Oh Outsiders, what a wonderful chaotic show you are and what fun ideas you give me to eventually implement into my own stories.

Anyway this was very much an epilogue to the Genms portion of the April Fools prank that basically spawned these "connected" episodes. While it's clear we're not done with a lot of these characters, we're finally making way for a new series of specials that take forever to come out.

Welcome to Outsiders, it only gets crazier and stupider (affectionate) from here on out.

Interesting you decided to slot it into Zero-One, granted, it is rooted in Takahashi so either of his shows would work well for this so I suppose it's fitting that it's not its own thread.

I definitely played around with the concept of treating it as its own thing... but making it a part of Zero-One a) made more sense, since it's a natural continuation of those Presidents/Smart Brain specials, and b) then I'd sort of feel obligated to write about it, and that sounded fun. So here we are!

And, yeah, pretty dumb so far! Definitely less thematically-coherent than something like Geats, that's for sure.

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 1 - “MIRROR WORLD’S TREASURE AND OUJA’S RETURN”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders1a.png

Just… just a nonsensical plot, at almost every level.

Let’s start with the Ouja story, since this is about 90% his story, and 10% other Legend Riders. (Very fun to have the first episode of this thing feature literally no one from the preceding chapters, besides the same Zein effect from Episode 0.) The idea, vaguely, is to retroactively (through the use of a post-Ryuki timeline) give Asakura a sort of Tragic Past, where a marginally moral man – Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Evil – is wronged in a way that unleashes an unrepentant killer who works to destroy everything he once held dear. It’s fine, if that’s what you think Asakura’s character needed.

I would vehemently disagree with you, though. A lot of what made Asakura work in Ryuki is that people (Shinji, mostly) kept trying to ascribe some deeper motivation or complication to his character, but he was just a killer, the end. In a story about trying to understand people and see things clearly, Asakura’s point as a character was that he wasn’t hiding any deeper secrets or redeeming qualities; sometimes people are exactly who they say they are. That’s why he worked.

But we get the Fall From Grace bit in the beginning, and it just feels wildly unnecessary. We’re right back to Classic Asakura within about eight minutes, with basically nothing extra to his character to show for it. It’s a time-killing diversion that misses the point of the original character. Worse, it includes one of the dumbest plot developments I’ve ever seen.

So, Nazu has decided to tie up the loose end that is Asakura because he’s planning bigger political moves, and he can’t risk anyone finding out that he was associating with a ne’er-do-well like Asakura. Fine, makes sense. But then he decides to tell this to Asakura BY GOING TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME THAT ASAKURA IS COMMITTING ON HIS BEHALF – surrounded by cameras and witnesses – and basically state his criminal motivations and threats out loud to Asakura. It’s colossally stupid. There are witnesses maybe six feet away, and Asakura just called this guy on his phone. Nazu can threaten to blow up Asakura’s brother’s life to keep Asakura silent, but a half-dozen people just heard every single word of this villainous speech, and there's a bunch of incriminating evidence linking the two of them together. This is dumb! It is incredibly dumb! It almost instantly made me hate this episode, and that’s not fun to say.

Luckily, the additional elements of this story were pretty similarly stupid, but in a different way, so I’m not exactly wringing my hands over my dislike of this episode.

Like, the whole We Need An Advent Deck To Make A Wonder Ride Book thing is… god, it’s sort of what I was afraid this series was going to be. It’s like Kamen Rider Mad Libs, where you could plug in any series of proper nouns – the Timejackers need a Disc Animal to make a Fuestle, so they hire Birth to get it – and it makes about as much sense as what’s on the screen. It fires all the dumb fan neurons in my brain (DIEND!!!) but I can’t sit here in the aftermath and say the storytelling was anything more than getting those fan neurons a-firin'. It’s not trying very hard, and that’s so dispiriting.

