They've already been reported to the mods, don't worry. I'm sorry I let you all down like that!

No, for sure, it's a failing of the later part of Zero-One (surely COVID influenced) that we rarely get to see all of MetsubouJinrai in a room together, and never for anything too character-focused. This adds so much weird weight to their relationship, and it's a shame it's probably non-canonical.

I like that it's vague? We're at the start of another story here, where new characters have to struggle with old problems. It's good to leave it unresolved.

Oh, that's nice to hear! I just sort of assumed this was a one-off thing, not some new initiative. And, yeah, these are definitely scratching the same absurd itch that the Net Movies used to, slightly to the detriment of the actual TV series. Gai fixing everything in a way that makes things worse is maybe the character trait of his I'll most remember, despite it only showing up in these shorts!

THREAD WRAP-UP

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...eadwrapup1.png

And that’s it for “Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Zero-One (and builds SO-DO)”!

Thank you so much to everyone who came by and chatted as I spent five months working my way through Zero-One. Which… holy shit, FIVE MONTHS. I’m so sorry! Obviously some life stuff happened (big move, much-needed vacation, narratively-appropriate COVID), but I never want to have such big breaks mid-thread. I like the routine of six posts each week, and the speed of working through an entire series in under three months. Hopefully things’ll be more steady in the future.

Still, I hope people had a good time with this thread. I think I did okay on this one? There aren’t really any big blindspots on it for me, at least that I can recall. (The SO-DO part was probably a bust, but it helped me clear out some backlog.) The discussion everyone provided was, as always, the highlight for me, and it was a blast to experience this show around each and every one of you. You helped me take off towards my dream, and I’ll always appreciate it.

Normally I’d post a celebratory picture of a newly-opened Zero-One Figuart, but, uh:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...erononefig.jpg

That’s my pile of boxed Figuarts, waiting for next spring’s Moducase delivery. There’s a Zero-One Rising Hopper in there somewhere, but I’m not digging him out until those cases show up. As a consolation, I think you can see the Vulcan and MetsubouJinrai members I got in recently.

That’s about all I got? This thread isn’t going anywhere, so if anyone has anything else to say about Zero-One, I’ll definitely read it. The next few weeks are going to be tricky for me (packed late-November, followed by a work-heavy December), so I might not be around too much to post. But I always read! This thread was always as much yours as it was mine, I’m happy to pass it along to your stewardship.

I’ll be back full-time after the New Year for “Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Saber (and ****** ***********)”, most likely around January 5th. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am! In the meantime, have an awesome rest of your 2022, and I’ll see you in 2023 for Saber. You can count on that 1000%.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...eadwrapup2.png

If there was one thread that was going to be interrupted by unexpected real life chaos, there really is no more appropriate option.

As always, it?s been fun and I look forward to talking about Saber, a show about which I have some thoughts.

Kamen Rider Saber is my favorite Reiwa Rider show so far! I'll have a lot to talk about for sure!

Saber? I hardly knew 'er!

https://i.imgur.com/EDF6syv.gif

I cannot wait to talk about Saber. Definitely a big favorite of mine.

Looking forwards to Saber! It's a show I have real mixed thoughts about, and can't wait to try and express them badly.

Also, well done on really comitting to the Zero-One bit and catching covid just for us, you truly do everything for the cause of watching a Japanese children's show.

https://dryedmangoez.com/images/Drye...e02-(1014).jpg

I plan to watch this when I get to it during my run. I started with the first Rider and have watched 1st episodes up to Den O. It will be quite a while before I get to this. I have 97 episodes of Series I to finish before the run really gets going. I can see all of Rider on You Tube.

Saber's going to be a fun one.

And it's been fun talking about (what I've seen of) Zero-One. I still have a bunch of Rider media I've yet to get around to, but things have been busy for me.

I look forward to revisiting Saber with everyone!

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 0 - “THE END OF GENMS AND THE START OF THE OPERATION”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders0a.png

It’s a prelude, basically, so I don’t want to ascribe too much significance to anything it’s doing – this is all basically to introduce the core (?) cast of Kuroto, Dan, Mari, and the Arch Orphenoch. We are table-setting, and not much more.

