I think the concept of a secondary rider should be left in Heisei.

hiromi being out of place is the most accurate description of the character I've ever seen

I want to be excited for his character development but he is so fucking boring now. I almost wish we had a new demons user because all he does right now is lose fights or his opposition flees. it's never been more apparent that this guy wasn't supposed to be a rider. a lot of these episodes so far have felt pretty complete even if you exclude his influence

hell, they didn't even bother to add ANY visual effects to hiromi's last transformation in this episode - he just says henshin and they immediately cut to demons fighting. obviously they prioritized time and budget on live's debut, but still - kamen rider hardly ever does cuts like that with zero visual effects whatsoever

I'm just getting bored of seeing every hiromi/demons moment so far amount to pretty much nothing - especially when we're approaching the end of the first quarter and we're kind of starved for plot

I think it's really funny how we both have the same read on the character, but in completely opposite doses of optimism :lol

I kinda wanna believe he'll be something. Some of my favourite characterwork has resulted from plans diverting from the original -- Ankh's place in OOO's finale, Stacey's existence in Zenkaiger, etc. And even beyond that I've found changed plans to just be downright fun like Cronus in Ex-Aid, so I wanna believe there'll be something here!

Personally I'm just sitting here worried he'll get stuck in Build's "Rogue" situation of:
"What do we do with this extra guy now that he's firmly on the protag's side?"
"Idk just have him do goofy shit, it'll work out."

I was just as optimistic a month ago. it's just that it's officially been a month since his debut and I expected that we'd have something to work with by now aside from his catchphrase

actually I thought his resolve to stop daiji was interesting - but the fact hiromi had no lines or input on daiji's return tells me they're dropping that plot point


at the moment everything about him feels like filler to me which is kinda bad cause I don't feel like revice as it is now really has time for that

Hanta Kinoshita, screenwriter for Revice, revealed on Twitter that Hiromi is supposed to have a younger sister who also works in Phoenix and is in Daiji's squad: https://twitter.com/hanta_kinoshita/...50375754518529
This was in the original plot where Hiromi died, but it is possible that elements from him are still planned to be used.

I will admit that I do echo the sentiments of Hiromi... sorta just being there. It's interesting because his debut worked well, but aside from like a minor fight scene with Evil an episode later, all of his fights have definitely felt filler-ish in regards to what he's doing.

Like whenever he's just fighting Gifu Jr's, or a Deadman while Ikki is having the plot with the brother etc. Like even next week in the previews you see him sort of isolated fighting Gifu Jr's on his own while Daiji and Ikki get the brother Henshin moment and we've got stuff with Sakura coming up.

Admittedly I'm not swung either way on Hiromi yet, I find his "there-ness" intriguing more than anything else. Though to be honest I was getting rather bored of him and his singular catch phrase to the point where I was like fine with Vice's stunt at the beginning showing him in his mind. I was finally like "Oh, good he can emote more than stale burning justice".

But in the past there was Stronger reciting a lengthy monologue before each battle.
I think since Hiromi symbolizes the Shova Riders, he should be such a monotonous hero. On the other hand, yes, more interaction with others would make him more entertaining. I still think it's worth waiting for the first quarter of the show to end when the audience is bombarded with new toys. Maybe then we'll get a whole story dedicated to Hiromi. Or the Spider-Bat-Cobra trio (it will be a pity if something is not invented for them without Revice).

Completely understand on the idea that he's kinda just there. You can remove him from the episode entirely and there would only be slight alterations, he really was meant to die and for someone else to be Demons.

But, it's because of his straightforward demeanor and catch phrase that I really love him. Really emulates the showa era rider. Made stronger (albeit not presented well) when it's shown that he's crying inside, a mind of steel with a soft heat.

He emulates what I also liked in Saber. He's a Kamen Rider no questions asked, pure classic heroism that I feel is kinda a rare sight nowadays. Topped it off with an amazing suit and belt.

George seems to represent what can happen for the kind of shit-stirrers who stirs up drama, but as usual, amplified by the existence of superpowers in his universe (as usual, supervillains for example can cause damage primarily due to their power, even if they're anti-villains and can be morally 'better' than weaker straight villain). For what you said about "good and evil being two sides of the same coin", I got a feeling that George probably would be someone similar into the likes of DJ Sagara or Blood Stalk, who manipulates both sides that neither will have an advantage (of course this is decided later if George would groom supervillains too for the Riders to face), and in this case, it's to prolong his own KR story in real life, but with little regard to what suffered as a consequence due to the superpowers.

Well, Vice is at least shown to be a cannibal and constantly makes claims to intend to eat humans. Ikki's flaw of not having faith in others I covered too though in the first paragraph of my summary, but you brought up that in my Vice summary instead.

From what I've talked with certain someone, their explanation is about how the outro of Demons' debut episode has his stamps being added to the end card alongside Revice's, unlike the outro of Evil's debut episode. Though of course it's more of something in the past, and now it's clearly seen.

