Absinthe -
in the face of the abyss,
Yes, that is only how
It can be called Absinthe.
and in the absence of common sense,
And in sad totality of glory,
We shall drink and cheer
our share of green ignorance.
Absinthe is to be drunk on the dark,
for it lights the streets with revelry,
and warms that heart
forsaken from romance.
- Today I will go downtown, and in sight
of the beaten path. I’m going in a moment!,
And the glass will be green and golden
then empty, like the meaning of the night.
And I will fly my way back home,
Or to some other dimension of dream
or the dream will fly to me. And then place my grief
In one more green liquid monument.
sorrow (for the loss of something or someone loved)
Oh, sorrow. You are tangled in this fall, too.
Perhaps it’s a role you did not want. You didn’t ask to be born, did you? But you ride in the hearts of the lost, of the hurting, of the broken. You come over them quick and relentlessly, yet dragging your feet as you do it. You know the pain you wring in the human heart, the heaviness that you bring to the table. It’s all that you have to offer, all that you know to offer, all that you’re here to offer. Ever since you came to life you’ve arranged a symphony of sighs and tears and groans, one that you never asked to play a part in.
You wouldn’t have minded sleeping for all eternity, I think.
But you woke, born of the tears of the Father and result of the one who rebelled.
-
Oh, sorrow. You write yourself on the human heart, a pen enchanted that wouldn’t write if you had a choice. You compose epics out of tears, pouring out of yourself more and more and more. No one is immune to you, and no one can escape you. You have a song for all, and it will be sung.
You even had a song for Him.
-
When did He first hear the notes? Light of the world, stepping into the darkness that you swim in.
He was too far away to hear the anguish of Bethlehem’s mothers, and would have been to young to remember your song, the song that they couldn’t hold in, the song that burst forward from their very hearts. From their souls. When did His parents hear? When did His mother hold Him too closely, too tightly, as she mourned for the mothers she knew?
Did she ever catch Him outside, looking at the stars? Did you blanket His shoulders as He stretched out His hands towards them? Did you sink into His voice as He asked, “Why are they so far away?”
Did you take up a corner of His mind as His parents led him away from the temple, from the place where His heart sang?
Did death hit Him harder because of you, or because He knew it wasn’t right? Because He knew that the darkness wasn’t meant to have this much sway, because He hated that you were awoken? Did you wrap Him up as He wept over His family? Did you cause His hands to curl and fist into His hair as He sat in a dark corner and wept over His grandparents? Over His earthly father?
Oh, sorrow. You tried to comfort the Light, but all you had for Him was a shadow.
-
You walked in step with Him as He reached into the dark places, the places where sin reigned and the wrongs ruled. You morphed into compassion that physically caused an ache in Him, one that compelled Him to do something—anything—to spread His light. To alleviate the pain, the suffering.
To give a glimpse of Eden, of His love. Of the depths He would go to to restore it.
Did you squeeze His heart as He wept? He wept over Lazarus, and Jerusalem, but those can’t have been the only times. As you broke His heart over the blind, the leper, the lame, the demon-possessed children, you must have milked His tears. Did He stealthily dry His eyes on His sleeve, or did He let them openly run down His cheeks?
He felt no shame over His tears.
Not even when you drowned Him, sorrow, causing Him to sweat blood as He curled to the ground in the garden.
-
The garden.
A different garden. A garden so different than the one He must have wanted. The whispers of Eden must have been cracks of thunder in His ears as the darkness started to swarm, as He prayed and pleaded and wept wept wept in Gethsemane.
Gethsemane. Oil press.
People were anointed with oil. Was He anointed? Did He feel set apart in this moment? Did He feel holy as you swept over Him again, and again, and again, morphing into agony? As He stared down the cup of wrath that awaited those He had knit together, those He loved, if He did not step in?
For it could only be Him.
Oh sorrow, you reluctant character, did you cherish your role in this night or did you despise it? You knew who He was, though you could not possibly know the things they would do to Him. Chained to your role, damned to anchor hearts and weigh them down. He came to destroy you, did you know? He came to put you to rest, to relieve you. Did you think He would take the course He did to do just that?
How could sorrow and pain bring freedom?
-
You have spent years writing His symphony. A symphony worthy of the sorrow of the Creator of the universe, of the Word of God, of the Light of the world, of the Saviour of mankind.
It is your magnum opus, and you wrench His heart as He stands quiet, letting His precious creation mock Him and beat Him and whip Him. There is agonizing beauty in His silence as He is led away, your music His difficult breaths and the drag of the cross on the ground and the jeers of laughter as He collapses again, and again, and again.
