That is a really valid point; none of Faiz’s characters would have met if it weren’t for Mari getting that belt. Never really considered that.

This sentence alone justifies the entire thread.

Spent a minute watching the new DonBros (real real good), and it looks like I missed some discussion!

I mean, Sougo's a sweet kid -- Kamen Rider Puppy Dog -- but I feel like he'd be a terrible friend if you were a teenager? Like, we've seen him try and hang with one kid his age who wasn't a Time Orphan, and he immediately made things weird by drafting that kid into his Good Empire. Like, it took maybe seven seconds for Sougo to steer things towards his troubling/adorable obsession. That can't be fun to be around? If you couldn't order a pizza without your friend talking about which toppings would be the official ones for his realm, you'd probably stop hanging out with him.

And it's also... this episode did its homework. (Appropriate for the setting!) The new KRC members were introduced in the Five Years Later segment of Movie War Ultimatum, which puts it at 2017. In 2018, they'd still be in the school, alongside Ohsugi and Gentarou. It might seem random or insufficient, but they're actually about 50% of the established cast members for this point in time.

Yeah, I think it works out fine. Having Gentarou be off on a mission to save one of his students rings true, and sort of rushing past his role in the story is a nice way not to dwell on his absence. (Like, he only gets mentioned one time, which is smart!)

Oh, that's very cool! Thanks for pointing it out!

I think it's also that, this show just did a high school story? Sort of? Sougo's a high school student, so trying to do a two-episode Sougo Goes To A Different High School story is probably not a great use of anyone's time.

Ha ha, yeah, just ROCKETS, the end. It works, though!

If there's one thing I believe, it's that nothing in Heaven or Earth could keep Takumi and Kusaka from irritating each other. Like, death canonically did not stop Kusaka from telling Takumi that he was garbage. I don't thing a million Time Jackers could keep these two jerks from pissing each other off. They're like the Negative Build and Cross-Z. Much like life finds a way, so might hate?

I didn't really get a chance to mention it before, so I'll do it now while I'm thinking about it: I loved all of the little details in the KRC room. Hayabusa! Some of the cardboard Showa costumes, I think! The little picture of Sonoda that Ohsugi kept in his safe! I think those tiny mementos did a lot to cover for the bigger name characters' absences.

I don't know if there's anything else like talking about Faiz. One of my all-time favorite shows. And this episode only had maybe two minutes of it! AND IT WAS THE BEST PART OF MY DAY!

“It all began with a shooting star”

Here we are, at another instalment of

Ridewatch Playlist: Space on Hands edition

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LAFfVoYQloQ

First up, is the main man himself.

“Space is HERE! The Rider fighting with the power of Switches is… Fourze”

And the song choice is obviously Switch On https://youtube.com/watch?v=t1nJ7D0ThVs

Next up is the final form Decade’s actor considers the worst suit of them all.

“The bonds of friends births a new power. Space’s ultimate Cosmic Power, Fourze Cosmic States”

And once again, the choice was easy: Cosmic Mind https://youtube.com/watch?v=VVxWl-eRn7k

“Fighting for the sake of friendship, the Kung-fu master Rider is Meteor”

I might as well just come out and say that all of the choices here were obvious Shooting Star https://youtube.com/watch?v=bs0YT3VXtAs

“The storming Meteor awakened by friendship. Meteor Storm”

Admittedly, this is tied with Kiva and OOO for how easy it was to assemble (the hardest were Kuuga, Hibiki and Drive) Evolvin’ Storm https://youtube.com/watch?v=weveUK7xUAw

And here is the list of the unreleased. This time, none of them won the competition

Kamen Rider Fourze (Elek States)
Kamen Rider Fourze (Fire States)
Kamen Rider Fourze (Magnet States)
Kamen Rider Fourze (Rocket States)
Kamen Rider Fourze (Meteor Fusion States)
Kamen Rider Fourze (Meteor Nadeshiko Fusion States)
Kamen Rider Nadeshiko

As for the Another Rider compare and contrast. Gentaro is an outgoing person with a lot of friends and one of the most talkative riders, while Another Fourze is mysterious, a loner and has no dialogue when transformed. Design-wise, the Tron lines inherited from Another Faiz resemble those on the Zodiarts, while his transformation into Another Faiz is reminiscent of Zodiarts evolving into Horoscopes.

