And here in lies my problem with Kiriya. His realationship with Asumu is incredibly one-sided with constantly mocking and antagonizing Asumu and Asumu just takes it. He dosen't get mad or anything he just feels bad slightly and that's it. There never really a boiling point for Asumu and it's likes if your going to subjegate both the character and audience with this crap. At least let be building to something. The only time I feel Kiriya antagonism works happens way later and even then I feel like writers backpeddled on that.

jfc I don't know why I keep mixing up Midori and Hitomi's names. I'm not sure there's been a show where I've so consistently transposed two names. I'm so angry at my brain right now.

Hibiki With A Sword (thank you for the early tease) is such a colossally stupid idea. I honestly hate it, on basically every level. There's some minor aesthetics that I'd like, if it were a brand-new character, but I loathe it on Hibiki. Him just slashing an enemy so that it explodes...

https://media.giphy.com/media/ToMjGp...qPUQ/giphy.gif

(And no, I never figured out who Kogure was played by. Feel free to inform me, Androzani84!)

Well I'll just bring up the fact that even the costume designer for Hibiki states Armed goes against the show designs aesthatics.

The thing is, I honestly don't dislike the Asumu/Kiriya "friendship"! I think it's a lot of fun, and it tests Asumu in new and different ways.

What I hate is Hibiki acting like there's some clear value in Asumu being friends with Kiriya, when that has 1000% proven to not be the case thus far! Hibiki telling Asumu to be friends because sometimes jerks are helpful or whatever? It's bad advice, and it's dumb advice. It's trying to shoehorn Kiriya's blatant antagonism into Kogure's old-school stern judgement. They are not the same thing! It's okay to not force yourself to be friends with jerks who belittle you constantly!

Oh, wow, I already totally forgot I did the same passive aggressive thing I did with Heisei Generations Final back when Hibiki got his Lightsaber. :lol

Needless to say, Hibiki already having a way cooler, more in-character sword in just one more point against Armed for me.

And don't beat yourself up about the Midori/Hitomi thing too much. They're the same number of letters, and have the exact same vowels in the exact same places; I can imagine that being harder to keep straight than you'd think!

I've always thought that the usually power up forms thing actually made no sense for Hibiki in the first place. Both of the ones that Hibiki gets seem obviously tacked on because Toei insisted on it for toy sales.

Armed is probably the worse though. The entire concept of the Oni, is that they fight monsters through music. Having a sword that is just a sword and not some kind of musical instrument completely breaks that. It just goes completely contrary to the lore.

I thought Crimson's in-story deployment was narratively tricky, but I think the suit and its origin were pretty well supported, thematically. They add up to a Better Hibiki because he trained super hard, and also it's seasonal! That's a very Hibiki way of doing a power-up!

Armed, though, jeez. Someone makes some all-powerful piece of merch and now Hibiki can cut stuff? Why not give him a cellphone and a card deck, while you're at it?

I am loving this thread tonight. :D

Also, say goodbye to Shounen Yo, Die. This special highlight performance was the last time the show will feature the closing theme before the finale. The opening is gone after this one, too. The show gets a new, terrible opening but the ending credits/theme are just gone.

Happy Halloween, I'm going as a guy who hated this episode of Hibiki.

Yeah, sometimes they're bad! I love Kamen Rider as a franchise, but individual episodes get judged on their individual merits. This one didn't have a bunch!

Sorry to hear Shounen Yo is done with. I really liked that song, and I thought Kogure singing us out with it was sort of fun. I wish they'd done a few more variations on the staging (Zanki! Todoroki! Kiriya, hovering over Asumu's shoulder when the camera spins around!) but it was a pretty nice way to end an episode.

Armed Saber is an anomaly because it's a power-up item that Inoue actually wrote in how and why it shows up, instead of having it appear out of thin air and then never questioned again. (I liked it's movie origins more though, which is more contrived but slightly more thematically fitting. Slightly!)

Instead of explaining it, I’ll just post this screen cap I posted when I watched the episode.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElSgIbFX...jpg&name=large

And as for Armed Hibiki being a radical departure from everything beforehand in every way? I think that’s kind of the point. For hundreds of years, the Oni in Kantō have basically had a strict status quo for dealing with Makamou (a set of parents plant the egg somewhere out in the wilds, the Oni find them, kill the parents and then wipe out the monster as it hatches) but the Makamou’s bosses have changed the rules, by creating Makamou that are born fully grown to directly attack people and having their only oversight coming from the Super Douji and Hime, who have a lot more intelligence that the normal version and the clones who were previously providing oversight (though not by much). You could say “but they already beat one of the new breed once”, but to quote from Toy Story 3 “they got lucky once.” There’s no guarantee they can go on beating a new threat with old methods. It’s kind of a theme in shows with a heavy Japanese influence and a legacy theme that the heroes do better against the bad guys when they try something new or previously thought impossible instead of relying on the ancestors’ methods forever.

