Yensid: You have to stop Organization XIII, Sora. Who knows what terrible deeds they could accomplish?

Xemnas: I kid you not, He turns himself into a pickle, He's called pickle rick. Funniest shit I've ever seen

MEDITATIONS ON A STRONG MAN... (REPOST)

Since this is the last episode of a series that has taken years to release, I asked (or attempted to anyway)  pretty much every person who was involved in this project if they'd like to say a few words regarding their thoughts on this series and working on it.  So without further ado:

HeatMetal - Founder of Over-Time, Translation checking for last dozen or so episodes, Coolest Dude in Town

stronger is good even though his costume is weird

Steel A Jeeg - KITsubs co-founder, Lead Editor for post-sjutton eps, occasional timer, old person

"Jeeg may have won the battle, but the war still rages on. Onward down the endless road of battle."

sky79 - Timing & Lead Translation episodes 23-39, translation checking for 1-22 v2s

(ANY COMMENTS MOCKING HER SPELLING WILL *NOT* BE TOLERATED)

Something about Stronger? Hmmm.. actually I think it's one of the borest KR series. Especially in the middle, when they revived Titan. But on the other hand, it shows some good scenes, when "villians" are fighting (or at least they try) between themselves for the position they have (or which they could have). I was disappointed when they showed Tachibana as comic chara. .mean, he doesn't deserve it. He is someone, who fought with all Riders after all, so I thouhgt it's somehow

And Shigeru .. he alone is a chara, I wasn't sure how I should feel about at beginning. Sure, he is hero, who protects the world, but the way he uses is a little too "showy". Like he thinks, no one is better than him. But there is something heroic about him. Would you be able to remodel yourself for the sake of your friend? Or something else? He threw all his life away, since the result was him being a cyborg. What could mean, he is immortal in some sense. So he lives forever, even when all his friends or people he knows aren't here.

And in the end, he stays alone. That's sad, don't you think? I think, the decision to remodel oneself takes courage to do it. In the end, when I knew the actor is dead, I've started to like him. Because, we will never see him like that. The actor is dead. In the last episodes, he was similing so brightly and happy, that I could only cry. We will never see that smile again. And the feeling which he gave with his smile at that time was really nice for me.

What I am thankful for is, that this serie brought all the Riders together. This is something I like. I still think the Riders are living in one universe so they should know each other. Going Fighting only alone is something I don't prefer. Showing, that there are others fighting with you for the same goal, is the thing I imagine, when I hear the word "Rider".

About Yuriko. I was crying when she died. Really.  It was such sad ending. And something I thought it's useless. Why couldn't she stay alive? It would be nice to see, how are both of them living after the end. Happily ever after? Or living apart, and remembering the fights they fought together? Since they both liked each other, is there a way they could have lived together? This we will never know.

 I'm not sure if I said everything I wanted I've never thought about talking about it

Abigail - MCS co-founder, Editor for first half of series, occasional timer

I truly enjoyed this series. A fun main characer, fun villians, and silly Showa plots come together in a good way and puts this up there with Black as my favorite Showa Kamen Rider series.

It was fun working on what little I actually did to help sub Stronger (which really wasn't much at all to be honest), and I hope you all had as much fun watching it.

I want to give a special thanks to Jeeg and the KitSubs guys for helping us finish this after real life happened. You guys are amazing.

So with that, I end this post of my thoughts that no one actually cares about with this.

RIP Titan and Shadow, you were too good for this world and I really wish you would have got to fight with each other the entire series. Finally, may Stronger continue to fuck with people forever more.

Zetta - MCS Co-Founder. Belgian, Translation checker for episode 1 and first few post Sjutton episodes.

Stronger is a cool guy and I'm happy he's completely subbed.

Ryoma - Editing for first half dozen eps, All around Deutschbag

I never thought I'd see the day where Stronger is fully subbed... also screw you, Cas.

Sandy - Timer involved with v2s of episodes 2-21

As a series, Stronger has a dedicated spot among my favorites of the Showa era. As a hero, Shigeru has a dedicated spot among my favorites, ever. Stronger is an exciting, emotional ride, from beginning to end, and I’m beyond thrilled that it’s finally been completed for everyone else to enjoy. Soar through the sky! 

Bunny Hat - DVD Encoder, timing assistance, master of DVDs

[Don't really have anything to say] other than how much I hate it when Toei uses laser-disc masters for DVD releases.

