Yeah, it's fun to see them starting to acknowledge that, once you get into Phase 2, Heisei shows stop being these discrete, concluding stories for our heroes to drop into for a fortnight. Phase 2 is messy! Shows overlap, characters get endless epilogues, etc. Decade could do stories that siloed off other shows, but Phase 2 isn't really like that, production-wise.

Also, it's neat to treat Heisei as a giant mix of themes and aesthetics, rather than Decade's view of it as individual worlds. Feels more like my experience watching these shows, honestly?

Delta's so powerful that even the Time Jackers are afraid to resurrect his power. Better to lose endlessly than unleash the constant victories of Delta.

I guess I have and I've done that at times when I was little too. Though dunno if this counts but this is about talking about the same thing over and over again when talking with them but not necessarily about steering things. Actually I can feel like I'm the one at fault to not be able to converse well if they talk about something I don't know well, and if I got rebuffed for talking something at start I can feel small (now I'm more avoiding talking about my interests) though what I got was about them telling being bored to talk about that topic (if we had mutual interest only). I guess still while it can be annoying it's far from the top of my shit list, there are far more worse shit, as it's a flaw that is disastrous (to life quality) so gotta still tolerate it and those have to be treated fairly too.... l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶S̶h̶ ̶R̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶k̶u̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶h̶u̶s̶i̶a̶s̶m̶.̶ I guess for Sougo iirc others didn't directly point out about them not being interested hearing his hobby talk, now I wonder what'd happen if they point out that they aren't interested hearing Sougo's talk.

Otherwise wdyt about my previous comments here?

It wasn't seen on how Sougo worked his way up to become Ohma Zi-O before.... Sougo would likely still be his goofy self who wears his heart on his sleeve I guess in said Ohma Zi-O's youth and thus can invite his friend to become his staff, but dunno. And while this isn't about becoming king.... Sougo's offer to his friends seems similar to certain successful people who also tried to make cooperation with their friends back then and/or can be looked down or underestimated with their goal declaration.... b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶l̶e̶n̶c̶e̶.

I think this is the only one I had anything for? Sorry! I read 'em all, but I don't always have something to say that'd expand the conversation.

I guess I don't see Tsukuyomi that way? She's shown herself to be a confident and outgoing person (she definitely is fine talking to strangers and/or getting Sougo thrown off of a bridge), so her reluctance to befriend Sougo feels like it comes more from I Might Have To Kill You, then it does from any personality conflicts.

And, man, she does like that kid! She's smiling because she thinks his enthusiasm for Time Missions is cute! She's used to working alongside Geiz; the fact that someone's not a human-shaped frown in an oversized collar is probably a pleasant change of pace!

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 6 - “555-913-2003”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/zio/zio6a.png

I think the most Faiz thing this episode does is to make sure that the Ryusei School kids suck.

God, I hate them. I’ve always hated them. All that school did was churn out charmless martyrs and remorseless killers. Every single time one or more of them would show up in Faiz, it meant the story was going to get bogged down in earnest pleas for characters to immolate themselves on the pyre of generational warfare. It was always a bad sign, and this episode – for its faults – stays true to that repeating disappointment.

I don’t care about Karin and Sakuma in this story. It’s bloodless melodrama. Sakuma’s feelings are histrionic and unconvincing. He’s just sweaty, constantly, as though that fills in the blanks of his relationship with Karin. Karin, naturally, is no better. She’s desperate to sacrifice herself for Sakuma’s freedom from guilt, and she’s beatific in her weird particle dispersal (?). None of it feels like a real person's behavior or actions; either of them, both of them.

The idea of a story built around sacrifice – that it’s easier to die for someone than live for yourself – is something that feels more indebted to the Ryusei School dinks and their mascot, Delta, than it really does for either Takumi or Kusaka. It’s not really how I remember either of them? Kusaka dies from his sacrifice, sure, but it wasn’t exactly a series-long motivation. And Takumi… Jesus, it took Takumi most of a season to even fight for people, let alone care enough to sacrifice for them. (I mean, there’s the iconic If Fighting Is A Sin, Then LET ME BE DAMNED speech, but I always took that as more about society’s judgment than, like, death.) The idea of trying to ground a story of sacrifice in two of the most aggressively antagonistic and homicidally opposed Riders in all of Heisei (and that counts the ones from the battle royale seasons) is… what? No. No, I’m not seeing it.

