Congrats. To commemorate your run of Kabuto and to build up hype for your impending ride to Den-O listen to Crazy Train by Ozzy on loop. :lolol

No watch of Kabuto is complete, imo, without fully watching this video. Glad you had an... okay time? "Absolutely loved most of it, really stumbled at the end" was not what I expected from this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB3IUtcceU4

Thanks! And I'm probably just going to listen to The Magnetic Fields' "Born on a Train", which is about the way restlessness can sabotage relationships. Hopefully it's at least a little applicable to Den-O?

[youtube]H95jGsZmzmQ[/youtube]

Those were amazing! Thanks for the heads-up.

This is something I'll dig into more with tomorrow's Series Wrap-Up post, but I found Kabuto to be a show where the characters and performances (especially the performances) rescued a series arc that is maybe my least-favorite one of all time. Just a ton of bad plotting decisions that all came home to roost in a mediocre finale.

Funny, I was thinking about watching Kabuto and Den-o after recently finishing Ryuki, however, I'm afraid I won't have time to join in your little watch-a-long.

These threads don't go anywhere, so feel free to read along with them when you end up watching those shows. No one gets to tell you how to walk your path! That is a thing that'll make more sense after you watch 49 episodes of Kabuto!

I remember thinking the idea that the necklaces turning everyone who wore them into Natives was a very fun Evil Plan, and also the Hoppers' final scene, and then I remembered that the series spent time following up on giving all of the characters a happy ending (except the Hoppers, haha). The happy ending bit is what I think I enjoyed the most about Kabuto. It's nice to see characters that I mostly like get a positive resolution.

The Actual Endgame has occupied no headspace here and still doesn't really. Though I did kind of love Tendo's Very Dramatic entrance to the big fight with his catchphrase over the loudspeakers. The plot and the themes from 47-9 are still a mess but somehow I cared less while Tendo was deciding to be melodrama personified :lol

Yeah, it's... they basically finished the TV series with 44, the themes and character arcs and master plot and all of the Worm stuff that goes with it. Then they did a goofy romance two-parter with Misaki and Tsurugi that ends up not working out because Tsurugi needs to go back to France. Then the final three episodes amount to the TV movie version of the Kabuto story, where it's, like, the Bullet Point version of all of these characters and concepts. Tendou is full of himself. Kagami has Very Big Feelings. Hiyori is a cook. Kageyama is a failure. Yaguruma is psychotic. (I really wish there'd been a part in the One Year Later credits where we cut to the docks, and Yaguruma is sitting next to Kageyama's decaying corpse, trying to feed it shitty ramen and talking about the light that exists for them.) In the absence of expanding or deepening our understanding of the characters, because their stories already concluded, we get 47-49 acting like series recap. Fun for being able to remember what you liked about the show, terrible at justifying its existence.

https://i.imgur.com/ny9YoQC.png

This has gotta be the most Showa finale Heisei Rider ever had. Just breathe this all in for a second. We've got some villanious mad science scheme taking place in a cheap looking dark room, complete with an uwilling test subject lying unconscious on a table; we've got Negishi dropping his previous casual speech shtick for a stereotypical 70's dictator vibe; we've got two Riders teaming up to fight a big monster guy who has basically no character beyond "is not nice"; and then it all ends with a Double Rider Kick and the evil secret lair being exploded. It's absolutely textbook. Plus, all the things exploding meant Ishida got to light that many more fires before the show ended! There's basically no way I could hate this episode.

It's real thin on plot, but as heavy as can be on the style. Ishida makes that cheap broadcast station room work. Honestly, he does! The final showdown is against a monster so uninteresting that, you guessed it, I never even remembered Mishima was literally the show's last boss. It's got issues narratively, but the cool blue palette contrasted against occasional spots of bright lighting, that's an image that kinda sticks with me a little more. Fitting the big theatrical flavor of an episode where Tendou makes his entrance jumping off a radio tower, there's a lot of God Speed Love in this one's style. Not surprising from the same director, but, heck, Yamato and Oda even make cameos as two civilians being affected by the Natives' plan going into action. It's like a party everybody but Sasword and the Hoppers were invited to!

I really do like it. Not a ton, and I was probably totally disengaged by this point in my first run through of the show, but still – there's a lot to enjoy here. It's a finale that starts with Kagami heroically riding off on his bike to save the day, and ends with the cast chilling out and soaking in a well-earned peace. Again, textbook. While it struggles with the same deeply rooted problems with this arc Die and I have mentioned more than enough by this point, it really is trying a lot harder to make those questionable decisions come together. The end result is serviceable at worst, and quite enjoyable at its best.

Tendou has always had a way with words, and his speechifying here is the big highlight for me as well. I loved his verbal dismantling of the Natives' goals. It gets to the core of why I legitimately think Tendou is an admirable hero. One of the big assertions he makes to Negishi is that humans are able to change themselves for the sake of others, and not only is that the start to just a nice, broadly positive message, it's also Tendou's very own life story.

I didn't mention it last time, but the cliffhanger at 48 draws a parallel between him being trapped under some rubble after being defeated by Gatack, and him reaching out to Hiyori all those years ago. It's rather on the nose, with him telling the viewer via internal monologue that really, Hiyori was the one who gave him the courage to keep living that fateful day, but I honestly thought it was a great moment, and it feels particularly relevant to Tendou's final speech here.