Even by those enforced lower-standards, I didn’t think too much of this. Tonally, it can’t make up its mind as to whether we should be seeing this through the manic lens of Kuroto, or the now-inexplicable straight man routine of Gai (seriously, Gai is the Tethered To Reality voice of reason now!), so the episode just does both across different scenes. I’m not saying you can’t have jokes inside a serious action story, or vice versa, but you kind of can’t do Kuroto’s cartoon character in a 10-minute special unless that’s all you do. To try and land a scene of Kurotobot powering down and pulling his framed photo of his dad out of his jacket like it's a mallet from a pants pocket, and then be like Here Are The Serious Stakes with Gai and the Ark… man, get out of here with that. Pick a lane, Outsiders!

Beyond that, I can’t say I’m immune to the baser pleasures of a TTFC mini-series; namely, constant and barely-defined fan service. I mean, Mari! In two roles! Plus the Delta suit, making two times that lady got to dub in a voice for a fight scene in the last three years! Mari’s here to loop in Smart Brain and the Arch Orphnoch to the previous Gai/Genm stuff, but the reasoning behind Smart Queen looking like Mari feels unbelievably hand-wavey – I think a villain-centric mini can do a little better than Because They’re Bad as a motivation for a scheme – and very much like someone decided after the fact that they’d rather that actor just play Mari instead. I’m not gonna crab too much, since I recently went on record as saying that Mari is as big a part of 555 as any other character to me, but it’s sort of a narrative cul-de-sac.

Fight was good, though! There’s only the one, and it’s a pretty straight-forward one-on-one brawl between Delta and Genm Musou, but it’s stylish and visceral enough for this thing’s abbreviated runtime and limited scope. Delta’s meant to be a terrifying harbinger of doom, so seeing Kuroto gleefully demolish it in record time is a nice statement of where these characters are at, power-wise.

Still, not much to rave about here. There’s the YMMV aspect of famous faces returning, but Zein is relentlessly vague, and there’s basically no one here to root for; even in a cast of monsters, I’d like there to be someone worthy of my fervor. Nominally Gai, but BOY does he not get much to do besides be ineffectual. We’ll see if anyone steps up in the next episode!

(Not counting, of course, the climactic appearance of a cackling Hiromu Takahashi, the Ticking Time Bomb of New Japan Pro-Wrestling himself! I knew he was in this, and I can’t tell you how happy that stunt casting makes me. Hiromu’s a legend in pro-wrestling, and it’s going to be fun for me to see if they give him space to get weird. Closing shot is a good sign, though!)

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders0b.png

Oh Outsiders, what a wonderful chaotic show you are and what fun ideas you give me to eventually implement into my own stories.

Anyway this was very much an epilogue to the Genms portion of the April Fools prank that basically spawned these "connected" episodes. While it's clear we're not done with a lot of these characters, we're finally making way for a new series of specials that take forever to come out.

Welcome to Outsiders, it only gets crazier and stupider (affectionate) from here on out.

Interesting you decided to slot it into Zero-One, granted, it is rooted in Takahashi so either of his shows would work well for this so I suppose it's fitting that it's not its own thread.

I definitely played around with the concept of treating it as its own thing... but making it a part of Zero-One a) made more sense, since it's a natural continuation of those Presidents/Smart Brain specials, and b) then I'd sort of feel obligated to write about it, and that sounded fun. So here we are!

And, yeah, pretty dumb so far! Definitely less thematically-coherent than something like Geats, that's for sure.

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 1 - “MIRROR WORLD’S TREASURE AND OUJA’S RETURN”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders1a.png

Just… just a nonsensical plot, at almost every level.

Let’s start with the Ouja story, since this is about 90% his story, and 10% other Legend Riders. (Very fun to have the first episode of this thing feature literally no one from the preceding chapters, besides the same Zein effect from Episode 0.) The idea, vaguely, is to retroactively (through the use of a post-Ryuki timeline) give Asakura a sort of Tragic Past, where a marginally moral man – Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Evil – is wronged in a way that unleashes an unrepentant killer who works to destroy everything he once held dear. It’s fine, if that’s what you think Asakura’s character needed.