And now, for the next time lyrics.

And I told you to be patient
And I told you to be fine
And I told you to be balanced
And I told you to be kind
And in the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different kind
And I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owning all the fines
- Bon Iver, Skinny Love

My big issue with that is, if you can get a powerup form just by training hard, why is Hibiki seemingly the only Oni every to have seemingly achieved this? It's not like he's the only Oni that trains hard!

Otherwise, yeah, it's far better thematically than Armed, but still obviously forced in there for toy sales. It just displays the different in writing teams, I think.

Valid. It loses points for no one chucking it at Hibiki’s head, though.

Okay, I said I was going to complain about Hibiki's final form when it showed up. Here we go.

Before that, I want to start with Kurenai as a comparison. Despite a few minor complaints, I ultimately like Kurenai for what it can do and what it represents. I like how Hibiki unlocks it by training hard, which reflects the show's moral. I like how it's an organic progression from the default form in both aesthetic and fighting style, which reflects the show's theme of nature. I like how it can make goddamn self-exploding Ongekikos!

Compared to that, Armed is a disappointment. It's one of my least favorite final forms and I feel like it belongs in a different show. I don't like how it screws up Kurenai's design by making it heavier when they could have used a different base and color to distinguish it. I don't like how it requires a special weapon. I don't like how it makes the mouthplate even more impractical since Armed Saber is voice-activated. I don't like how it's a technological upgrade when Oni and Makamou are supposed to be forces of nature with only a little assistance from technology. It doesn't make much sense to me, even the training part for using Armed Saber since Hibiki doesn't seem much stronger, physically, after becoming Armed. It's just so meh.

Anyway, yeah, Fuse Akira, the singer of Shounen Yo, is Kogure, as Androzani84 pointed out. If you think he looks familiar, I'm not sure where, since it's his voice that was the major clue to his identity.

Yeah, he makes a bigger deal out of Armed Saber here. He's trying, but... ugh, it's still so dumb.

Oh! Okay! Neat!

So, I like this explanation, but while it could fit metatextually, I'm not sure it's supported in the narrative?

For one, it comes from Kogure, who is specifically called out by Hibiki as being the archetypal Old And Traditional Japanese Man. If the point of Armed Saber was to show Takeshi trying new things or considering different approaches, I'm not sure it works in a story if it comes from a guy who demands things be done the way he did them as an Oni.

Second, Armed Saber shows up at the same time the upgraded Douji and Hime show up, just as the pattern is changing. But we find out in 33 that the Armed Saber was being tested a month ago, which means it must've been in the design phase even earlier... way before the Makamou plot changed, and back when the Oni had things well in hand. There wasn't anything in-story that suggested that the Oni desperately needed some new piece of tech to even the odds.

Third, it's just not how this show ever treated Getting Better as a concept? Hibiki's whole thing is about training yourself to handle problems and challenges. Having do a brief training session and then handing him a super-powerful sword... what is the lesson there? What about that speaks to Hibiki's resilience, or dedication, or drive? Kogure just makes him more powerful.

Finally, it gives the drum guy a sword, and I will never feel like that's a smart idea.

Well, a) maybe he trains harder, and b) it's not like we've got a huge data set to definitively say no other Oni changes forms seasonally or due to training. I don't think the show categorically says only Hibiki goes through form changes.

I thought he was some Kuuga cop I'd forgotten about. His singing voice honestly didn't click with me!

Something nice I will note about Armed that does fit the show is that it feels more like armour on top of the suit; rather than the suit itself being upgraded -- that's a rarity outside of specific toyline stuff like Gaim's Arms. It's a good thing for this show since the suits, of all Riders; are the most explicitly stated to literally be the Riders' transformed bodies and hence an upgrade being armour on top of that feels very natural. I also like that the disc animals form it, that's kind of neat.

... shame about the rest, though!

I was hoping to dig up some concept art or something to show, but the original idea for Hibiki's final form was to do a "subtractive" upgrade, ditching the silver bits entirely, and doing some kind of fancy pattern with the colors of the body itself. This whole concept was then abandoned for the usual approach of slapping more bits on the costume, since kids would immediately get that.

