I love the later opening, it's fantastic.

Faiz 47

Okay, so NOW this show is actually starting to annoy me. First, Osada dies and now Kiba's a massive villain. I'd at least understand if this change was more gradual and carried over to the last episode or something but uh...he spent forty something episodes believing humans and Orphnochs could work together dude shouldn't be grinning evilly while Lucky Clover beats the shit out of his former friend! He does seem uneasy lying to Kaidou, though....I think.

On the other hand, I do think Takumi actually grew a lot over the curse of the series. He seems a lot more idealistic in his viewpoints. I mean I guess he's more of the standard early Heisei rider now but he did come a long way from the standoffish punk he was at the beginning.

Also Faiz hasn't been That bad about explaining things, imo. A bunch of questions I had have been shockingly answered aside from, 'Where did THIS powerup come from?' The Orphenoch king though...uh. I thought the King would be the first Orphnoch or some sort of secret leader, but now that it's shown what he is, it takes the Orphenocs from sci fi monsters to to...some weird mystical shit.

Also, wait...is the goat the mentor form Dairanger?!

Yeah...as much as I love Faiz I have never liked how quick and easy Kiba just switches from anti-hero to straight up villain. True his friend died and it drove him over the edge, but he's like immediately total evil. This is a case to where the movie (Paradise Lost) handled it much, much better.

He does. Personally I really enjoyed how he grew as a character that could give two shits about anything or anybody to wanting to protect the world and the dreams of its people. I think he got a little "Fuck life and shit" too many times over the series, but at least the final time they pull it you get some nice dramatic moments from it.

The King is kinda weird too...and it leads to one of the biggest problems with Faiz's story.

I have seen Paradise Lost a little while ago on a whim. Maybe I shouldn't have, but it didn't really spoil anything that wasn't spoiled to me already by various crossovers. Anyway, it was pretty cool for one of those non-canon au movies.

Paradise I would say is definetly one of the highlights of Faiz for using it's setting in a different take, the new suits are amazing, more use of Start up and essentially everything about Psyga was brilliant.

It was just a fun little movie but then you are also reaching the ending of Faiz which is one of Faiz's main issues.

Faiz basically ends with a lot of plotpoints not really given closure.
it's what kinda made me disappointed in the whole thing.

Yeah, I really like how he spoke entirely in English for no reason.

Anyway...Faiz 48-50

Masato Kusaka isn't exactly a character you mourn...but his death is still a tragic one, nonetheless. I'd almost say I'll miss his inhuman douchery, but as I know form Kamen Rider Taisen he literally comes back from the dead to continue being a dick so lol.

His former classmates along with Keitaro and Takumi for some reason will mourn for him though. It makes sense that his classmates are saddened by his death honestly. They were literally the only people he was ever halfway decent to...in his own Kusaka way. I'm can't see why Takumi took his death THAT badly. I guess they had some antagonistic camraderie. I'm surprised Takumi actually told Mari and Keitaro about his death. He really has gron a lot form the beginning aha.

Too bad the other Ryusei students never got to see their dad one last time or find out what happened to him. Speaking of their dad...why didn't he just make Takumi president?! I mean...it wouldn't have solved EVERY problem but...it just made more sense. He's even seen Takumi in action before and he HAS to know he's an Orphenoch. I just...well, okay

Kaidou at least realized early on that something was up with Kiba's plan. He still may be a weird jerk (I mean did he even ask where Osada was?!), but his hearts in the right place. I like how he sorta became friends with everyone in the end. When Takumi refused to tell Kaidou that Teruo was the Orphnoch king, that's the one withholding of information I can sorrrta get since Kaidou felt sort of responsible for Teruo....but when Kiba told him Kaidou took the information fairly well, so it was pointless anyway.

Mihara....is very pointless. I'm glad Kiba got knocked back to his senses, but...did he have an more evil version of his horse form during his fight with Takumi or were my eyes deceiving me. His sacrifice...I mean I saw it coming, and I'm glad he died heroically, even if..it was kinda ultimately pointless.

The Orphnoch king...doesn't make much of any sense at all. But the final battle looked cool enough. Except for Mihara he didn't do much...And yet he doesn't seem to be dead only very badly hurt as Saeko promises to heal him...great. And Takuma became a wimpy construction worker...um, okay....he's such a weird character lol.

Also what the hell is Smart Lady anyway? An Orphnoch...right?