I’ll skip over how the kids from Ultimatum are back (I read a few comments from when the episode aired, where many didn’t recognise them and thought they were just a Japanese take on Bulk and Skull) and Gentaro being reduced to stock footage and a pre-recorded line (which also confirms what happens to the monsters when the Riders lose their powers: they cease to exist) and talk about our third Time Jacker, Schwartz. As promised, his name isn’t a foreign translation of “hour”, instead being a composite of “schwarz” (German for “black”) and quartz (a material used to make watches). That should tell you everything about him.

All I remember from this episode was my amazement at how deep Takumi's voice has gotten.

While I don't have much strong attachment to Nezumi and Kong, they're both characters from my favorite Kamen Rider movie of all time, so seeing that referenced here makes me happy.

And it's only thanks to Time Nonsense that this iconic duo are able to appear in this story, since they're otherwise.... You know.

Of course, I care so much more that Takumi and Kusaka are here, than how they're here. It's awesome to see them again, together like this without one of them being a vengeful ghost. The first 4 episodes didn't sell me on Zi-O, I struggled to connect with the story that Shimoyama was trying to tell, but I think he did good with this arc. A story about friendship and loneliness is something that works great for both Faiz and Fourze. It's exactly the kind of novel stuff I'm here for!

This is also Murakami Kohei's first time returning as Kusaka after his new role in Zyuohger.

Faiz and Fourze are my favorite and third favorite Heisei Rider shows respectively (Build is second) and while the thematic connection between them isn't immediately obvious from the first part, this shared arc does do some really smart things with the Faiz cast utilizing the themes of Fourze. Like Rei, I am also waiting for you to watch the next episode so I can talk about them! It's also a reminder that friendship is still a major part of Faiz, but naturally it's depicted as way harder than the friendship expert Gentarou makes it look.

I recall I first noticed that in Kamen Rider 4. Takumi sure is deep now.

This arc is certainly a clever one.

To be honest, some of these early episodes kind of escape me at the moment, but they're not bad at all. The Armor Times are pretty great, including some of the sounds from their respective Riders, but also the armors doing their signature poses before becoming a part of our Time Riders, and it's neat how Zi-O's is Katakana, whilst Geiz is Hiragana, it's such an interesting way of defining the two.

It also really warms me to see Gentarou's students and teacher again, but strangely funny how Gentarou is just expecting Sougo and lets him have his powers, which after the Wizard X Fourze movie, kind of fits, and yet doesn't fit at all, so I don't know quite how I feel about this exactly. Funnier still, Fourze took place in a high school, and Decade's Faiz also took place in a high school.

I also find how they slightly tweak the monster-of-the-week formula pretty cool, since usually they save something like this for later, but it's a little refreshing to see Rider changing its formula to avoid becoming cut-and-paste of the same weekly conflict until the endgame. But nothing against that formula, since there are shows where it doesn't feel like it's dragged on for too long, or they're constantly entertaining that I don't mind the usual formula, but it's still something I've noticed from later Rider seasons.

And of course, while I'm not familiar with Faiz, we get our favorite laundryman and local scuzzball to make up for the lack of Fourze appearances (at least we got the handshake).

This seems to be just different definitions we catch... I use the defeating the Bugsters as their methods and motivation as their actual characterization and to explain regarding what they want... and I use 'goal' as in what those characters want in life and try to reach. Unless you refer goal here as in, completed objective in their methods (their methods is fighting off Bugster, they reach the goal when the Bugster has been defeated).

I think I appreciate that you back up your gripe here with some solution that you think is better here (as well as the pun there, b̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶d̶y̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶e̶r̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶), but regarding Tsukuyomi not hanging out with him and laugh.... could it be that she's just a more calm, collected, serious, and reserved type of person? There are varying types of people and their temperament (moreover can look at how she interacts with Geiz too if Sougo isn't an actual friend to you). Though still, the only one that bears any form of hatred here is Geiz towards Sougo (though he can be a tsundere), while Sougo won't despise Geiz or Tsukuyomi, and Tsukuyomi doesn't despise Sougo either (her smiling at Sougo changing isn't necessarily an indicator of lowered hate, in general growing closer isn't, smile can just happen if a situation is good). Geiz and Tsukuyomi are real partners.