I would vehemently disagree with you, though. A lot of what made Asakura work in Ryuki is that people (Shinji, mostly) kept trying to ascribe some deeper motivation or complication to his character, but he was just a killer, the end. In a story about trying to understand people and see things clearly, Asakura’s point as a character was that he wasn’t hiding any deeper secrets or redeeming qualities; sometimes people are exactly who they say they are. That’s why he worked.

But we get the Fall From Grace bit in the beginning, and it just feels wildly unnecessary. We’re right back to Classic Asakura within about eight minutes, with basically nothing extra to his character to show for it. It’s a time-killing diversion that misses the point of the original character. Worse, it includes one of the dumbest plot developments I’ve ever seen.

So, Nazu has decided to tie up the loose end that is Asakura because he’s planning bigger political moves, and he can’t risk anyone finding out that he was associating with a ne’er-do-well like Asakura. Fine, makes sense. But then he decides to tell this to Asakura BY GOING TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME THAT ASAKURA IS COMMITTING ON HIS BEHALF – surrounded by cameras and witnesses – and basically state his criminal motivations and threats out loud to Asakura. It’s colossally stupid. There are witnesses maybe six feet away, and Asakura just called this guy on his phone. Nazu can threaten to blow up Asakura’s brother’s life to keep Asakura silent, but a half-dozen people just heard every single word of this villainous speech, and there's a bunch of incriminating evidence linking the two of them together. This is dumb! It is incredibly dumb! It almost instantly made me hate this episode, and that’s not fun to say.

Luckily, the additional elements of this story were pretty similarly stupid, but in a different way, so I’m not exactly wringing my hands over my dislike of this episode.

Like, the whole We Need An Advent Deck To Make A Wonder Ride Book thing is… god, it’s sort of what I was afraid this series was going to be. It’s like Kamen Rider Mad Libs, where you could plug in any series of proper nouns – the Timejackers need a Disc Animal to make a Fuestle, so they hire Birth to get it – and it makes about as much sense as what’s on the screen. It fires all the dumb fan neurons in my brain (DIEND!!!) but I can’t sit here in the aftermath and say the storytelling was anything more than getting those fan neurons a-firin'. It’s not trying very hard, and that’s so dispiriting.

I genuinely did not like this episode. There’s minor enjoyment of the Recognizable Element Of The Franchise variety, but, man, I could’ve just watched the trailer and gotten that. I watched this episode, and it gave me an Ouja story that misunderstood why Ouja ever worked, told in the dumbest way possible. I feel like we all deserved more than that?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders1b.png

Probably my least favorite of the episodes released thus far.

I've yet to know if I was wronged in any way because I've yet to watch Ryuki, but this episode was still a bit odd tbh. Even nowadays its a weirdly divorced episode from the rest in that it's just "Ouja gets his groove back" at its base level. Ouja Survive looks neat but that's really about it?

Anyway, when in doubt about bringing back a dead book character, utilize the power of a phoenix, in which said book character also used the power of a phoenix. I'm unsure if it was intentional, but it's funny how it works out like that huh?

It's seriously just Playing The Hits as a one-episode arc. He even makes sure to do his Vexed catchphrase! Considering the amount of post-Ryuki Asakura appearances where he's just the usual remorseless villain he always was, I'm really not sure why anyone thought giving him a tragic backstory was worthwhile.

If it were resurrecting Falchion (or, uh, Phoenix from Wizard), I'd probably say it was smart; with Desast, it's a little harder to think it was intentional.

True but when you think about it, it'd be one heck of a pull if they did Odin's Deck because Desast used Falchion once. And I want to believe that now because that sounds like the kind of insane stuff I'd want to pull in a story.

I would never stop you from thinking that! I love it when folks give a story more credit than I would.

In retrospect, this was a strange one, given how, last few seconds aside with Desast being Time Vented back into existence, nothing really gets expanded on from earlier or in later chapters.

