Oh hey, they actually had Geats lose already. Really thought he'd stay in at the end. Based on the preview, I'm thinking it might end up as another one where nobody wins because of that..

I guess if anyone was going to have a different driver, it should be the Gamemaster. I just hope he isn't the start of a deluge of new drivers lol. The simplicity but versatility of the Desire Driver is too nice.

And John and Ben being confirmed as former Riders is awesome! Do hope we at least get to briefly see them actually transformed.

And it seems to me that Ace, during the Jamato attack, will touch the Core ID, remember everything, convince the guy in charge of the buckles to return and snatch victory at the last moment.

By the way, given the complaints about Tacoon's willingness to give away his driver to Geats, I think that many people do not understand Keiwa's position. It's not about naivety, but about the difference in priorities. For him, the DGP is primarily about saving the world, not about competition. Hence the willingness to cooperate to the detriment of oneself. Because the main thing for him is that Jamato does not win and all the dead civilians are resurrected. And his own desire is a nice bonus.

XD
What a legend

Spot on there! We all saw how he basically did the same thing in the kick the can episode. Also all those times he gave away the boost buckle.

My problem this week was that Buffa should have killed the final jamato. Keiwa killing it before confirming Geats had obtained the driver and was safe, well, it just makes Keiwa look stupid, right?

At least you could have had the jamato threatening a kid or something, or have some sort of countdown time limit. As it stood it just looked like Keiwa was styling on that fool and just decided to kill him completely forgetting about his bro!

Should have just let Buffa do it, since he wanted to take out Geats anyway. Or if you have a mind control rider, have the mind control rider take over keiwa to kill the jamato and eliminate geats.

It?s really only a minor complaint though.

I definitely agree Ace is winning this DGP, but I think Michinaga will transfer his entry rights, personally, like with Keilow before. I doubt we?ll lose any of our big four permanently until maybe the finale, so I think he?ll be back a few months after Christmas (like with Kento and Kiriya), but I do think we?re losing Michinaga for a while, and that rather than die, he?ll simply drop out for a bit.

The fact that the Chadguards, Ben and John, were Riders only makes me love them even more.

But also, Glare certainly leaves an impression. He looks like he's from the future, as if he's above the Rider Players (not the Ex-Aid ones), which he is, but the aesthetic surrounding him is really cool! And the fact that his armor comes off and becomes a mask to control others is a neat feature.

I kind of figured Geats would lose at some point down the line, but wouldn't ya know it? He goes out the very next episode I make that claim.

I have a feeling that the sponsors are going to go against each other at some point, since I'm assuming one of them, sent Ace the Command Buckle, then we have the Kuramas and Hallelujah's grandpa's company all as known sponsors, and now that Giroli has stepped into the game (which the outro says he can't do no matter what as Gamemaster), there's going to be some infighting, unless there's a real Gamemaster.

Oh yeah, there's also the Planter Guy who makes Jyamato. I have a feeling he's using the Rider's memories to feed this new batch of Jyamato, given the implications of Tycoon's Boss' last words being uttered by one of them.

Next Episode: Kamen Rider Geats-is-no-longer-the-Protagonist.

I obviously know that he's cooperative. I do think that he may be able to cooperate by fighting more of the Jamato Riders himself to get more belts for other Riders, instead of just letting them be to ensure other people's elimination after being in safe position. Taking action for others while still maintaining your safe position. Though which is why I suspect that this is probably done due to Keiwa still feeling insecure to some extent (obviously he's lot more confident than early on) for some parts in the game and felt safer/more guaranteed if he leaves the quest for getting all the Drivers back to Ace, based on his talk with Neon of them being dependent on Ace.

Not necessarily about Keiwa but also it seems that some can forget that being competitive and caring for others' well-being isn't mutually exclusive, as being competitive seems to be associated with cutthroatness and willingness to do anything to win (yeah Michinaga's a type of this), along with "nice guys finish last". But yeah, one can both really motivated to go for victory, like doing their best to complete the task required to win, while still care for others' well-being, including for competition, not wanting to see them end up in bad shape as you beat them.

Regarding the Boost part, some people also seems to equate kindness with naivety for this (and KR portraying many kind ones as that doesn't help..), I gotta say there's a difference between Keiwa getting tricked to giving it away like ep. 2, or intentionally giving it to help others he knows are in difficult situations, Neon for ep. 4 and Michinaga for ep. 5 (well yeah for giving the Driver to Ace, my thoughts above). We also see in ep. 7 that Keiwa refused to give Michinaga his Boost Buckle if there are no difficult situations (outside of obligatory Jamato fighting), even as Michinaga guilt-tripped him.

Though for the part of defeating Bishop Jamato, seems that he needs to do it before the Bishop Jamato tears the Riders apart by making the Riders fight each other via illusions seen in Buffa and Na-Go attacking each other. (in place of a child being threatened like you suggested, and killed Riders don't return.. unless Keiwa wins).

Ok. I’ll accept your reasoning, that Keiwa was worried about Buffa and Na-Go. It really just seemed like he was just styling on that fool, but Na-Go and Buffa were fighting each other too, I guess.

The episode can only be so long and there was obviously some much more important stuff going on with the other characters, so they did not have time to really communicate what exactly motivated Keiwa there. It was only a minor complaint I was making.

I’m really enjoying this show so far.

Damn, after all my predictions last week, I totally wasn't expecting Ace to lose his plot armor so suddenly. Geats didn't even appear in this episode. However, it looks like one of his desires, "to play DGP until I die", will allow him to stick around and have a limited effect on the finale, since he technically didn't die in the conventional sense. Maybe he can appeal to get back his qualifications by calling out Glare's very obvious rigging, just in time to defeat the final boss.

Yeah, for a guy running a competition about desires, Giroli totally failed to anticipate how betraying Win and leaving him in an unwinnable position might make him a little disinclined to keep following orders. And then there's the rule of the week that the game master isn't allowed to interfere with the result, immediately after he interferes with the result, so I think this is going to bite him pretty quickly.

I doubt the DGPs were always that consistently short. The first DGP lasted 6 whole months, which makes me think that the seasons decrease in length in adverse proportion to the growing strength of the Jyamatos. The fact that how only 5 players passed the pirate round was considered an abnormal result supports this, as more eliminations per round means less rounds until the final boss. Who knows how long they lasted in the previous 2000 years?

Even presuming Ace is telling the truth about playing since 1 AD, he could've written a desire to travel to the future, so he wouldn't necessarily have lived for all those years. The official KR site does state his age as 21 after all.

The other main difference is that Michinaga has a personal beef (haha, get it?) with Ace, while Win is just doing a job that his grandfather offered him due to his lack of success as a musician. I liked seeing Win open up and show his sympathetic side here, with the flashback revealing that his punk rocker style isn't merely a persona to hide his affiliation with staff, but rather a symbol of the dream he gave up on, something that Ace helps him to find once more. Just like him, he also got his revelation by falling to the bottom, that he can also make his desire come true if he seriously plays the game like the others.

For sure.