I genuinely did not like this episode. There’s minor enjoyment of the Recognizable Element Of The Franchise variety, but, man, I could’ve just watched the trailer and gotten that. I watched this episode, and it gave me an Ouja story that misunderstood why Ouja ever worked, told in the dumbest way possible. I feel like we all deserved more than that?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders1b.png

Probably my least favorite of the episodes released thus far.

I've yet to know if I was wronged in any way because I've yet to watch Ryuki, but this episode was still a bit odd tbh. Even nowadays its a weirdly divorced episode from the rest in that it's just "Ouja gets his groove back" at its base level. Ouja Survive looks neat but that's really about it?

Anyway, when in doubt about bringing back a dead book character, utilize the power of a phoenix, in which said book character also used the power of a phoenix. I'm unsure if it was intentional, but it's funny how it works out like that huh?

It's seriously just Playing The Hits as a one-episode arc. He even makes sure to do his Vexed catchphrase! Considering the amount of post-Ryuki Asakura appearances where he's just the usual remorseless villain he always was, I'm really not sure why anyone thought giving him a tragic backstory was worthwhile.

If it were resurrecting Falchion (or, uh, Phoenix from Wizard), I'd probably say it was smart; with Desast, it's a little harder to think it was intentional.

True but when you think about it, it'd be one heck of a pull if they did Odin's Deck because Desast used Falchion once. And I want to believe that now because that sounds like the kind of insane stuff I'd want to pull in a story.

I would never stop you from thinking that! I love it when folks give a story more credit than I would.

In retrospect, this was a strange one, given how, last few seconds aside with Desast being Time Vented back into existence, nothing really gets expanded on from earlier or in later chapters.

And as you?ve seen, this series isn?t strictly Zero-One, but it?s also not strictly Takahashi, since this episode and the next are both written by Hiroki Uchida, which is probably why the second episode is one of the better ones.

And also, surprisingly, despite how many may dismiss this as an excuse to sell toys, there are no action figures or DX Advent Decks/Cards/Visors for Ouja Survive, which only really happens when they have something else to show off with it (eg. The Ark Driver only being announced when Aruto first transformed into Ark-One), or they don?t have any intent to make it unless demand is that high (Yujou Burst, Bang Bang Tank, the Killbuspider).

Other notes: I realise that, aside from actor availability, having a suit that still exists (even if the suit actor fills it out slightly more than he used to) and that fact that Kitaoka is likely dead by this point, the reason Ouja got a Survive Mode was because Knight got one with the blue card, Ryuki got one with the red card, so it makes sense a purple Rider should get the one in-between them.

Yeah, Outsiders starts off incredibly meandering, and not in a way that feels intentional. You could tell me that Ouja was the only past-Rider they had available that filming block, and I would be inclined to believe you. It doesn't help the feeling that Outsiders is all "Wow! Thing I remember!" and not anything deeper, because this story does nothing with Ouja. The Ex-Aid special where he shoves Emu's face into medical waste might be truer to his character.

It's a little disappointing that there's no Ouja Survive stuff, but honestly not that surprising. We're a long way from when any post-show thing would get a action figure -- Figuarts-wise, it was Arabiana Night for Saber, I think? -- and Ryuki isn't nearly a recent enough show for there to be a slick DX toy that can take advantage of an upgrade (I'm just gonna put "Zero-Three" here with no elaboration, because I shop at Tokullectibles). While I'd personally add an Ouja Survive to my collection, I definitely didn't assume one was forthcoming just because he was in a TTFC project.

(Also... I don't really like the look of Ouja Survive, and it's for a potentially impolite reason: Ouja's suit actor got, uh, thicker around the middle. The design of the suit absolutely draws the eye to a much denser midsection than I saw in those flashback videos, and it does not do that suit any favors.)

He's an incredibly weird character to kick things off with, that's for sure. He doesn't even vaguely intersect with anything else that's going on (Diend's like Go Fight Zein and Asakura's like LOL Nope), and there's virtually no narrative reason you'd ever recruit this guy to prevent an apocalypse -- is there a Kamen Rider story where Ouja ever helped out? He's a weird pick for this Suicide Squad-style show!