It's easy to forget, but Tendou trained himself to become the guy we met in the premiere. That connection Tendou made with Hiyori, it's everything to this series. We've been shown them grabbing hands 48 times just thanks to the opening alone. It's what I said about 44, too, about how personal and humble it all is. Tendou didn't become the strongest for his own ego, despite what it looks like, nor did he do it out of some vague, arrogant notion of saving the world. He did it because he wanted to be by the side of a single girl who needed help. Kamen Rider Kabuto only exists because of one small act of selflessness that lead to something far greater. Tendou isn't just making up something schmaltzy out of nowhere, everything about the narrative of the series supports what he's talking about – Tendou is his own proof that he's right. Maybe he really was justice, after all, huh?

So yeah, everything about that speech worked great for me. Die tackled why it's good from a completely different angle, too, and that's all the more reason I loved it. You can look at it from so many different directions and they all tie together and make sense to Kabuto as a whole. It's the kind of thematic weight and relevance this final arc could've used more of, but I'm glad they got it in where it counted the most.

It leaves you with a good feeling, at the end of the day. I don't know where Die's opinion will settle, but, personally, I don't get done watching this one and bemoan what could've been. It's not Kabuto's finest hour, sure, but when the finale ends with Tendou going to France to grab some tofu, I mean... like, are you not going to smile at least a little? This final trilogy suffered from an inability to find exciting new directions to go in, but on the flipside, it benefits from not doing anything crazy enough to risk sabotaging what came before. It's a final episode when Tendou and Kagami beat up a monster to save people. It's Kamen Rider, and it's hard to go wrong with that.

Now that you mention it, it kinda was a befitting way to end the show being an anniversary/milestone show and all just going by this statement alone.

One detail in the final fight I lkke is that when the Perfect Zecter fails and is destroyed you can see the broken parts of the TheBee Drake and Sesword Zecters in the wreckage, and it allows Gattack to live up to his hype of being the strongest rider.

That Tendou speech is easily the high point of the first two-thirds of this episode. (The high point of the entire episode is what's going to be the first screencap of tomorrow's Series Wrap-Up post.) I'll always prefer the vulnerability of his speech in 44, but I still love everything about this one. Him starting his Grandmother line and Negishi's face just dropping, knowing that his plan's about to terminally unravel; diving off of a broadcast tower; foiling the villain's scheme with Hiyori's goddamn flower; giving the most full-throated speech imaginable in support of humanity's capacity for growth... it's a really great speech, befitting the last one Tendou'll ever get to give. Of all the ways this final story let me down, they nailed that last big Tendou Talk.

The God of Battle ekes out a last-minute win!

I honestly think it was likely intentional to some extent. Like, Negishi's change in personality especially feels like *such* a conscious throwback I'd be amazed if they were doing this on accident. "Let's make the final battle feel all old-school 'cause it's the anniversary" seems like the sort of thought that would be kicking around in the back of the staff's heads for a while as a goofy, half-serious suggestion, before they got attached and decided "you know what? Yeah, let's actually do this!"

That about sums it up.

I will say though, even though Tendou is such a great speaker, his metaphors are getting pretty tangled at this point. Like, how can one man be the sun, the world, justice itself, and probably several other things he's said that I'm forgetting? I know Tendou is good (the best ever, if you ask him), but man, that is one heck of a resume. :lol

There is very little of this finale that stuck with me in the long term - which was kind of the whole Kabuto story, as I've mentioned before. I remembered Tendou destroying a meteor with a flower. I remembered Tendou in green screen Paris. I remembered Hiyori being heavily isolated from the actual plot and other characters. What I remembered most, though, was Kagami and Tendou. Not a specific moment with them, but I remembered this being an episode that really centered on their friendship. I still get that from the rewatch; I really love the scene after the fight where they're just hanging out on the rooftop.

I'm probably going to forget a lot of this again. The fight with Mishima is already fading, and I'm literally writing this immediately after I finished the episode. It's not an especially grand finale - Tendou's speech is great, but the villain is highly forgettable, the fight is really brief, and it all ends with an unnecessary self-sacrifice from Dark Kabuto to take out a Native mook. There are some good emotional beats, but they aren't even series high points. There's really not a lot here to hang onto walking away from the series. I'll definitely remember the show's real shining moments better now, but this isn't going to be one of them.

what if this whole series was also written by tendou, build-style

I think some of the reason the One Year Later epilogue hit me so hard was, like, this is what I want to remember from Kabuto. After 50-odd minutes of dumb plotting and confusing story decisions, there's this incredibly sweet epilogue that reminds me of why I enjoyed this show in spite of a weirdly high amount of forgettable storytelling. Not to be a broken record, but it's a lot of what the Series Wrap-Up post is going to focus on. Great characters in a not-great story.

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - SERIES WRAP-UP

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utoseriesa.png

That picture, man. That's the entire series of Kabuto for me, for better or worse. Two people I really care about, basking in a victory that's worth so much less than the celebration. That big smile on Kagami's face, his happiness overshadowing a lackluster superhero plot. And that's the show, really. Some excellent character development, some incredible performances, and a series plot that nearly always found a way to rob them of their hard work.

