From what I've gathered it's taken a long time for them to realize we exist. Part of why it took so long to get any official licensed releases (outside of The First randomly showing up here back in the day) was because no one at Toei thought that there was enough interest in them. It took some long conversations with companies like Shout and Bluefin before Toei started actively paying attention, and that was just last year.

Up until last year Toei basically thought that we don't exist.

That sounds about right (Bluefin brought basically zero Rider stuff to C2E2, save a couple Figure-Rise kits), but it's still weird to me. I'm glad that all of the Japanese owners are starting to come around to the global Kamen Rider fandom, but it's disappointing its taken so long. I'd love to know why.

Oh! And here's this thing!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faizcloud.jpeg

Pulled from my Google Doc, so it doesn't incorporate any responses, mine or yours. Still, it's a thing!

Oh no, Yuuji ate Takumi!!

Takumi is where Yuuji's heart is!

Rumors have that Ishinomori Productions weren't happy with Masked Rider, Dragon Knight not performing as well as Toei hoped it would be as well an official release of Kamen Rider The First going under the rader and not selling well. Combined with lack of communication torwards english speaking fans until recently discovering Toei's director of Planning and Production Shirakura Shinichiro twitter account and bombarding him until he apologized for commenting on saying he didn't believe a western Kamen Rider fanbase even existed.

So after you posted the "Folks got feelings about Scissors" edition of this of the end of Ryuki, Kurona said this, which was a sentiment I really liked:

That being said, they were pretty close in size. (And "Rider" was bigger than both of them, but that's an inevitability talking about Ryuki)

Which is how, looking at this one, I know you REALLY did like these characters! Takumi's name is dwarfing literally every other word there. It's not even a competition!

I love these because of how many dumb sentences you can get out of them. WHY MARI FEEL SHOW

Don't forget YUKA GETS GREAT PLOT, which may as well be an actual quote from one of Die's posts! :lol