The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
And for those of you that do click it, let me thank you in advance for contributing to those stellar stats over the last year. Arrigato Gozaimasu!
For reasons that don’t seem to entirely make sense, almost every aspect of Kamen Rider Fourze has been treated as a closely guarded secret. And no secret has proven to be bigger than the theme song. While we’ve been able to learn the title of the song, and we did manage to hear some of it during the preview that followed the OOO finale, no one knows who actually wrote or performed the song. It’s to the point now that Avex Rider Sound had a “guess the artist” competition, where you can go online and submit your guess for who you think the artist. It ended by the time I finished writing this post, but I included the link anyway.
While the artist hasn’t been confirmed yet, there is one guess that has been circling around the rumor mill:
JURIAN BEAT CRISIS, a.k.a. Juria Kawakami, who is currently signed to Avex Trax, has released 12 digital albums in the last year, and who released a self-titled physical album today (Sept. 1). And people on 2ch and HJU are so sure that it’s her, that they made the image above, comparing her picture to the silhouette in the advertisement. So, are they right, is JURAIN BEAT CRISIS the artist behind the theme, or are they wrong on this one? I guess we’ll find out soon.
-M.C., the Quantum Twin
Okay, maybe not, but for long time followers of the blog, he’s finally here! Here is my rendition of HenshinHead. Wanna take a look?:
Well, what do you think? (Don’t be too harsh)
Let me start off by apologizing about the utter lack of news we’ve had today(7/1/11) and yesterday(6/30/11), outside of the press conference for Fourze, there really hasn’t been much else that seemed news-worthy, at least nothing relevant to this blog. I can’t control the flow of information, I can only hope to keep up. And I’ve been doing a good job of that, right? Anyway, I just wanted to talk about how the blog did last month, so for those interested, read on! If not, then don’t.
For the month of June, there was a total of 9143 visits in that month, DOUBLE that of May. The daily average went up to 305 visits a day, again double what we saw just since May. And we had our best day on June 18th, when 436 people visited the site in a single day. That might not be high compared to other larger websites, but for a specialized blog such as this, and one only started back at the end of november last year, that’s quite an accomplishment. By the end of June, total visits since the blog started had well surpassed 20,000. And for all of this, I would just like to say THANK YOU!!! If it wasn’t for you guys, we wouldn’t be where we are now. So Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, and Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I promise now to keep bringing you all the toku news I can find, and to deliver it with that personal touch you all seem to enjoy. And who knows, maybe I’ll even have a chance to get into some of my own stuff soon. Would you enjoy that?
And in parting, I just want to thank everybody again who help make this site a success! And remeber to check back often, ‘cuz you never know what will happen. Who knows, I may even start adding my own videos, now that I know how to embed videos from YouTube into the posts. I probably won’t, but you never know… (Let’s just say, I wouldn’t expect any videos anytime soon, if I were you).
Keep checking back for updates on all of your favorite toku, from your favorite toku blog!
We’re getting closer to the release of this Kamen Rider W V-Cinema Release, Kamen Rider W RETURNS: Kamen Rider Eternal, we’re getting more info on the movie itself, and it’s shocking ending!
In this movie, Kamen Rider W is still fighting aagainst the remaining dopants, when a mysterious woman with psychic powers appears. The woman, calling herself Mina (played by Takahashi Rin) has come to take revenge on W for the defeat of Daido Katsumi (a.k.a. Kamen Rider Eternal) because she thought Katsumi was a hero, and that “Katsumi was going to save us from hell”. And that’s when she reveals Katsumi’s past as a hero, and the events that lead to the formation of NEVER and Katsumi becoming Kamen Rider Eternal.
And with the release of Kamen Rider W FOREVER Director’s Cut, theses images, supposedly from an alternate ending, have been leaked to the web. Just tell me if the person in this pic looks familiar:
I’ve gotta say, if they had used this image, then the overall story arc would definitely have taken a different turn. Of course, this could also be a spoiler of sorts for future Kamen Rider W projects. Who knows for sure, but if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.