I mean, I crab about how forgettable/poorly-sketched the villains can be in the Phase 1 shows, but this has got to be a new low. The Worms are introduced as mysterious invaders, and basically just stay that way for the rest of the show? There's never any sense of an overall goal, or a grand design. We'll meet a random monster, they'll do some random murders (or have a random target), and then they get detonated. When we finally get a recurring villain in Worm Widow and Worm Widower, they aren't really an escalation of the plot or arc or anything. They're just, like, recurring. They take a few more episodes to get detonated than the average Worm, but they don't mean more to the plot. They're just there a bit more. The Worms are a constant presence, a consistent threat... but they're also background noise, well-designed wallpaper. They aren't really a story?

And the main villain, the real threat... I mean, Negishi doesn't even get introduced until episode 45 of a 49-episode series. That is over ninety percent of the show before he shows up, and we don't even find out he's a villain until episode 47. His plot isn't even explained until the penultimate episode! That leaves this series stringing together the occasional clever plot with a raft of forgettable one-offs, with no real story progression to speak of. It's just a rotating cast of antagonists and adversaries without anything feeling like we're going anywhere. ZECT is a threat, until they're a joke, until they're nothing, until they're a threat. Goro is a second-in-command until he's randomly the final monster. Dark Kabuto is in, like, two stories. The Natives aren't in opposition to Kabuto until the last half-hour. Worm Widow and Worm Widower have a deeper crew of monsters, but their activities are just them being more or less public as the plot demands.

It's a show that is massively confused about what the villains are up to, and any attempt to encapsulate the threats the heroes face would sound like you hated the show. (See above!) Nearly any part of the series that tried to foreground the series arc was boring at best, actively confusing at worst. If my mind ever strays to the plotting of the season, I just get angry about it.

But, man, the characters in those plots are so goddamn good.

Tendou is a character that, on paper, 100% should not work. He starts the show as an arrogant know-it-all, and ends the series as a slightly less arrogant know-it-all that you love regardless. His arc is one of the saving graces of the show, as he never really smooths out his rough edges, while still making you feel like he's worth caring for. Tendou's all about one of the main themes of the show, that individual success is a societal good. He's a hero who is more interested in protecting people's potential than in protecting people; encouraging them to become their own heroes, asking them to succeed so the whole world could be that much better. He's like the sun, shining down on the world. The sun isn't creating millions of individual beams of light, personal and unique. It's bathing the world in light, and trusting you to go bask in it or not.

Kagami was the opposite, able to see the worth in everyone. He'd risk it all for a single person, anyone. While Tendou hid his heart behind a god-level view of the world, Kagami and his Very Big Feelings were us, were the people who could never be Tendou. Kagami was achievable, recognizable. Kagami embraced the world, and tried to make sure everyone in it was happy. Tendou was someone who wanted to let people achieve; Kagami was someone who understood what it felt like to not achieve. Kagami was the other main theme of the series, that humility is the key to pursuing success. We got to see Kagami struggle to live up to the success of others. We got to see him feel like he'd never make anyone proud. But then we got to see him succeed on his own terms, by not trying to be Tendou or Yaguruma or his dad or anyone else. Once he owned his limitations, stop judging himself for his shortcomings, stopped measuring himself against others, he could finally succeed. He's the beating heart of this show.

Or, y'know, maybe Hiyori is? The most relatable character of the show (YMMV), Hiyori was the most fascinating character to follow in the early going. Someone who was like a raw nerve, exposed to the world, expecting everyone in her life to let her down. She was rude, closed-off, and endlessly watchable. Getting to see her grow into a friendship with Tendou, to see her faith restored by Kagami, those were some series highlights. It's unfortunate that we never really got to see what the show would've done with her. I honestly never liked the reveal that she was Tendou's sister, but maybe that plot would've won me over in time. (It was super easy to forget about in later episodes, which I really appreciated.) As it is, her absence from the show leaves her diminished in my memory, all of those beautifully acted scenes as present in my mind as episodes of Hibiki, or Blade. Her return to the series is like an afterthought, a story that becomes more about Tendou than her. Her journey feels like it stopped at the midway point, and that's a real shame.

The rest of the cast was fantastic, up and down the credits. Tsurugi, the adorable comedy relief who got the loveliest send-off, living happily in France. Yaguruma, always keeping the core of his identity, no matter the shell he was in. Kageyama, a ridiculous man who died a ridiculous death. Misaki, the only one at times who seemed like they were saying things I believed in. Tadokoro, stuck between a shadow war with monstrous invaders on one side, and two insubordinate underlings who needed to tell him everything ZECT is doing wrong on the other side. Juka, who is incredibly well-fed. And Daisuke and Gon, who were on this show just often enough to remind me that they're great, while always feeling like the show had to stop to accommodate them. (Worth it!)

I love these people. I loved getting to spend a couple months with them. I cried actual tears when I realized that my time with them was coming to an end. I loved their arcs, the themes of achievement and humility that they embodied.

I disliked the world they were in. Rarely did any of plots live up to the characters' or actors' potential. (The Inoue stories did, mostly. The Dark Chef one was maybe the best two-parter this show ever had.) The plots were occasionally fun, but never really added up to much. The series arc was a huge drag, actively working against what this series had going for it.

But, again, look at that picture up there of Kagami, beaten but joyous. It doesn't matter what stupid story he just had to go through, or the flimsy motivation of the monster he just had to defeat. He won, him and Tendou both. They did it.

I can't be too mad at a series that can make me this happy.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utoseriesb.png

It's really funny to me that Tsurugi gets to 'go to France' but when Kageyama met basically the same (albeit ludicrously quick in comparison) fate, you're just like 'welp, hes gone I guess'. I totally relate though.

