電影版 獣拳戦隊ゲキレンジャー ネイネイ! ホウホウ! 香港大決戦 [Limited Edition]
Hallo hallo~
We watched this one in our LCD with 5.1 and stuff. So beautiful.
I got this one in the mail the other day, but I did not have time to write my review until this morning. And I'm still really annoyed by this new tax policy thing... but what can I do ? At least the Geki are worth.
Juken Sentai Gekiranger Nei-Nei ! Hou-Hou ! Hong Kong Daikessen
Toei Company Ltd. 2008
The movie opens with the Gekiranger fighting Mele and an army of Rinshi in Tokyo. As in the opening of the TV series, the narrator explains how Juken is the art of sensing the heart of the beasts inside the body, and how it is split into two opposite sides: the Juken of Justice: Gekijuken Beast Arts - our sexy trio of heroes, and the Juken of Evil: Rinjuken Akugata - represented by Chameleonken no Mele (TM & © Mine).
At the same time, an strange device appears to be monitoring each one of their movements, and transferring all this data to a mysterious computer in a dark room. The device then teleports everyone to Hong Kong. The plot is basically this: the best fighters from around the world were reunited in Hong Kong for a decisive encounter held by Yang, an evil martial artists who seeks the ultimate Kempo - combining human power and robotic technology to rule the world.
Like in the TV series, the characters were very well portrayed, although this time under-developed due to Toei's absurd standards when working on Super Sentai films: 33 minutes is just not enough. At least the Limited Edition release comes packed with a lot of wonderful extras, like the press conferences, musical performances, trailers and TV commercials. Oh, and these lovely Gekiranger pencils. I am so in love with the Mele one !
I am very happy for the action sequences in this movie. Maybe a bit short, but they were really well executed. Part of the battle sequence (right after the movie-only Henshin and the full intro stances) was later re-done for the final encounter with Ron, in the last episode of the TV series, adding new chained techniques to the original choreography. Veru colorful and different.
Gekiranger as a whole, has been also the best work of Hirofumi Fukuzawa and Yasuhiro Takeuchi (Sanae Hitomi -who also rules- is a bit new here). Hirofumi, for instance, replicates Jan's personality amazingly well. His body built and Zukkii's are similar, too. Sanae is slightly more slender than Mina, and Yasuhiro is a lot more muscular than Manpei, but with their great in-suit performances you just forget about that.
Another interesting thing to notice is how many of the martial artists in the film were members from JAE too, people who annually works in the Super Sentai Series. Rio, for example, can be seen beating Kurojishi's suit actor up - the great Yasuhiko Imai. Yasuhiro Takeuchi is also seen fighting against Retsu. Even Hideaki Kusaka was there !
The visual effects keep improving ! There's this Gekiwaza used only in the movie where the Triangle is covered by flames to violently finish their opponent, very pretty. Also, and this one is just so good: we see actual footage of Hong Kong during the kyodai battle ! Amazing landscape, perfectly detailed (previously created and filmed in Toei's set in Japan) and well very mixed with the 'real' city scenes.
The kyodai battles in Gekiranger were always very original, but their effort went much further with the movie. Good that they kept the same dedication for this year's Super Sentai, at least during the few episodes broadcasted so far.
The musical score follows the epic style from the TV series, crowned by that beautiful orchestrated version of the Gekiranger theme played during the kyodai battle.
The movie ends with Rio and Mele going back to Japan, the cool dance to Ichirou Mizuki's TAO, and footage of Miki and her daughter going crazy around Hong Kong, enjoying the good food and buying presents with Master Shafu (and don't forget to look for a panda cameo during the ED credits !).
My only complaint with Juken Sentai Gekiranger Nei-Nei ! Hou-Hou ! Hong Kong Daikessen is, like I previously said, the actual length of the movie. Taking the whole cast to Hong Hong to make a 33 min. movie seems like a waste, considering how unique is this in the Super Sentai franchise. And of course, if the movie was longer, we automatically would get blessed with much more Yinling (Miranda) sexyness.
Masashi Ishibashi as the big boss Yang and Mayumi Ono as the silly Lao Fan also delivered well, but I actually wished more screen time for them. Okay, just more Miranda would have been glorious.
By the way, missing this movie doesn't really affect the story developed in the TV series, and you'll only notice brief movie references in the edo-period episode. I guess this is why Rio and Mele are not portrayed as in the TV series, and they only played anti-heroes roles instead.
So, that's it. This one also joins my list of favorite Super Sentai films, with Ninpu Sentai Hurricaneger Shushutto: The Movie, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger The Movie: Full Blast Action, and GoGo Sentai Boukenger The Movie: Saikyo no Precious.
