I get that Ora's actor is older than the character, but it's still an ENORMOUSLY gross look for Swartz to get all turned on by her when he's trying to do his job as an educator and teach a bunch of high school students who are terrified of being devoured by monsters that they need to start pairing off and oh the men could also just physically and emotionally dominate the women to make things faster.

It's all gross!

what about sougo's cute little festival, tho

That's always cooler to me than some gigantic explosion or CGI fight scene, when a character has to improvise their way out of a jam.

I mean, I got the context for his stated motivation, but his actions are way beyond what I consider acceptable on the Tsukasa spectrum of grumpy disregard for other people's feelings/safety. I'm pretty sure that he let loose a bunch of Inves on just, like, normal high school kids? Who definitely weren't going to become Oma Zi-O? And are now dead forever?

Forgot that happened! Was pretty cute; thought it was pretty characterful of him

(Fish Sandwich also watched Rider Time: Kamen Rider Zi-O VS Decade - "7 ZI-OS")

I really didn't enjoy this one. I mean, you only need to click that link to find out, but yeah, I didn't like it, and worse, I liked it so little I felt completely okay just tearing into it and even now, I don't think I said anything that was uncalled for. The only things I really strongly like from this whole project are all the things except the series themselves. Complete Form 21 is brilliant. Inside-Out is a great song and I love that we got versions emphasizing both Decade's Latin sound and Zi-O's Indian one. (<-And it is officially Indian, by the way! Probably should've looked that up before I got it wrong at the start of the thread.) Plus, like I said in that old post, it was legitimately neat that everyone had a second chance at grabbing a Neo DecaDriver! And it's cool that Saber got a Ride Watch! And... uh, okay, I guess I can at least bring up this follow-up post where I tried to be a little more positive:

So these things weren't totally devoid of merit, by any stretch, but in a way that just makes it all the more frustrating they couldn't build that into something that felt cohesive and worthwhile? I don't even have a problem with Inoue doing some completely random nonsense, but I need to feel like he's got a story he really wanted to tell, and this didn't feel like that at all. These things came out recently enough that I've been waiting ever since I watched them to see what Die would have to say, considering his whole deal with Inoue. Like, if anybody could draw out some hidden deeper meaning to the story here, it'd be him, right? But uh, yeah, I guess "straight downward slope, but a fun one" is about as good as I could've realistically hoped for.

There's a thing I've said about Inoue's writing a bunch, and it's that I think he always does best with casts he creates himself. Let me put it this way:

With one episode of Donbrothers, Inoue took characters I've never met and made me fall in love with them and their story within 24 minutes.

With Decade/Zi-O VS Zi-O/Decade, he took characters I've already loved for years and made me feel completely apathetic towards the story they were in.

But -- and I'm sure Die knows this better than anyone -- I suppose being on that rollercoaster is just the fate of those who call themselves Inoue fans. Or something.

I'll just refer everyone back to the comment I made when Mirror Sougo (that's "Dark Sougo" on your list, I think?) showed up. It's more relevant in 2022 than it was back in 2019!

EDIT: Oh, but speaking of alternate Sougos -- I do genuinely love Teddy Bear Sougo! It's a lot harder (but not impossible) to stay mad at Zi-O VS Decade whenever I remember Teddy Bear Sougo!

Man, did you think this at the time and I forgot? Because you have no idea how nice it is to hear someone else say that

With pretty much the exact same words, no less!

I mean, it's basically just the truth, you know? That suit has a concept it's going for, and it is utterly nailing that concept on a level few suits can. It's everything that was commendable about Complete Form at the time, adjusted for another decade of Rider costumes becoming more and more willfully strange in the wake of the original. Like a king come to reclaim its rightful throne. (And I say all this as someone who's never been super fond of Complete Form!)

I never finished the vs. miniseries. The Decade murder mystery one I just never got around to finishing due to apathy, but the other one really turned me off from the start. I found the surprisingly high levels of gore to be off-putting and some of the high school stuff with Ora was deeply unsettling (even once I realized who she was; like I said earlier, I had completely forgotten that she and Heure were characters from the show). I was also kind of weirded out by how cheap the Zi-O suit looked. I'm not sure if that was from the stage shows or what, but it was really obvious that it was not the full quality suit from the series.