It was really fun reading you navigate through this show's high-speed highs and also the various bizarre lows. I'm pretty sure the main duo of the show are all I'm gonna truly keep close in my mind even now when I think back to it, but it sounds like just about everyone in the cast has wormed their way into your heart in one way or another.

Kageyama died like he lived: ridiculously.

Thanks! It was very fun to watch this show, regardless of any negativity I just posted. Save for a few absolutely dire installments, Kabuto was a real good time. And, yeah, I dig this cast. They're almost all exceptionally weird, and could handle serious drama as well as they could slapstick humor. I'm a sucker for the ladies of Kamen Rider, since they're usually so maligned/ignored/underserved, so I'm super happy that one of the final images of the show is of Juka, Hiyori, and a weirdly resurgent Sally, all supporting each other. Little shit like that, you know? Fun cast to think about.

I feel that this is the last show that really has that J-Drama feel. Shows after it feel as though they remembered "Oh crap we're supposed to be appealing to kids not just their moms and/or dads" not that there's anything wrong with that in fact I generally prefer Rider shows post Kabuto. Den-O through Decade is basically like a transitional period between Heisei Phase 1 to Phase 2.

Dude.. I already talked about Tendou becoming more open to Kagami, several times. And I also included that here that "I probably find it uncharacteristic for him to act this way to Kagami, Tendou seems to value him more openly previously against Cassis Worm!"

I mean, it's about what the real villains of the series doing, so they're supposed and intended to do bad stuff? xenophobia is only a baddie thing here, and it's only restricted to their plan. Though yeah, other species villains commonly has xenophope thing going on, with them feeling that their race are the most superior and seek to replace the inferior one with theirs. Series like Faiz also had this going with Smart Brain and Lucky Clovers to replace the humans with Orphnochs, but that has the humans being killed instead of being overwritten. But I do think that this episode, quality aside, has a theme that is brought out in Kabuto previously though. The villain here Negishi (Mishima is just pure evil) thinks that the solution of creating world peace is turning everyone into Natives, the same species as him, because he thinks peace between humans and Natives can't coexist, the villains don't understand about the theme that Inoue brought up about self-acceptance and stop judging yourself, which means about that your species don't matter, your self does ("X is X"), Negishi thinks that peace is determined by what species your are, and thinks that human won't create conflict with Natives if they turned into that too, lacking the understanding that it's your personality that decides how they act, not their species; even humans can kill other humans for their criminal needs!

Probably your (and likely mine too) bummer here is caused by the fact that, Kagami doesn't try to help people in larger way here? He now just chooses ZECT's side and declare Kabuto as enemy. Kagami is supposed to be someone who takes any sides and help them right? (him leaving Shadow for Tendou is wrong, him killing Tendou for ZECT is also wrong) But well, something about Kagami feeling that Worms should be allowed to live, aren't that something you already discussed before about Ryou and Makoto? Well, the one thing that I questioned is about Kagami suddenly being completely vengeful again (including to Tadokoro and Tsurugi, the latter he tried to help before) about the Worms on ep. 41, and him suddenly tolerating Worm again on ep. 46. But well, I never believed that Tendou is down or letting himself to be down, unless it's stuff that involves his family like Hiyori (to Dark Kabuto), probably Tendou has his other hidden plan, Tendou won't die or beaten by Kagami that easily. Like the time where he faked defeat from Yaguruma. Tendou is the one who knows that the true purpose of the necklace is turning everyone into Natives, that he works to destroy them previously.

Well yeah, the setup is that, the real main antagonist of the series (the equivalent of Banno in Drive, Masamune in Ex-Aid, Evolt in Build) is Mishima, the plot twist kind villain, and I thought you got the clue already on Hyper Kabuto's debut? And that him being dismissive to everyone isn't enough of the indicator already? (many plot twist villains don't even show their villainous personality before the story reveals that they're the real villains!) It means that he has no empathy to others and expresses shallow emotions, some of sociopath hallmarks! For this time Riku is the leader of ZECT, while Mishima serves under him and can only persuade to disregard human lives, but the berserk system plays a part that, Mishima is a Starscream-type, he and Negishi starts overthrowing Riku Kagami as leader of ZECT after Negishi found out about them. This shows that Riku is actually a good guy, despite his sinister-like portrayal before, while Mishima is actual bad guy. The movie had Riku being the bad guy together with Mishima though...

I find something appealing about Negishi that, at first glance, he looks so casual and nobody, and had unprofessional behavior too with him acting fun-loving, foolish, and innocent, his Native form is even the fodder Worms that recently just got killed easily by the ZECTroopers' guns! Unlike Mishima's who is Gryllus Worm, the strongest Native. But the truth is that he's masterminding his visionary plan and is in charge within it. Crouching moron hidden nightmare, it's like characters such as Shunpei or Onari, but is given total "more than meets the eye" status, albeit in evil way. Negishi is the type of doing bad things for good reasons, the end justifies the means type mindset, which means him being extremist anti-villain, in contrast to Mishima who..

