Congrats on finishing not just Blade, but also the Heisei era in general!

IIRC you once mentioned reading Die's' thread alongside your watch, so you probably already know my general thoughts about the show.

So, I'll try to make my general thoughts short. To me, Blade was a much better version of Faiz, in terms of the experience. Especially since I watched Blade almost directly after I'd finished Faiz up.

What I mean is, with Faiz, I loved the first two acts, but couldn't stand the third. The same applies to Blade. But what differentiated the two for me, and made me appreciate Blade alot more, was that absolutely perfect ending that Blade has. "Bench" is a long standing Blade meme for a reason, ya know?

I'm like the one guy who preferred the first half to the second. The first half kept me really interested all throughout. I was constantly wondering just where the heck this crazy train was going. Meanwhile, when the second half hit, and the show got more "normal"... it just lost alot of appeal for me. Add to that me not jiving with the way Mutsuki and Tachibana were handled and I was not happy.

Still, I'm glad you found a good amount of enjoyment out of it, judging by where you placed it on your list. :thumb:

If I remember rightly I think the middle may have been my favourite bit lol but yeah I do see similarities between Faiz and Blade in terms of quality (it's better for some imagery,music etc being memorable than characters/story being that fantastic) whereas sometimes I can genuinely enjoy Kuuga,Agito and Ryuki equally imo.

Thanks!

It might have been Fredbob392 who said that, but I did follow Die's thread as well.

Something I never really got is why is Kenzaki special? Like how his King Form fuses with 13 cards instead of the 3 used to access it. I don't think they ever explained why he has such a high fusion compatibility compared to Tachibana.

My immediate thought after seeing Kenzaki become a new Undead and walk away was how he's doing what Hirose told him not to do, but from a different perspective, it's no longer a burden he's carrying alone. Hajime's sharing his suffering.

It was a great ending for sure. I personally wouldn't consider it to be better than Faiz's, although I concede that you have a valid complaint about Kiba's abrupt turn to evil. I will also say that I think Blade's ending did right what Gaim's did wrong, by giving Kenzaki and Hajime a less contrived reason to fight and a resolution that doesn't involve either of them getting killed.

I would like to join that club of preferring the first half. The whole appeal of Blade to me was how ridiculous and chaotic it was while still managing to tell an intriguing story. If there's any word to describe the second half, then yeah, "normal" is pretty apt. At least Tachibana had two more bad*ss moments, but Mutsuki.... I can't even. I'm not even going to try and defend him. Everything you said about him, I agree.

Its lack of reputation had me worried, probably why I put if off for so long, but now I see that this show is actually pretty underrated. Came for kara miso and a bench, stayed for the characters!

My personal favorite moment of Blade is still from Episode 15, the beach fight between Garren and Isaka. I think it's an awesome climax to their rivalry and a major turning point for Tachibana's development! Probably the thing I will remember most from this show, other than bench.

Shoutout to Skyrider episode 25 for taking the whole "monster child" concept you see in Showa toku to its most insane extreme. Never thought I'd see Tsukuba become the adopted mom of a rapidly growing monster turtle child named Bongo but here we are.

Just my personal interpretation, but I think they were feeding off what was established with Tachibana early on, where his inner fears were literally killing him, which was also probably the reason his compatibility rate was low.

Kenzaki meanwhile, not only never had such an issue, but was also the only one to actually get to have a King Form to begin with. So who knows, had Garren King Form happened, maybe Tachibana would run the same risk of becoming an Undead(probably not given the overall themes of the story but hey).

I'm now up to episode 35 of OOO. Only 13 to go.

It's a shame that Tachibana was the last to seal his King and promptly lost all his cards, otherwise he might have got the chance to use it at least once. I guess it's possible that I misunderstood Yoshito saying "Blade's King Form isn't normal" to specifically mean Kenzaki isn't normal. Maybe BOARD just underestimated the potential of King Form in general, or Yoshito is deliberately feeding Tachibana misinformation to "prove" his alleged jealousy towards Kenzaki. Both good headcanons, I guess.

I think it's said somewhere, around when Kenzaki gets his King Form, that it's supposed to only be a fusion between him and the King Undead. However, because Kenzaki is just that empathetic, he ends up fusing with all 13 in the Suit, which has consequences on his biology pretty quick.

Thinking about it, yeah, I recall something like that being said as well.

The reason for Kenzaki's high fusion rate is also so simple it doesn't demand much explaining to begin with. The early episodes (7 is especially thorough in its exposition) make it a point that it goes up the more intense his emotions are (in contrast to Tachibana's going down because of his constant doubt and hesitation), and nobody else in the series is anywhere close to as earnest or as straightforward as Kenzaki. Keep in mind his initial transformation into King Form also comes right after the whole "I'm a Kamen Rider!" fight where he's pretty much the most focused he's been in the entire show to that point, too. Essentially, Kenzaki's King Form works that way because he's so good at being a superhero, he's basically overclocking the Rider System. Or at least that's how I've always understood it.