To me, it's said with resignation, or exhaustion. An acknowledgement that she's asking a question, but clarifying that she shouldn't expect an answer. With the other translation, "Depends on the question," it sounds more like he's allowing for the possibility that she'll ask something he wants to answer. I really prefer him throwing shade with a What About Our Relationship Makes You Think You'll Get An Answer, rather than a more succinct Ugh Maybe.

I consider it incredibly helpful! Thank you! I'll probably keep throwing up the occasional screencap that feels important but is unclear. I hope you don't regret offering this service!

And you're great at it!

While episode 2 is the last appearance of the cousin, he still got a meta-revenge. The actor playing him (Shinnosuke Abe) got cast in a semi-regular role in Chouseishin Gransazer, which ended up outselling Faiz’s successor.

Ha ha, fantastic! Glad he was able to take being a heart-murdered as a setback, not an ending.

Yeah, not to get off-topic, but the little I know about Blade is that its merch sales were so poor that the Kamen Rider franchise almost went on ice because of it. Interested in seeing how that eventually plays out onscreen.

I had forgotten how hard they go into Kiba (That's how I know Horseman best) and his tragedy in just the second episode, but in hindsight there's really no better place for it since this is still all part of his 'origin story'.

Vaguely related to Kiba, but I like the Horse Orphnochs's design. In fact, I like the look of all the Orphnochs in general. Some people find the fact that they're all monotone in colour to be dull, but I actually think that makes them all the more striking.

I was mainly just asking for their business parts though, not the whole Driver plot.

I'd think it's probably Kiva for those people not care.

This right here is something I came around to after a point. To be fair, it can be a little tricky when you're binging your way through the show to keep track of what the minor ones are even supposed to be, but the designs are all great, and that strong, unified identity within the group makes them stick out as a whole, and the monsters literally being gray is perfectly suited to Faiz for a few different reasons.

The few Orphnoch kills that've been shown have an element of the victim dissolving into sand (or at least that's how it looks to me?), so the monsters looking like they were carved out of marble seems like a linked design choice. It definitely plays as Powerful, even the zero-level ones that show up early.

And the great big horseshoe on Horsepower's chest is so great. I don't know if I can even explain why, but it's a very fun touch. It's... I think maybe I love it because of the baked-in Kamen Rider dissonance of Yuuji having a very serious, sad story, and the actor getting it all out in the scene, and then there's this gigantic horse monster who is really into horse motifs. It's this juxtaposition of Very Serious Storytelling and Very Designed Suit, and that tension in production is something that's maybe the heart of Kamen Rider to me.

You aren't thinking edgy enough. It's ash. Hence all the fire.

Too much darkness in this show! Between the nighttime scenes and the low resolution of the video, I definitely couldn't tell those apart. It makes a lot more sense, though, with the hearts burning up and all. Sorry I missed that! Thanks for the clarification!

Oh, right, one more thing for now -- I think you comparing a character as... disdainful for me as the Smart Brain Lady to Hatsune Miku, in any respect, no matter how sarcastic or jokey, awakened some kind of primal rage within me. It won't be sated. You'll tonight find your SHF collection thrashed at 5:55AM, curiously with only the OOO, Build and Kuuga segments kept intact.

Oh man, you should have seen the original Faiz subs. They were TV rips from 2003 and they looked like someone had smeared Vaseline over the camera lens.

But can we find one weeb willing to say that Faiz was better when it looked like that, because it was the "true" experience?

Look, if I can't unsee it, you can't unsee it. That's just how fandoms work! I don't make the rules!

(Also, thank you for leaving my OOO guys intact. My Ankh hand already needed to be repaired when a wing broke off during a palm switch-out, and I think the next hit it takes could be its last.)

I'll be honest, I've felt pretty lucky at how watchable all of the Kamen Riders have been. Seems like a decent amount have gotten Blu-ray releases, and even the DVD ones seem solid enough. (Dark scenes are always going to be iffy on SD content.)

And, ugh, I can't imagine someone fighting for early-2000s-broadcast-quality as a preferred version. I can see folks kicking about a Remastered version as being Not Real Kamen Rider, but, yeah, you'd need to be pretty devoted to your nostalgia to feel like a DVD is too far from the intention of the creators.

