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Kamen Rider OOO (Warning: Major spoilers up in this bitch)
2011-09-20 06:16:17
edited 2011-09-20 06:16:17 in General
If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.
Finished watching this just now, so I'm going to give you all my thoughts on it.
Just as a warning, there's going to be a lot of spoilers in this. If you haven't watched it but you think you may want to in the future, you may want to leave if you don't want spoilers.
First off, the characters.
Hino Eiji
I wish to have power...
Better known as Os, or Kamen Rider OOO.
Hino Eiji is the son of a politician- or, more precisely, the son of the Prime Minister, I'm told.
Since he was young, he has had the desire to help people. In fact, we even see the fruits of this desire in one episode, where we see a young recluse Eiji helped out of his shell when they were in high school together.
However, this soon ended badly for him when he set his goals too big. He attempted to help a small country out, by giving them a lot of money. A group of 'bad guys', as they are referred to in the show, caught wind of this, and it soon started a civil war. Eiji is still haunted by his memories of this time- including one recurring memory of trying to save a friend of his, a young girl, who is killed by a missile as he watches.
His father cashes in on this story, milking it for all its' worth.
As is said in-story again... There are some who would be crushed by this, and there are some who would let it turn them rotten. But, for a rare few... it dries them up inside.
We come in near the end of Eiji's story. He's already suffered a lot- he is in his darkest hour, and has lost his desire in favour of a self-destructive spiral wherein he focuses on helping others over himself. As we watch, though, we see Eiji slowly mature. Eiji's path of development in the story is to learn to want things for himself again- to learn that it is not a bad thing to desire things, merely that you must be careful with your desires lest they consume you (more on this later).
Eiji is one of the more interesting characters of the story. He seems naive and idiotic at first, but under his kind of stupid exterior hides a fairly smart kid. His character arc takes him from a purely selfless individual to someone who learns to care about himself- and shows us how not being at least somewhat selfish hurts just as much as being too selfish.
Ankh
I want more Core Medals, to grow stronger.
Ankh is a Greed. One of the villains of the show. He seems to be different from the other Greed, though- as you can see in the picture above, he is a... disembodied hand. Unlike the other Greed, who are visibly nonhuman in their Greed forms, only Ankh's arm is nonhuman.
His character arc is, as always, interesting. Make no mistake- for a majority of the show, Ankh is a villain, plain and simple. He's on Eiji's side, but it's not out of a desire to help. As he admits up front, he's using Eiji to get his Core Medals back so he can be complete again.
Ankh is the Bird Greed. He has wings, and all of his Yummy are based on birds. He also uses fire-based attacks. I'm sure you can figure the symbolism here out all on your own.
It's only in the last section of the show that Ankh finally realizes what he has experienced over the course of the show. It is only in the final episode that he realizes. His desire is no longer to regain his Core Medals to grow powerful- his desire now is to... live.
Greed, you see, are literally nothing but piles of medals in the shape of people. Core Medals- think of it as your skeleton- and Cell Medals- your muscles, blood, etc. They see everything in muted colours, everything tastes bland, smells are dulled, and you even lose your sense of touch.
Ankh inhabits Hina's brother's body, though. And as he is inhabiting the body of a human, he's able to experience everything he was missing.
At that time, Ankh is pretty much reborn. He's no longer the villainous Greed he was for eight hundred years; now he is a living being (albeit still a pile of Medals- he is just no longer a thing, now he is a person), and he's willing to work with those he considers his friends, like Eiji.
Unfortunately, at the end of the series, he pretty much dies.
Gouto
I want to save the world.
Gouto is, perhaps, my favourite character in this show, and a prime example of this shows character development.
He starts off as a really annoying brat. He wants to save the world, and he wants to do it himself- as he makes clear to Eiji. He's proud, he's arrogant, and he thinks it all revolves around him.