No offense but I think you're missing some of the nuance of that scene (you talk about Hiromi smiling openly?). Hiromi previously is eager to take down Daiji as per Fenix' orders, and even encourages the hesitating Ikki to do the same (or him giving final blow). That can give an impression that Hiromi may be the pragmatic hero kind and probably can be self-righteous, the "shoot first ask later" type. But the scene of Hiromi smiling due to Daiji coming back to his senses as Live shows that Hiromi still hopes for the best outcome.

Oh, so you're also someone who longs for pure classic heroism too. I thought otherwise regarding how Tendou and Tsukasa are your favorites among the main protagonists (and also appreciating Onodera more than Godai), as pure classic heroism is seen in most of the main Riders? Unless you have your own definition of what it means for pure classic heroism (and if people'd want for characters to become like Tendou and Tsukasa.. or Takumi, it'd just make pure classic heroism even more of a rare sight).

I was talking about Hiromi exclusively to the show he's in. Ikki and Daiji still have some inner darkness within themselves, sometimes quite literally too. Ikki being possibly an unintentional attention-seeker and hides hidden resentment, Daiji literally having Kagerou, there's just Hiromi who is steadfast, pure, and honest (so far) in putting on the belt simply for protecting the peace and lives of the people. He's also pragmatic, something I like.

Edit: I also like to bring up something I just thought during this same scene. When Sakura said "what's the point of protecting others, if you can't protect your family?", just felt like she (during that time) has no ground in that argument since she's the only one in the room not wearing a belt and going out there fighting. It also kind of looked like she said that other peoples' lives pale in comparison to your own family. Yes, loved ones are important but so are the of others. Hope to see if they might bring them up once she gets her own belt.

https://i.imgur.com/4jM5vbn.jpg

Obv a little drifting, and hope you don't mind a note from outside, but as someone who also really appreciates classically heroic characters like Hiromi so far... and guys like Tsukasa, as well, that totally tracks for me? Because as much as a Character as Tsukasa can be throughout Decade, he also shows a lot of appreciation for the more classically heroically motivated AR riders he meets. If I like Tsukasa, why not like what he likes as well? (Think you could probably go down a similar logic line with Takumi too.)

In the end, though, I think it's not that one model of hero is always more fun than the other, but having a variety of models to react to and play off of each other makes things more interesting. Which, bringing it back to Revice, is what Hiromi has the potential to be with how much he contrasts the rest of the riders so far!

Nah I was just referring to Hiromi in general. Between the two ends of the spectrum that is "Hiromi has the potential to go anywhere." and "He hasn't done anything since he was introduced.", I'm merely in the camp of "I hope they don't make his character gimmick something jarringly comedic in an attempt to balance out how serious he generally has been to this point..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3BKlqLnKhA

gonna take a shot in the dark here and give a guess to how sakura's belt works. So far each of the belts has been a kind of prototype on how to use demons to fight. Revice seems to separate power of the demon so the host can fight alongside it. the Twosidriver changes depending on who is in control of the body, and the Demons driver seems to literally be made out of a demon that you wear like power armor, which is metal as hell but probably super difficult and dependent on the demon they use. Revice fights with the demon, Twosi gives all the power to one party, and Demons takes all the power for the human to use. continuing that trend, i'm gonna guess Sakura's belt will externalize her demon entirely and let her puppeteer it, like a stand or a pokemon. it also might be a prototype of the revice driver, which is why it kind of looks like that one. That might also let them cut costs by giving her a deadman instead of a full on suit, though I admittedly don't relish that thought since I like sakura as a rider quite a bit.

I am now here... LIVE!!! (sorry, I had to.)

So overall, I really liked this episode... Of course, once again, Reiwa is still a little on the shaky ground in the early episodes (barring Zero-One, which had a fantastic start).

First off, the Introduce Every Rider In The First Quarter routine, which isn't too big of an issue in a show that's supposed to introduce a bunch of cool looking suits, but then a lot ends up getting sidelined. For instance I love a lot of the Genomes for Revice, but once he gets his first power-up, they're going to become completely irrelevant, granted they will sprinkle them every now and again, but it's mainly the Rider's themselves who get the short stick. Demons has a Death Flag, partly because his belt isn't a standard release, second being his catchphrase as people have pointed out. Evil, we might not see until something really big happens.

Now I actually liked Live's debut, but I have to agree with some of the criticisms about his design, as it does look a little generic. Maybe the visor could have looked more bat-like, or been a different color. Maybe his undersuit should have been a different color, instead of using Evil's because the colors feel a little off (Elemental Dragon comes to mind). But overall, when you consider how crazy some of the other suits in Revice look, he's definitely the weakest.

I actually don't dislike Vice, Interestingly enough. But these abilities he can use are definitely going to be forgotten (remember the Vicecicle?), and he kind of deserves more spotlight than just being the "funny guy." He has some pretty strong scenes when he's alone with Ikki, but when he fights, he's just sort of... there. In short, he needs to take a few steps forward and a step back, which now that I say this, I think the whole season could learn that going forward. I also think that Vice is so peppy and goofy because Ikki is always going out of his way to be so nice, which actually fits how he's an attention hog which spawned Kagerou.