-M.C., the Quantum Twin
For those of you interested, next Sunday they will have new episodes of both Go-Kaiger and Kamen Rider OOO. Some good news, at least for us toku fans. I just have to wonder if people in Japan will have enough power to see it, since they are still dealing with rolling blackouts across the country.
This brings me to my next point. Yesterday, or should I say last night, this website and myself became official supporters of the Super Hero Time Japan Relief Fund, which, as you may have read on the original RRR post, is the combined efforts of RRR, CS Toys, Henshin Justice Unlimited, and many other reviewers, vloggers, bloggers, and general toku fans, to bring some form of relief to those devasted by the tragic and terrible events that have taken place since the earthquake, which many are now measuring at 9.0. What many are going through in Japan is almost unimaginable. So I implore you, once again, please help in any way you can. I will repost the link to the SHT ChipIn site right here: http://superherotime.chipin.com/super-hero-time
You are more than welcome to follow this link, and give however much you want. Any amount will help. You can even copy this link and put it on your own stuff, whether it’s a blog, a Facebook page, a Tweet, whatever you use, as long as the word gets out. As I type this, there is the possibility of an explosion at the third functioning nuclear plant, and the possibility of nuclear meltdown is now greater than ever. Many people are without food, water, electricity, even shelter in some extreme cases. If you still have doubts about helping, then think about this: Monday morning in Japan, over 1000 dead bodies washed up on shore in the Northern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. They were all people who had been drowned and dragged away by the tsunami that resulted from that 9.0 earthquake. They need all the help they can get over there, and you could be a real hero to someone. So please, follow the link above and donate.
As they said on the original RRR post, everyone, let’s henshin, get out our giant robos, and let’s get out there and help. And if you need a little inspiration:
BTW, just so you know that I’m serious about this, I’m not even going to post a celebratory piece about hitting 2000 visits(!). Thanks for that. Please help, and thank you for listeneing.
In Japanese, 国際戦隊救助ジャー . Translated means International squadron rescue rangers. In responce to the events that have taken place in Japan in recent days, and inspired by the world-wide responce to the crisis, I came up with this fanfic sentai. Image a mix between Battle Fever J and KyuKyu Sentai GoGoV. Basically it’s a team of rescue and relief workers comprised of members from around the world, brought together by the terrible tragedy that befell Japan. Originally just rescue workers that came to help from their own respective countries and organizations, five of them joined together when a new evil threat appeared to take advantage of the destruction and devastation. That’s all I really have now, if you want to see the rest, the full fan fiction will be available soon.
Whether or not this is in bad taste, I’m not sure. I’ll let you decide.
HenshinHead here to give you M.C.’s review of the premiere episode of Go-Kaiger, because he’s just in a stupor right now, and keeps drooling on the keyboard (gross). Anyway, let’s talk about Go-Kaiger. It was AWESOME!!! From beginning to end, I just couldn’t pull my eyes away from the screen. It started out with the an invasion by the Galactic Empire Zangyaku, the main enemies in this series, with a fleet of their warships attacking the Earth and their ground troops invading, probably the biggest such invasion in sentai history. So, in order to deal with the biggest invasion in Sentai history, you need to gather as many Sentai senshi in one place as you can, right? And there they were, every major sentai team in one place, from Goranger to Goseiger, including sixth rangers. Massive fight scene, people punching and shooting and slashing in every direction, Jetman flew in and bombarded the enemies, Kakuranger and Hurricanger teamed up and knocked out a few, there was a lot of that sort of teaming up based on theme. Once they had eliminated ground support, the warships attacked from above. Akaranger managed to organize everyone and together they built up their collective energies and shot it towards the fleet as a massive ball of energy, wiping out the ships. And that energy was enough to catch the attention of a red, pirate-themed spaceship heading in the direction of Earth. Inside the ship, the parrot robot they have, called Navi, starts going on about some big energy signature coming from the nearby planet (they’re in space, did I forget to mention that?), which they bring up an image of Earth on their monitor. There’s a bit of dialogue that I didn’t understand (it was a