Kamen Riders, by default, have Protagonist strength. They get to punch and tackle monsters before they Henshin, while every other character gets knocked out if a monster so much as glances at them. That's the genre of show this is!

And for Keitaro being the wrong hero for the mission, I meant it in a more general sense, since I have literally no idea what Faiz's mission even is yet. (Unless it's getting on people's nerves, in which case Takumi is definitely the ideal man for that mission.) It's more that Takumi is destined to be Faiz, and Keitaro getting the belt would inevitably lead to tragedy. Again, that's what genre this show is!

I get the impression that Mari doesn't know where her dad even lives anymore. They are not that close!

Which I am a-okay with! If there's some inciting incident, like he let a friend down in school and now he's sworn off friends forever, it's trite. If he just innately came to the conclusion that he's broken, and will inevitably hurt anyone who gets close to him, that is actually way more interesting of a character, and way more realistic. People don't... it's not like most of us are aware of why we act the way we do, you know? People can spend years in therapy to even be able to articulate their failings the way Takumi does. Delving deeper than that, getting to the why of those feelings... only in stories, man. And the best stories avoid it.

Having some dude show up to tell them the rules and then drop dead is expedient, but the point of stories shouldn't be to just relay information as expeditiously as possible! We should want something more dramatically interesting than that!

I'm telling you, I've seen that play, and he is not testing them. He wants to share, but he wants them to want him to share. He's being dramatic. Even when they eventually cave and ask, he tries to demur, to get them to ask more questions. Takumi nailed it, he's just being annoying.

Actually, having just taken a look at that scene, I'm not sure it was? The line from Sawamura is:

「内臓の一部が人間のものじゃなくなってるっていうんですから」

Which would be more like "They're saying some of their internal organs were no longer those of a human", which, like, I can't even remember at this point what that means or why the distinction would matter, so I guess it's very lucky "Murder Make Cops Go ???" is still the main takeaway from these scenes. It's apparently a consequence-free enough environment that all the errors just barely manage to fudge their way into still sounding okay. Just, "oh alright something wrong with the organs got it"

And yeah, Soeno definitely has a totally different energy from a guy like Ichijou or even Hikawa. If you told me Sawamura was literally just Omuro I might believe it though. :lol

Interesting how you consider Kaido the equivalent to Keitarou, since I previously made the comparison of Keitarou to Kiba as the nice guys, leaving Takumi and Kaido as the a**holes and Mari and Yuka as neutral. You make a valid point though. Kaido and Keitarou are polar opposites but they both play the wild card in their respective teams with Keitarou being the nice guy and Kaido being the guy who allegedly doesn't care about humans. I think there's more than one way to pair these characters together. How do you see Takumi and Yuka as equivalents and likewise with Kiba and Mari? I would like to see that perspective.

Now that I think about it, this show is kind of like a precursor of Lupinranger VS Patranger.

Destroying hearts is the Orphenochs' calling card but since we don't get to see the pseudo X-ray vision when Squid kills Kaido, we don't know what happens to him. Either his heart was destroyed and replaced by an Orphenoch heart or it mutated as a result of being injected with mutagen. This is only a head canon but maybe they found the failed Orphenoch heart in the gym class' corpses? That would explain how incompatible humans are able to reanimate for a short duration.

About the translations, I thought it was weird how they translated Master, which was already an English word. I don't remember them doing that in Kiva with Mald'amour.

Well tbf yeah, Takumi really shows that here, where he breaks free and knocks down Snake Orphnoch/Kaido.... but there's also protagonist that never does that without in Rider form, like Emu. And for Keitaro not being able to henshin.... even the likes of Mari also can't henshin, but the whole of this is a spoiler so just wait.

The Smart Brain is like... the school and guide for Orphnochs, it'd inevitably lead into that way, I don't see some other ways... It's like the reverse of a newbie Kamen Rider (some of the main protagonists at debut) being guided by others.

Yeah, no, though there's an act of Yuji pushing Smart Lady, both him and Yuka wasn't presented as an asshole or a villain even at their debut. If anything, Yuji was again, being an asshole to those deserving it (though he may not think she's evil yet). Smart Brain is the one to egg them into fighting humans. Everyone in Faiz showing some degree of a dick, that's the true point of Yuji and Yuka's story, that extends not only in main cast but also in others.. the thing is, Yuji is... the series "secondary Rider". But yeah even if Yuji already gives those 2 a chance damn Mari still manipulative by pretending to be miserable. And Yuji left anyway, robbing (pun intended) their chance to get what they want. And she thought he's the kind one and.... not Keitaro?