I like Hiromi (yes, I don't mind the crying scene), I like George (who I'm convinced is the mastermind who just wants to live the Kamen Rider experience he's always dreamed of), but this show is falling under the pacing issues of Saber (which I honestly believe Saber did a better job at).

And now Sakura's going to join Deadmans... At least we're getting this out of the way early.

Next Episode: (Vice) "Ikki, think can you hit a woman?"

I honestly think they should drop alt forms in general. the base forms are what they use to sell the show but increasingly little screen time actually goes to those suits. like I'd rather sento just use rabbittank and have to find different ways to use his powers until his upgrade over him juggling ugly forms the whole way. Most of Revice's genomes look cool but don't even have moves, they're just stopgaps to remixes and you could skip them entirely.

Absolutely agree! The alternate forms in Rider are just add-ons to the gimmicks, if they really wanted them they should take a page from Ultraman where each form has it's own style: Speed, Magic, Strength, etc. or go the Sentai route and just use less forms and have one or two extra power-up forms. As much as I love seeing a bunch of forms, they really are just eye-candy and nothing more, with their only purpose in the show being for one or two situations where they're the optimal solution to defeat the Monster-of-The-Week.

There's also Wizard which, while he did have alternate forms; most of his rings instead gave him different attacks. That's kind of the route Zenkaiger's going right now in fact. There's also a few Ultras who get attachments like Victory's armaments.

Lots of interesting ways to do gimmicks! They're just never gone for

rider used to do it like that too. Kuuga had 3 alt forms which were fairly basic, and I think agito had the same deal. they just outright dropped alt forms for a while there until kiva brought them back, but I think Kiva had significantly fewer riders than the other shows. I'd really love to go back to the ryuki method where its just the base form, some weapons, a bunch of riders who get focus and then final forms around the mid point.

I personally liked Fourze's way of having 3 alternate forms with unique abilities, while the excessive toy shilling was focused on the auxiliary weapons/modules instead.

I'm still wondering on how the Demons belt work up to this time, but the very first episode established Hiromi as having an inner demon that he can't control, inadvertently causing chaos in his try to henshin, that kinda gives the implication that time that Hiromi too has inner darkness (at least at that time), where the Demons Driver probably mitigated that where he only fought as himself. I (and some others) guess any humans have demons in this universe. And well, this is kinda rare to be brought upon for females, but Sakura's character overall is that she seems to be an edgelord (to/around her family mainly despite that deep down she cherishes them), reacting negatively to almost anything happened and expressing strong, shocking opinions like that, or also approving of Masao's methods before. She's nicer to non-families like at karate dojo but it seems that the next episode can highlight the difference of what people are expected to act (restrained; Sakura to outside family) or what people want to act (unrestrained; Sakura's edgelord phase, or her with superpowers). The only person who got her full respect so far is Daiji.

Actually, that's what I kinda hope, appreciating both classically heroic characters like Hiromi and also the anti-heroic one like Tsukasa. People come in different kind of morality and fiction should allow any kind of them to be represented equally (with the 'good' or 'bad' is about how they're executed instead of character preference), but double standard can happen where the classically heroic ones can get unfair criticism as being generic, unrealistic, one-dimensional, etc. while the morally grey ones are frequently being praised as distinct and recognizable, neglecting that troubled pasts and questionable morals can repeatedly express themselves in the same ways too. It's unpopular, but I kinda got fed up with "generic" as criticism. And I think it's not about being "classically heroic" (the term sounds to paint moral as old-fashioned..) or such, it's about overall moral; if you are heroic and has little to no negative traits (not ordinary flaws like fear or such though), you're straight hero, if you are heroic but has handful of negative, unheroic traits, you're an anti-hero.

Tsukasa's morality resembles secondary Riders more (though for his case, his secondary Rider Kaitou is even worse than him, while for Kabuto, the secondary Rider is the one being straight hero), and many of them warmed up to the straight-up heroic main Riders commonly (so they gotta have appreciation for those mains' morals).

Oh right, I'm also against giving jarringly comedic traits on a more serious or grounded character; I want people to have better impression on more reserved characters, they quite got a short stick compared to the over the top characters (like one of the most morally upright characters that got universal acclaim is Gentaro), when people are allowed to behave in the way they want and "over the top character being better" is subjective claim, as well as that people misusing "no personality" claims for those more serious characters. But yeah, probably it's jumping to the conclusions too fast to assume that Hiromi has been turned goofy by just smiling earnestly at the end of this episode, to earn the label of goofy one gotta do much more than that. I currently just think that it reaffirms Hiromi's morals here, not someone who's self-righteous and has "shoot first ask later" mentality.

I think the reason why Hiromi fights by himself is because Revice already offed his demon in episode 1?

Yeah, the white and gold clashes with the dark and teal undersuit, but I get what they're going for; dark armor to represent demon and white armor to represent the good human. But I wish the color scheme was more consistent; I would've liked it if they had Live's armor be teal to keep the color scheme consistent.