Seven days until the VS Special release~ ＼(^_^)／
We watched this one in our LCD with 5.1 and stuff. So beautiful.
I got this one in the mail the other day, but I did not have time to write my review until this morning. And I'm still really annoyed by this new tax policy thing... but what can I do ? At least the Geki are worth.
Juken Sentai Gekiranger Nei-Nei ! Hou-Hou ! Hong Kong Daikessen
Toei Company Ltd. 2008
The movie opens with the Gekiranger fighting Mele and an army of Rinshi in Tokyo. As in the opening of the TV series, the narrator explains how Juken is the art of sensing the heart of the beasts inside the body, and how it is split into two opposite sides: the Juken of Justice: Gekijuken Beast Arts - our sexy trio of heroes, and the Juken of Evil: Rinjuken Akugata - represented by Chameleonken no Mele (TM & © Mine).
At the same time, an strange device appears to be monitoring each one of their movements, and transferring all this data to a mysterious computer in a dark room. The device then teleports everyone to Hong Kong. The plot is basically this: the best fighters from around the world were reunited in Hong Kong for a decisive encounter held by Yang, an evil martial artists who seeks the ultimate Kempo - combining human power and robotic technology to rule the world.
Like in the TV series, the characters were very well portrayed, although this time under-developed due to Toei's absurd standards when working on Super Sentai films: 33 minutes is just not enough. At least the Limited Edition release comes packed with a lot of wonderful extras, like the press conferences, musical performances, trailers and TV commercials. Oh, and these lovely Gekiranger pencils. I am so in love with the Mele one !
I am very happy for the action sequences in this movie. Maybe a bit short, but they were really well executed. Part of the battle sequence (right after the movie-only Henshin and the full intro stances) was later re-done for the final encounter with Ron, in the last episode of the TV series, adding new chained techniques to the original choreography. Veru colorful and different.
Gekiranger as a whole, has been also the best work of Hirofumi Fukuzawa and Yasuhiro Takeuchi (Sanae Hitomi -who also rules- is a bit new here). Hirofumi, for instance, replicates Jan's personality amazingly well. His body built and Zukkii's are similar, too. Sanae is slightly more slender than Mina, and Yasuhiro is a lot more muscular than Manpei, but with their great in-suit performances you just forget about that.
Another interesting thing to notice is how many of the martial artists in the film were members from JAE too, people who annually works in the Super Sentai Series. Rio, for example, can be seen beating Kurojishi's suit actor up - the great Yasuhiko Imai. Yasuhiro Takeuchi is also seen fighting against Retsu. Even Hideaki Kusaka was there !
The visual effects keep improving ! There's this Gekiwaza used only in the movie where the Triangle is covered by flames to violently finish their opponent, very pretty. Also, and this one is just so good: we see actual footage of Hong Kong during the kyodai battle ! Amazing landscape, perfectly detailed (previously created and filmed in Toei's set in Japan) and well very mixed with the 'real' city scenes.
The kyodai battles in Gekiranger were always very original, but their effort went much further with the movie. Good that they kept the same dedication for this year's Super Sentai, at least during the few episodes broadcasted so far.
The musical score follows the epic style from the TV series, crowned by that beautiful orchestrated version of the Gekiranger theme played during the kyodai battle.
The movie ends with Rio and Mele going back to Japan, the cool dance to Ichirou Mizuki's TAO, and footage of Miki and her daughter going crazy around Hong Kong, enjoying the good food and buying presents with Master Shafu (and don't forget to look for a panda cameo during the ED credits !).
My only complaint with Juken Sentai Gekiranger Nei-Nei ! Hou-Hou ! Hong Kong Daikessen is, like I previously said, the actual length of the movie. Taking the whole cast to Hong Hong to make a 33 min. movie seems like a waste, considering how unique is this in the Super Sentai franchise. And of course, if the movie was longer, we automatically would get blessed with much more Yinling (Miranda) sexyness.
Masashi Ishibashi as the big boss Yang and Mayumi Ono as the silly Lao Fan also delivered well, but I actually wished more screen time for them. Okay, just more Miranda would have been glorious.
By the way, missing this movie doesn't really affect the story developed in the TV series, and you'll only notice brief movie references in the edo-period episode. I guess this is why Rio and Mele are not portrayed as in the TV series, and they only played anti-heroes roles instead.
So, that's it. This one also joins my list of favorite Super Sentai films, with Ninpu Sentai Hurricaneger Shushutto: The Movie, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger The Movie: Full Blast Action, and GoGo Sentai Boukenger The Movie: Saikyo no Precious.
Seven days until the VS Special release~ ＼(^_^)／