Tokusatsu

Fighting Guys in Keitai Sousakan 7

I really meant to make a more in-depth post about this, but the past week has been really hectic.

In any case, Keitai Sousakan 7 is a tokusatsu series by Miike Takashi, and it’s about a boy named Keita and his walking, talking cellphone. Together, they fight crime!

…Except it’s not really his cellphone, because it’s actually a partnership (they’re actually “buddies”). I’ve watched 3 eps, and I’m all over the silly premise just on principle, and 7 (that’s the phone) is actually is quite… endearing, in a dry, dead-pan machine-y sort of way.

But I’ll be honest and admit that a big draw to check this out is that Matsuda Satoshi, Kamen Rider Ryuki‘s Ren, is in it, playing a character that is basically Ren with flatter hair and a white coat instead of black duster, but apparently still being a badass and punching people in the face, so that’s awesome. Ren is not my favorite Ryuki guy (that would be Super Lawyer Kitaoka Shuichi), but I do like him an awful lot.

Also in Keitai Sousakan 7 is Takano Hassei, although he hasn’t appeared yet. But as it turns out, Ryuki‘s Editor-in-chief is 7’s original buddy, and either I never knew or I forgot about this, but I was really happy to see him show up in episode 1. I do love me some Editor-in-chief.

In any case, I’ll post more about it when I’m not on the brink of falling asleep, and hopefully it will be more about the show itself (which is fun on its own merits) and not about the actors in it.

Movies

Kamisama Help! trailer

So this is actually not new, but I had only seen it at Nippon Cinema and hadn’t noticed it was up on Kato Kazuki’s YouTube channel in nicer quality…

So, a horror movie is really not something I would be interested in under normal circumstances, but Kazuki is in it, in his first starring role, and thus it merits  consideration. It seems more campy than played straight, so who knows, I might actually watch it. Maybe. Not making any promises.

It does have three things going for it, though:

  • Psycho!Kazuki. I’ve been saying for ages how Kazuki needs to do something like this. Yes, he’s totally hammy here, he probably had a blast with it.
  • Matsuda Satoshi is in it! Possibly evil too? Not psycho evil, but perhaps man behind the curtain evil? Awesome.
  • The theme song (performed by Kazuki) sounds great. Totally want that.
TV

On White Collar

White CollarThe first 10 episodes of White Collar have been such a happy surprise for me. It’s actually the first USA (the network, not the country XP) original series I’ve really sat and watched, outside of a couple of eps of Psych I’ve caught here and there, and while I’d read that USA has been doing very well for itself in developing engaging tv series, I also wasn’t really sure how much to expect from it.

Fun show, great character moments all around… but in the end it’s all about Neal and his unlikely new bff

Blog stuff

Breaking in the new blog

First “official” post on the new blog!

It’s been several years since I last had a self-hosted blog, and frankly I’ve missed it. Mostly I plan to talk about whatever happens to hold my interest at the time, which in this case means that a White Collar post should be be coming up soon.

I’m not particularly good at self-introductions. Obviously.