The choice of Disc Animals (the most technologically advanced thing in the series) as a motif was conscious decision on the part of the designer to mollify a production team that was more than a little uncomfortable with the idea of their natural hero gaining such a mechanical new look.

I know we've all been dogpiling on Armed Hibiki plenty already, but looking these things up seriously only reinforces everything I've ever felt about it as an embodiment of compromise.

It's especially glaring in comparison to the sort of thought that went into the base suit. Did you guys know the reason Hibiki's mask doesn't have eyes is to give the impression that, as a hero who fights with sound, Hibiki wouldn't rely on his sense of sight? Because I'm pretty sure I never heard that until a few weeks ago and it blew my mind a little.

I actually never knew that. Me personally I always assumed the giant visor in the middle of his head was meant to be a giant eye, since it certainly looks like one from certain angles.

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI HYPER BATTLE VIDEO - "ASUMU, TRANSFORM - YOU CAN BECOME AN ONI, TOO!!"

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/hibiki/hbva.png

"Hey, remember when
We could save kittens from trees
Or lunch on skyscrapers
Bring the villains to their knees"

-Say Hi, "Back Before We Were Brittle"

I want to like this video! It's goofy and sweet and, sure, it's 80% clip show stuff, but it's a story that's about Asumu!

It's just, it's a story about Asumu's burning desire to become an Oni that concludes with him using Armed Saber to destroy a reused monster suit and maaaaaaannnnn no.

As with the last story, there's some fun surface stuff. Asumu's interactions with the disk animals are great, and make me sort of long for a version of this show where the disk animals had discrete personalities. I like how the snake one's an enthusiastic kid that the others don't like, or how the blue wolf/whatever one is all about carb loading. There's a lot of little goofy personality traits that made the recap stuff easier to stomach. (It is constructed in the most boring way possible, though. It functions like someone's reading a Wikipedia entry on these characters.)

But the crux of this whole story is that Asumu's training hard to live his dream of becoming an Oni, and, no? Just, no? It could not get off on a worse foot than if Asumu was training to live his dream of being a cannibal, something that's roughly as supported within the last 33 episodes of Hibiki. It's such a dumb hook for a video, and while I can't ever get that mad at a story where Asumu rides a tricycle to impress judgmental toys, it just never ever worked for me. The whole premise feels ripped from a version of Kamen Rider Hibiki that never got made, and it's baffling that this was the story they went with for what's nominally a marketing outreach attempt. I get that it's a dream sequence or whatever (zero time given to how this even vaguely fits into continuity), but it's just not anything that the show ever put stock in, so it falls flat for me. If they want to steer Asumu's character in the direction of wanting to be an Oni, fine, but you can't just say He Really Wants To Be An Oni Now. Gotta set it up better than this.

I mean, points for having Asumu need to bail out Sabaki, who had already broken Kogure's record by defeating 31 Makamou that day, but that's about all I can give this one.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/hibiki/hbvb.png

I like this special mainly because it from the 2nd half and there was no Kiriya. I do agree making Asumu a oni would probably be a mistake in the story. But this is non-canon special that never tries to connect to the show outside of recapping so I'll let it slide. Plus I just think it cool they had a mini Bibiki suit for the actor to wear when they were filming the helmetless scene. Also it'scool to see the Sabaki suit again

I honestly wouldn't be against the story shifting Asumu into wanting to be an Oni if it was set up well. (I mean, that's what the story was feinting towards in the first dozen episodes, before it went a different direction.) What's here just treats Asumu's motivation as a foregone conclusion, and I don't get it? Am I watching this one, like, 10 episodes too early? There was no release date on the Wiki, and it's clearly after Armed Saber shows up, so it feels like the right time to watch it? But the Asumu in this short feels completely wrong.

Asumu in a tiny Hibiki suit, though, yeah, totally cute. It's Marshmallow Hibiki!

To be honest, I’ve nothing to say about the content. Just that, as far as I know, the actual show runners have little to no input on these sorts of projects.

Asumu becoming an Oni? From what I can gather from comments made by the guy playing Hibiki, that WAS the plan at some point in production (I can’t say when they stopped that being the plan, mostly for spoiler reasons)

And now, for the cast trivia.

Akane Taka/Madder Hawk is voiced by Hiroshi Masuoka, who Super Sentai fans may recognise as Navigator Gator from Changeman and GaoGod from Gaoranger.