raw video), and as they decide to head towards Earth, a fleet ok Zangyaku ships pops up, which they decide to fight, leading into the intro. The intro, by the way, is just superb, it’s filled with scenes of them flying around on Go-KaiGalleon, there’s a part with a huge number of past senshi, and then where their floating around with RangerKeys everywhere, just fantastic. I also like the theme music, sorry that link doesn’t work anymore. After the intro, the focus turns to the inside of the lead ship of the fleet, with a minion holding up the wanted posters for the Go-Kaigers. Then back to Go-KaiGalleon, where they’ve already henshined and are steering the ship into battle. They run through the fleet, knocking out ships with their cannons, tearing one ship in half with the bladed end of the mast. Then, they do one of the greatest things I have ever seen. After quickly changing the ship into Go-KaiOh, the robo runs across the surface of the moon, lunges at the fleet, and flies through hacking the enemy ships to bits, with a lot of flying and swinging around and shooting at people with the cannons in the legs, finishing with a flying kick towards the remaining ships, followed by the finishing pose. Next scene their flying over a city in their ship, weighing anchor in the middle of the street, and announcing themselves to a crowd of very confused people. During this, the scene shifted to the Zangyaku’s main generals and leader, who are talking about taking over the Earth, when they learn that Go-Kaiger might be on Earth. I guess Go-Kaiger was asking for money, because they ended up selling one of Milfy’s (Go-KaiYellow’s) rings, for a very nice sum of money. That’s when they decide to grab some lunch at the Snack Safari (a restaurant from Sun Vulcan). Just as they are about to eat, a giant explosion (which they do some weird slow motion thing for) rips through the restaurant, to which they just don’t really react. They go outside and see its Zangyaku invading, and decide to head back to the ship. The next scene shows an all-out onslaught by Zangyaku on the city below, with the monster of the week leading an infantry of this season’s cannon fodder through the streets attacking people. In all the chaos, a small group of school children with two of their teachers or parents trying to get away from the explosions, only to be cornered by the monster. The Go-Kaigers run through past them, with only Aimu (Go-KaiPink) stopping to say, hey they need help. They stop and watch the monster torment the trapped people wondering whether or not to get involved. Of course, they decide to help, and shoot at the monster before he can do anything to the trapped people. They call out the monster, the monster calls them a bunch of pirates, and then the henshin sequence. This was rather interesting. After yelling out “Go-Kai Change” and using their RangerKeys to unlock the mobirates, the background changes into some sort of outer space scene, where three X’s (and a temporary V) shoot out of the mobirate and falls back on the rangers, dressing them one layer at a time (first black shirt with their Jolly Roger logo, then the jackets and pants, and finally the helmet), and instead of going back to the scene of the fight, they perform their role call with that same background, and the role call itself was very simple and straightforward, giving only their Go-Kaiger title (Go-KaiRed, etc.) and ending with “Kaizoku Sentai Go-Kaiger“, in other words, no special descriptions of either themselves or their team as a whole, I guess a callback to the Showa era Super Sentai. Anyway, the fighting starts, they take out the foot soldiers that are there, and then more foot soldiers pop up. In order to deal with them, they pull out a different set of RangerKeys and henshin into Goranger, using the Hurricane Ball to deal with that group. Then even more soldiers arrive, and they henshin into Shinkenger, following that up with Magiranger to take out the rest. All that’s left now is to defeat the monster-of-the-week, changing back into themselves to finish the job. Using their personal RangerKeys, they supercharge their Go-KaiSabres and finish the monster with “Tidal Wave” (they did a special version of that whole “they can project sword slashes” thing). After the fight is over, they realize that they’ve lost the ship, and that they are stuck there for the time being. The people who they rescued came to thank them, but they said they didn’t want it, and they only fought because their lunch had been interrupted. And that’s how the episode ended. As for the end credits, it was a mix between the opening sequence (a lot of the same stuff in it) and what you would normally see as part of an anniversary special, with direct references to past sentais in the song. And like the ending of any Super Sentai, it gave a special preview of the next episode, but I’d rather not spoil anything.
