Hiiro better not fucking die. And he better use that demon king form a good few more times before the show is over.

Remember the bugster was from a robot fighting game and they were with an old fashion robot theme to the point that I am amazed it didn't beep boop beep "Bugsters Superior, Riders Inferior". So the "Sleep Mode" thing probably just affects it if each bugster sticks to their game's theme. But who knows maybe your theory could be right with the next episode.

Hiiro will be fine. It's Taiga that I'm worried about, honestly.

This so much
The way he says he has nothing to lose sounds so depressed it's as if he read the script for some later episodes and realized what would happen
Though it's kinda funny as his actor's favourite Rider wasn't from Ryuki unlike the others but Necrom

He'll be fine... FOR NOW! (I don't trust this show to not kill literally every character.)

Aaaanyways, that was a frickin' awesome episode. I got way too excited when Hiiro started doing parkour, Taddle Fantasy was really cool, and both Hiiro and Emu got some nice moments. The next episode looks crazy too.

I really liked Hiiro in this episode, I think they took his characterization in a better direction that just generic Heisei secondary rider, which is always good in my book.

Hot dang that was literally everything I was hoping it'd be. One of my favorites of the series so far. Thoughts abound on this one:

- *No opening* You know what? Whatever. You do you, Ex-Aid. At least the song fit nicely into the last scene this time.

- So I guess Emu's virus breaking out turned him into a bad caricature of himself? He's acting so obsessed with games it gives the impression he's some kind of sociopath. Between the way he acts as a Rider, that one flashback, and how we know he always wanted to be a doctor, nothing has ever suggested M is this much of a jerk. I'm just going to chalk this up to Ex-Aid's ever confusing internal logic and move on, but for the record, stuff like this is why Emu isn't even in the running for favorite Rider for me right now. He was promising early on but the show has been treating him like an object for a while now. Presumably by the time he gets his next power-up, things will pick back up for the poor guy. I mean, this is HIS show, right?

- So, Hiiro is the man now. He's been exhibiting some pretty nice character development already, and this episode cemented that exactly how I wanted it to. Everything's gone to crap, the only one with a Gashat is Emu, who's not exactly in a sound state of mind, and there's a patient to save, so what does Hiiro do? He gets s*** done. What a guy. I think he's surpassed Kiriya as my favorite Rider in Ex-Aid at this point. He even actually earned his new toy! Nobody in Ex-Aid does that! That little moment at the end with him tossing Emu his Gashat back was also perfect.

- He doesn't get to be Ex-Aid, though. That was a commercial break, too! What a tease! This show really enjoys trolling the viewers, doesn't it?

- Wait, Dan, what do you mean he can't use a Level 50 Gashat because he's only up to Level 5? What? Is that how Gashats work? Is that why Ex-Aid and Snipe could suddenly just use Drago Knight Hunter Z by themselves? You can't just throw this s*** out there, man! I'm struggling to keep up as it is! :lol

- Oh, so you just defeat a Bugster that's taken over somebody's body by blowing them up like normal? How convenient. I was thinking it'd be like Drive or something where they'd make a big fuss about it.

- Also, Dan continues to simultaneously win and lose and the same time. He's seriously in like, villain purgatory, or something at this point. I suppose he is undead. I think. They never really explained that very well either.

Five episodes without opening theme scenes...thats really weird.....

Hmm...I am really want they add opening again in next episode...maybe they will add Pallad as Para-DX and Hiiro as Brave Fantasy Gamer in opening scenes....

Oh jeez, 5 episodes in a row with no opening and they put the main song at the end of the episode again. At this point I'm certain the editing team for KR Amazons are running the show.
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Moving on to the episode itself.

Woo!!! That fight was awesome! Fantasy Brave perfectly captures the feel of a rpg's final boss; summoning his own minions, telekinesis, even the pose he makes while he was floating down looks like it was ripped out of a old rpg, it's just amazing.

Also, powerful Bugsters can just go into sleep mode inside a patient's body if they're in a jam apparently. (sarcasm mode on) Gee... I wonder if that's going to be an important detail?

Oh, and yeah Gemn apparently does get a riders weapon upon collecting their gashat (I guess he downloads the weapon's files or something.)
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Interesting thing to note, the rest of the CR staff (mainly Hiiro) were theorizing that the "M" personality is the bugster despite the show originally hinting that "Emu" was the bugster with how he said he starting hitting the books 6 years ago when he first got infected.

I was initially confused by this until Hiiro's big line "That's the Emu I know!" (I'm watching with Excite subs). Meaning that; depending on how the issue is resolved when they finally "cure" Emu, this might actually be a situation where the audience knows something the characters don't.
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Lastly.

Welp, Taiga's going into Episode 3-8 Mode again, although I'm sure we'll get to see more next episode, at least we now sorta know why he wants all the gashats.

I took it as meaning Hiiro's not physically acclimated or not properly trained. I've seen ideas that the higher levels have a higher concentration of Bugster Virus (Gashats containing Bugster Virus being the reason they need a vaccination).

See, that's more or less the same assumption I'm running on, but, and I've probably said this before, the problem is that the show leaves me to make that assumption. I'm not asking for the show to pull over and blandly exposit every little detail, but Ex-Aid's world-building game is weak. The mechanics of the setting beyond the most basic level are left to the viewer's imagination in a way that feels less like it has clear rules but just hasn't explained them and more like it just makes stuff up as it goes along.