Rūri Okami/Lapis Wolf is voiced by Bin Shimada, who’s previous Rider credit include being a voice double for Nigou and Stronger during the late 70s/early 80s. He’s also had several villain roles in Super Sentai, most notably Sixth Spear Satorakura in Hurricaneger (and his son who looks and sounds exactly like him in Gokaiger)

Kiaka Shishi/Orange Lion is voiced by Ryuzaburo Otomi, who you may recognise as the voice of the bad guy from OOO’s movie and the Dragon from Wizard.

Seiji Gaeru/Celadon Frog is voiced by Taiki Matsuno, who you may recognise as Cubi from Kamen Rider Ghost.

No next time lyrics this time, I already used them last time.

Awesome! Thanks!

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 34 - "LOVING BONITO"
KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 35 - "BEWILDERING ANGEL"

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki34a.png

"I spent all day trying to decide
About the things that you said last night
Did they mean nothing
Or were they filled with hidden clues"

-The Wedding Present, "Take Me!"

INOUE FOREVER.

I mean, this one's just perfect in my eyes. The only thing I'd change is to make Todoroki's colossally weird dinner date an entire two-part episode, but beyond that? Note. Perfect. Just an exceptionally funny and insightful couple of Hibiki episodes.

The real interesting twist on this one for me is that it's really Hibiki who ends up learning something from all of this. Oh, sure, there's wacky misunderstandings and relationship problems that basically every cast member has to overcome, but Hibiki's the one who changes and grows over this story.

Like, that's not typical? The basic configuration of the show is that Hibiki is the idealized mentor, and Asumu (or Todoroki) is the POV student. Hibiki is the one who teaches, not the one who learns. So this story putting Hibiki in the role of mystified observer, someone who can't figure out how to help because everyone's being way too weird, it's a new perspective for the show to explore.

Not that Hibiki's some sort of What Is This Emotion You Humans Call Love robot or anything. He's been in love! Passionate love! But he's always been able to focus on his responsibilities as an Oni first, so the concept of the rest of the cast being just wrecked by their various feelings of shame and jealousy... I like how weird that is to Hibiki? He's just like Do Your Job and everyone else is a disaster. He's trying to give them advice, but when that advice is basically Suck It Up... that's not going to work.

It's Midori (or Hitomi, I don't know) who sweetly fixes Hibiki in this one. Hibiki's the best non-Sabaki Oni there is, and that's partly because of how dedicated he is to his role as an Oni. That's what makes him great, but it's also what makes him unique. Everyone else is a mess of interlocking neuroses, where confidence in a job gives them confidence in their personal life, which gives them confidence in their job, which gives them confidence in their personal life, and so on. Hibiki's greatest skill is compartmentalization. (It's definitely not cooking.) Everyone else is a giant pile of noodles on a tray.

So Hibiki figuring out that Todoroki needing to get Hinaka back is the key to getting back on track as an Oni, I thought it was sweet. I can understand if people thought it made Hibiki a little too emotionless (he comes off mildly tactless for multiple scenes), but I thought it stayed on the right side of believable. It's a cute story.

It's also a hilarious story, so much so that if it did have any failings as a story, I'd be more than willing to write them off. I'm not sure I've ever laughed so hard during a Kamen Rider story. From Todoroki's almost-impossibly bad attempt to celebrate Hinaka's birthday (love that 2005 fauxhawk); to the all-time great sightgag of Todoroki pulling a meter-long wooden fish box out of nowhere (a gag so nice they did it twice); to Todoroki's clearly misplaced relief when Hinaka says that she's Just Tired (with Kasumi rapidly shaking her head in the background); to Zanki's awful, awful turn as Cyrano (he slinks away in failure while two random dudes are like WTF); to Todoroki listening to sad songs in his Honda Element (the exquisitely sad Moshi Moshi killed me dead); to Hibiki trying to get Todoroki to understand why a meter-long wooden fish box is maybe not what Hinaka was expecting (it takes a minute!); to the tears of joy shed by Todoroki and Hinaka over some world-class udon (pure joy for me, in that moment, I love these two weirdos); to the goddamn genius capper of Hinaka being slightly bummed at getting a ring when she wanted "something shiny"... you know, sushi.

It's hysterical. It's a succession of killer scenes that never let up, while still keeping things in a very A Superhero Deals With Romantic Troubles mode. There are fights, there's a monster, Armed Hibiki shows up (ugh) with a really stunning drum solo finisher (so great)... I don't know, man, I thought this one worked gangbusters. A+ episodes for me!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki34b.png

This is the episode I most remember for the flanderisation most heavily settling in.