First impressions: well, since it’s still HenshinHead reporting on this because M.C. still hasn’t quite recovered from that level of awesomeness exposure, that should tell you something. Um, I may need some help getting him out of this. Anyway, most of that episode review was written by him, so I don’t know entirely what he wrote. If I had written it, translating what they said wouldn’t have been a problem, since my helmet has a built-in audio translator. I would translate the dialogue for him, but I know he’s just going to look for a subbed video over the next couple of days anyway, so why bother? The beginning was a lot like the beginning of Kamen Rider Decade, with all the past senshi fighting together against Zangyaku, but they definitely did a much better job with it. It’s an interesting spin on the series, to have the main cast be pirates from space, so they have no real obligation to fight for the people on Earth, but we all know they eventually will. Go-KaiOh looked good and added a new spin to the Sentai mecha tradition, having the other mehca essentially contained inside of Go-KaiOh in Go-KaiGalleon mode, much like stacking dolls. And this episode also contained a lot more CGI than what the series is use to. Some people have complained and said that it’s too much, but I say “Who are you? It’s Super Sentai, and they deserve to have as much CGI as they want. Besides, that’s just how special effects are done nowadays, so get over it, it looks great”. And unlike in the Goseiger V. Shinkeger movie, the henshin sequence for changing into different rangers incorporated parts of that senshi’s henshin sequence, similar to Decade using the past Rider’s henshin sequence when changing into them. So it’s a bit more personal than just the logo in front of them, but I’m sure it was a nightmare for the special effects people. All in all, I’ve got high hopes for this series, so it better deliver. I don’t want to be had by a bunch of swindling pirates!
-M.C., the Quantum twin with HenshinHead
By the way, look for HenshinHead’s upcoming post!
UPDATE: (2/14/11) (It’s M.C. this time) Just wanted to correct a few things from the review abive, now that I’ve had a chance to see a subbed version of the episode (I seriously need to learn Japanese). Starting with the opening scene, it seem that by collecting their powers together to fend off the Zangyack (and I’ve seen it spelled that way several times now) invasion, they actually lost their ability to essentially be Super Sentai anymore, so there’s a good chance that Go-Kaiger will not run into any past senshi, at least not right away. Turn’s out, by the way, that the only reason that that Go-Kaiger went to Earth is because the greatest treasure in the entire universe is somewhere on Earth. During the scene where they just weighed anchor and are questioning the crowd below, they’re asking the people in the crowd about where the treasure is, and of course no one has ever heard about the treasure so they don’t have a clue. That’s when they decide to eat and sell of Luka’s ring. I wasn’t too far off with the scene with Zangyack, but it turns out that their leader is actually the son of Emperor Zangyack, and even though the Go-Kaigers are wanted outlaws, they considered them a low priority. Big mistake. Anyway, Go-Kaiger got 10 million yen for Luka’s ring, they went to eat at the Sanck Safari, big boom, they see that Zangyack’s lead ship, Gigant Horse, is among the invasion fleet and realizes that they are there to conquer Earth, so they head back to the ship. Then there’s the attack. This season’s foot soldiers/cannon fodder are called Gomins, but I still didn’t catch the name of the monster-of-the-week, my bad. Anyway, skipping ahead to the scene where the Gomins and Shikabanen are tormenting the teacher and the school children, the Go-Kaigers see this, try to talk themselves out of helping, by talking about how the planet won’t be there after tommorow, it will be a Zangyack colony soon, and then they reveal two big, major plot points: 1), they are all from the same planet, and 2) that Zangyack colonized their home world, which is why they opposed them in the past. Captain Marvelous decides he’s seen enough, goes in, big fight scene, I already explained this part, though I should mention that with the teacher and the school children is a women who believes that they are the 35th Super Sentai, not knowing that they are from space. They also comment throughout the fight. And the final attack they used was actually called “Final Wave”. Skip ahead, turns out I was very wrong about them losing the ship, they were just freaked out because now they had officially made themselves enemies of Zangyack. Of cousre, the people thank them, they say there’s no need to, that they are just pirates looking for treasure, and when they ask “then why did you help?”, Marvelous answered that they were upset that they weren’t able to finish their curry (they ordered curry from the restaurant). Next week’s episode involves a man in a black coat, some teenager who questions why the Go-Kaigers aren’t defening Earth (he might also make off with the mobirate and the ShinkenRed RangerKey) and then changing into Dekaranger, Hurricanger, and the five red senshi from the past five series. That’s all for now!