Mishima is also one of the most irredeemable villains on the whole franchise as well (like those 3 I mentioned). Dark Kabuto is crucial in the story for Mishima's motivations. In the past, Mishima captured the young boy that would become Dark Kabuto and performed horrendous experiments on him to unlock the power of the Hyper Zecter, keeping him as a prisoner for years inside a ZECT facility in Area X. Assigned to oversee the development of the Gatack Zecter, Mishima wastes no time in sacrificing the lives of his own soldiers to see who is worthy of its power. Mishima allies himself with the Worms to stop the independent non-ZECT Riders, framing Daisuke for the murder of a rival makeup artist and later sending an agent whom he forced to eat nothing but dry boiled rice for the last seven years of her life to assassinate Tendou. In AM Bomb operation, Mishima is disappointed in his superior for attempting to save the hostages, telling Kagami that if he fails the negotiation, he'll just nuke the entire district. After the existence of Worms is announced to the world, Mishima turns himself into Gryllus Worm and conspires to do the same with the rest of the world by usurping the position of general and, just so he doesn't get to lose his status after all the Worms have been exterminated, manipulating the population into wearing a pendant that detects Worms, but actually converts those wearing it into Natives.

And you don't seem to appreciate KickHopper murdering PunchHopper here? From what I read, people can find Hell Bros' personality annoying, but they got a heartbreaking ending enough to make them sob. Kageyama is a victim of Mishima's grand plan where he got turned into Native, and Yaguruma is forced to kill him. Kageyama wants to die as himself, a human, not as a Native. Oh right, probably this resembles something in.... ep. 46 so yeah...

Probably b, and that Souji Kusakabe suffers a lot, where he's tortured by Mishima for his grand plan which likely means he found the reason of Dark Kabuto's villainy, and tries to instill Hiyori's behavior and situation to him as she also suffers but lives normally, and saving him means partially foiling Mishima and Negishi's plans.

I think I'm okay with that? There's an energy to the Phase 2 stuff that... I don't want to say I miss it, that would make it sound like I don't appreciate what the Phase 1 stuff is trying to do. But I definitely respond better to that tone than I do some of what Phase 1 is trying for.

Or, man, maybe I don't? I keep thinking I want the sugar-rush storytelling of Phase 2, but the more emotional, slowed-down and spaced-out stories are the ones I can't stop thinking about. Hmm.

Either way, I'm excited to see how the next three shows manage that transition!

Sure, but I think of that all as more of an Inoue theme than a Kabuto theme. A lot of what's happening at the end of Kabuto feels like it'd've been a better fit for the end of Faiz, and that's not an indicator of great writing?

https://i.imgur.com/6CBTVtt.png

I already figured out the mystery of why Kabuto didn't stick with me a while back.

It was pretty obvious in retrospect, even. As I subtly foreshadowed with my screencap for episode 45, nearly everything I like and dislike about this show ultimately comes back to Hiyori. I've made it into something of a bit, and I'm sure Die is grinning at the predictability of her being the thing I'm immediately talking about, but having watched the show again, it's so clear to me now how critical her character was to it. She speaks the very first lines of the very first episode. The initial sequence of shots in that gorgeous opening I could talk about all day, it's her drawings draped over Kamen Rider Kabuto – her hanging over the entire series.

Not only was this a character who I deeply empathized with, and loved to watch, but from the outset, it was as much her story as it was Tendou's or Kagami's. I praised that over and over again. The writing gives her feelings and her wants and her needs and everything else as much weight and depth as anyone else. Going back to the opening one more time, the three of them make their entrance as a trio given equal amounts of focus, because that's exactly what they were. There was so much genuinely smart stuff the show was doing with these three, and it was wrapping it all up in utterly glorious action sequences featuring some of the coolest designs in Rider history.

Then Hiyori has to leave for reasons beyond the writers' control, and to be blunt, I think Kabuto loses a ton of footing it never quite gets back.

Honestly, in its own way, I might seriously argue that it's as devastating a blow to the story as Hibiki's infamous production shakeup was, despite never getting the same level of attention from fans, as far as I've seen. Heck, I'm part of the problem, there. This will seem crazy after these past two months of posts, but in all these years on this forum talking about Kamen Rider, I'm not sure I've ever once so much as mentioned Hiyori before this thread. I never stopped liking her; she was always in the back of my mind as one of my favorite things about Kabuto. It's just that, as the memories got more and more distant, I stopped being able to think of why.

One thing I've definitely mentioned on multiple occasions is how important finales are to locking in my long-term feelings on a series. Because it's the last thing you see, and thus the thing that's most fresh in your recollection. Hiyori was never a part of that recollection, because even when she comes back, she's never truly a part of the show again, at least not in the same way.

As soon as she leaves in episode 32, Kabuto tries its best to make her presence felt as part of the plot, to varying degrees of success. Many of the show's best episodes come from this Hiyori-less era, to be sure, but on the whole, the writing becomes noticeably more uneven, clearly racing to adjust to changes it hadn't intended to deal with. The plots lose a lot of the connective tissue they previously had with Hiyori, and combined with what I assume were budget issues meaning the show loses most of what made its action distinctive on top of this, the impact the early show had on me ended up dulled. Instead of all those wonderful, character focused plots, some of my most prominent memories of Kabuto ended up being bored at a fence, and angry at some necklaces. My brain decided to pick out some of the lowest points of the series for preservation, and frankly, that is a shame. Something I'm thrilled I was able to correct thanks to this thread.

