lowvisibility

Sorry for that delay, folks! Here's episode 11 of the show, covering everything from Fourze's last third or so (episodes 37 onward). Please note that this show was recorded before Wizard's first episode aired. We have a fairly detailed discussion of Fourze's last two episodes, so you may not want to listen to this one before you finish the series. Otherwise, you should be in good shape. Also, be sure to check out Aesir's translation of the final post from Toei's official Fourze blog, for a little bit of insight into what the creators wanted to do with the show. Our next episode is going to pay a visit to Go-Busters and discuss, at the very least, the show's controversial second quarter. We may discuss what's going on in the current story arc, too, depending on when we record. If there's anything about Go-Busters you'd like our next show to touch on, or if you just want to let us know what you thought of this episode, please leave a comment below! As always, you can also email us at lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com and catch up with us at @lowvisibility on Twitter.

This double-sized episode takes on the last show of the "military sci-fi" era of Sentai, Choujin Sentai Jetman. This is one of the most widely-recommended and often-discussed shows in the entire Super Sentai franchise, and with good reason. Strong direction, great characters, and an unusually strong premise really make this show stand out from the pack. Spoilers for this episode depend on how far you go into the episode. If you listen to the hour or so of stuff before we get into the epilogue,the spoilers won't be too detailed. The epilogue discussion runs 45 minutes and spoils a lot of specific plot twists in the show, so you probably shouldn't listen to it unless you've seen the full series. (And if you have, then you probably understand how two people spend 45 minutes agonizing over Jetman's epilogue.) Fourze's last episode will air in Japan later today, and Go-Busters's second quarter finished up last week. So, our next couple of shows will probably revisit what's currently on the air. Feel free to leave any comments below, harass us on Twitter at @LowVisibility, or drop us a line at lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com.

So after we did Episode 5, we got a lot of feedback via email and Twitter that was along the lines of, "Good show, but please talk more about the ending!!" So here you go. This double-sized episode covers the last four episodes of Kamen Rider Agito in detail, with analysis and argument. Obviously, this show is extremely spoiler-heavy if you haven't seen the ending of Agito yet! The show also talks about the endings of V3 and Kuuga in some detail, as well as the endings of the films Shaun of the Dead and Inception.  Consider yourselves warned, and listen at your peril. For those who are interested, here's the screencap showing the CAP translation vs. the corrected translation we discuss in the episode. (Spoilers abound, so click at your peril if you're not listening to the episode.) As it happens, our sound editor hasn't seen the ending of Agito yet, and instead walked me (Lynx) through the process of editing the episode myself. As such, the editing may be a bit clunkier than usual. I'll apologize in advance for any problems anyone might have. Next episode is going to be a little bit delayed, since the editing process for this one cut into our usual recording time. Next time we'll be covering Choujin Sentai Jetman, so we can further explore the glory days of Toshiki Inoue. Let us know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see  us talk about in that one!

Another Gokaiger show? See, last week we said we'd do a show revisiting a few things about Gokaiger and Agito. Then the Gokaiger portion of the show was an hour long, and... well, y'know, that's an episode. This episode was inspired by new information about Gokaiger's production, information that explained a lot of the things that we discussed as major negatives in our first Gokaiger show. The information's source is an interview between tokusatsu legend Shigenori Takatera and Gokaiger producer Takaaki Utsunomiya. You can read a synopsis of the interview here, from HJU user Red Ranger. We also go over this information in the podcast itself, and discuss how it changes our feelings about the show a bit. If you're curious about the Tokusatsu Hero Twitter that we discuss during the show, you can find the original account here and read some translations of early posts to it here. Next week, by viewer request, we're going to revisit Kamen Rider Agito and do a show explaining the show's ending in more detail. We thought it was a fairly straightforward conclusion, ourselves... then we rewatched and realized where people were probably getting confused.

We're back after a short break with our episode covering Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger! Usual spoiler warnings abound, you should probably watch Akibaranger before you listen to this podcast. No episode notes this time, thanks to Akibaranger being a nicely short and self-contained series. Well, we're sorry we didn't get around to discussing Machine Itasher more? For next week's show we're going to do something a little different and do a show that follows up on some earlier ones. In the case of Pirate Sentai Gokaiger, some new information has come out about its production that we want to discuss, since it's very relevant to our issues with the show. In the case of Kamen Rider Agito, we've gotten a surprising number of requests to discuss the show's ending (the last 5 episodes or so) in more detail, so we're going to take a whack at that. As usual, if you've got any questions, concerns, or corrections, don't hesitate to leave a comment, drop us a line at lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com, or send a tweet to @lowvisibility. Enjoy the show!