Fun fact Horsepower's fiance was played by Mika Katsumura, whose claim to fame is Yuuri/Time Pink in 2000's Timeranger and Horsepower's cousin was played by Shinnosuke Abe, who went on to play Impactor Logia in Toho Studio's Gransazer post-Faiz.

Regarding the original broadcast versions of the episodes there's one detail that both me and my friend utterly prefer to the DVD versions, and it's solely due to the later being re-scored so the scene in question is way better with the original music choice.

There's one other upcoming character whose actor played another significant Toku character, and... and I won't say who it is for spoilers. All I will say is that as a Zyuohger fan it completely broke me.

The weird flipside to being excited when folks get rehired in toku shows is feeling maybe a little offended when stars of one show get picked up as one-off guest stars on a later show. Like, being the Pink Ranger is a pretty big deal! Being a two-episode vestige of the past is... it is not a step up!

I remember when Koyomi from Wizard was in a two-parter on Ghost as an idol singer and it's, like, a little insulting? Can you imagine a past Rider just being recast as a lower... tier... oh.

You'll have to let me know when it happens!

TACHIBANA-SAN! Why are you watching? TACHIBANA-SAN? Is it true that you've become a lower-tier character?

In fairness, she at least didn't bail on filming Ghost, requiring those episodes to be written around her absence.

There are a lot of tokusatsu vets that appear in Faiz. You'll see faces in here that pop up in Zyuohger, Garo, Kabuto, Ultraman Nexus, Shinkenger, GoGoV, and Amazons, just to name some stuff off the top of my head.

Nah, personally I find it to be a good time only because it is fun to see toku alumni act other types of characters and I dont really feel like it is a step down. Rather it is a good chance for them to show me what else they can do and plus these shows are typically entry points for new talents so there is that too. It's kinda like that first time people saw John Wesley Shipp as Barry's dad in the CW Flash show or the late Luke Perry as Archie's dad in Riverdale.

Y'all'll have to let me know when they pop up, since I will definitely not know who they are!

I guess the difference for me is that, in the case of the CW stuff, it's older actors who've become less active in the intervening years (and for some of them they haven't been in a superhero project in literally decades) and the roles they're cast in are referential: the 90s Flash is the 10s Flash's dad, Supergirl's mom and dad are 90s Superman and 80s Supergirl, etc. (Even Luke Perry on Riverdale was just 90s Teen Heartthrob playing 10s Teen Heartthrob's dad.) With some of this toku stuff, they were starring in other series less than five years ago, and the new roles they get could've been played by anyone.

Still, you're not wrong, it's cool to see deep-cut actors show up in new types of roles. I'm all about folks coming back as often as they want!

And the one person who probably fits the bill of "most toku appearances post-lead toku hero role" would be Hiroshi Miyauchi, at least that is who I can remember off the top of my head. This man is LEGEND. He played 4 lead toku hero roles during his prime starting off as Shiro/V3 in Kamen Rider V3, followed by Akira/Aorenger in Gorenger, Shokichi/Big 1 in JAKQ Dengekitai, and Ken/Zubat in Kaiketsu Zubat. After that he went on to play either regular supporting roles or guest roles in The War In Space, Toei Spider-Man, Space Sheriff Gavan, Winspector, Solbrain, Exceedraft, and finally Ohranger. And also he was Mr. Tachibana in the Kamen Rider The First movie.

Dang! That is a CV!

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 03

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz03a.png

1. This was a messy one! It's not a bad one, though. I really enjoyed it, probably in ways/levels that I wasn't supposed to, but it's pretty much just an overflowing bag of an episode. There's a loose Takumi/Mari runner, a check-in with Yuuji and Live Action Hatsune Miku, an underground school that was abandoned in 1995, the hilarious suffering of Yuka, and Keitaro, the world's most impossibly dedicated dry cleaner. All that plus Faiz playing around with his cellphone to figure out how to shoot monsters with it, an unbelievably irritating high-pitched whine of an Exceed Charge, and god knows what else I already forgot. It was a lot! This one was a lot!