Kilo - Project Organizer, distro & Editing, useless

I can almost remember it like it was last month when Abi was talking to me about stuff he had going on and I offered to help with a certain project that was giving him minor technical headaches.  I didn't really know what Kamen Rider was aside from references in Kururu Gunsu.  But I just fell in love with the persona of Jo Shigeru.  The actor portraying him had this (to use a now overused phrased), arrogant swagger that exuded strength and confidence.  Along with delightful side characters like Tackle and Tachibana and over the top villains like MISTER TITAN, it started me on this path to obsession with tokusatsu, kamen rider and fansubbing.

I've made friends, I've lost friends, I've lost sleep, I've laughed and cried.  I'm not sure if I'd do it all over again, but I'd definitely be drawn to and etertained by Stronger no matter how my life turned out.

I'm extremely thankful to everyone who... well "assisted" is too light a word to describe all the manhours and effort put into this project, but I'm happy to have known them all and that in the end it wasn't all for nothing and that now lots of people can potentially enjoy this show as much as I did!

Champstice - Timer involved with v2s of episodes 2-21, Irish Person

Stronger is a show of firsts: First time a rider had a powered-up form, as opposed to just having a sound effect play. First time the antagonists truly fought amongst each other, as opposed to the occasional internal quarrel that usually ended with an evil character that appeared only in that episode being killed off. And the first time we had a female Kamen Rider (Frankly, SPIRITS only explained why she wasn't considered a Kamen Rider after she died, not why she wasn't considered one while alive).

At the same time, it's full of the same spirit and energy that makes Kamen Rider so enjoyable to watch. At least to me anyway. I hope everyone that's been watching Stronger since it was first picked up by MCS truly enjoys watching it's finale. And to those of you that plan to watch it at some point, whether it's soon or not for ages:

Honestly, you're in for a treat.

So I rewatched the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy again.

I say trilogy well aware that there are more movies by now but I feel like removing the main charachters and keeping one side charachter counts more as a spinoff. So before we begin I did watch these before once pretty much before they came out. I remember really enjoying the first one and the sequels overall being mediocre. Then over time I forgot why the sequels were bad and remembered a really cool story about magic pirates with a badass female lead. And now I have watched them again and they are bad. But like bad in their own special way. And the fact that they are bad doesn’t mean they don’t tell a cool story about magical pirates. So what I am going to do is go trough each movie in a semi structured way and tell you why they are bad but still tell a cool magical story about pirates with a badass female lead.

So when we start the second movie we get some exposition setting up the main vilian for both movies, It’s this new trading company dude who is looking to get jacks compass for some reason. Also this dude enjoys being an asshole so he imprisons elizabeth and sends will out to see to look for jack sparrow. What follows is what I like to call shenanigans. The pirates movies are not the only movie that employ the shenanigans trope but the trope can be sumarized as any action/comedy/general scene that doesn’t make much sense and does noting to progress the plot in a meaningfull way. (the defintion of the word meaningfull is subjective here but bear with me). The shenanigans the second pirates movie gets into include a very racist 20 minutes of Jack being a king of native canibals and having to be rescued by his crew and Will who was looking for him. Elizabeth gets her own shenanigans as she escapes jail. makes a deal with our main villian. Then in order to find Jack and Will she dresses like a man to tag along a trading ship. In her infinte cunning and wisdom that apperently dissapears because shenanigans she hides her dress on board of the ship. Wich then leads to her pretending there is a ghost on the ship and leading this ship to Tortuga. Now it can be argued both of these shenanigans progress the plot. Will finds jack and frees him. Elizabeth uses a cunning plan to get where she needs to be. Except both of these points rely on A. Jack got captured by natives that are there for no plot relevant reason. B. Elizabeth hides her dress on board of the ship she is hiding her identity and gender on. But ok half an hour into this movie and nothing has happened, fine. skip forward a few scenes and we get to Jack selling will to davy jones, will meets his daddy this is all pretty good. Refer back to cool magic pirate movie. Will escapes eventually and meets with Jack Elizabeth and suprise james norrington, you know the british navy villian from the first movie. (he is introduced earlier and better than I might suggest but this is already far too long.) So the boys fight over davy jones’ heart untill halfway the fight Norrington steals the heart out of jacks jar of dirt. After which the fight actually continues for quite a while. this entire fight can be summarized as shenanigans. So davy jones is angry because his heart got stolen and he sends the kraken after our heroes and something acutally suprising and interesting happens.