Hibiki's characters... I'm not gonna act like they were all incredibly complex, but they were all very grounded. It's something I joke about Hibiki a lot; that it's a show about demons with musical instruments beating up giant spiders, but also it's easily the most laidback, down to earth, realistic Rider show. Todoroki, for instance, he is a little dim and a little naive; but in a way that you could imagine him being a real person. He's very normal; just someone who needs a bit more experience to be the Oni he wants to be.

Aaaand here he's devolved completely into a cartoonish comic relief character who mugs for the camera and is so stupid he thinks his crush wants a giant fish as a present, whoa-ho-ho isn't that so wacky and funny! I'm fine with a little change in pace, but there's just no resemblance here to the Todoroki that came before. Where his naivety and relative foolishness were previously just some of the aspects that informed his character, they've now been dialed up to 11 and define him now. We saw it in the last couple episodes too with Kogure -- that guy is completely out of place in a season like this. If he was in episode 17 or 25 we would have been reeling from the sudden tone shift, and I don't appreciate it any more just because it's been a few episodes since the original creative team left.

It's not too surprising given this is often how Inoue writes his characters, and that's not an insult -- when it's a series he's actually writing, and it's not about vampires, he does very well with it! His work on Agito and Ryuki was fantastic most of the time, and I've come to respect everything 555 does even if I personally don't vibe with it - hi Fish! - but like Kuuga, this is not a season Inoue was a good fit for at all. And even isolated, even viewed through a lens of Hibiki 1-29 not existing (please god no), this is easily some of his most dire work. A lot of it feels like his tropes just thrown out hastily onto the script; I just can't get anything out of this other than "this sure is an Inoue story about dating which gives me secondhand embarrassment every two seconds and the title character somehow turned into a fucking idiot".

... I'm glad you found something to like in it, though!

There is nothing quite like someone eviscerating something you've enjoyed and then ending it with "I'm glad you found something to like in it, though!" Rhetorically, it's like getting your face punched so hard that you're knocked on your ass, and then that same person helping you up off of the ground.

So, obviously, this is going to be a real Your Mileage May Vary rebuttal, but, wow, did not have that experience with this one at all. Doing this story through the lens of Todoroki and Hinaka's relationship made perfect sense to me, considering how Heightened they've always been as characters, and specifically how Extra Heightened those two are when it comes to their dating. There's a moment in the beginning, after Todoroki completely ruins their date, where Hinaka confesses to Kasumi that, y'know, Todoroki's got a lot of weird anxiousness to him, and that's not great to date. It's a little space to explore the idea of what happens when you care about someone, but they're not right for you. The tension of that runs through everything Todoroki and Hinaka go through (his lack of focus, his depression, his More Than Usual amounts of anxiety), and it keeps things pretty relatable, as far as I was concerned.

As for Todoroki seeming too weird in this one... again, I'm not really seeing it? It's more of a comedy couple of episodes than, say, the ones where he doesn't want to be a drummer, but nothing in this one felt out of character for Todoroki. Todoroki's always been a guy that gets in his own way, that lets his anxiety and enthusiasm sabotage his success. That's pretty much what he does in this story?

I don't know, yeah, really didn't have the experience you had with this story. I appreciate your honesty, though! It's a take I hadn't considered.

happens all the time here but alright


All that is technically true but, like... to continue the food theme; in much the same way that a mild basic beefburger with sauce and a triple-decker hamburger with bacon, lettuce and mayonaisse both have tomato sauce, so therefore they're the same thing. Todoyama and Hinaka were definitely some of Hibiki's more expressive and heightened characters but they were never anywhere near this level -- it's as if you took Jean from Kuuga, who had a couple jokes and a few moments of comic relief; and wrote him like you would Shunpei from Wizard. There's maybe the same theme of both being comedic characters but it's nowhere same the thing. Hibiki's had comedic episodes before and, again, they're just nothing like this. It's a completely different show and cast of characters, and I'm not convinced the writer knows what he's doing with any of them.

I guess I just don't see (beyond it being a lighter couple episodes) their volume getting turned up that high? I don't know. Feels like we're seeing these episodes very differently. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your viewpoint, though!

No doubt Die is just a little confused thanks to Hidenori Ishida's flawless direction elevating the material. Fortunately, these are the last episodes of Hibiki he worked on, so that won't be an issue from here out. :p

Seriously though? I'm loving how much Die is loving Inoue's writing on Hibiki... about 66% percent of the time so far, anyway. Even I can't be this generous towards this part of the show, so the positivity is much appreciated.