Keitaro cleaning clothes, is his own way to clean spirits and protecting smiles like some Riders using their power to do such thing. Even if the Faiz trio has financial problems before like their belt being sold and speeding fine before... they somehow can have a very fancy dinner as shown here. Keitaro promotes their laundry at the supermarket? Usually that kind of person promotes while standing in 1 place but he does it while being a regular customer. Dunno if Takumi thinks that Keitaro's mindset making him a fool overall at first before seeing his competence, making him change his mind about him and subsequently the idea of helping people. I don't know if the strangers here truly has realistic tension... as you say the people that Yuji or Yuka killed are the worst and these types of people (not Keitaro ofc, he himself claims on how unpleasant the other 2 are) are not to different from them.... except if realistically the whole human are the worst (like nihilist thinks). Obviously Keitaro has high tolerance, but And again, Orphnoch trio having sweetness on them... you expect them as the main group of villains who clashes? Then you're wrong...

How do you think that Naoya Kaido (the new guy) is their Keitaro? He's the more gruff and aloof between the three.... he's more like their Takumi, honestly. It's kind of reversed between the Team Faiz and Team Orphnoch, Team Faiz has 2 jerks with 1 mild, but Team Orphnoch has 2 milds with 1 jerk. Was Kaido denied from his job interview from behaving "inappropriately" with his enhanced senses as an Orphnoch?

More like Yuka is the other nice ones, and Mari as the other a**hole one in their respective team.

So the first time that Takumi fought, a major Orphnoch character, the Snake Orphnoch. They wouldn't kill him off immediately (regardless of how's his personality as a human)... right? And end it as a cliffhanger.

I guess I meant "correctly" in the sense that the statement lined up with what we'd seen elsewhere on the show. (I still don't speak Japanese!) At this point, we're just finding out how Orphnochs make more Orphnochs, and that they burn up people's insides to do it, and most of the time it just kills people, so that episode's investigative scene is so the cops can get that info about Yuka's murder spree.

Yuuji and Mari have the ability to drive their respective groups through a need for answers, concrete information, and a lot of their story is wrapped up in Smart Brain. Yuka and Takumi's stories are more about figuring out their own humanity, Yuka literally (she is a bird-lady who murders by the baker's dozen and kind-of thinks humans are terrible) and Takumi figuratively (maybe he doesn't love being an unloveable asshole?).

But, like you said, a lot of ways to compare these six characters!

So far, The New Guy's role in the Orphnochs was take a lot of their questioning and answer it with Hell Yes We Should Kill People. It's him embracing what a show like this would normally do, have the monsters out being monsters. Keitaro serves the same role on Team Faiz. He's got an awareness of them as a hero group, and wants them out doing hero things.

Also, the two of them are the High Energy members of their groups, the ones who show the most enthusiasm. The other four could just stay inside all day, but Keitaro and The New Guy gotta be out in the world!

But there are a lot of ways to compare these six characters!

Right, I wasn't trying to like, reprimand you, or anything. You just mentioned that line and I kind of couldn't help myself. I also think it's just really interesting how "tell, don't show" some of these scenes are? If this were Kuuga, we'd spent at least two minutes with Tsubaki looking at X-rays or something. I kind of don't blame TV-Nihon for having trouble parsing some of this stuff!

Anyway, I don't think anybody watches Faiz for the criminal investigation elements, which is why it makes me so happy to see how much the main cast continues to do for you. These main six characters really do have all kinds of fascinating parallels, and they're all so fleshed out it really is hard to say the two trios line up with each other in one particular way. Also, Keitarou is the man. I used to have it in my head he was just the show's punching bag, but on a rewatch, he's the MVP of that group pretty frequently. It's very telling that even Takumi has warmed up to him a bit already.

I really love that Takumi's opinion of him changes after Keitaro demonstrates the usefulness of patience and attention to detail. Like, Keitaro is basically saying Maybe Don't Quit As Soon As Things Get Difficult, and Takumi is shook by it, and views Keitaro in a whole new light. Takumi has a lot of very deep-seated problems! In his brain!

Keitaro sometimes can be needy as hell, but he's like the Team Mom/heart and soul/whatever metaphor you'd use for someone who prevent the other two people from driving each other insane (in this sense, he fulfills the same role as Yuuji's I guess).

But, I also think it's not wrong to call him a punching bag; Faiz has a terrific cast, it's just the way they're being used that... were often sub-optimal, IMO.