2. That Mari/Takumi runner, though, it keeps this thing on whatever rails it manages to stay on. I like how formless their story is right now, how it's all character-driven decision-making and, like, hanging out. (I can't decide if my favorite thing in the episode is Mari faking an Orphnoch wrist injury to get Takumi to stick around, only to actually get her wrist injured by an Orphnoch at the end, or her telling Takumi that the right amount of distance for him to sleep around her is 30cm less than Too Far Away. They're both perfect. I can't choose!) It's only midway through the episode that Mari's like Hey Why Don't We Both Go To Tokyo And Get To The Bottom Of This Monster And Belt Stuff, to which Takumi could not care less. I love it. I love how adamant the ostensible star of the show is to not doing anything as Kamen Rider Faiz. Even when Mari tosses him the belt late in the episode, you can practically hear his rolling eyes louder than you can hear his dialogue. (Holy shit, Kurona just posted about SO-DO Double getting a Hardboiler, very exciting, I lost my train of thought now.) It's maybe a turn-off for some people, the way Takumi is trying to avoid the premise and run away from the action, but, like, come on. Fate keeps throwing the two of them into the path of motorcycle-riding monsters, so we're going to get our big sci-fi story whether Takumi wants it or not. And, like, I really love that he hates being in this story. It's an endlessly funny take on a toku hero, where reluctance just, like, magnifies into a complete frustration with the genre of the show. Super funny, the ways the show pushes these two characters along the path without them both wanting it.

3. The Yuka stuff was also incredibly funny, and I'm 99% sure that's not supposed to be my takeaway. Yuka's pining for Keitaro, a very sweet boy who wants to make everyone smile and will probably kill himself if you don't get the clothes you needed laundered. (So great that the Kamen Rider show about selfish misanthropes found a way to do The Kamen Rider Theme in the most funny, satirical way possible.) Other than that small bright spot of hope, everything in her life is trying to destroy her. Yuka's story is basically an unending torment, as she's belittled by her parents (Or, "parents"? Michiko mentions that Yuka's not really her sister at one point?), bullied by her sister and the other girls at school (right by Yui and Shiro's childhood home of abuse, for added trauma), and eventually just collapses dead on some snowy stairs. It's?€? it's not a story that does a great job of sketching out a sympathetic character. Yuka's a victim of the world's hostility, but we don't really get a sense of who she is. She's meek, and gets abused. Beyond that, the only look we get into her thoughts are that she'd very much like to be literally anywhere on Earth that isn't the place where she's being abused. Which, that's a very universal wish, but it lacks the specificity that would make you want to see her situation change. As it is, the endless amounts of pain and belittlement she suffers is actually just stupidly funny? It doesn't feel grounded enough to feel relatable, and Yuka doesn't have a characteristic beyond Abused and Would Like To Stop Being Abused to make her feel like a real person. Even her death ("death”, she got them Orphnoch Optics now) is pointless, her just suddenly falling over dead. I get that Inoue had to maybe shortcut to get her story into one episode, but what's here is so over-the-top as to be almost completely ineffective. Unless you count it as parody? In which case, super effective.

4. The rest of the episode is some neat little quick bites of stories. Teases of that abandoned school are intriguing. Live Action Hatsune Miku as Yuuji's Orphnoch life coach should end up paying dividends, as even the moment when LAHM tells a questioning Yuuji to just go with the flow adds a nice sense of menace to what's otherwise an upbeat reassurance. I could not believe how absurdly dedicated to delivering dry cleaning Keitaro was, and it never got old for me. That whole part of the episode felt like Mari was trapped in an RPG, where Keitaro always needed help with just one more thing. And the final fight with the Orphnoch was great, if only for Faiz just punching in things on his phone while he lounged against a rock, taking the time in the middle of his third-ever fight to be like Hey I Wonder What This Button Does. It's that Takumi attitude of just completely not caring about the monsters or the belt or whatever, but as a fighting style. Disinterested Style? Is that a martial arts spin-off from Drunken Style? Can it be?