Decade Vs at least has the sense that it's leaning more into Tsukasa Is Not Doing Great to sort of create a kind of allegory to what's happening: Tsukasa can't see beyond the high-level multiverse stakes of his character - the character that doesn't get a narrative of his own anymore - to treat individual lives as having much value. So we get this small story of individuals in jeopardy, but Tsukasa doesn't truly get involved until the stakes become multiversal. Like, it's a special that wants to talk about how Tsukasa's spent ten years moving from a guy looking for where he fits in, to a guy that can't relate to regular people anymore.

But this Zi-O Vs thing? Man, I got nothin'. It's all cribbed from the Zi-O series, but faster and dumber. The new characters are one-dimensional gags, the stakes are hard to care about, and the end of the story makes it all seem pointless. If anyone's got a single theory on what this story was about that isn't just pointing out episodes of Zi-O it's referencing, I'd love to hear it.

He does a better job with his own casts, sure, but: Blade. Ryuki. Those were good stories! He had some winners as a guest-writer!

I wasn't sure if I was imagining this, so thanks for the confirmation. It's definitely a cheaper-looking suit. The metal watchband that drops down from the Driver is sewn in, instead of being a plastic piece on top. And you can see some of the stitching? It doesn't look great up close.

I found it most noticeable on his watch holders

Zi-O vs Decade is a story that's all about exploring yourself as you grow up.

Hobbies, interests, friendship, sexuality, the works. Not just in how you take things into yourself, but in the interactions you see from others as well.

Sogo literally gets to meet and experience other lives that he could've lead, and they all get him questioning various aspects of himself to the point that he begins to think that maybe his dream of being a king might not be the sort of thing he's into afterall: Literally hearing himself talk gets him to reflect on things.

The closed off world of the high school represents his own inner world, where he's at the center and everyone else orbits around him. New Sogos coming into this world represents new ideas on who he could be.

There's alot of talk throughout the three episodes about the "True Sogo" which in turn is reinforcing the idea that, whatever phases you go through in life, whatever challenges you face, one day you will look inside and discover everything you need to. The goal of both Tsukasa and Oma is to literally bring out what they think is the best (in) Sogo.

True to life too, it's all one big and confusing mess. Whose advice do you follow? Whose feelings do you return? How do you handle social situations you were never expecting to end up in? Do your friends or teachers always know what's best for you? And how do you handle it all when life continues to come at you so fast(represented here by the Inves swarm)? In the end, it seems as though the end message is to try it all out to see what sticks and what doesn't; It's a journey to find the best version of you for you.

That all aside, I think the thing I liked the most in this special was Heure's' crush on Sogo. Representation is nice and all, but I'd say that, for the most part, this was actually pretty well written and good gay rep. I really did love how Sogo wasn't grossed out or against the idea of Heure's' love. Plus, Geiz's' "He's MY man!" moment was really funny/cute. And all throughout, it's very obvious that Heure is going through his own struggle with finding love, and that we are meant to sympathize with him, just as any straight crush plot in a show like this would be presented.

So uh, with all that said? Do I think that this special was good? Eh, not quite. While it did feature a nice handful of things that I really did enjoy, it still has a ton of problems(the plot being the biggest offender), so I really wouldn't try to argue with anything who felt this fell flat for them. But did I get alot of enjoyment out of the character interaction and comedic bits? Absolutely, and in the end I feel that made watching it worth it, unlike Decade vs Zi-O.

And yes Tsukasa dying didn't hurt anything either.

This was a thought I'd had earlier about this special, and forgot it before it came time to write anything, so thank you for both reminding me of it, and putting it more eloquently than I'd've done.

Yeah, this is definitely Inoue getting at his themes of self-actualization and the irrelevance of labels. Maybe not nearly as coherently (or, for most, entertainingly) as he's done before, but this all doesn't feel a million miles away from some of his Faiz stories.

Thanks for the solid analysis!