Kabuto is a good show. Sometimes it's even a great one, and when it is, it's on fire, something I hopefully conveyed well, and that Die definitely did if I didn't. I've gained an enormous amount of respect for Shouji Yonemura as a writer after this rewatch. I had gotten it into my head this show was nothing but easily agitated weird people fighting over melodramatic grudges and dumb sci-fi plot devices, and while there's certainly a fair bit of that throughout, there's far more genuine heart and thematic purpose to the scripts than I was giving them credit for. My assumption going in was that Kabuto left me cold because it was simply a cold show, give or take an episode about Tsurugi leaving for France I recalled as being rather emotional, but, man, that was so far from the truth. Some of the stories this show tells are as poignant and/or touching as any other Rider show.

This rewatch was worth doing for the (four part, eight episode) Drake Trilogy alone, which comes highly recommended to anyone who wants a nice, relatively manageable chunk of the series to bring back those memories of it firing on all cylinders. It's no surprise Daisuke and Gon also stuck in my head as characters I vaguely remembered loving, when their appearances tend to bring along such enjoyable storytelling with them.

There's a lot to love about Kabuto, despite its many missteps, especially later on. At the very start of the thread, before I even committed to going all out the way I have, I called it my Least Favorite Heisei Rider Show By Default, and here at the end, I have to say I'm considering revising that statement. I certainly have a much greater respect for Hibiki, which even now gives it a bit of an edge, but I rewatched most/all of that show (depending on who you ask) with Die as well, and I don't think I had as much fun with it as I did with Kabuto. Maybe part of that is just how much more surprise and rediscovery was involved here, versus a show like Hibiki that was pretty much exactly how I remembered it, but this really was a good time, even when I hit an episode I wasn't all that fond of.

Die, as always, has summed it up at least as well as I could. It's a lot of strange plotting decisions that end up overshadowed by the much stronger work the show is doing elsewhere. I'd be lying if I said the question of what the Worms even want never popped into my head, but I'd also be lying if I said I cared that much about getting an answer. It was a delight to spend time with all these crazy people once more. I may not have magically turned my opinion around on every aspect of the show I recall disliking, but even though I think that, for example, the Hoppers are still pretty lame, it was nice to see them. To try and appreciate them more all these years later, watching the series with much less apathy and with a greater ability to pick through translation errors where needed.

That's the whole story here, really. I came back to Kabuto hoping I could see it with fresh eyes, and that's exactly what happened. It's not leaping up the ladder of my favorite Rider shows, especially when that list barely exists (it's like Ghost and Wizard followed by a nebulous cloud of deep affection surrounding the franchise), but I've found an appreciation for it that I didn't have before. If you go back through my posts here, you can probably even see how much more enthusiastic I became with each passing episode.

So yeah, in the end, Kagami is happy, Die is happy, and I'm happy too.

I said I’d be gone until the next thread, but I realised that this is the first time since the Ryuki thread we haven’t mentioned the novel for the series. And that’s not on.

Basically, my knowledge of the novel comes down to three things:
Tendou is established to be in Paris to destroy the last of the Worms on Earth

Kagami tries to get into Hiyori’s pants.

It was the first Rider series to get a novel (it would’ve been W, but there were delays with that one)

As someone has mentioned a few times (and I'll paraphrase here): Just because something's predictable, doesn't mean you can't enjoy its execution.

Yeah, Hiyori. There's this brief window, after she disappears, where the character still feels as vital as ever, as present as ever. But the longer she's gone, and the more the show starts telling other stories... it's like she becomes a lost cause, like the show is fighting to recapture something that's already gone. And if that was how it felt for me, a viewer who only had to deal with her absence for a couple weeks, I can only imagine how much the weekly viewers in 2006 had moved on.

There are times when I wonder what the show could've done differently. I don't really bring them up here, because I think How I Would Change Things misses the point of art. It's not about how I'd've told a story, it's about how the story was told. I can like or dislike things, but I don't want to spend a ton of time trying to fix something that ended over a decade ago. But with this, I wonder if the show would've been better recasting (tough, but possible) or just eliminating Hiyori entirely. I imagine both of those choices would've been distracting for fans (and potentially incredibly divisive), but it would've kept the show from feeling tethered to a plot it couldn't really progress.

Regardless, I'm glad you were able to find more in this show than last time. It's not my favorite, for sure, but I found it to be a real enjoyable watch. There're shows I've done threads on here where, at times, it can feel arduous to draw out something interesting, or frustrating to figure out what the show's trying to say. With Kabuto, I found the overall experience to be really pleasant. A fun show to watch and talk about, even if it's not one I'd feel the need to gush about in the future.

Glad to hear the novel resurrected one of my least-favorite things from God Speed Love! Ugh.

Thanks for the info, as always!

My most memorable part of the finale is Dark Kabuto's heroic sacrifice as he pulls Negishi in to the explosion, finally getting his revenge on the Natives for ruining his life!

Now he just needs to get revenge on Kagami for leaving him behind in that flaming studio!

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - THREAD WRAP-UP

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utothreada.png

And that's it for "Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Kabuto”!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to share your thoughts on Kabuto, or even just your thoughts on my thoughts on Kabuto. This was a really enjoyable thread. Pretty smooth sailing, with only a couple patches of choppy water, and a nice way to kick off a new year. Y'all are consistently the best, and I'll never get tired of telling you that. You are the Tendou to my Kagami, providing an ideal to live up to and an excellence to strive for.