Takumi's final line about finding a dream is pretty good and there's the vague maybe death I've heard a lot about before. This scene honestly wouldn't have been that bad if...anything else about the ending made sense.

Speaking of the ending...isn't it just the Agito ending more or less. Main Rider kicks the main villain and a massive flash of light is shown and then it shows what the characters were all doing in the aftermath. Ah well.

I do really prefer the Paradise Lost version of events save for a few things, but yeah Faiz wasn't the perfect series. I guess given all the complaints I've heard about it, it couldn't be. That said, I enjoyed a lot of it and most of the problems it had for the first 40 or so episodes amused me anyway. And Takumi is probably one of my favorite Riders now, because despite whatever problems the series itself has, he did really grow as person and Rider and came a long way.

Next Rider thing I watch might be the Kamen Rider 4 special since I hear it's sort of an epilogue to Faiz anyway.

And the next Rider series I watch is probably gonna be me finishing up Hibiki....at least the first half. I may like Faiz but I'm not sure I want to watch Hibiki all Faiz'd up...

It's time for another episode of What's up with Agito?

This week: Project G4

The movie felt a bit weird and disconnected from the show, but that's to be expected considering the nature of the pre-Den-O movies. I did find the facility with the powered children to be interesting, but it wasn't explained very well. Why did it exist? It couldn't have been to harvest powers for G4, as they didn't have that design yet. I liked the Unknown attack at the beginning, but why did they attack? So many questions...

Composition-wise, nearly half the movie just felt like a string of short vignettes. The story shows one character for a minute then it jumps to another character then to another. It made the movie feel too choppy, and while I know it was probably to show all the characters before bringing them together, but the scenes felt to short to smoothly transition.

The plot...doesn't really make sense. Aside from the unexplained facility at the beginning of the film, why are the bad guys (I don't think they even named their organization, did they?) interested in G4? Where's the Overlord of Darkness during all this? Story just feels kind of awkward and unexplained; the evil organization wants to create G4 and kidnap Mana because...reasons. How did they even know about G4? And what's up with the Unknown? Why are they helping fight against the main Riders? Or is it just coincidental? And what''s up with Mana's vision at the end? I'm assuming its just an AU thing that's not really important, but it's weirdly focused on.

Side note: Anyone else think this movie felt a bit similar to Kamen Rider Blade: Missing Ace? New mysterious bad guy comes in, infiltrates the good guys' ranks, kidnaps a girl close to the protagonists to facilitate his plans, and at the end they need to fight their way through a crowd of generic bad guys to get to the big bad.
EDIT: Both were written by Inoue, so that explains it.

But the real star of the show is Hikawa/G3-X. Hikawa felt more like the main Rider of the movie, as he actually had a decent story and some neat interaction with G4. I think if they had fleshed out his role more and made it his movie, it could've been a neat little G3-X story.

Speaking of which, that final fight between G3-X and G4 was one of the highlights of the movie for me. Very cool to see them fight, both physically and ideologically, as well as G4 coming back to life after the guy inside it died. The part where that rotating mirror thing slows to a stop when G4 dies was also beautifully done. The G4 suit itself is a very neat black redeco of G3-X. My only real problem with it is that its head crest is a bit tall, but I can forgive that in light of the giant rocket launcher.

Overall, it could've been better with a bit more focus and explanation, but I'm willing to forgive it since its a movie (we all know how those are). G3-X and G4 were the best parts of an otherwise standard AU Kamen Rider movie. But it did give us a chance to see Ryou and the G3 unit again, so it wasn't a total loss. And it has Hiroshi Fujioka (Kamen Rider Ichigou) in it! How cool is that!

I think the Unknowns in both the movie and the show have some pretty brutal ways of killing. One guy makes people slowly disintegrate, and their victims are almost always normal, innocent people. The Unknown and Grongi are probably the most violent killers in the Heisei era so far.

Inoue wrote all the non-Den-O movies during the '00s.

Made it past episode 16 of OOO and the debut of Kamen Rider Birth.

The plot is getting much more interesting as it goes, and I'm constantly getting excited over all the different Medal combinations. I also have to give credit to the show for keeping the tug-of-war between Eiji & Ankh, the falling-apart Greeeds and the increasingly ambiguous Kougami Foundation fun and interesting enough to make you want to know about each's party's motivations and goals as they are slowly revealed. I'm excited to see where the show takes itself.