I loved Sougo in this! The signs of his path towards Ohma ZI-O creeps ever closer, I have a little memory issue cuz I don't know if this was the episode where Woz remarks to Sougo how weirdly manipulative he actually was without him noticing.

Wizard armor is a pretty cool form, like I said before.

Oh hey, Beast is here! Truth be told, I never had the strongest feeling towards Nitoh, not even in his own season. So, when he showed up and not Haruto I had a pretty mild reaction. It was cool seeing the suit return, but what I would give to see the Wizard suit again... And also Haruto, yeah. Haruto for sure!

same

It's really great! It starts with that screencap I used in my post, this slow push in our normal trio, but configured weirdly: We can see the faces of the Time Orphans, but Sougo has his back to us. The episode's only starting, but he's already unknowable to us.

There's another shot near the end, with Geiz and Tsukuyomi, where the camera placement frames Geiz inside the negative space of the back of a chair. It makes Geiz look all boxed in as he tells Tsukuyomi that Sougo took control while she was out.

TONS of smart shots in this story.

Hey, we totally saw the back of Haruto's head! And I think one of his hands! It's just as good as a full appearance!

They silenced him, for they feared the truth......

Shunpei's not really a favorite of mine in any kind of way, but I appericate his presence in Wizard and his dynamic with Haruto. (That bit where they're out grocery shopping is something I remember very clearly from Wizard, not because it's important or anything, I just enjoy them chilling together lol)

I feel like he's similar to Akari/Onari from Ghost, as while there are valid reasons to dislike them due to being rough-around-the-edges sometimes, I feel like only focusing on that is a disservice to the good moments they have later on.

Haha! Good, you caught the thing that made me suddenly very interested in Sougo. Till this point, I thought he was a complete idiot, moron and just dumb, but this episode pulled the rug out from under me! Sougo is dangerously smart and even manipulative! Best part, on my rewatch I saw it from the getgo! Sougo was often the one who made the logical leaps or quickly understood something.

And I kinda love how you feel into the same trap as Geiz. For all his niceness, he never was dumb, but people took it that way and were shocked when they had fallen for it. Sougo is disarmingly nice and that makes his fantastic social intellect so damn dangerous!

This episode really made me excited where our King would eventually go!

Not much to say this time, other than Nitoh totally killed Geiz in the 8.5 (now who’s gonna lead the show?)

Next episode, we answer a question I made you ponder back when HeiGen Forever was announced for official release. For context, I listed everything that got its own tribute before the movie (Build, Ex-Aid, Fourze, Faiz, Wizard, Dan Kuroto, OOO and Gaim), and this was (roughly) your response.

Shunpei walked so that Mei could fly.

I think it's also... like, Sougo was put in a position to gain power, find confidence, and battle for his sense of justice. Those were all maybe bad things to do for a kid who might become a genocidal warlord! But the Time Orphans just assumed that creating an environment for Sougo to grow ethically was the solution to Oma Zi-O, instead of maybe the creation of Oma Zi-O?

Hysterically, it reminds me of my my all-time favorite Wizard story, the two-parter for Phoenix. It's a story where Rinko is convinced she's helping Phoenix reform and become a hero, but she's accidentally telling him to become an even more dangerous villain.

I'm actually pretty excited to see the show get weirder and more specific with its homages. Doing a Fourze show when you can't really get any main characters from Fourze is going to restrict your story options. So maybe it's better to do a Kuroto story, or a Rogue story, or an Accel story. (I'm just picking names at random; I don't know if either of those characters return.) Like, being less beholden to We Have To Do A Story For Every Heisei Show, which frees them up to do stories with actors they can actually get.

(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP08)

I'm kinda not even sure what to say about this episode, besides that it was a pretty major turning point for my opinion of Zi-O.... something that seems to be the case with a couple people in here already. Which, you know, the more the merrier, right? It made me really happy to see the twist at the end land for you, Die. I've mentioned in a couple of those old posts how the dynamic of being a viewer watching Zi-O kind of has some broad similarities to how Geiz, you know, watches Zi-O, and much like he realized Sougo is capable of far, far more than he was giving him credit for, this plot made me start to consider the potential of this show as more than just hypothetical.

The difference being, of course, that as a viewer, I got to just be excited about that revelation.

I'll also mention here, because it seems like a good spot, how much I love the Dopant model of Rider monster? It's just my taste in heroism, I guess, but I like seeing evildoers stopped, rather than outright destroyed, and as Zi-O's Another Riders have already demonstrated a few times, including here, it lets you do stories where the villain is also one of the people the hero is trying to save, which is an interesting dynamic, and just makes things feel so much more human and intimate. Wizard accomplishes something very similar even though the Phantom/Gate formula is obviously not quite the same, and I thought these episodes of Zi-O did a fantastic job capturing that same vibe, where it's all about a Kamen Rider giving everything he's got to protect something very small in scale. Again, very strong outing for Zi-O.

Plus! I feel like gushing about Sahashi's music again right now, so here's the track that plays during that climactic phone call across time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFGjW8OE5Nw

The visual split is cool enough already, but the BGM in Zi-O just adds so much to the series. Even the tracks for the quiet moments, like this one, often have this sort of ethereal vibe to them that makes things feel so grand. What also impresses me is that like, the whole aesthetic of Zi-O's music is often so different to Sahashi's other work, and it fascinates me how much he's kept evolving his style over the years. You would never immediately peg this as being from the same guy who did Kuuga.

This was a good episode, with lots of nice shots, Wizard's theme bleeding through, and the Wizard Armor, one of my favorites. I mean, look at that suit! It's got magic tassels, the ring should guards fit perfectly, and it just works perfectly for me. I do admit, I think it would look better on Zi-O, but Geiz certainly rocks the look well.

That .5 Episode is such a joy, and that image is just perfection. I do have a soft spot for Nittou, and did really enjoy him throughout Wizard, and I find it strangely hilarious how he transforms for the Beast Fans, and yet we never get to see Beast. Makes me wonder if Toei did this intentionally for any of the non-Beast fans.

Heck, Wizard is one of my favorite Riders, both show and suit. It was really enjoyable, and I look back on it fondly. Are there better seasons and characters? Sure. But did I have a good time? Absolutely!

Shunpei is a precious boy, who must be protected at all costs.

Seriously, his introduction to the show was legitimately one of my favorite arcs in Wizard, and you brought in both of my favorite Shunpei moments in this thread.