Just hope the writers don't give M/Emu an easy out.

Maximum Gamer has level 99 reprogramming skills. We just need to wait for Emu to realize that.

So first off the episode was great. The more I think about how this was tackled and that they allowed it to happen in the first part made me realize once more how great this show really is.

Now that we talked about this, let's focus on the important stuff:

Kamen Rider Poppy. I should hate her. I hate idol girls. I hate cutesy stuff. Like hearts, rainbows and sparkles and shit. But I can't hate her, she's too awesome. It really helps that we saw this character through so many situations and that we always had the puzzle pieces since we knew she was a Bugster for quite some time but they never really told us how she came to work for the CR and why. I mean they haven't done it now either but we can put some pieces together and I'm pretty sure once the show works on getting her back to the good side we'll see some flashbacks.

And the actress continues to do a fantastic job. Her voice is amazing. The way she can alter it really helps with the delivery, the way she says "Henshin" in this episode for example, so good. Her suit isn't the best, her fighting style (while different) isn't all that exciting, but dang I'm still very glad that she's here.

So yeah, bring on the merch, Kiwami needs a Kamen Rider Poppy Figuart now.

I swear, if Taiga really is the next to kick the bucket I am legitimately afraid of my ability to guess the order of deaths in this show, haha.

That was a good episode though. I liked Kamen Rider Poppy, the antagonist clearly have thought through their plan (I am super intrigued to see how they plan to recover from the bad publicity of their game murdering people goes), and I liked that we got some nice moments for all the main Riders. Good stuff!

Agreed. As silly as Poppy is as a character she's still, well, a character which makes her infinitely more tolerable and even likable than some other comedy relief we've had in the Neo-Heisei era.

Something about Kamen Rider Poppy though really reminds of something you'd see in Super Smash Bros., too, and I can't point my finger on it. Maybe it's just the idea of this very colorful, very eccentric and very unique fighter that's just coming in and wrecking shit.

Ditto on the Figuart too, this might be the first Rider series where I'd try to go all-in.

So Ren really is a complete Bugster, seeing that he seems to be using the Bugvisor I to transform in the previews. Meaning he definitely has some Dating Sim powers that allowed him to capture Poppy. Although how exactly Parad or Ren reset her memory is still a little iffy, unless there actually was a program in KR Chronicle specifically for resetting her memories when she entered it.

Speaking of Poppy, it turns out this entire time, she was yet another one of Dan's backup plans in the form of a spy that could unknowingly (or at least I hope unknowingly) gather data on the CR for him.

That's... Actually another completely perfect explanation, right up alongside the Dan is Genm reveal.

After what happened on the Zero Day, why would the CR let a Bugster just hang out at their main headquarters?
- She was a spy donated to them by their "trustworthy" friend Dan to help fight Bugsters.

Why did Asuna/Poppy seek out Emu to become a rider for the CR?
- Dan wanted Emu to be a rider, so he could get his full revenge on Emu.

How did Genm know the location where Kiriya asked the other riders to meet with him before Genm killed him?
- He could've just logged into Poppy's databanks and found out about it.

One issue with that. It contradicts Dan screeching about not being able to get a Doremifa Bugster. If this was intentional, he'd remember Poppy is the Doremifa Bugster and thus no new ones could come out

Hmm... see, now I'm wondering whether that is a contradiction or if we're going to get some explanation on that.

To be fair, he was kind of having a nervous breakdown at the time.

I don't buy that, Sure, it was bad enough for him to outright go insane when fighting but logically he would have done it right after corrupting Emu's Driver when he finally obtained Genm X

Dan was always crazy, just a question of how functionally so he was at any moment.

Sometimes a character just does something stupid. You know, like all the bonehead things any person does in a given day.

I think the bugvisor is used by Ren to transform in to humans like Pallad. Poppy is human looking enough and her transformation is just a costume change. I've never seen ex aid really care about her and now they're stuffing that message down after halfway through the series.

That's true, but considering how close after getting Genm X, you'd think he'd wise up. My theory is Ren had a 'delete save' button in his speech pattern or something

I was thinking that.

By the way, who drew your signature? I'd like to see Champ or Balance drawn by the same person.

Okay, so I'll stop whining about Ex-Aid for a while. This was pretty great! It wasn't like the best episode ever or anything, but it answered more or less all of my questions from last week, and had a bunch of other great stuff, so I'm happy:

- All the stuff elaborating on Kamen Rider Chronicle was great. I like the way they're going about it. Yeah, it was actually kind of a poor plan because the Ministry of Health instantly tries to shut it down, BUT WAIT, that was just phase one! We knew that would happen the whole time! It makes both the heroes and the villains look more competent. Good stuff.

- And we see the same jerk from last week actually grow to accept that fighting Bugsters is a Kamen Rider's job through an arcane, ancient narrative concept known as a "character arc". This Tenma guy is like the best VotW this show has had so far. I guess all it took to make one of them feel important was to literally get them in on the action. Loved how once he steps up at the end all those other losers are just like "oh wait, maybe I shouldn't be hanging on to this thing either". It's rare for things to go that well for Emu. :lol

- Speaking of which, it's nice to really be liking Emu again. This whole arc is giving him back the purpose he was lacking for the second quarter of the show. Dude feels like he has some gumption again.

- And Hiiro and Taiga are still the bomb. Having them show up right as Emu is talking about how he's willing to fight alone was awesome. Really sums up the unique dynamic these three have among Rider groups. Sure, they'll never, ever truly get along personally, but at the end of the day they're all here to get the job done.

- Kamen Rider Poppy was pretty delightful. Ex-Aid has a mastery of tone-deafness that puts other Rider shows to shame. That's not a backhanded compliment, either. It's awesome that we can have this big dramatic scene where she shows up and then suddenly that zany transformation happens, and then it's right back to the drama. It's this kind of nonsense that makes me love Toku so much.

- Also, y'all are freaking out about Taiga dying like all these signs are new things. You wanna talk death flags, he's been waving his biggest one ever since the start of the show. "I'm the only Kamen Rider we need around here". Can you guys not see how obvious a setup that line is for a big ironic twist toward the end of the show where he says that before making some big heroic sacrifice? Any other flags are just icing on the cake at that point. Heck, he already did put a positive spin on it back when he first used Bang Bang Simulations.

I'm only belatedly catching up on these, but... Wow. Early on in the series, it felt to me like the show was trying to channel Gaim, but felt empty. Now, it's evoking much the same feeling that Gaim did - that this is way more engaging than modern Kamen Rider is supposed to be - but without the asterisk; it feels like it's finally figured out its own identity.

There's no character who makes me feel as strongly as Micchi did ("I utterly despise this guy, and wish someone would just kill him alr-- no, wait, he's the best part of the show now, isn't he?"), but almost all of our principal players now feel fleshed-out for me to be invested. Not Whatsername, Taiga's hanger-on, but I suspect that'll be remedied.