As the show goes on, though, Gouto loses that proud edge of his. He learns to be humble, and that he doesn't need to save the world- the world just needs to be saved; and if he isn't the one who saves it, then he can at least help. It's no longer about him- it's about the world.
He is, perhaps, my favourite character of any Japanese show (although no-one can beat out Faith for my favourite character ever 
)
)Date Akira
I want one hundred million yen.
Better known as Kamen Rider Birth. When he's first introduced in this series, Date initially seems to be very self-centred. He fights the Yummy to earn Cell Medals, which he trades in to the Kougami Foundation in exchange for money.
As the show goes on, however, Date soon gets involved with the characters. First Gouto, whom he teaches to be less proud and arrogant, and then Hina, Eiji and the rest.
It is soon revealed that he was caught up in a civil war, and he has a bullet lodged in his brain that could cause him severe brain damage. He wants the one hundred million yen to pay for an operation to help save his life- a very selfish Desire, but not a bad one.
Date is a very fun character. 1.5 hats out of 5.
The Concept of Desire
The concept of Desire is central to the show- as the name Greed should imply. However, unlike most shows, OOO neither claims that you should forsake all desire, nor does it claim that you should go in excess. Instead, the central theme of the show is that desire is necessary for advancement, but one should be careful to never let it consume you; you should always keep your Desire in check.
The message is not exactly told subtly. In fact, I've seen elephant rampages that were more subtle than OOO in beating us over the head with it. However, that's not a bad thing. The show's theme states that greed is not bad; one should always lust after power, or wealth, or money- one should just not let it consume you, and you should not be a dick while you're trying to get it. It's a moral that's not told very often in society today, where we are often told that selfishness is bad and you should sacrifice yourself for others, or that seeking out money is bad and you should be content with what you have.
I'm not really sure where I'm, going with this. I was just listing my thoughts. Hopefully I get some discussion out of this.
Comments
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Excellent overview.
Seriously, Cygan pretty much spoils up to the last episode.
^^^Most Kamen Rider series are, as are most superhero shows, actually.
Plus it's really good.
AHR: You haven't seen the Birth armor yet. So silly, yet so badass.
Anyway, going back to the discussion of the show itself, it is clear that OOO as a show promotes Buddhist messages in the way it upholds finding a middle path between selfishness and selflessness, indulgence and asceticsm, and showing that without one or the other we are lost.
Buddhist ideas are not just present in the themes, but in the imagery as well, as Ankh (and by extension the Tajador Combo as well) is obviously based off the Karura (or Garuda), a race of divine birdmen in Buddhist and Hindu tradition, who were said to be brothers with the sun, possess the heads of eagles, the wings of condors, the tails of peacocks, the bodies of man, and were the very steeds of the gods themselves.
^^Holy wow. Now I wish I was better versed in Buddhism.
Let's see, what else.
If you squint, you can link the Tatoba Combo (as pictured above) to the Vedic tridevi. The hawk, being the bird, is the vehicle of Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, that which distinguished Ankh amongst the Greed. The tiger is the mount of Parvarti or Durga, who was said to be capricious and cunning, like Kazali. Finally, Lakshimi oversees wealth, and it was Uva who became the richest in Cell Medals with his patient and cunning schemes.
Gamel, possessing the elephant's head, the child-like fool who mimics the behavior of those he sees,could be seen as antithetical to the god of wisdom Ganesh, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles. By using the Sagozo Combo, Eiji restores the divine aspect, once again becoming a remover of obstacles with his prodigous strength.
Thr Burakawani Combo is associated with Virtra the dragon, who was slain by the thunder-god Indra and found soma, the elixir of immortality in his stomach.
I'm sure I'll be able to come up with more connections to the Greed.
EDIT: Many people have complained about Toei's status as a toy company conflicting OOO's message of not letting materialism run rampant. I myself, disagree. Toei here plays the part of Kougami, telling us a tale of desire gone rampant while helping children realize their desires of playing with OOO and Birth toys, trusting in us to make them rich and not going insane.