And as you?ve seen, this series isn?t strictly Zero-One, but it?s also not strictly Takahashi, since this episode and the next are both written by Hiroki Uchida, which is probably why the second episode is one of the better ones.

And also, surprisingly, despite how many may dismiss this as an excuse to sell toys, there are no action figures or DX Advent Decks/Cards/Visors for Ouja Survive, which only really happens when they have something else to show off with it (eg. The Ark Driver only being announced when Aruto first transformed into Ark-One), or they don?t have any intent to make it unless demand is that high (Yujou Burst, Bang Bang Tank, the Killbuspider).

Other notes: I realise that, aside from actor availability, having a suit that still exists (even if the suit actor fills it out slightly more than he used to) and that fact that Kitaoka is likely dead by this point, the reason Ouja got a Survive Mode was because Knight got one with the blue card, Ryuki got one with the red card, so it makes sense a purple Rider should get the one in-between them.

Yeah, Outsiders starts off incredibly meandering, and not in a way that feels intentional. You could tell me that Ouja was the only past-Rider they had available that filming block, and I would be inclined to believe you. It doesn't help the feeling that Outsiders is all "Wow! Thing I remember!" and not anything deeper, because this story does nothing with Ouja. The Ex-Aid special where he shoves Emu's face into medical waste might be truer to his character.

It's a little disappointing that there's no Ouja Survive stuff, but honestly not that surprising. We're a long way from when any post-show thing would get a action figure -- Figuarts-wise, it was Arabiana Night for Saber, I think? -- and Ryuki isn't nearly a recent enough show for there to be a slick DX toy that can take advantage of an upgrade (I'm just gonna put "Zero-Three" here with no elaboration, because I shop at Tokullectibles). While I'd personally add an Ouja Survive to my collection, I definitely didn't assume one was forthcoming just because he was in a TTFC project.

(Also... I don't really like the look of Ouja Survive, and it's for a potentially impolite reason: Ouja's suit actor got, uh, thicker around the middle. The design of the suit absolutely draws the eye to a much denser midsection than I saw in those flashback videos, and it does not do that suit any favors.)

He's an incredibly weird character to kick things off with, that's for sure. He doesn't even vaguely intersect with anything else that's going on (Diend's like Go Fight Zein and Asakura's like LOL Nope), and there's virtually no narrative reason you'd ever recruit this guy to prevent an apocalypse -- is there a Kamen Rider story where Ouja ever helped out? He's a weird pick for this Suicide Squad-style show!

Speaking of toys, where are the SO-DO?

I've built the Zein SO-DO several times, but it keeps getting shredded!

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 2 - “PROPHECY OF DESTRUCTION AND DESAST’S AWAKENING”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders2a.png

RIDE PLAYER NICO!!! Five-star episode, no notes, A+++.

If we don’t factor Nico in, though: Nonsense. Glorious, wonderful nonsense.

I genuinely don’t even understand the sides in this story, and I can’t tell if that’s brilliantly staying on-theme or just this show’s regularly haphazard approach to narrative. Horobi and Nico are on one side (for Zein?), while Ark is on a different side (against Zein?), and Foundation X is on one of those sides – but I can’t tell which one. Also, there’s everyone from Episode 0, who I think are on the Anti-Zein side, but maybe not. It’s all just a mish-mash of psychopaths and zealots, and I’m enjoying it probably twice as much as I’m understanding it.

Like, you’ve pretty much already got me sitting forward in my chair when I get to say the words Kamen Rider Desast, you know? Love that! Love everything about that! The road to get there is a little less polished and thoughtful than his arc with Ren on Saber – not sure we needed Ren’s Kagerou; this episode sort of misunderstands the reason Ren fought Desast to the death originally – but there’s still plenty to like about a story that wants to talk about Next Chapters, and does it with Saber guys.