A few bits of business before the Captain goes on vacation again for a few weeks:

-I still don't have a SHF Kabuto (prioritized Seihou Hibiki, do not regret it), so please enjoy this photo of my Figure-Rise Kabuto kicking a newly-opened SHODO Dark Kabuto entirely in the junk as a way of commemorating another series completion.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../kabutofig.JPG

-Here's the Word Art for my episode posts on Kabuto. (As always, this doesn't include my responses or your responses. This is generated off of my Google Doc for the series.) Tendou being dead-center seems unbelievably appropriate, but what jumps out to you?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utowordart.png

-This thread will obviously stay open for everyone's further thoughts on Kabuto, and I'll try and respond as best I can, but I'm happy to just sit back and let folks get their final words in on Kabuto. My work is mostly done on this thread, and I'm going to be taking a slight break for a few weeks. Definitely a few life things I've let slide that I need to address. Let's just say that A Deep Apartment Cleaning is another end-of-thread tradition...

-Otherwise, I'll be back with "Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Den-O” on February 18th. Very excited to finally get to this series, and very very excited to share the experience with all of you. Until then, keep walking your path to heaven, don't be afraid to feel your Very Big Feelings, remember to act with noblesse oblige, and never forget that you're... you're, uh... (beautiful?) Yes, yes! That, that!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utothreadb.png

So, Kabuto.

Going into this - as I may have mentioned once or twice - Kabuto was a show that refused to commit itself to my longterm memory. I knew I had watched it and I knew that I had generally liked it, but it really didn't have much that stood out. Coming out of the rewatch? It's fine. It's a perfectly fine show. Not great. Not awful. It's fine.

The show's main strength is its characters. Tendou works off of the strength of his actor's charisma helping to pull off what could otherwise be a really insufferable lead. Kagami and pre-departure Hiyori are both great. Tsurugi is possibly the best comic relief character in Kamen Rider history and I love how enthusiastically unnecessary Juka is. Really, everyone who isn't Kageyama is pretty great.

There are some truly excellent two-parters, but the overall plot never really gels. Part of that is having to deal with Yui Satonaka leaving for most of the last twenty episodes. But honestly, it really feels like neither the Worms nor the Natives have much character or present much of a coherent threat. Even ZECT, which is presented as a nebulously shady threat for much of the series, doesn't really have much of an agenda. It leaves the whole show feeling a bit aimless in the end.

Anyway, it's been fun and hopefully more of it will stick in my memory this time.

Definitely looking forward to slipping on my banana new shoes and ore sanjou by bike-ing into the Den-O thread in a couple weeks!

I mean, yeah, this is pretty much the show's Con column in one paragraph. There are a ton of ways the show could've created a sense of escalating menace. They don't hurt for antagonists: ZECT, Worms, Dark Kabuto, Natives... and yet, no one really steps up? Every villain is content to be a brief threat, like they're too scared to really face off against the heroes. That leaves Goro, the most amoral dude on the show, to finally get sick enough of everyone's hesitancy to just be the final villain himself.

It's funny, remembering how much potential I thought the Worms had the beginning. And then, 40-odd episodes later, it's just, like, what were they even for?

I was planning to use this exact line for a screencap, but from a frame with Hiyori's face in it. Really sums up the difference between our approaches to Kabuto, huh?

Anyway, Tendou once said "Those who travel the same path are no more than mere allies. Those who are able to travel together on separate paths are..." Well, they're something. Maybe ask Kagami how the rest of that quote goes.

I did really love that line though. It was such a perfect thing for the finale to have Tendou write his own wise saying for the first time, and the sentiment itself is genuinely quite beautiful.

That very first post I made in this thread wasn't me being coy or anything, for the record. I honestly had no intent to rewatch the entirety of Kabuto alongside Die up until after I finished the first episode and realized I might have some things to say. I don't know how many of those things ended up being of interest to anyone, but I'm glad I took the time out to do this.

I already mentioned how much of a newfound appreciation I gained for Kabuto, but, even beyond that, I've become yet more impressed by Die's ability to do all *this* on such a regular basis. Episode after episode. Paragraph after paragraph. I think I always say something like this at the end of these threads, but after making like a Worm and copying his entire shtick for two months, I'm also feeling it this time. I can't imagine only needing a couple weeks to recharge for another one of these.

So thank you, Die, for your inexhaustible passion, and thanks for going along with my sudden decision to arrogantly appoint myself co-writer for one of these things. Rewatching this show wouldn't have been half as fun if I wasn't doing it with you.

As always, I'm eagerly anticipating the next one. Maybe more than usual this time, even, for reasons anyone who knows my taste in toku writers can guess.

Inoue Kill also fairly leaps out.

I had another post I made as a response, but apparently it was so glowing and emotional that it broke TokuNation. That sucks! I love TokuNation!

In the hopes of sparing my fellow fans any further service interruptions, let me go a slightly different way from the earlier post (of which I remember only a few key phrases: "passionate intelligence", "hyper-competence and success", and "friend") and mention how bizarre it is to see you praising my work.

For someone whose work is always so readable, so clever, so emotionally honest... whenever you say nice things about my work, it's like I'm trying to decode some foreign language. The words are ones I recognize (the roots of them, anyway) but the way they're all configured is impenetrable to me. I can't understand how or why you're saying these things in conjunction with what I'm doing here. So much of what I do on these on boards is stuff I feel like I should apologize for. Having smarter fans than me find value in what I do is confusing, deeply.