He cries out as the nails pierce Him, as His wrists and feet are mauled. You keep the beat as they raise Him up, and your music quiets to the sounds of His breathing and the tears of those who loved Him as chaos reigns around Him.
Climactic moments are supposed to be loud, sorrow, but yours is quiet and aching.
His words are but murmurs, no breath lasting long enough. He saves His voice for the words He needs most, words that you carve your mark into—
Mother, this is your son. Son, this is your mother
Rest, tense, push, breathe.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do
Rest, tense, push, breathe.
I am thirsty
Rest, tense, push, breathe.
It
Is
Finished
Rest.
Rest, for there is no more breath to be found here.
-
You washed over the face and soul of His mother and those who loved Him, tangling with despair and hopelessness as the Light was ushered to the depths of Death. He didn’t struggle under your hands, though, like so many had before and so many will after. He fell into the crypt and the lid closed on Him. Finished, as He had said—though how could this be the end?
You are so tired, sorrow. You did not ask for your part in creation.
Take heart, for light is shining through the cracks. He will not be held down.
He will have His victory, and You will have your rest.
(Dive into the Mirror by defspiral, the original song opening created for the Japanese dub of a 2009 American adaptation to a 2002 Japanese show. Surreal just sayin’ that ain’t it?)
2009 in the USA
The Great Recession was “ending”....but its effects would linger on for several years.
Power Rangers was off the air at the end of RPM and a minor actor on the Mighty Morphin’ season was put on death row for murdering a couple with his wife as an accomplice.
Way back in 2006, producer Aki Komine was given permission by Toei to license a Kamen Rider Series for international distribution. Aki then chose SFX costume designer and filmmaker Steve Wang of live action Guyver movie duology fame, his brother Micheal Wang and a film crew to create a TV pilot of an adaptation to Kamen Rider Ryuki. This was later leaked online for KR fans around the world to see before being taken down in 2008. The general idea Aki, the Wang brothers and later a company called Adness Entertainment had was that Kamen Rider had potential to work in the US market as an action show.
Adness, unlike Saban, knew what Kamen Rider was and did not try to cheapen it to ride the coat tails of something that was a success in its own right or talk down to its audience. Kamen Rider just needed a minor bit of tweaking to account for the differences in cultures, but not so much that would make the source material unrecognizable or diminish its entertainment value. The target demographic after all was, like its Japan original, for pre-teens and teens but with enough of an entertainment factor for an adult audience to appreciate.
One thing was made clear by Aki to Toei: Don’t call it Masked Rider for international release, just call it Kamen Rider. This was done as Aki thought Masked Rider sounded “weird” and Toei wanting to distance themselves from Saban’s attempt to cash in on the beloved series.
Yes, Masked Rider is so awful to the fans of KR that even Japan, the land that created Kamen Rider, wants nothing to be associated with it. (Also, Masked Rider as a super hero name is/was trademarked by Marvel in the US).
The studio shopped around for networks and eventually got 4Kids to pick it up in late 2008. But, since the company was run by people who had an issue with anything that had what they deemed to be excessive violence in it, the Network later did whatever it could to sabotage the show’s airing schedule and tried to interfere with the production. This ultimately backfired on them in a karmic way after Dragon Knight ended, but more on that later.
Dragon Knight is notable for being the first and only Kamen Rider show to ever receive an Emmy award. The Daytime Emmy Award was for Outstanding Stunt Coordination, a relatively new category for the Emmys at the time. The award was given to the show’s coordinator Dorenda Moore, who aside from this series would later go on to work on Thor as the stunt double for Natalie Portman.
The award was well deserved, as the fight scenes are fantastic and truly reflect what the action of tokusatsu should be with stylized kung-fu martial arts. Helping this was the choice of 5 time martial arts champ Matt Mullins being chosen to play the secondary Rider Wing Knight.
The series also gets praise by the fandom for doing what no Kamen Rider show had ever dared to do at this point: Let a Female Rider actually...*gasp*.. LIVE?! And not only that, we got a female supporting cast character donning the persona of a Rider when the first is defeated and put in the Shadow Realm-y Place of Non-Deadness. While some call it a cop out, this is the one time the ineptness of 4Kids on the subject of death worked in its favor by the USA having 1 LIVING female Kamen Rider in the form of two heroines taking turns donning a single Rider belt trounce Toei Japan’s then count of 0 living female Riders. (Natsumi Hikari as Kiva-la wasn’t created yet). I refuse to see it in any other way than a blessing and in typical egotistic patriot fashion my countrymen are often stereotyped with, we more or less showed Japan female Riders can be in a show and kick butt. USA USA USA USA!