This week Low Visibility does its first "pre-show," a breakdown of everything we know about a series after it's announced, but before it begins airing. In this case, we're covering Kamen Rider Wizard, the planned successor to Kamen Rider Fourze. The show covers all of the published information about the character to date, including a rundown of the cast and confirmed creative staff. We speculate a bit on what the show might be like, and talk a bit about what we'd like from the new show. Wizard begins broadcasting on September 2, so it'll probably be about six months before we return to see how right (or wrong) we were about him. I don't think there's any huge spoilers for other shows in this podcast, but we do talk a bit about a variety of prior Rider stuff. Let me know if we dropped a spoiler bomb that we missed, though. If you want to see where we got our information, it comes mostly from a series of news posts at Henshin Justice Unlimited, which gathered up all of the big announcements from various sources. You can view the Wizard TV news clip on YouTube right here, too. Our next show is going to cover Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger! If there's something in particular about Akibaranger you'd like to see us cover, please let us know about it. Send in your requests (or concerns, complaints, and corrections!) to lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com, @lowvisibility on Twitter, or in the comments below.

This week's episode takes us back to the 2nd entry in the Heisei Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider Agito. Well, you're supposed to write it AgitΩ, but I think that'd drive us all crazy by the end of this post. So why the 2nd, and not the 1st? Or something newer? Well, listen to the podcast and all shall be explained. There's pretty strong spoiler warnings for this ep, for folks who are currently watching Agito or eventually want to watch it totally unspoiled. While Agito is quite old by this point, I know it's not fully subbed by TVN yet, and other people may just have not gotten around to watching it at all yet. If you're wondering why you should bother to watch Agito and don't mind spoilers, though, you might want to tune in. For next week's show, we're going to do a pre-show that goes over the new information we have about Fourze's successor, Kamen Rider Wizard. It's meant as sort of a time capsule we can revisit after we've got the first quarter of Wizard under our belts, and can compare the show it is to the kind of show we thought it might be. So if there's any particular thing you want us to discuss about Wizard, don't hesitate to send us email at lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail, pester us on Twitter at @lowvisibility, or to just drop us a line in the comments.

If you recall, we ended up talking about Gokaiger a bit during the middle of last week's Ultraman Zero podcast. So, it seemed to us that it was time to just go ahead, do our Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger podcast, and get it out of our system. Gokaiger's an interesting show, so we had a lot to discuss and this episode runs a bit longer than usual. A warning, though: this episode isn't the huge Gokaiger lovefest you might expect, given how popular the series is right now. Part of what makes Gokaiger interesting is that it's flawed in ways that are very unusual for Super Sentai. If you want that cryptic statement to make any more sense, you'll just have to listen to the episode. This episode also ended up being Super Error Time in two major regards. There's a bit where we discuss how Gokaiger stacks up as an anniversary season, and during this part of the conversation we erroneously identify Turboranger as an anniversary series. While Turboranger does begin with an anniversary episode, it was the previous show, Liveman, that was marketed and merchandised as the first Super Sentai anniversary season. MattComix is not a huge fan of Liveman so this error doesn't change his views much. For me... well, if Liveman's in the running, I'm not sure I could still say that Gokaiger was Sentai's best anniversary season. At some point in the future we'll probably do a Liveman show and revisit the issue. Suffice to say I like Liveman a bit more than my husband does. The other major error is in regards to Jetman's naming scheme. Honestly, I just brainfarted here. Jetman named its characters using a [Color] [Bird] format. For some reason, I always get it into my head that the format was Jet [Bird], but it's not. So when I "correct" Matt during the recording into using a name scheme that's actually more wrong, well, have a good laugh at my expense. I kinda deserve it! And if there's anything else wrong, email us at lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com or just leave a comment below. Next week's show is going to cover Kamen Rider Agito, which I'd say is probably the single most significant entry in the Heisei Rider series. If there's anything about the show you'd especially like us to talk about, like a favorite story arc or a thing that just never made sense to you, feel free to let us know in the comments or shoot us an email. Or bug us at @lowvisibility on Twitter. We're not picky!

