there is a good reason for why he has to be the Rider, it still irks me that the show taunts me the way it did. Unfortunately, the supporting cast doesn't help to compensate for the lackluster lead; many of the characters are neglected for long stretches of time, while others get introduced as being important only to be killed off in very short order without ever accomplishing anything of lasting note, characters who just plain don't ever amount to anything, and then there are characters who are just plain awful people who you want to just go away forever, most notably Masato Kusaka who's just such an awful terrible person that he deliberately sabotages things between Yuji and Takumi just as it seems like all the misunderstandings are going to be cleared up for no better reason than to be an asshole to Takumi. Seriously, fuck that guy.
The story for the most part fares little better; the first two-thirds of the series are slow, sluggish, repetitive, tedious, repetitious, plodding, and constantly resetting what little progress is made. There is just so much padding and stalling for time that could be cut out from the first two-thirds of the series, I can't even say. Fortunately, once the final third of the series is entered, things get much better both character and story wise and the ending is actually pretty good given how the show started off...except that one of the female characters gets killed off near the end of the series to make one male character very sad, and to motivate a heel-face-turn in another male character, and then the female character is never mentioned ever again. And of course this happens just as she'd finally found happiness in a life that had been up to this point been almost non-stop misery for her, because Faiz is very predictable that way. Also, the Smart Brain corporation is pretty stupid, constantly changing its mind on just what it wants at any given moment, and the Orphenocs they employ aren't much better.
So yeah, Kamen Rider Faiz was pretty disappointing, but not as bad as it could have been. If your taste lies towards very dark stories with only occasional glimmers of light and happiness, you might like this more than I did.
Kamen Rider Faiz is a very dark series. It is the story of two forced into a world neither is equipped to deal with; Yuji Kiba's life is going very well until he gets into a car accident, falls into a coma, dies, and then comes back only to find that everything, including the girl he loves, has been stolen from him by selfish relatives and supposed friends. It is at that time that he transforms into an Orphenoc, a monster described as being "an evolved human", and then kills the friend who'd stolen his girl from him. Meanwhile, a young woman named Mari is being pursued by another Orphenoc who is after the Faiz Gear that her father had sent to her, and in desperation she forces lone wanderer Takumi Inui, who was after her for having taken his bag by mistake, to wear the belt and become Kamen Rider Faiz. In their human identities, Takumi and Yuji become friends, but as Rider and Orphenoc they are bitter enemies. And behind it all is the mysterious Smart Brain corporation which seeks to control the Orphenocs for their own sinister designs.
The monster designs and the fight scenes are for the most part very good; the former have a uniform color scheme of either bone-white or ash-grey, emphasizing their deathly nature and yet still have enough of the right sort of detail that you can tell them apart at a glance even if there three or four of them on screen at the same time, and the fight scenes themselves are tactically well composed with a good beat to them.
Unfortunately, that's all I can be fully positive about with this series. There are many flaws that really drag the series down; in particular the rivalry between Takumi and Yuji is dependent on contrived misunderstandings and a staggering inability for the characters to be able to communicate basic and simple facts, tediously dragging out a conflict that was never interesting or engaging to begin with beyond any reasonable duration. It would be ironic that a series where cell phones feature so prominently has Takumi's tragic flaw being his poor communication skills, except that it reaches pathological proportions at times and thus becomes irritating. And really, for most of the series that's all you can really say about Takumi, that he can't communicate simple facts to save his life. He, along with many other characters, has weak convictions and frequently loses the Faiz belt, which gets used by an Orphenoc long enough for Yuji to get pissed off at Faiz some more, and around the mullberry bush we go. In fact, the way the first episode presents things, you'd think that Mari was going to be Kamen Rider Faiz, but nope, the damn belt rejects her, and later another guy named Keitaro who's by far the nicest guy in the whole show, but it works for Takumi who's just a big lump of blah who'd like nothing to do with the whole thing, but coincidence and providence seem bent on him being the Rider, and while we do eventually learn that there is a good reason for why he has to be the Rider, it still irks me that the show taunts me the way it did. Unfortunately, the supporting cast doesn't help to compensate for the lackluster lead; many of the characters are neglected for long stretches of time, while others get introduced as being important only to be killed off in very short order without ever accomplishing anything of lasting note, characters who just plain don't ever amount to anything, and then there are characters who are just plain awful people who you want to just go away forever, most notably Masato Kusaka who's just such an awful terrible person that he deliberately sabotages things between Yuji and Takumi just as it seems like all the misunderstandings are going to be cleared up for no better reason than to be an asshole to Takumi. Seriously, fuck that guy.
The story for the most part fares little better; the first two-thirds of the series are slow, sluggish, repetitive, tedious, repetitious, plodding, and constantly resetting what little progress is made. There is just so much padding and stalling for time that could be cut out from the first two-thirds of the series, I can't even say. Fortunately, once the final third of the series is entered, things get much better both character and story wise and the ending is actually pretty good given how the show started off...except that one of the female characters gets killed off near the end of the series to make one male character very sad, and to motivate a heel-face-turn in another male character, and then the female character is never mentioned ever again. And of course this happens just as she'd finally found happiness in a life that had been up to this point been almost non-stop misery for her, because Faiz is very predictable that way. Also, the Smart Brain corporation is pretty stupid, constantly changing its mind on just what it wants at any given moment, and the Orphenocs they employ aren't much better.
So yeah, Kamen Rider Faiz was pretty disappointing, but not as bad as it could have been. If your taste lies towards very dark stories with only occasional glimmers of light and happiness, you might like this more than I did.
