RECAP: KAMEN RIDER DRAGON KNIGHT #1- “SEARCH FOR THE DRAGON”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE HEROES OF DRAGON KNIGHT!

After great turmoil in the world of American toku, the fandom was hard at work writing letters to Santa, asking him to bring them something fresh this holiday season. Something that could challenge the likes of Power Rangers as a force to be reckoned with. Santa’s answer?… “Kamen Rider Dragon Knight!”

Our story begins in the indoor parking lot, much like the one during the opening to the “Highlander” movie. As a young asian woman walks over to her car, she hears a strange sound. She’s unable to see what’s behind her. She got a stalker, y’all. An inhuman monster that wants to take her away to do goodness-knows-what with her once he’s got her where he wants her!

The woman tries to fight back as she is grabbed and slowly dragged into a reflective surface, which has become a portal to another world. It’s like Stargate, except with 2% the budget. But suddenly, out of the swirling mirror, a guy on a motorcyle comes fying in, smacking the monster away from the woman. The monster is clearly teed off at this point, and a few of his friends jump out of the mirror to rough up the buzzkill that wants to ruin their fun.

It’s only then that the almost rape victim realizes who- or what- just saved her…. IT’S BATMAN! OMG, I HOPE HE DOES THE VOICE! ………. No, wait. It’s not Batman- that’s his second cousin, on his mother’s side, Kamen Rider Wing Knight! He’s here to lay the smackdown on these punks! And he’ll do it with the help of his Yu-Gi-Oh cards and his Duel Monster, Black Wing!

The parking lot attendant and the asian lady watch in astonishment as the Rider launches into an amazing attack… against nothing. The lady can’t believe that she’s been rescued by a certified schizophrenic. But really, it’s what she and the parking lot attendant CAN’T see that’s impressive. Wing Knight is beating the crap out of his invisible friends and looking cool doing it.

After all the baddies have been dispatched, Wing Knight is showered in flashes of energy and morphed into his human form. Now, his real name is Len, but I’m going to call him Keanu Schwarzenegger. With the glasses, the motorcycle, and the tendency to speak in a scary monotone voice, I think it’s quite fitting. Who names their kid Len anyway? Is that short for Leonard?

In any case, Keanu helps the young lady to her feet and when she questions him about what she thought might have happened, he allows her to believe that whatever kinda crazy he has, it’s contagious. And now that he’s touched her, she’s got it too. With that, Keanu hops on his transforming motorcycle and the parking lot attendant waves goodbye as he swoons over the hero’s animal charisma. Ten seconds later, Len is driving through the streets and transforms again so that we can have a cool lead-in for the opening credits.

The opening credits assault your senses with a hard rock song and a storm of flashy visuals, including what is probably every main Kamen Rider the show is going to have, as well as some super-quick mentions of the three lead actors’ names. Don’t blink or you’ll miss em. The song itself is not what I had hoped for (which was a more ambiguous track that you might have a chance to sell as a “regular song”), but ya know what? Given the option between this and Fake Outkast trying to rap about Kamen Riders raising the roof with mad skillz, I choose this.

Next, we find ourselves in… I’m not sure where it is. It’s either a police station or a social worker’s office, or some such business. In any case, 18-year-old Kit Taylor is in trouble with the law. He’s trying to explain to his father why he’s such a screw-up when we suddenly realize he’s just as crazy as Keanu. His father isn’t really there. In fact, his face is on a missing person’s flyer on the wall. Kit’s case worker is standing over him telling him to get his act together. His foster home situation is coming to an end, cuz he’s too old for this shit. It’s time to shape up and ship out.

But as Kit leaves the office, his bout with sanity gets the better of him as he hears his father telling him to “search for the dragon.” Oh my god. THAT’S THE NAME OF THIS EPISODE! Kit has no idea that the dragon in question is actually stalking him from behind the reflective surfaces. These people and their invisible friends…

Kit returns to his foster home to find that they’ve already found a REPLACEMENT for him. Wow, can you feel the love in that room?! Well, one person is happy to see him at least. It’s his young friend, Jesse, who comes with a birthday present. A picture with a frame that he stole from his foster sister. And the circle of child dilinquency is complete.

After Kit returns the hot merch, he bids farewell to Jesse by repeating his father’s apparently famous words. “When the going gets tough, the tough go riding.” …… We won’t discuss WHY those words are famous.

Kit rides to what we can assume is the home he lived in with his father when he was around. The place really needs those Queer Eye guys to come in and give it a homey feel. Especially considering the cool flashbacks Kit is having as he remembers the place being more alive as a kid, hanging with his dad, cracking unfunny jokes.

I love the visual style used here. In fact, all the more surreal moments of dream and memory are done especially well, considering. The only thing that might have made this better would be if there wasn’t so much COLD, DEAD SILENCE in so much of the show. Seriously. You could hear a pin drop in some of these scenes, even if the characters have dialogue.

So Kit’s snooping through dad’s things while I’m imagining that he might find his father’s secret pot stash and go to town. Instead he finds an Advent Deck. Wait a sec… Didn’t Keanu have some Yu-Gi-Oh cards that look just like that?! I smell a duel coming on!!! Kit goes onto the balcony and is freaked out by his deck suddenly glowing and the dragon flies out of the mirrors across the street directly toward him. Kit throws up his hands in fear, but the deck creates a shield that deflects the dragon and it goes flying off. I would love to be a fly on the wall during Kit’s therapy sessions.