5. Structurally, this episode was all over the place. A whole bunch of plots were just setting up other things, and it didn't really come together at the end. (There's, like, at least four plots that do not intersect in just this one episode) But! The funny stuff is really funny, and the serious stuff was also really funny. I don't know if I got out of it what I was supposed to, but this thing was a riot. Great work, Inoue!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz03b.png

The Yuka stuff is one of the biggest obstacles I've had to watching this show again. I agree that it is ludicrously over-the-top, but everything about her backstory is so senselessly cruel that I find it hard to even thing about sitting through it again. This is what I was saying about Faiz and melodrama; it's a show that never met a dial it didn't want to turn up to 11.

My favorite touch, and the one that had me dying, was there's a point where she's getting basketballs thrown at her during gym class. It starts with her missing a pass, then her teammates are just whipping them at her. (In fairness to her bullies, there're a few of these that, like, she just needs to put two hands up to catch them. I don't have it in me to physically bully someone, but even I was like Jesus Yuka.) So it's this quick montage of her getting hit with a basketball, and then she's hit by multiple basketballs in succession. Her classmates grabbed other basketballs just to throw at her! Amazing!

It's, again, totally ineffective at garnering sympathy. It's like a fairytale, where her struggle is all cautionary tale, all metaphor. And the way it's divorced from any sort of realistic human psychology, it makes it work gangbusters as comedy. And, you know, your mileage may vary on it. I've definitely found stuff like this a slog before. Here, maybe it's because so much of the rest of this episode was full of charmingly manipulative jerks and pathetically defeatist do-gooders, but the Yuka stuff played great as comedy. I don't know. Maybe this show is just making me an even bigger asshole than I was before?

Oh man Die, you get it. THIS is part of the brilliance of Faiz.

There's this almost dark comedy aspect to Faiz that really does it for me. This is going to be a fun thread.

Yeah, it... someone asked before about Amazons, and how this compared, and I think I have a better answer now. Amazons is What If It's More Violent But Still Heroic, while Faiz is What If It's The Same Violent But Everyone's Horrible. I found Yuka's story, from her getting a towel thrown at her at breakfast to just falling over dead at the end, to be so funny that it's seared into my brain.

I don't want this to sound like I found this episode So Bad It's Good or anything. There's a ton of really funny stuff that's clearly funny on-purpose, and some genuinely creepy stuff in other scenes. It's just the Yuka stuff that is insane, but it's insane in a way that I'm not even a little mad at.

I've got this friend, and she'll tell stories about her day, her life, and the longer you let her tell these stories the more horrifying they start to get. But she's fine, and she's having fun telling these stories, so you can't help but laugh. It's someone letting you know it's okay to laugh at these otherwise horrible events, even if it's only because it's too sad to contemplate. The Yuka story was like that, where I wasn't invested in the story of a teenage girl's suffering, I was watching a TV show where an actor was getting basketballs thrown at them until they cried. Like, even typing that sentence is making me laugh. There's this unreality to Inoue's melodrama here that makes it so goddamn funny to me.

What I meant by a recap is that you take all your episode thoughts after you are done with the show; and put them somewhere so they are easy to read, rather than having to find them in between the excellent discussions these threads have. Also the necrom and faiz drivers have the best voices ever for rider gear and I will throw cats at anyone who disagrees

So all I have to do is disagree with you and I get a free cat? Cool. I disagree then. Now where's my cat?

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

I have literally nothing of value to add but I want you to know how hard this made me laugh :D

Oh! Okay, I see what you mean.

I'm not sure I'd ever want to break my posts out entirely. Like you said, the discussions are excellent, and the whole reason I like doing these threads. Without the discourse and digressions... it'd feel incomplete to me? There're so many fun ideas and funny jokes that can only crop up in the space between episodes. It's like the difference between eating at home and going out to a restaurant with friends. It's not so much about the food, it's about spending time with people. (Which we'll hopefully all get to do again when it's safer!) These threads are about spending time talking with other Kamen Rider fans, more than they're about my thoughts on whatever show.

However! What I can offer is maybe following through on a suggestion someone made (it might've been you!) a couple months ago. I can try and add episode links to the first post in the thread, giving folks a chance to jump to specific points in the series. It might not be updated immediately after a post, but I'll try and keep up on it at a reasonable pace. Maybe that could be a compromise?

