A little context is needed for this one: In a mold-breaking change of pace, the final battle of the episode does not come down between Skyrider (still being called just "Kamen Rider", but let's not get into that now) and the Kaijin of the week. Rather, this episode's monster, Sasoranjin, just got shot full of arrows by Neoshocker because he, who's actually a she, and...well, it's complicated, let's just say that the woman who got turned into Sasoranjin had a kid sister, and upon finding her again blah blah blah regain memories of former self blah blah betray evil guys and all that jazz. Anyway, point is, Skyrider arrives on the scene too late to save the turncoat Kaijin.
He pulls out the arrows as she reverts to human form, gives some parting words ("Take care of my sister") and the does the Neoshocker dissolve thingy all those early New Kamen Rider Kaijin do.
Needless to say, our hero is now pretty ticked off.
SNAP!* Yeah, bet you saw that coming. To make matters worse, who should start laughing it up than...
General Monster! Skyrider and him talk trash for a while, before he goes through the motions and sics the requisite legion of henchmen, whom Skyrider pretty much decimates, because by this point he's mad as hell and he ain't taking it anymore! Watch as Skyrider kicks several guys in quick succession, and we see it all from his point of view! Keep in mind now, this is the first meeting between Skyrider and the General (who's been lurking in the shadows for the past 3 episodes, seen only by us and everybody else who isn't Skyrider) and generally, these first meetings never end well for the heroes (see Rider 2's first encounter with Colonel Zol, you'll understand what I mean.)
Before he can deliver the killing blow on the big man, Monster teleports away to mock Skyrider some more from the safety of the local Neoshocker base. Or so he believes.
Our hero summons his trusty Sky Turbo...
...and you know what comes next.
RIDER BREAK!
Now, General Monster is pretty shocked at this turn of events, but his world's about to get even more painful. Because what does our fightin' mad hero do?
He nearly runs him over! This is followed by a serious Rider beat-down.
Watch as Skyrider hits Monster so hard, things just randomly start exploding. This being a 70's Rider series, it all culminates with everything blowing up.
While General Monster does live to fight another day (the final showdown between him and Skyrider comes in #17) let's look at what just happened:
Neoshocker killed one of their own monsters when the latter turned against them. Skyrider arrived too late to save him/her, and, stricken with grief, he just flipped the @#$% out and hammered a ton of guys into the ground, then drove right into the enemy base just to track down and beat up a character who, going by standard Rider Logic™, should have been home free after teleporting away. And then everything blew up.
So I guess we can declare the winner to be, without a doubt, Skyrider.
General Monster looks a lot like Colonel Zol, not? Maybe is Zol who has changed name and rank? :P
ReplyDeleteKamen Rider Ghost
That was pretty awesome. I need to see some more Skyrider! Can't wait to see Skyrider lose it and deny General Monster of any teleportation clichés.
ReplyDeleteThe only episodes I remember are...Madarakajin and the episode with a kid who makes a little hang glider that looks exactly like the one in the intro video.
I think General Monster was intended as a sort of homage to Zol, as with much of the early Skyrider happenings.
ReplyDeleteI kind of theorize Admiral Majin (the second and final Neoshocker officer) was supposed to be kinda like a spin on Hell Ambassador, and the short-lived Professor Doc (who's in the later episodes with General Monster, and has a *great* name) is like the Neoshocker version of Doctor Shinigami That Never Was- cuz he gets fried pretty early on, and he doesn't have a tenth of the presence that Shinigami had. He did have a nifty pocket calculator though!