But if you say there's value there, I'll believe you. That's just how convincing of a writer you are! I can't risk being as effusive as I was before, so as to keep these boards functional, so trust me when I say that your contributions to this thread are thanks enough, and anything beyond that feels unnecessary.

Funnily enough, that exact bit Kurona singled out was the singular goofy phrase my eyes were drawn to at all this time. I guess that's just our bond as disgruntled early Yaguruma fans or something.

It's okay! The gist of it is still coming across fine . Namely that you did in fact ask Kagami, and that for as much as we disagree, we will apparently always find common ground on one thing above all others – imposter syndrome. :p

Oh, and speaking of disagreements:

I don't believe we ever circled back to this? Feel free to tell us if your stance on giant beetle crests has softened after however many episodes of seeing Hyper Form in action. Or don't, and just kick back and enjoy this video of Hiro Mizushima playing with puppies instead! You know, whichever! It's your thread, at the end of the day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCiwhiR9YWU

Ha ha, whoops! As I always try to put in the introductory disclaimers, I will frequently forget to talk about the suits! You know, nearly the entire reason these shows are created?

I honestly don't like Hyper Form. The beetle crest, iconic though it may be, is my least-favorite part of Kabuto's design (most favorite: glossy red chest plate), so Hyper Form's whole Crestacular design ethos... not my thing! It will always look dopey to me in a way that's difficult to articulate.

It's... I think it's a thing I dislike in a general design sense, that way a Kamen Rider headpiece can get so massive that it pulls me out of the drama. Saber's whole thing, the giant sword sticking out of his head, same problems for me. Blade, Kenzaki, same deal. (Not as pronounced, and it does look better in profile, but never going to be a fave suit.) My favorite suits are the ones that are more head-shaped, but with some small decorations: Double, Build, Ex-Aid, OOO, Faiz. The ones where the crests or antennas or whatever are too much of the focal point in the design, I check out. They just look less heroic to me, I guess, and more like the monster designs in a show.

So, yeah, not a fan of Hyper Kabuto... and not that big of a fan of regular Kabuto, even now. (It's the main reason I snagged that Seihou Hibiki first!)

Oh, and thanks for the video! I'm actually on a weird Gaim kick right now (stickering up SO-DOs finally), and I've been watching the CSM Sengoku Driver videos the cast did. Super funny stuff, especially the Mitchi/Takatora one. I'm ready to relax with Kamen Riders!

See, that's so crazy to me as someone deeply into both toku heroes and super robots. Big beetle horns = heroic is such a part of the "language" of those kinds of designs that I'm entirely conditioned to see it that way. It's like slapping a lion mane or a pair of wings on a dude; I see it and I instantly understand they're meant to be cool and important. It just reads as larger than life to me. I'm tempted to use the word "divine", even, but that's not quite right. It's just like, what I've been taught, you know? It's genuinely fascinating simply hearing you say "nah, not really my style", because that is an unthinkable thought to me.

Honestly, the big horn and the wings are the only things I'm particularly fond of when it comes to Hyper Kabuto? I appreciate how straightforward it is as an upgrade, but when it's not all opened up, the horn is the only part that leaves any real impression on me. It's kind of in this weird zone where I think it fits the series perfectly and wouldn't want it any other way, and yet I've never really fallen in love with it.

Personally, I've seen Stronger, so even Hyper Kabuto's horn doesn't seem that ostentatious to me.

The best thing to ever happen from this show for me at the time and still to this day are the Hell Brothers. Wannabe-edge lord-posers FTW. :rock:

I think a lot of it comes from how much my brain is wired for American Superheroes, and all of that visual language. As much as I love Kamen Rider for the ways it comes at superhero stories from a completely different cultural place, and its trying to speak to a completely different audience... visually, I still gravitate towards designs that feel like they come from that Superman > Batman > Spider-Man > Wolverine gene-pool. Round heads, slim suits, some small ornamentation, that's it. Wizard's one of my all-time favorite suits, and a ton of that (subconsciously) is because I could see him teaming up with the Justice League or something. The cultural signifiers that exist for a Japanese audience, all of the insect motifs and whatnot... I get it, but I don't have an emotional connection to it. Like, Build, though, with his blue/red suit and acrobatic quickness... that hits a button in my brain that says Superhero.

Anyway, yeah, suber-subjective. I'm still learning to love all of the design choices Kamen Rider makes. I came in through Ex-Aid, so I'm not at all opposed to unique or outlandish designs, but Big Thing On Forehead is just a weird pet peeve of mine.

Sure, but I don't truck with Showa, so I'm already Thumbs Down on that stuff.

They are truly exceptional. That goddamn Kamen Rider George From Of Mice And Men and Kamen Rider Lennie From Of Mice And Men, they really did a number on me. They got me ramping up my Figuarts collection, just to accommodate them. I used to think I could see the light, but it's been blocked out by Mandarake tabs on Chrome! All is darkness!

Darkness and ramen, darkness and ramen. :lolol
In case you are wondering what the exact type of ramen they each had, Yaguruma's is shio ramen, or salt-flavored ramen, while Kageyama's was miso ramen. The proper way to eat these if you are a real toku fan and a real hell brothers fan is either wear battered leather garbs from a vintage clothing store or wear green for shio ramen, brown for miso ramen respectively. :lolol