Same thing for Sougo trying to land the episode’s themes on Team Zi-O? He’s all like We Have To Stop Sacrificing Ourselves For Each Other, but none of them were doing that? It was a pretty straight-ahead Time Mission, and most of it was with split teams. Geiz and Tsukuyomi were putting together clues, while Takumi and Sougo were doing some Time Orphan-style surveillance by just standing around Karin and talking about her lack of bathroom breaks. No one in this story on the hero side was doing anything extra sacrifice-y this episode?

That inability to tie everything together thematically, while trying VERY VERY HARD (that stupid Uncle speech about fixing radios!), sort of tanked the episode for me. Every speech a character gave rang hollow, and the two Ryusei dinks were flat as hell for me. It’s a good message, moving forward with your life and all, but it felt completely misapplied this episode.

It wasn’t a total loss, though. The action was phenomenal, especially/exclusively the Geiz/Another Faiz fight. I don’t love the Faiz Armor (the cellphone shoulder pads are a bit of a shrug, design-wise) but the fight choreography was really fun to watch. There’s a lot of lateral movement in the blocking, making the one-on-one brawl feel like a fighting game. There’s also… there’s this shot when the RIDER mark shoots onto Geiz’z mask, and the camera pulls in with it, that I really liked. Fun action photography!

And, hell, I can’t ever be too mad at an episode that tips in a bunch of goofy Faiz details: Takumi being unable to drink something hot; the dry cleaning points card; Takumi having Keitaro’s dream (!!!); Kusaka being a grim weirdo who makes everything worse, always, forever. I don’t even much care that they’re just Playing The Hits, you know? It’s probably not even as good as their emotionally-destructive reunion in the Heisei Vs Showa Taisen movie, really. (It’s hard to top Kusaka coming back from the dead specifically to tell Takumi to kill himself!) This is just Reunion Special stuff; low-impact. But I love Faiz, and I don’t care a whole lot if these guys want to just goof around for a week.

This wasn’t… it wasn’t a very good episode? The thematic stuff is trying way too hard, which means it’s not really working. The new characters are either badly-acted or badly-written. Most of it doesn’t apply to Team Zi-O, despite the first part being a lot about their weird friendship, or lack thereof. It never really coheres in a convincing way, across its multiple storylines.

But, FAIZ. I can’t be too upset!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/zio/zio6b.png

—

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O COMPLEMENTATION PROJECT EPISODE 6.5 - “THE SECRET OF FOURZE 555”

I’m not sure which gag I liked better: that Takumi and Kusaka are collectively so untrustworthy and abrasive that Team Zi-O bails on them without even saying goodbye, or that this installment just relentless buries the Faiz Legend Riders and worships at the altar of the Fourze guys who were too busy making Bleach to guest-star in this series.

It’s great, though. Takumi and Kusaka’s increasingly thin attempts to connect Faiz and Fourze are a delight, nearly reaching the point of suggesting that cellphones send signals through space, and Fourze is a space Rider, so they’re totally connected. I could watch the two of them unconvincingly bullshit about Kamen Rider shows forever. Good bless these two lunatics.

And look at that final (cursed) image!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/zio/ziocp6a.png

Yeah, I'll be honest I never really cared about the main plot of the Fourze & Faiz episodes when all was said and done. The first half did a good mystery but the second half was just weird. All the little nods and character moments was cool though.

But Geiz's fight against Another Faiz was really good. It was a fight I absolutely enjoyed and replayed constantly upon finishing the episode.

But yeah, next up is well... self explanatory in terms of the BGM Swaps as we're back to one for now.

