It's way up there, for sure! Just to be clear to people who don't remember this or haven't seen the show for whatever reason, the theme song is literally starting to play as Blade is getting shot. I think between this and Mukkoro after the opening, this episode makes it a lot easier to understand why exactly Kenzaki was so thrilled when he realized Kotarou actually wanted to be his friend. Dude just doesn't have much luck in that department.

Hajime just needs a haircut real bad. Or, a trim, styling, product, something. It honestly makes me upset to see it. Plus, no one ever seems to get a haircut once a Rider series starts, so I am not looking forward to how messy and unkempt that head of hair is going to be if Hajime survives into the 40s.

(Thanks as always for the info! If you stopped me from sealing an Undead I'd totally forgive you! At least one time, anyway!)

Yeah, it was such a Tachibana-only factor on this show that I honestly forgot that it might be something Kenzaki should be more into resolving? It's a very clever resolution to the plot, though, having it be all about Tachibana's psychotic fear of death. Just way more to dig into if it's a psychological problem rather than a plot problem. The former makes for the better stories, if I get to pick.

Also, holy shit, he's still trying to patch things up with Tachibana after he gets shot for trying to help a faking Tachibana. Kenzaki is a very sweet boy! He is definitely not cut out for this world of lunatics!

You have no idea how much this paragraph makes me excited for your inevitable run through Decade.

Ten years of men with awful hair.

I think it's safe enough to mention now that there is, to this day, a debate as to whether Chalice or Garren is the Secondary Rider. And I don't mean slight confusion, I mean I have seen outright argument with people calling each other out as mentioning the "wrong" one as the "true" secondary rider and getting outrage if people don't agree. It's the only rider show I know of where this has happened.

We shall see which side of it you come down on.

I think he is, and mostly for all of the reasons you've mentioned. He's a complete and total disaster of a person, but he's an endearing disaster. Despite all the terrible ways he's treating people right now, he's such a pathetic guy that it's impossible to dislike him and in fact he becomes likable specifically because of his crazy behavior since it becomes so over the top.

it's also kind of crazy to think how fast this is all moving for him. In a lot of other shows, this development would take place over a more extended period of time, but so far this is only six episodes in! It always seems strange to me that a common complaint about Blade is that it has a slow start, because I feel like it moves at a pretty rapid pace.

Garren is the tertiary Rider. Blade is Chalice's secondary Rider.

Yeah, I think this is basically a long weekend for Tachibana?! He's gone from blowing up his job, to kidnapping his boss, to getting yelled at by the new kid, to having his boss pull the ol' Hologram And Magnesium Switcheroo (a classic), to kicking the new kid's ass, to finding out that his dreams of a painful death are just dreams and his crippling pain is basically psychosomatic.

(Also somewhere in there he may or may not have eaten a puzzle piece because he thought the puzzle symbolized his inevitable demise.)

Imagine the guy at BOARD who took a couple days off to go to Tokyo DisneyLand and comes back to that story from whoever is now working at BOARD because everyone else was killed by a biblical plague that Garren accidentally let loose.

He's just the best.

In terms of how the story is flowing and his presence, understandable. But technically no as proven by Decade and Zi-O merch which I will not go into details to avoid spoilers in case you did not watch those shows.

Well, I’ve got nothing new monster wise, so I’ll simply share the meme stuff and talk trivia afterwards.

Tell me, was it you? You're that Rider from before...and you have the antibody for Amane."
"I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"
"Why do you hide the fact that you're a Rider--No--What is your purpose?"
"I don't know. I really don't know anything at all."
"Well, I'll tell her! I'll tell Amane that you're a Rider, and the number of times we've fought!"
"Try to tell her that...and I'm going to kill you!"
―The full dialogue of the meme

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20180212084827

In episode 6, Hajime's warning to Kenzaki "I will kill you!" (俺は貴様をぶっ殺す！ Ore wa kisama wo bukkorosu!) was popularly spread across the Internet due to his humorous facial expression, labeled as "Mukkorosu" (ムッコロス) by the Japanese community due to Hajime's slurring of the line making it sound like Ore~a, kusamuwomukkorosu! (ｵﾚｧ､ｸｻﾑｦﾑｯｺﾛｽ!). This is also acknowledged as part of the Ondul family meme that was spawned by Kazuma Kenzaki in the original series.

Acknowledgment: Actor Ryoji Morimoto has re-enacted this line during his appearances in public events.

Tamotsu Shinohara, one of the designer of Another Riders in Kamen Rider Zi-O, adapted this scene into the face design of Another Blade.

<img src="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/kamenrider/images/7/70/Another_Blade_Profile.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/180?cb=20200311142549" alt="Another Blade Profile" class="thumbimage " data-image-key="Another_Blade_Profile.png" data-image-name="Another Blade Profile.png" width="180" height="101" >

And now, general trivia. This one of two Kamen Rider episodes to air on February 29th (the other being an episode of Kamen Rider (1979)). And his show is the only to,usatsu credit for one Shoji Imai, who was head writer for the first half of the show. As a result, we have no real idea how he would’ve ended the series (especially since Phase 1 shows other than Kuuga and Hibiki weren’t planned in any detail beforehand, instead having ideas suggested at points the writers wanted to implement them).