Hey, and speaking of not being positive about Hibiki – the new opening is a good song (it's still 100% Sahashi with the same lyricist as Shounen Yo), but I've always hated how abrupt the transition into it from the cold open is. Normally that's one of my favorite things in a Rider show, but something about that HARUKA TOO~KU NOOOOOO cutting in never, ever felt right to me. The more subtle way the first opening flowed from Asumu's (now retired) narration worked so, so much better than those spinning Takeshi logos.

The direction was pretty exceptional:

-The way the seating kept changing in the opening, where everyone's everywhere and it's all Todoroki's anxiety making things confusing.

-The shot from below Zanki and Todoroki's faces in their car! Zanki seems like someone you'd trust to fix your relationship!

-The orange filter over the repeated scenes of the Oni trudging, defeated, to the railing off of the river.

-Every single dream sequence!

It's definitely fun being the only person who's comfortable finding strengths in these episodes! It doesn't feel weird at all!

Nnnnnnot crazy about the new opening. Maybe it's just because Lyrics On A Hibiki Opening just feels wrong in a fundamental way? I don't know. Feels like a downgrade, for sure, but it's more that I miss Shounen Yo at the end. That was just a great way to end an episode.

Ah the 2nd opening. I freaking love it. The instruemental and the chrous gets me every time. Combine with Akira Fuse vocals it's just fun time for me. It's a worthy replacement in my eyes and I honestly don't get why it has it's so disliked? It not like that got a idol group to do a j-pop song they had the singer from Shonen Yo and the same composer made a new song that I think fits with Hibiki overall music. As for the episode to summarize good Inoue episode but a bad Hibiki episode. On it's on it a wacky and comedic episode. But I do agree the flanderize Hinaka and Todoroki a bit too far for my liking

I'm in the camp that likes both Armed and the second opening, despite everything. I've said before how I like that Armed is more like armour than a form change, and the saber does feel like a weapon that suit of armour would use -- though admittedly, this is largely due to my attachment to the movie, where said saber has a much better origin. Though, uh, it magically transforming into something way more toyetic is definitely a weakness of said movie even though I usually like that sort of thing. So I'm... fine to a degree with it, even if its in-show origin is atrocious and its placement acts as a sign of the worst things to come.

And the second opening is just really nice to listen to, really bombastic... think what I'm getting at here is that I like both of these things in a vacuum, and I like them just enough to forget that neither really fits Hibiki. Both should never have existed because the show should have just been cancelled before it got to them, but at least we have them now.

For me, I just don't feel like the singer has the right approach for an opening song? It's all subjective, but I want a Kamen Rider opening to get my pulse racing, to get me ready for an episode of handsome boys detonating monsters. The previous opening, with the drums/guitar/horns, it always got me fired up. The new one, the operatic singing smothers it too much, makes it feel as soothing as the old ending used to be. But I don't want to be soothed at the beginning of the episode! I want to be thrilled!

But, you're right, it's not really a gigantic change from how it used to be. Both versions are trying a different kind of song than Kamen Rider had been using in the recent series. I don't hate it, or anything, but I prefer the previous opening.

What about the movie-opening-style cut-away during Hibiki's finisher in this one? Personally, I loved it. I liked how it reduced the world to just Hibiki Drumming. It's the most hyped I've probably ever been for Hibiki's finisher. If they'd left the sword to a side weapon, and still kept Hibiki drumming his opponents to death, I don't think I'd be as down on Armed. It's really the way the finish doesn't make sense that bugs me, and this story corrected it!

I'd completely forgotten about it? Rewatching it the movie tie-in thing is super lame and doesn't match up at all, but the rest of it was kinda cool; especially with how the holstered drumsticks look on his back. Really though what struck me most is how incredibly wrong it is to see Hibiki fighting at a pier and a train station.

Wow, I don’t remember these episodes at all.

I’m okay with that.

You act like post-29 doesn't exist every second post -- eventually placebo's going to set in and make that reality for you :lol

I'm legitimately surprised at how well it's working. I kinda remember the fish thing, but that is literally it. Nothing else mentioned rings a bell; I can't even remember how the second opening goes.

Oh God, Todoroki in this episode... I don't know if I still find it funny or cringe at the humor they presented.

https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/f3/40/ZsTgDdTW_t.jpg

There is not one answer to that question, apparently!