For this week we decided to visit tokusatsu's third pillar, Ultraman, by reviewing Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial. We picked it both because it's the latest Ultraman release, but also one of the more interesting and accessible ones. As a spoiler note: we usually discuss blocks of episodes so it'd be possible to listen to the podcast, watch the corresponding block of a show, and then be surprised by a few things. Since this is a film (and a tightly-written one at that), we end up going through the plot of the entire movie as we discuss it. Depending on how sensitive you are to spoilers, you may want to watch the film before you listen to the podcast. If you're not sold on the movie, you can give the podcast a listen anyway and see if any of the highlights we describe pique your interest. In addition to the movie review, we touch on our feelings about the current status of Beet Buster in Go-Busters, how Ultraman influenced our early days in the fandom, and the various things that may keep fans these days from liking Ultraman stuff. Just as an aside, at one point in the podcast I mention that I've got no idea if Zero's in the upcoming (on home video) Ultraman Saga flick; we were corrected on that before the file even went to the sound editor! So yeah, Ultraman Zero does appear in Ultraman Saga. I'm sure you guys can find plenty of other things we got wrong to tell us about in the comments. One thing that comes up at one point during the podcast is the idea that Heisei Kamen Rider has kind of trained tokusatsu viewers to not really expect anything significant from a hero's supporting cast. Now, actually, I'd say there's two big exceptions to this general trend, but the conversation in the podcast drifted in another direction and it never got mentioned. The sound editor brought it up, though, so I thought it'd be worth a note here in the blog. The two Heisei Rider shows that violate the trend toward supporting casts being nonentities are Kamen Rider Kuuga and Kamen Rider Hibiki. These two shows share one very important factor: they're the only two Rider shows produced by Shigenori Takatera, who had a very different approach to the Rider franchise than his successors. I also feel like you could argue Agito is also an exception, but if so, it'd be part of Agito's general tendency to try and handle certain things the way Kuuga did. That trend goes away in Heisei Rider very quickly and is all but gone by the time you reach Blade, let alone post-Hibiki shows like Kabuto and Den-O. Well, in our opinion; I'm sure somebody out there feels different, and if so, feel free to bring it up in the comments!

Welcome back to Low Visibility if you caught us during our first week, or scroll down to the first episode if you're seeing this for the first time. This week's episode covers the first thirty-two episodes, basically the first two story arcs, of current Rider show Kamen Rider Fourze. As usual, expect spoilers for this run of the series, though they should be mild ones. Before we get around to Fourze, there's a bit of discussion about why we like tokusatsu, why we decided to do a podcast, and some extra information about Sentai toys. Also, some hilariously outdated observations about Beet Buster! We have seen the character's full debut episode by now, but the plan is to not discuss Go-Busters in much detail again until the show's around episode 26. Suffice to say that he wasn't what we were expecting, but he might be fun. We plan to record weekly, but we won't be talking about Akibaranger (the only ongoing show we haven't discussed) until after it finishes, since it's only a twelve episode series. In the meantime, what do you want to hear about? Feel free to let us know. Send questions, feedback, and requests to lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com, or you can get in touch with us on Twitter at @lowvisibility. You can also catch up with us on tumblr at lowvisibilitypodcast.tumblr.com

Welcome to Low Visibility, the podcast that fights convincingly despite being unable to see. This is a tokusatsu podcast that will examine shows both ongoing and classic. Your hosts are long-time tokusatsu fans (and nerdily married couple) Lynxara and MattComix, who've spent fifteen years watching and observing low-budget Japanese special effects entertainment. You may have heard us on other tokusatsu podcasts! If not, well, you can tune in here to listen to a couple of long-time fans chew the fat about henshin heroes, kaiju, and wire-fu. Episode 1 covers the first thirteen episodes of the thirty-sixth entry in Toei's Super Sentai franchise, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters. This episode shouldn't contain spoilers for other series, subbed or otherwise, but may contain spoilers for the first course of Go-Busters. Make sure you're caught up before you listen! Incidentally, in some discussions with our sound editor, we figured out that the last Super Sentai series to put as much effort into its mecha sequences as Go-Busters was probably Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger.  Aside from making some creative early use of CG, Dekaranger would often try to shoot the main robot in sequences modeled after standard cop show action sequences. This lead to completely unique and delightful stuff like the robot standing with its back behind skyscrapers for cover. Toei, make more shows like that seriously. Send questions, feedback, and requests to lowvisibilitypodcast@gmail.com, or you can get in touch with us on Twitter at @lowvisibility. You can also catch up with us on tumblr at lowvisibilitypodcast.tumblr.com