Desast gets brought back to a life he never liked, outside of dueling with Ren, so he just goes right back to doing that. Meanwhile, Ren trained to prevent an apocalypse, prevented an apocalypse, and just kept training. It’s pathetic, for both of them, and they sort of realize that. Getting to watch two of the most historically non-introspective Saber characters try and sort out their lack of ambition, and reframe it to be a way of pushing each other forward… I like that. I like that this frequently dumb, regularly impenetrable show about All Of The Toys wanted to do a follow-up story that’s about how hard it is for us to consider new starts in our lives. It helps when we embrace that change and create a new version of ourselves, just like Desast learned.

Beyond that compelling and brisk story, it’s a lot more of the weirdly amorphous apocalypse-prevention stuff that I can’t really get a handle on. (Zein wants worlds to combine? Or not combine? But they’ve already combined? Or could combine worse somehow in the future?) Except I pretty much could not care less about the plot, because NICO IS BACK, and that’s all that matters. I’m sure I’d heard about it a year ago, but I’d thankfully forgotten, so I got to shout HOLY SHIT NICO IS BACK at my monitor as soon as she stepped in front of Horobi. (Also, Horobi’s back, but that’s just okay.) My favorite Ex-Aid character, back after FIVE YEARS – broke my heart that Nico Snipe couldn’t show up for Girls Remix – buys a whole lot of goodwill from me.

NICO! BACK! I can’t wait for Episode 3!!!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders2b.png

Probably my favorite one of these, you give me more Desast, you give him a really cool Rider design, you bring back the Desast Walks of all things in celebration? Yeah no this episode clears all of the other Outsider episodes before and after if I'm being honest.

Also I'll be real I recall Foundation X complaining vaguely about Horobi, and Horobi's siding with Zein because he wants to eliminate malice and that aligns their goals. So I think Foundation X is Anti-Zein.

Hard to go wrong with resurrecting one of the best Saber characters, making them a Kamen Rider, and then giving them a new mission!

Thanks! That sounds right, but there's so much random motivation (and subterfuge) thrown around that it was pretty difficult for me to discern what each side was fighting for, and who was where.

Remember how I said most of these Outsiders episodes didn’t have toys? Well, this episode was the exception… until the newest one.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_JKNGLUv...UWlEedWC3dFqVx

(Despite being the Saber guy in terms of merch, I don’t have this… yet)

And somehow, Zein managed to convince at least two people it was good, despite ordering Horobi to attack a good monster on the basis he was created to do evil. And Horobi somehow took him at his word, despite coming from a similar background.

And continuing the trend from Zero-One and Saber proper of people coming up with their own interpretations without actually understanding Japanese or waiting for someone who does to watch it, a few fans came to the conclusion from the final scene that Nico was working for Foundation X and was responsible for Kamen Rider MetsubouJinrai going berserk… despite nothing in the staging, the dialogue or the actors’ performances indicating that.

Next time: F*cking Banno.

It's crazy to me that we get a new entire DX toy for Kamen Rider Desast... but no Figuart for either of his forms. What is this fascinating and disgusting smell?!

Horobi's participation here is incredibly weird, because it hinges on a) Horobi trusting another malevolent AI* enough to kill on its behalf when he should for sure know better, and b) his motivation now being that he's a Rider who was once bad and became good, so now he has to kill any Rider that's even slightly morally complicated. This is a bizarre new motivation for a dude whose previous thing was just safeguarding the future of his species and culture!

(*: In fairness, we're only told at this point that Foundation X rebuilt Horobi, not that he's working for/with Zein, so it may just be that he's putting his trust in humanity now. It's a little weird, but it also shows some personal growth?)

We did get a So-Do set with improved versions of Kenzan and Desast, along with the new Rider form

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 3 - “REVIVAL OF THE BATTLE FIGHT AND ZEIN’S BIRTH”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders3a.png

You know things are going great in your direct-to-streaming tokusatsu series when you have to start your third episode with a recap sequence to try and disentangle the ludicrous amount of plot threads in your convoluted and random narrative. Super good sign!

Merited digs aside, I actually sort of warmed to this episode’s focus on its plot/”plot”. I think the moment where everything really clicked for me was… oh, I’ll just show you:

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

When looked at through the lens of wanting a coherent strategy or a plausible narrative or basic causality or just not feeling like you have a fever when you’re watching it, Outsiders sort of fails. It’s bafflingly incoherent, with a genuine feeling that we are getting 15 minutes of improv from whichever actors were in the building that day. BUT! When looked at through the lens of Foundation X, it honestly all works perfectly... while still feeling we are getting 15 minutes of improv from whichever actors were in the building that day, only on purpose.