Man it's times like this I wish Tokunation had the ability to threadmark posts in a thread.

Yeah, Yuka’s story is funny in a black comedy kind of way, but it’s still pretty creepy to me, given that it follows an idea that was slightly explored in some Showa shows: that the monsters could be anyone, anywhere. They could even be the wife/husband/brother/sister/cousin/indentured servant/delete as appropriate telling you that someone’s replied to your thread.

And if I have anything to say about the Faiz Gear, it’s that it puts the next two henshin items for main riders to shame. I don’t think they really made anything better until Decade. https://youtu.be/UNcAcqX_2G0

That's a good point! It's also a topic that gets explored in a lot of darker monster shows, the Humans Are The Real Monsters thing. The thing I enjoy about how Kamen Rider uses it is that, yeah, they'll hit that beat of a regular person just being awful, but then there's still a layer of Okay But There Are Still Legit Monsters As Well. It's having its thematic cake and Rider Kicking it, too.

I can't speak to the Blade-through-Decade drivers and collectibles, but I do like the Faiz take on it. I think I've said before that I dig how the belt and accessories have to get hauled around with them, but this episode had a surprisingly involved sequence of Takumi, like, building Faiz out of a half-dozen bits of gear. It's not just some belt showing up from a mirror, it's this Ikea manual of how to make a tokusatsu hero. Very fun little moment in the Henshin process, for my tastes.

Yuka's backstory is tragic as hell. I'll have more to say about this after you watch Episode 4.

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. The most effective villains are those who blend in to society. It's something that comes naturally to Orphenochs since they're mutated humans with human emotions. Each is a person with their own life and motives, not just another monster.

Incoming! Also, very yes!

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 04

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz04a.png

1. I’m really enjoying what they’re doing with the Yuka storyline in this show. It’s definitely a new perspective on a monster plot for Kamen Rider. We’ve seen stories of monsters, and we’ve seen stories of people with the power to fight monsters. Usually, it’s about the need for a decent person to become a hero to save other decent people. Occasionally, it’s about less-than-decent people needing to find heroism within themselves to save decent people. But what Faiz is doing is new to me. It’s doing a story about beaten people being given powers, and then using those powers to punish wicked people. The folks that are getting killed by Yuuji and Yuka, they are the worst. Michiko gets saved by Yuka, and the second she sees her parents warming to Yuka, she lies and blames her for the accident. The girls at school target her early and often. None of these people deserve pity, which makes Yuka’s actions feel deserved, cathartic. It’s a way of muddying the water, of making it more difficult to condemn a killer. Yuka isn’t just having a tough time at school and a rough home life, she’s beaten and insulted and abandoned. It’s a not-uncommon horror story to tell, it’s basically just Carrie, but it’s a different look at the origin of monsters than I think Kamen Rider has done before. (It’s definitely not a part of Kuuga through Ryuki. EDIT: Unless you count 60% of Agito, which I forgot about. It's a gray area!) The individual moments of Yuka’s story still veer wildly between Relatable and Hilarious, that really hasn’t changed, but the overall feel of it is intriguing and compelling. For an isolated girl like Yuka to find someone like Yuuji at the end of this episode, another survivor of trauma who has the power to punish his abusers, that’s going to be an interesting friendship.