It's not the most damning issue in the world, and for how much I whine about it in these threads it's yet to really take me out of the moment, but given how often I saw people get extremely hung up on throwaway lines during Ghost, I'm surprised to see how ready people are to not only brush off, but attempt to rationalize every weird thing that happens or is said in Ex-Aid.

For me at least, while In DO have to make the assumption, I feel Ex-Aid provides enough for me to have a conclusion whereas Ghost didn't give me enough. For that line, I figured 'Well, the full Drago Armour made Emu go beserk and Hiiro never even had the full armour, so Hiiro wouldn't be used to the kind of power and severely underestimate it', which I felt fit due to it being very risky to do, but Hiiro didn't care about the risk anymore. I DO agree however, that it's pretty hypocritical for people to complain about Ghost too, and I'm still confused about the Newton Eyecon

You know, I was thinking the same thing, but when I think about it that is basically exactly how it worked with the Level 1 Bugsters, so there's some sort of precedent. Those also exploded and things, so I guess it's not so strange.

Still convinced the whole "taking over the body" thing is mostly so they don't have to spend time cutting away from the fight to the patients, and having it work like this just allows them to not have to change anything else but that. It's definitely an convenient/largely insignificant development either way. But as long as it does allow for a little more time for the show to do cool things I guess I don't mind it.

This episode was great. More focus on Hiiro is always welcome, Emu's personality switch shacked things up really well and I loved the scenes where he was playing DoReMiFa Beat. Poor Poppy!

The highlight of this episode for me was Brave Lv. 50 though. Gorgeous looking suit, and the way it impacted the action scenes was amazing. Summoning mooks, using the force, cape drill (Tali’s gonna love that one! ;) ), teleporting, shooting mook missiles... yes! :thumb:

I'm fairly certain this will just be a more powered up Taddle Quest from now on though since he has the sword back and using the force costs too much money, but oh well.

Next week looks promising as well, Snipe's new Battleship form looks utterly ridiculous, I love it.

Also, you think Dan is creepy now? Rewatch the start of the episode. He works on a PC that isn't even plugged in, witchcraft! :lol

Quick thoughts on last weeks episode: Enjoyable, it built up a lot of tension towards Emu finding out he had the game diseases with a decent enough pay off. Seeing Parad lay the smack down on Dan was pretty satisfying especially with how much more crazy he has been getting over these past few episodes. I mean seriously, he's been slowly getting more and more unhinged as the show goes on and if he isn't dead by the end, I expect him to be in a mental instituition.

This weeks episode: This is basically's Hiiro's episode through and through. He's increasingly starting to respect Emu and seeimg his reaction to this much more egotistic and less compasionate version of him provides a nice contrast to how they interacted in the first few episodes. I kinda wish gamer Emu lasted a few more episodes just to see how Taiga and Niko would react.
As for the action, first off, yay we finally have a new bugster design and its a pretty neat one. The main attraction of course is Taddle Fantasy. The fight itself was pretty cool with various different magical abilities he was able to use but I don't expect to see them often because you know, budget. The finisher however is kinda lame, hopefully now that he has the Gashacon sword it will be cooler. The design has also somehow gotten worse in my eyes since I saw it in the toy scans. I think it's the combanation of the dark coloured armor over the bright undersuit, which is kind of the opposite problem I had with Sports Genm. Also him briefly turning evil was pretty pointless since it lasted less than 5 minutes. I mean I guess it showcases his willpower but that aspect of Hiiro has never been called into question.
That's basically all I got and it's kinda been the standard reaction I've gotten from Ex-Aid over the past few weeks. It's good but I haven't been exactly hyped for it.

Yeah you kinda hit the nail on a problem I have with Ex-Aid. Especially when they try to explain how the rider mechanics and game world works. It's not a huge issue but I'm often left more confused

Burnnnn him!

So a great episode, everybody already said all that I wanted. I expect the opening to return in the next week, because they need to market the movie in it.

Great episode. This may go down as the moment when Hiiro really clicked for me as a character, not only for the great fight scene but also for his interaction with the patient. There does seem to be more to his personality than we've seen so far. Also impressed with Brave Level 50; it joins the very elite club of non-terrible Ex-Aid suits - something that I will clearly not be saying about Level 50 Snipe.

cool episode

i enjoyed seeing the evolution of the bugster virus at level 30, seems they're no longer using human hosts as a carrier that they can jump out of, but something they actively feed off of as they fully take over and swap from human to bugster form

Taddle fantasy . . . man, thats an awesome upgrade. Super powerful, teleportation, summoning jobbers, flight, cape spike, telekenesis. for a middle upgrade, alotta powers

Have we seen a hero rider get the power to summon bad guy minions/silly putties to use before?

Only in Gaim that I know of. Lots of blind spots in my Rider watching, though...

These are the only instances that I'm aware of.

Remote Tapir.

Leangle pulled this trick all the time with the Remote card.

True, but Leangle wasn't really a hero throughout most of the story

Imperer is Anti-Hero atmost, and he controls quite a big army of Zelles. Technically, he only controls one of them, it is just that they usually hunt in pack, but it still counts, right?

Hmm....I am really want dream match between Brave Fantasy Gamer vs Specter Deep Houdini Damashii. I think their battle will be awesome...

Just finally got some time to watch this.

God, I love how well they're pulling off the video game tropes. The whole focus on the energy items and Brave pulling all the stock final boss attacks (the teleport bit was hilarious) were so good. Here's hoping we get to see some more Fantasy Brave craziness.