I’m a dork or whatever, but right now the 2 movies in theatres that I want to see the most are both only in Japan, and are both Kamen Rider movies. Let me show you how sweet both of these movies look. Pretty much this entire post is just an excuse to put cool pictures on the Blog. I’m not using nearly enough of my bandwidth or storage space on this webserver (just renewed for another year tonight), so what the heck.

First up is 「仮面ライダー響鬼と七人の戦鬼」, which translated to Kamen Rider Hibiki and the 7 War Demons. The title itself makes it awesome. So Hibiki, this year’s Rider show, is about demon “Riders” who fight monsters using sonic attacks. These sonic attacks are played using gimmicky instrument weapons, like taiko drumsticks, trumpets, and electric guitars. The movie takes place in Feudal Japan, because they fought a lot back then, and you can bring in a bunch of sweet fight scenes. Demons? Fighting in Feudal Japan? Unrealistic, you say? Yeah, and Tom Cruise really was the LAST samurai. I’ll bet he didn’t have an axe that turned into an electric guitar that he wailed on and made giant crab monsters explode. Nope, but Hibiki will have that. 音撃斬！雷電激震！

Oh and here’s the trailer(Windows Media), in case you’re bored and want to check it out. Oh but you have to sit through the trailer for the new Magiranger (this year’s Japanese Power Ranger show) trailer also.

OK now on to the other one. So yeah, every year in Japan, they make a new Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) TV series. Hibiki, for example, started last spring, and will probably end this coming January or so. Then the week right after, they’ll start a new one. Well way back in the 1970’s, they started the whole genre with a show just called Kamen Rider (Masked Rider). It’s about a guy who is turned into a cyborg super-soldier by a super mega evil crime organization named Shocker. He keeps his mind, becomes a good guy, and fights Shocker. Simple but sweet. This is what he looked like. Check out the hair:

And now, after America’s (OK Japan also) been just remaking stuff for movies for the past five or ten years because no one in Hollywood or anywhere has any creativity left, Japan has decided to remake their country’s iconic superhero (he really is, maybe in a tie with Ultraman) into a feature length film. The new movie, called easily enough, Kamen Rider the First, re-tells the original story and also the original story of the second Rider, named Kamen Rider No. 2. The movie looks pretty sweet also, or else I wouldn’t be sitting here at 2AM writing a long blog entry about it.

And here’s the trailer! (RealMedia format)

Oh, and yes, you heard me right, the evil organization in the original Kamen Rider and the new The First movie is called Shocker. This was way before those jokes started up when we were in middle school. But either way, I’m going to go ahead and put this up. Karen will love it, I’m sure.

That’s all for now. My blog posts are probably going to start having more things like this. Not really updating anyone on anything, not really trying to make a point, not even (gasp) complaining about something. Pretty much I just want to link to cool stuff.