Zero's Legend Episode Previews Corner - EP 7 Preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7uodxtXv5M

It does a good job tying together all of its loose ends -- and the dual-timeline duel is pretty great -- but it never feels like it says anything valuable about Team Zi-O. Like, even for a weird attempt at trying to compare the Faiz/Kaixa dynamic to the Zi-O/Geiz one... okay, a) don't ever compare your two Riders to them two unless they are actively trying to kill each other on a weekly basis, not just threatening it; and b) Geiz leaves in the middle of a fight to do his teamwork in a way that is socially and emotionally isolated from Sougo. It's weirdly more impersonal than it was before the Ex-Aid story, not less. This was a story that started being about Sougo needing real emotional connection and support from his captors (normal thing, totally), and then it ended on I Guess It's Cool Friends Hate Each Other.

Didn't really come together, you know?

I may or may not have turned off my brain when it came to the plot of this episodes Has it actually been four years since this episode?! Anyway, I mostly the nice sunset shot of Sougo looking by the ocean and the great fight that was Geiz's debut in the Faiz armor. Him just not looking as Another Faiz explodes is gggrrreeaaaaatttt.

I also think Geiz gets the better armors, him being red and his armors being mostly black makes his suits blend in well. I would've honestly loved a SHF of his Drive Armor. Sadly he only got the useless Genm armor.

Immediate 0/10, nobody threw the Faiz Ridewatch at anyone's head.

.......But seriously, this is probably one of my least favorite arcs in Zi-O, purely how.....disjointed it feels?

Legend Rider content... Takkun just kinda quietly follows Sougo around, piping up here and there. Which, to be fair, that's very characteristic of him, and there's cute callbacks here and there, so its not all bad. But the Ridewatch handoff was an immediate step down after Ex-Aid's kinda soured it. (More on that later) Kusaka....is it bad that I saw Another Fourze/Faiz go for his throat and immediately went "Go for it!"? It's a callback that they didn't necesarily even need to do, but it's hilarious that they went for it juuust a bit. Anyway, I know the point is that Faiz's cast are kinda standoffish and all, but the way they were used just didn't work for me.

-"The cycle of scarifice needs to end": cool theme for a MOTW story, but I can't really connect it at all with Faiz or what the Zi-O kids are going through? Like the only "sacrifice" for someone else I can think for the Zi-O kids is Sougo risking serious injury by throwing himself down the stairs, and he didn't even need to do that! The total lack of connection between either our Legend Riders and our trio makes Sougo's Big Speech fall kinda flat, and in turn Takumi's Ridewatch handoff.

-I got jumpscared by the high quality Faiz footage, and giggled at the show trying to pass off adult Takumi(his actor wouldve been 34 at the time?) as his teenage self. Not gonna lie, for a show that doesn't want to concern itself about what happens after Rider Erasure, you'd think they'd pick a scene where Takumi loses Faiz to be, idk, not one where someone's clearly in mortal danger? Like yikes I hope the Time Nonsense got somehow got Mari out of that situation!

-I think the biggest thing for me, is that....it just kinda threw any kind of themes from Fourze or Faiz it could use to connect with the Zi-O trio into the garbage can? And as someone who adores Fourze and enjoys Faiz, that kinda sucks as a tribute arc? Like it wouldve probably not been spectacular but I think if you stuck with the friendship stuff from the first half of the arc, you could've salvaged it.

So yeah, this arc didnt do it for me, as a tribute story or a Zi-O story. At least 6.5 was really good, do maybe it makes up for it?

I gotta tell ya, the Armor Time stuff just isn't doing it for me, as far as form changes go. They're fine, they look like the show/Rider they're homaging, but I really don't care about them. (I've never really been much for Legend Rider form changes, honestly? The Ghost/Ex-Aid ones, probably, but not a lot of others.) Every single Build form change was one I wanted to see as a Figuart; with Zi-O, I'm probably just going to get main Riders and that's it?

Yeah, I think we had the same experience. The plot as a whole hangs together fine as a time travel story (I sincerely love that Geiz and Zi-O have to simultaneously defeat the same villain in two different time periods), but its attempts to be About Something feel distressingly forced.

It... honestly, it's pretty much exactly like the Takumi and Kusaka stuff from the 6.5 short? Them going harder and harder on Actually Fourze And Faiz Totally Are Connected, until you just want them to stop trying so hard because they've ruined it? That's the problem with Episode 6. It really really wants to land this big Sacrifice theme, so it just keeps telling you about it until you either give in and agree or give up and tune out.