2. Which, hey, theme of this episode! Yuka needs a friend, but there’s also the developing heroic trio of Takumi, Mari, and Keitaro. Keitaro is clearly the missing piece of the core dynamic, the moral and upstanding straight man to Takumi’s grumpy reticence and Mari’s manipulative self-interest. The show pulls back a little on making fun of Keitaro in this one, portraying his desire to help people as maybe just a little misguided instead of being a fool’s errand. I think the defining moment in this episode for me, the kind of Only In Faiz moment that is increasingly precious to me, is when Keitaro realizes the usefulness of the Faiz gear in saving lives and protecting smiles. He pitches Takumi and Mari on heading to Tokyo, getting to the bottom of the mystery, and stopping the monsters. Takumi immediately Nopes out, expressing misgivings about travelling with the two of them for that long and generally not giving a shit about the monsters or any of it. Rebuffed, Keitaro declares that he and Mari will go by themselves to save the day. And Mari’s like, Also Nope? She wants to find out what the deal is with the belt and bike her dad sent her, but she’s not really about protecting innocents. That is such a great conversation for this show to have, to paint the classic Kamen Rider drive of selflessness and sacrifice as Someone Else’s Problem. Like, Takumi and Mari do not take for granted that they are the protagonists of a tokusatsu series! The second half of the episode is about slowly, incremental, purposefully getting them to care about things that do not directly impact them. It’s so grudging, the way that Takumi will finally tell Keitaro his name, will go with Mari for at least a little longer, will take responsibility (!) for the belt, won’t run away any more. It feels earned, these three weirdos deciding to cast their lot together. It’s not so much about changing them or sanding their edges down, it’s about adding a small amount of compassion to their current stew of bickering and insults. It’s a nice evolution of what’s already working great on this show.

3. Also there’s a goddamn transforming bike now?! Okay! It’s a very fun idea, and I like that for all of her desire to get Takumi to accept his role as Faiz, when he asks Mari for the bike she’s like Uh I’ll Think About It. Why would you rush to give up a transforming bike? It’s pretty well deployed in this episode, proving its worth not by detonating a monster but beating the shit of Faiz. I really like that choice. It’s a neat surprise in the first place, seeing Mari’s bike spring to life and transform into a not-super-convincing robot. (I’m maybe glad they went with a practical suit instead of CG for the FaizCyKill, but the suit is a little distracting in places.) It’s more of a surprise when its first use is beating the hero of the show so hard he drops out of his Henshin. And, sure, it’s a monster inside the Faiz suit, not Takumi, so maybe it’s at lower power. But it’s a stronger debut visually to have FaizCyKill able to not just defeat a monster, but to defeat the guy who defeats monsters. Gives a little boost, you know? I dig the idea of the FaizCyKill, and I’m hopeful that it’ll allow Mari and Keitaro to stay in the mix for fights.

4. And the fights are still good! There’s a whining sound to the Exceed Charge that is getting on my nerves, but otherwise I’m liking what’s there. That little snap of the wrist for Faiz is a catchy flourish, and Faiz himself is (not counting when he’s playing around with new equipment) a very focused and active fighter. He feels more like a boxer than past Riders, where he’s all about getting in close, working the body. It’s a physicality that speaks to Wanting To Get This Done With As Fast As Possible, which is very Takumi. Along those lines, not much to the fight in this episode. Once Takumi gets the belt back and Henshins, it’s only a couple moves before the monster is defeated. (In fairness, there’s the other half of the fight scene, where Faux Faiz kicks his own amount of monster ass, but I have a tough time filing that under Faiz Fight, you know?) Still, a fun enough fight and a solid finish to this episode’s Brawl For The Belt.

5. Overall, I found this to be a tighter episode than the last one, with a focus on just two plots instead of a half-dozen. (Yuuji only shows up at the end, Live Action Hatsune Miku calls in to direct the Orphnochs in tracking down the belt, and a police higher-up doesn’t care that much about the workers missing from last episode’s cave-in.) The ability to drill into one theme, friendship, and then view that through Yuka’s isolation and the developing Takumi/Mari/Keitaro team, it allows for a more approachable story. Unfortunately, it replaces the fever-dream brilliance of some of the last episode with competence, creating a solid episode that isn’t quite as much fun to watch. Still fun, though! Takumi not caring that Keitaro stole the Faiz belt and bike FOREVER.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz04b.png
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz04c.png

FINALLY, YES! We're at my favourite Faiz rider!

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20190211004441

Auto Vajin puts in so much goddamn work and never gets any of the goddamn credit, and I love him, and he's just the best all in all.

I absolutely need to highlight Episode 3's next time which framed it in such a way that it looked like Mari saying "who are you?" was in response to Auto Vajin, and Takumi's "I'm your friend" was said by Auto Vajin. It's a beautiful, stupid piece of unintended consequence caused by merchandising and it makes me love this bike even more. He's the true hero of the series and the one I root for the most.