After Supra in Ryuki, here comes NSX (facelifted)!
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...101159/nsx.png

Also even if it doesn't really get you, how the f*** would you equalize Keitaro's suffering with Yuka's?

The 30cm less than Too Far Away part, again that reminds me of most of the (bratty teenage) girls I met IRL (it's started by don't get too close thing after all), and just like Takumi, it's a potential turn-off material to me (And even to Takumi... he wants to get off her BS. Also I only refer to this particular moment not to her overall, like particular moment of Takumi wanting to run away. Tbf she tried to give thanks a bit here, and helped Keitaro). Also the part where her wrist gets injured for real.... that hilarously reminds me of Ryuki's penchant for irony (particularly, Goro's Zolda sthick), but this time it's just an injury rather than actual death.

Like Yuji, I feel that, this moment, isn't really to get sympathy, but to show how horrible people in this world of Inoue's creation, that the real monsters are... humans. And obviously to get another fighter to join in (the end part at her "death", iirc, Death by Despair exists). Also people have said that Faiz is Kamen Rider Soap Opera, and Yuka's story is really reminiscent of it (especially, the place I live, where that kind is rampant on TV). A dysfunctional family where there's heavy favoring to the other sibling and ignore/abuse the other one (typically the main character), also typically that kind of abuse happens when you're a step child of that family (I read some sources where it says that Michiko is Yuka's half-sister) to the point where at one point, a family stated to me long ago that stepparents are always evil, also the excessive showing of bullying, and the emphasis of sulking about it (and many inner thoughts monologue). A̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶a̶n̶z̶a̶k̶i̶ ̶s̶i̶b̶l̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶l̶l̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶l̶.̶

For Keitaro, there's already side characters, not leads, that's given The Kamen Rider Theme before, like Minori in Kuuga. T̶e̶c̶h̶n̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶K̶a̶m̶e̶n̶ ̶R̶i̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶l̶s̶,̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶s̶k̶. His suffering is nowhere near as close to get his van damaged, one of his clothes getting squashed by a car, and getting into fight with Takumi (that tears his cloth), it's probably just a bad day compared to above.

Takumi now just fights by himself and instantly mastered Faiz Gear.... and the second finisher, Grand Impact appears. Unfortunately it's nowhere near close as cool as his Crimson Smash to me, where it's just usual powered punch. Oh I also forget to mention this before (all the finishers have this), I think the part where Faiz' symbol appears in the defeated monster before it explodes, I also like it despite it being simple, because it's so fitting that, as the monster no longer exists, it's crossed out (Faiz' phi symbol is like a crossed sign).

And it's neat that they're doing it this way, where instead of the monsters taking action and we eventually find out their motivation, here we start with the motivation. Like, it's getting the monsters closer to what I enjoyed about the Phase 2 Heisei approach, where there's some core trauma they're manipulating or inflaming, rather than just attacking people. I appreciate this more deliberate style!

Yeah, it's weird how universal it is to have had a not-great high school experience. Maybe it says something about my upbringing, but the horrible mistreatment Yuka suffers at home feels impossibly terrible, so as to be absurdly funny, while when I watch the high school stuff it's just Yeah I Can See That. I didn't have it particularly rough as a teenage boy, nothing that really stuck with me, but everything that happens to Yuka in school feels like what could happen to a teenage girl. They got it real bad in life!

I think you need to have the narrative counterweight of Keitaro. You always need someone in the cast to push against the other characters' assumptions and strategies. What I love about Faiz is that in any other show, Keitaro would be the hero character and Takumi would be the disgruntled anti-hero. Keitaro would be the voice of the plot, the focal point for the story, and Takumi would be the one acting in opposition. Here, they switch it, and Keitaro is the contrarian, asking terrible people to be slightly-less terrible, while Takumi is the Only If I Have To spirit of the show. It's such a fun inversion of the Kamen Rider formula.

I was more or less just talking about the transformation and how each form looks (... and subsequently, their toys. Fun fact, SHF Auto-Vajin can completely transform!) but if we're talking about character stuff, god, there's no way Ultra Magnus doesn't top my TFP character list. Loved his arc. Sort of similar to what I enjoy in a lot of Secondary Riders, actually; where they're trying to do the right thing but they need to step back from being very tight on authority and learn to embrace their found family.


What was my point here again? Right! Auto-Vajin deserved to be on the Lost Light. V3 and Den-O got to be there!

I definitely wouldn't! The comma was there to separate "the hilarious suffering of Yuka" and "Keitaro, the world's most impossibly dedicated dry cleaner". Sorry if that was unclear!

What's interesting to me is that so far Keitaro is the only one who has that Rider sensibility. On other shows, yeah, the supporting cast frequently follows the example of the primary Rider and fights for justice, protects smiles, saves innocents, etc. Here, it's just Keitaro. And the other two hero characters look at him like he's tragically confused. It's so fun!

Yeah, that punch isn't as cool as the kick, for sure. And the killed monster being Zeroed Out is a very cool effect.

Okay, first, did not know that there were two Kamen Riders in Lockdown's crew, so thanks for that. (To be fair, I was reading MTMTE way before I was watching Kamen Rider, and I still haven't watched Den-O, but this is neat info!)

I'm also very much looking forward to your essay "The Trials Of Authority: Ultra Magnus, Kamen Rider Accel, and the Value Of Flexibility In The Pursuit Of Justice".

I was, in fact; mostly thinking about Birth, Chaser and Vulcan as I was typing that! Heck, Geiz as well. Ichijou doesn't loosen up that much but he also fits the bill. Ah, Meteor too! Rogue--


THERE'S SO MANY

It's almost like the primary Riders are largely characterized by their ability to adapt to new situations and empathize with others, leaving the secondary Riders to explore themes of rigidity and questioning of authori---nah, it can't be that.

I note a distinct lack of feline projectiles heading my way. I am not surprised, just disappointed.

But onto the main topic, I do appreciate that after three seasons of only slight different heroic nice guys who want to protect people just because they are so nice and it's the right thing to do out of sheer angelic niceness, we get a main rider who is nothing like that. Not sure whether self-centered jerk is where I would have gone with it, but it does break all that up and we get more complex and varied protagonists from here on out. And having a group of monsters are secondary protagonists is definitely a different way to do things. It starts the trend of monsters as people who we get to know that many rider shows after this have done. Parad and Graphite owe a lot to this show, among others.

A lot of deliveries are being delayed as a result of the covid-19 outbreak. Please be patient! I'm sure OmegaEclipse is doing their best.

My avatar is a monster who chose to make art instead of doing evil (where my Rider Time: Cubi at, Toei), which is not just the most depressingly on-point description of myself that I've ever accidentally made, but it's also what I want from the monsters in Kamen Rider. I want dimensionality in all aspects of storytelling, and that includes the one- or two-episode chumps who usually just exist to be a cool suit that gets detonated.

So much of what Kamen Rider is about to me, empathy, needs multi-faceted antagonists to really work. The Orphnoch stuff so far, with Yuka and (especially) with Yuuji... it feels at times like the Very Serious a-plot to Team Faiz's Very Funny b-plot.

Some very exciting and unusual choices being made on a concept level with this show!

The cat projectiles were launched; however, due to a mistake in the aiming caluclations; they are instead aimed at our glorious comic book overlord, kamen rider die. As an apology we are sending a second cat hand delievered by kamen rider ouja