Hey everybody! It’s me, HenshinHead! Its been awhile since I’ve checked in. I might be from a different dimension, but holiday season is the same for me as it is for you (sorta). I have just been as busy as ever! Good thing M.C. has kept you so well-informed over the last month.
But now we’ve come to a point where there’s this lack of any real news going around the tokuverse, so instead we’ll substitute with news from my Tokuverse.
So it was almost Christmastime, and since Tokuworld is a lot like your world’s Japan (just so we’re clear, we have one too), we celebrate Christmas, but we don’t just plain stop what we’re doing. If it’s during the week, most people go to work or school like they normally would, and only a few people will take the day off. Unfortunately for me, Evil wasn’t one of those few.
It was a lovely December morning. It had snowed the night before, leaving a blanket of snow on the ground that glimmered on that unusually bright and sunny day. Because it was Christmas, I was performing one of my main Christmastime duties: I was dressed as Santa Claus wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and passing out small gifts to people who walked by. It might seem a little strange on the surface, but I enjoy the chance to spread a little cheer. The day was going too well, and I could sense that at any moment, something was going to happen, but I kept on a happy face, for the children. Just as I was handing out the last of my presents, BOOM!, and a mob of screaming people started heading my way. Naturally, I ran towards the crowd, trying to find out what had caused all of this chaos.
As I made my way past the crowd, to what do my wondering eyes should appear, but a hideous beast, who could probably eat whole a tiny reindeer. Quick like a flash, I ran towards the beast, and shouted out, “That’s far enough, you won’t make this town your Christmas feast!” Like every monster, all he did was laugh and taunt me in a garbled voice. “You think you can beat me”, he quipped back, “I could take you out with one shot”. “Let’s just see about that, shall we?”, I answered back. Right then I pulled out my main henshin device, a very elaborate microphone-type device. You see, I’m somewhat of a presenter, so I have a bit more flair to my appearance and tactics than most of my fellow superheroes. I brought the device to my mouth and declared, “Sutēji, HenshinHead o kangei shite kudasai!” (Translation: Please welcome to the stage, HenshinHead!) And by pressing a button on the back of the device, I was transformed into HenshinHead.
And so the fight began. I started strong with a few well placed strikes, he retaliated with a couple of heavy-handed slashes. I would knock him back a few feet and he would return the favor. We tussled like that, until he used a very powerful technique to launch me into the air, where I landed about ten feet away from where I was. I realized then that he could use that ability whenever he wanted, and tried to use it on me again several times, all of which I managed to dodge. I managed to take temporary cover behind a large column while he was taunting me some more. With that attack of his now in play, I had to rethink my strategy. I knew the only way to win was to strike fast and strike hard if I wanted to avoid getting pulverized. So using my abilities, I took the form of one of my world’s Masked Bikers (yeah, copyright issues). With that form, I had the speed to outmaneuver my ghastly opponent and his barrage, and I had enough strength to deal a devastating blow in the form of a Biker Kick (again, copyright issues). And like that, he went down in a fiery explosion.
After that, I de-henshined, and went back to my previous Santa duties. I refilled my sack with toys, and went into a different part of town.
So remember kiddies, if your good little boys and girls, Santa will bring you lots of toys. But if your naughty, destructive monsters, I’ll destroy you.
HEN~SHIN~HEAD!
Happy Holidays to Everyone, and Happy New Year!
Your Friends,
HenshinHead and M.C.
Henshin Head 