When Heisei Kamen Rider celebrated its 10 Riders anniversary, the show was brought over to Japan for broadcast and dubbed by many actors who were members of the cast of the Heisei part of the franchise. (Including Kenji Matsuda who played Wing Knight’s Japanese counterpart Kamen Rider Knight basically playing himself as an American XD). The show proved to be popular enough in Japan that the series got a sequel novel.
But sadly, America did not share the love, as changes in time slots and eventual removal of the show meant some fans didn’t get to witness it at all or only up to a certain point as the final episode only aired in Mexico and on 4Kids subpar online service, which went offline two years later and then died completely under the Saban Vortexx brand in 2014 along with the block.
To top it all off, this series is one of those “Never on DVD/Blu-Ray ever” shows in the USA, meaning torrents and streams or a cheap foreign legit or bootleg DVD copy are a fan’s only options. Which is ironic considering releasing the show consistently here would have prevented such a thing.
But KR fans and people who disliked 4Kids poor treatment of their favorite shows got the last laugh. The CW4Kids block died in 2009 and 4Kids went nearly kaput in 2012 as it filed for bankruptcy after a lawsuit and then went bankrupt again in 2016. The company’s main branch is struggling to stay afloat and only has a cash flow of $3.33 million which is in the negative based on reports a few years ago and only 16 employees are currently working there. (SO for 3.3 Million you could buy 4Licencing!) So, yeah, quite the fall form grace by the studio that once licensed and dubbed the Pokemon anime. (though given the One Piece rap and Dragon Knight’s treatment, I’d say it was well deserved karma.)
But enough talk, let’s Dive into the Mirror of Adaptation!
(Mr. Taylor Circa 2009)
Real Name: Kit Taylor (No relation to Jack Taylor, a person known for great parties. *MST3K joke*)
Kit Taylor is an orphaned teen who was framed a lot for being a thief and lived in a foster home. He went searching for his father after he turned 18 and came upon a strange looking card deck on a table in the old apartment he spent his earlier years in with his dad. The deck attracts a giant red dragon (wow, deja vu), who tries to attack him. He then witnesses a monster from a reflection try to eat someone and a strange man comes to her rescue who dons a suit of armor to fight the beast. Kit learns the man’s name is Len, who demands Kit hand over his “Advent Deck” and to not form a contract with the dragon he just saw. Kit gets visions of his father telling him to form a contract with the dragon and he does becoming Kamen Rider Dragon Knight!.
The Kamen Riders are warriors of the dimension of Ventara, a reflective mirror world like ours. An evil named General Xaviax has stolen some of the Advent Decks of the heroes of Ventara after defeating them and is seen giving them to evil or easily manipulated humans to kill Len and manipulate Kit into serving him.
After some duels with other Kamen Riders, resolving misunderstandings to forge new alliances and a stock plot about evil twins, the heroic 13 riders defeat Xaviax and both worlds are saved. Kit continues to use his powers as a superhero to help others alongside Len and a female Rider while the other human riders have their memories erased.
Powers and Gear:
Same as Ryuki’s but he also has an energy shield during transformation and a cool unnamed Rider Machine bike.
Enemies:
Xaviax and the Mirror Monsters
http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Xaviax
Xaviax is a scheming conqueror who has placed Ventara under his rule and now seeks to abduct all humans on the Earth as his slaves to rebuild his homeworld of Karsh.
Mirror Monsters function the same as their Ryuki counterparts, only this time they are artificially made soldiers for Xaviax’s army who kidnap humans to mass collect DNA to prefect a long range teleporter to Karsh to abduct all 7 billion humans on Earth and enslave them.
Afterward
Adness tried to make a movie out of Dragon Knight and adapt another Kamen Rider series...but the company could not do it and have gone uncharacteristically quiet, leading some to believe that Adness went bankrupt during the recession. The company did still exist in 2016 (sort of), trying to cash in on Gangam Style by investing in K-Pop....apparently that didn’t work as the official site has gone eerily quiet and the Japan office site has not been updated in 2 years. So either the company is laying dormant or is totally dead. It is as far as we know, a Schrodinger media corporation.
Due to the FCC regulations, angry parents and the rise of internet streaming and cable TV networks not being strict on censorship opening new avenues for creators, Saturday morning kids TV no longer exists as of 2014. But given the modern tech we have, fans can create their own Saturday morning lineups, so if you feel nostalgic for some henshin action by way of adaptation, seek out Dragon Knight.
Matt Mullins and Stephen Lunsford say: “HENSHIN!” at Power Morphicon in 2010.