Otherwise, for now though Geiz is the one that hates Sougo, the actual problem in the main team for now is Woz that both Geiz and Tsukuyomi tells Sougo to not trust him. Now by that Sougo is put in a situation where he had to become a villain's pawn but not doing that would not have any way to advance forward. Sougo can be frequently stupid but for this one... can't blame him or anyone for progressing even by trusting a manipulator's words, because the alternative would be having no more moves (of which is shown in a series that can't be talked about yet here). Woz is also a damn badass though, he's not Ohma Zi-O's prophet for nothing, that he can block Another Fourze's punch in his human form and then throw fireball at him. Speaking of badass Sougo did it again with a successful plan to distract the nurses by having him fall on stairs so those 2 can check up the student's data. Sougo isn't being merely useful to teach Geiz and Tsukyomi how to be teenagers!

This is Zi-O's problem. It sometimes can't decide that it wants to be a tribute to previous Rider shows or be its own show. This is similar to Decade previously as well (forgot to ask that for Zi-O you didn't pull watch together like you did with Decade?), and Decade also didn't always feature the main protagonists of the previous serieses, or even just had outright different incarnation of those characters. You think here the explanation is the people graduating, but for that, I don't think that the Ex-Aid and Build story before had the characters being that ahead in their timeline story too, at least for Build, ahead of for example the Heisei Generations timeline where Banjou was still selfish.

True, it's a nice gag for going from Fourze to Faiz. 4 (theme) to 5 (theme). When coincidences are taken into account it's good stuff too, like said Ryusei being not the first in the franchise (or the many Kusakas in Faiz). I also like it if the actors from older series can return. I mean like, people like Emu or Sento can be expected to quickly return as they're from more recent series, but actors from much older series like Kento Handa (Takumi) and Kohei,̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶K̶y̶o̶j̶i̶ Murakami (Kusaka) as there are no guarantees of those being available to return and that a number of actors have retired too. The Faizing also means they handle the characters not badly here, but don't want for everyone else to be turned like Kusaka here too (for the talk of prefering the main trio to be lunatic teenagers or such).

Sougo may be really weird like that as his friend (forgot the name, haven't found it yet) can attest but I think Sougo would be a good friend at least at hard times. He's a sweet kid thus he'd more likely to help you or at least try (not trying to make it worse like berating them for it) when you need it. Provided that Sougo knows enough about your problems at least (like him getting explanation of what Geiz went through). The part you talked here about ordering pizza doesn't sound like a bad situation but about settling differences and that you gotta be able to and in civil way. It'd be better rather than being with a hostile asshole sorry, but specifically when they're a popular one, of which being the life of a party (at expense of others too by that) can make them popular regardless if those can be two-faced or such and thus they can get free pass while harming others or such.

I also like the bat-wing ears on Another Fourze? It's sort of dumb (Bat = EVIL), but I think it works.

First Emu, now Takumi. The Time Jackers have officially forced every Legend Rider to go through a second puberty.

If this show uses Time Nonsense to get Tsurugi back from France, all will be forgiven.

It's the slight downside of overlapping Faiz and Fourze: it made me almost instantly forget about the Fourze parts? Like, Faiz. Way more psyched to see Takumi and Kusaka be awful to each other than I am to see Ohsugi snap his suspenders!

Also, a PROGRAMMING NOTE for anyone new to the thread or folks who just forgot, but Tuesday is a night off for me. No new episode post tonight. After a first week watching both Zi-O and DonBros, I think I'm good to do six nights a week in this thread. Episode 6 of Zi-O should post late Wednesday.

I think it works! Gentarou would 1000% hold onto some weird watch -slash- give up his powers just because some new friend asked him to. And it's... like, Kamen Rider Puppy Dog, man. Sougo probably acts as a multiplier to Gentarou's friendliness, just by being his normal adorable self. That kid could get that Legend Rider to agree to just about anything.

I mean, character portrayals are going to be slightly weird because of the Time Jackers, but overall life events are still occurring on a standard timeline. Emu's a pediatrician in 2018 instead of the intern he was in 2016, for example. And everyone from Fourze graduated back in 2012?

Sure, but, like... have you ever hung out with someone who won't stop steering things towards their own interests? No matter how little anyone else in the group cares about them? Like, if they're huge baseball fans, and no one else is, and they keep making every stray comment some way to talk about baseball? I feel like that's how Sougo would be with his interest. (Mostly because we've seen him talk about Being A King like it's his only hobby?)