See Elizabeth and Jack have this conversation a bit before this, where Jack suggests that Elizabeth will become a scoundrel like himself because deep inside she is a pirate and wants to know how it feels (also this means they are going to make out). She retorts that she will not but that Jack will become a hero one day because deep inside he is a good man and wants to know how it feels. So the kraken atacks because Jack has Davy Jones’ heart and Davy jones generally wants him dead. This is when Elizabeth does something briliant. She kisses Jack and ties him to the boat making the kraken kill him so she can escape. She lost the argument, she became a scoundrel pirate. However Jack in the eyes of the group became a hero, sacrificing himself to save the team. In a way they are both right. Especially from elizabeth’s perspective as a scoundrel, A heroic man is good for nothing but leverage (this is a huge theme in the first movie.) So Elizabeth killed jack, the movie ends with everyone mourning jack at Tia Dalma’s place. Who reveals that Barbossa is alive, and that Jack can be brought back from Davy Jones’ locker. But only if they are willing to sacrifice everything, everyone agrees with an “Aye!” except for Elizabeth, who reluctantly says yes, which makes sense... she killed Jack.

Now why did I write all this down (other than this being the point of the blog), I wrote it all down because the third movie has some issues that facinate and frustrate me to no end. So Elizabeth is now a murderer, pirate, liar, and overall badass worth a milion of Jack Sparrow. But this is a Disney movie and hollywood can’t have women be competent without also being objectified sooo we start the movie with her singing the pirate antem forcing the pirate lords to gather. In order to make a deal with one of the pirate lords named Sao Feng. So far so good she is being cool. But in order to get in she needs to drop her weapons and clothes and Barbossa is there to take the lead. This actually makes everything confusing, Everything up to this point would make Barbossa and Elizabeth equals if not friends for the fact that Elizabeth achieved what Barbossa would have loved to do. Kill Jack Sparrow. But because the movie won’t allow a woman to be a main charachter entirely she doesn’t tell him. So he treats her like shit. We also get to see her weakness in this scene, namely that she still really loves Will making her actually interesting. (I am not going to debate on tumblr if her weakness being attraction to a dude is sexist or not.) So much of the first half of the movie is spent on saving jack sparrow from davy jones’ locker and one thing relevant to my story here that happens is that Elizabeth finds out her dad is dead, which upsets her inmensly and she needs to be stopped from drowning herself. (I am honestly not sure about this scene it makes sense in charachter but portraying Elizabeth this way is just sooo weirdly out of the badass pirate version of her... Whatever.) She eventually gets kidnapped by Sao Feng who thinks she is the god of the sea Calypso, and Sao Feng wants to release Calypso from her mortal prison. This is the same thing Barbossa is trying to do but he knows who Caplypso actually is. Sao Feng dies before this goes anywhere meaningfull other than making Elizabeth a pirate lord with his last words. So now Elizabeth is actually on the same level as Jack. And now we finally get to the scene where all of this comes together. The pirate council scene. All of the pirate lords have come together to decide what to do against davy jones who is now under control of beckett. They fight amongst each other like pirates are expected to do and Elizabeth scoffs at this. She proposes they go to war against Becket’s fleet, in order to flee the scene and live another day, the most ancient of pirate traditions. Jack wants them to stay holed up because he is a coward. Barbossa wants to go to war and release calypso. They figure out the only way to go to war as the pirate council is for there to be a pirate king But everyone always votes for themselves. So there hasn’t been one in forever. Barbossa pushes the vote and because he wants to go to war he votes for Elizabeth, (Also barbossa is a pirate lord for some reason even though he was Jacks first mate in the first movie, you’d think you’d have to be a captian to be a pirate lord?) So elizabeth is now pirate queen. They go to war, some more stuff happend that should probably get its own post but this is all the information required for me to make my point. 

Elizabeth as a main charachter is written as a badass pirate with clear motivation but isn’t allowed to be competent and as such the movies narrative around her gets really confusing. If elizabeth had known about the pirate council and the full scope of the code in the second movie, (which was largely spend on shenanigans and could have done with telling us more about the world the story takes place in, the pirate lords and clear details about calypso do not exist in movie 2)and barbossa’s motivation early in the third movie (easily obtained by gaining his trust revealing she murdered Jack), we could have seen this movie as a pirate exceeding her mentor (Jack Sparrow) fighting for the power required to survive, and provide her fiance (Will) with the means to save his father whilst manipulating and lying like literally everyone else.I am almost entirely sure this arc existed for her at some point considering this is what she builds to in the first movie, she adores pirates for their rebellion and heroism, is appaled by their lack of morals and manners, ends up learning how to manipulate them into doing what she wants. But thats not what happend, instead we spent a lot of time on shenanigans and flip flopping between pirate Elizabeth and emotional rich lady on a pirate ship Elizabeth. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading. This is one hell of a first post for this blog and I have basicly only written about Elizabeth. I feel like the other big thing i want to talk about is something in more movies and needs its own special post.