Toei says he is a main rider. Blame them.

I don't wanna go down the "it doesn't have too many Riders!" argument again. I have my opinions, they have theirs. But I think Takatora is a good example of the Rider overload, as we're coming towards the final leg now and Takatora is still more important to the characters in his world than he is to the audience. And for me, that is a major problem.

I'll say this again. This is KAMEN RIDER. It doesn't matter if it's Gaim or not. Unless the character explodes, is squished, dies in someones arms, or evaporates into pixie dust; they're not dead.
Not only are the two who've died already not been part of the main four, but you can't deny that their deaths have been very blatant. That's how death has always been in Kamen Rider, we SEE the character die. This one was a little more vague and unsure. We only ever saw Takatora unconscious, not dead.

Yeah but there's like a million different ways where he could be saved or even resurface somewhere safe. Wasn't there a rumor that Oren would save him? And if not, Kouta's on his way there right now. Hell, he could just wake up and narrowly escape.

#1 rule of fiction: Unless you see a body OR you see the person die on-screen, it's likely that they're not actually dead.



I do have to agree with this. Of all of the confirmed deaths in the show, three of them EXPLODED, and one was crushed in between rocks.

With just how blatant the deaths are, it is a bit odd that Takatora would be the one to die off-screen, don't you think?

But being shown sinking to the bottom of the river isn't exactly off-screen, though.

I get that this is Kamen Rider, where characters don't die unless it's hardcore and blatant, but remember that this is being written by someone who knows how to kill off characters in ways that aren't always traditional in their genre. Even something as subtle as being mortally wounded and knocked sinking into the water isn't off the table as a possible death scenario.

Again: There aren't any photos of Takatora getting farewell flowers. That's usually the indicator that the character won't be returning.

Him not getting flowers just means that Kubota Yuki isnt done filming all his scenes. We know that Micchy will start having visions of his brother in front of him. We have yet to see what exactly that means but I´m pretty sure it will be Takatora being in the room with Micchy and both taliking to each other. This way Yuki would still be part of the show even when his character already died.

After Koyomi died in Wizard we didnt get pictures of the actress receiving flowers. She got them after she shot her last appearance in episode 52.

Most certainly is. If the death isn't on-screen, then it's an off-screen death. And it's improbable that Takatora was dead in that short amount of time that we saw him submerged.

Yeah, but even throughout Gaim alone, death has never been left ambiguous. All of the characters who were dead were so obviously dead. Of course, this could just be a subtle death, but when you send off Sid by crushing him in between a rock structure, or straight up making Hase explode, one can't help but feel suspicious when a guy gets submerged underwater and we don't see a body. On top of that, Takatora's actor hasn't received any flowers like the others did, and he was shown during the big battle at the beginning of the series. This guy is already known to have a knack for escaping death, so I don't believe he's dead until we get confirmation, through the series or otherwise.

Well we didn't have someone confirm wether he's dead or just unconcious, we only know that he was at least in the latter condition. That aside, as said before, Urobuchi doesn't have to go with the trope. He could, but he could also say: I'll do this differently.

So sinking into the water is not on-screen? Then was I just hallucinating about that scene? Yes, that scene could be interpreted in both ways (as you said there was a rumor about someone rescueing him, but then again... rumors don't necessarily come true), but I don't see how this is less on-screen than Hase or Sid. We've never seen a dead body of Hase and Sid- we even had the camera turn away when Sid was squished, so you could also go and say: Well, but he might have escaped...!
It might be not as possible as Takatora being resuced from the water, but it's an option you could think of. If we talk about off-screen death in water I'd totally agree about that in Blade, where we neither witnessed what exactly happened to Garren, not even how he actually fell into the water, so it was no problem that he came back, but imho, Takatora's scene looked bad enough to be interpreted as an on-screen death.

All of this, pretty much.

And this.

Just because the show didn't leave deaths ambiguous so far, it doesn't mean it always has to do so. It's actually a pretty good method to create suspense. Also, we don't even know if the prologue scene is actually the future, or the past, or a parallel universe or who knows what. Remember which groups are fighting which? At this point, why should Micchy join forces with Takatora? Or rather say, why would Takatora fight side by side with a brother that tried to kill him? And why would Kaito and Jonouchi fight Kouta? At the current point, this scene would not make a tiny bit of sense. Besides, Takatoras Sengoku Driver might be broken by now, so how is he supposed to transform into Zangetsu again? I don't think Ryoma will come around and repair it, after trying to kill his former friend a while ago.


Remember guys, we are ALL speculating here and just because there's certain tropes in Rider, it doesn't mean Urobuchi has to stick to those. But then again, he also could do so. We don't know. All we know is what the episode summaries tell us. Rumors don't count because yeah... they're rumors. Neither Oren rescuing Takatora nor Jinber Melon were ever confirmed.

The Oren fishing him out of the water rumor is pretty much disproven at this point. They were supposed to be part of some episode summaries. We got thos summaries a few days ago and there is no mention of such thing happening any time soon.