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the lovely and talented Maya, a reporter for WayAboveTopSecretSeriouslyWe’reNotJokingThisShitIsCrazy.Com… or something. She’s chatting with her buddy Trent about all the mysterious disappearances lately. Looks like the asian lady isn’t the only rape victim these monsters have claimed recently. Enter Lacey, the fly sistah who is pretty much just there to add some much-needed sass to the episode before Maya peaces out in hot pursuit of the rape story.

Maya reveals that she too may be crazy, as she talks to herself about all the disappearances while walking down the street. Kit is also walking down the street, but his particular dementia is causing him to see a man get yanked through a mirror by a giant spider. And there are more rapists ready to attack Maya! Kit’s gotta save her!

Kit rushes in to tell the baddies to back off. Maya, of course, thinks he’s nuts since she can’t see the rapists like Kit can. And so Kit has to push her out of the way so he can have a fight sequence. Kit’s not exactly a pro at this. He gets in a few good hits, but goes down pretty quick, and Maya gets sucked into a mirror.

But hold up! The offending rapists got kicked back out of the mirror by an unseen assailant. OMG, it’s Keanu Schwarzenegger again, and he’s carrying Maya back out of the mirror! This dude’s timing is just impeccable.

Kit watches in awe as Keanu reveals that he does indeed know kung fu, and he makes mincemeat out of the rapists… What exactly is mincemeat anyway?

In any case, Keanu is still pretty worked up after the fight, so he walks over to Kit and begins to sexually molest him, under the pretense of looking for his Yu-Gi-Oh cards. He reaches into his bulging pockets and pulls out a wallet, but that’s obviously NOT what he was reaching for, so he tosses the wallet away and keeps searching.

Kit is thoroughly creeped out, so he gets the hell outta there. When Keanu realizes that Maya photographed the entire molestation, he quickly walks up to her, drops her camera and smashes it to bits. Obviously, Mr. Schwarzenegger is still trapped in the closet.

Kit tries to run, but it’s not long before the spider monster comes back. It snaps at him, forcing Kit to fall backwards into a reflective surface that transports him into a big, shiny in-between mirror dimension thing. His Yu-Gi-Oh cards activate and suddenly cover him with some fancy-schmancy armor before he gets spit out into another world, where the spider monster is waiting to make Kit his bitch. Where’s Samwise Gamgee when you need him?

Keanu finally catches up to where Kit was last, and realizes there’s another monster. So he takes out his Yu-Gi-Oh deck and utters the words “Kamen Rider,” causing him to morph back into Batman’s second cousin, Wing Knight. He then steps into the mirror, where a sweet ride (or something) is waiting to take him into the other world.

Meanwhile, Kit is having a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, getting knocked around by the spider like nobody’s business.

At last, Wing Knight comes blasting through a mirror, knocking the spider over on his approach. He quickly demonstrates how a real man uses the Yu-Gi-Oh cards, inserting one into his card port thing and summoning a weapon from his invisible friend, who just happens to be a giant bat.

So, Wing Knight is doing his thing with the monster, but Kit gets the bright idea to join in and be cool like Keanu. He inserts a card into his port, gets a sword from the sky (which has got to have so many fun and easy applications) and rushes in to fight. And in .002 seconds, gets his sword broken and knocked back.

Keanu has had enough, and he bitchslaps Kit like a two-dollar hooker to get him out of the way for his awesome finisher. The most powerful card in his entire Yu-Gi-Oh deck is used, causing his bat friend to wrap its wings around him as he jumps into the air, then forge into a spinning needle type thing. The spider never knows what hit him, as the big needle comes slamming down into him and he explodes. There’s dead spider bits all over the place, but Wing Knight rises up like the Terminator, undamaged.

Kit is embarassingly shocked and amazed. Wing Knight has got a bone to pick with this noob, but it’s gonna have to wait because Puff the Magic Dragon has finally caught up with Kit, and he’s so not going down without a fight this time.

The dragon releases puffs of flame from his mouth, causing explosions to shoot up all over the place, which…. Ya know what, I don’t know if they had to do this in order to “take down the intensity” of the scene, but the explosions had very little impact to them because of the sound. There practically isn’t any. If you closed your eyes during the sequence, you’d think the dragon was attacking them by letting the air out of a bunch of balloons really quickly.

In any case, the explosions are a lot more dangerous than they sound, and not even Keanu Schwarzenegger is fast enough to outrun them. It’s not long before the two are being consumed in hot flame, and the dragon is inches away from chowing down on them.

To Be Continued…

I must say, I really enjoyed this episode. In terms of writing and tone, it’s definitely aiming for a more serious perspective on the sub-genre. I appreciated that I wasn’t being treated like an ignorant who only responds to bright flashing rainbow colors and loud flatulant noises. The show had little time to introduce a whole new world to us, and I think they got off to a great start.

I do have an issue with the overall soundtrack though. I mean, there’s a lot of dead air in-between dialogue and some extra music and backgound sound would have added a LOT. It doesn’t kill the episode, but I do feel like my attention would have been grabbed more if there was something to fill those voids.

Overall, I’m liking the show quite a bit, and am excited to see where it goes from here. “Search for the Dragon” gets a B+. Let’s Ride.

-Dr. Tristan