Foundation X is one of my least-favorite Kamen Rider concepts, because they have no conviction. I can crab about a lot of season-long masterminds (I don’t want to say Swartz, but: Swartz), but at least they’re dedicated to their machiavellian plotting or millennia-long vendettas. They aren’t half-assing it, or playing the field; these guys and gals are all in on their genocidal nonsense. Foundation X isn’t that, though. They’re specifically about backing every play, hoping some moonshot pays off. They aren’t a shadowy cabal or a den of vipers – they’re a hedge fund. They don’t actually care about what they’re funding, so it doesn’t matter if it fails. They’ll just move on to Plan Q or Plan R or whatever. (Never Plan X, though; it’s too dangerous!)

So a series where Foundation X just spins up another two random dopes each episode – this time it’s Brain, in a non-speaking role, and the hilariously copper-colored Gord Drive – is kind of exactly their flavor of pathetic disinterest. Why Gord Drive and Brain? I don’t know: AI or something, sure, whatever. The strategy is just I Don’t Know How About That, and I’m honestly really enjoying that vibe now. It’s improv comedy rules – Kamen Rider Yes And. It makes me care less about the ridiculousness of the storytelling, because comedies should be ridiculous. This is a comedy show.

Within that framework, I enjoyed this outing with the most inexplicable cast of characters, and cameos where characters would normally be. (Like, George is here for about 20 seconds – I ain’t delving into his arc.) Beyond some half-hearted attempts to give this story some explicable background, the plot is just Nico taking a suitcase to the lab from the Live & Evil & Demons V-Cin, within which sits the operating theater or whatever that we’ve been seeing for close to a decade. It’s a lot of portentous promotion for Zein’s grand debut, and that’s the scope of this thing. Fun to see Nico, and she’s very good with the little amount of space she gets to act, but this is a Zein story, even when he’s not on screen.

Zein’s appearance – and absolutely walloping of Gord Drive – is appropriately epic. I like the suit quite a bit. There’s a lot of that old IXA cleanliness, where it says Order in a way that’s both good and bad. There’s no wisecracking or imperious dialogue – just silence, and then power. It’s a debut that doesn’t even need the Foundation X guy practically weeping in amazement. Zein pulls out Ex-Aid’s game-breaking Muteki power, and then follows it up with Xross Saber’s overpowered magnificence. We get that this is too much power! It looks incredibly cool!

And, like, that’s sort of the way Foundation X works in a story: here’s a bunch of random-ass stuff, and it’ll probably look cool in the end, but they’ll just be back next time because they’ve got a million names on Kamen Rider Whiteboard that they can keep lining through. Yuuto uses Saber’s final form to blow up Gord Drive? Sure! Go with that! Keep calling out names from the audience!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders3b.png

Banno probably wasn’t a lot of people’s choice for Drive rep in the Outsiders, but given how the only movie Rider suit that still exists in a non-cannibalised state (probably) is Sangou, and having Heart come back as part of the bad guys would kind of be pushing it, they weren’t exactly spoilt for choice. And fighting Horobi allows him to get back some of the menace he lost when Rinna smeared the Drive weapons in an anti-teleportation paste or something.

And Takahashi’s back in the writer’s chair… as a supervisor, since Geats was still ongoing at the time of production. Instead, our writer this time is a new kid named Kengo Nagahama, whose only other credit I could find was the next episode.

And for some facts about Zein’s belt from Gotchard’s TV-Asahi page, it’s made from the same fictional metal as the Vail, Demons and Chimera Drivers, the cards it uses are modified Rouse Cards that function similarly to Ridewatches, in that they contain the actual powers rather than a copy (ie, the Hyper Muteki Gashat, the Haouken Xross Saber and so on). The reason the cards are one-use only is a security measure agreed upon between George and the 40 Primaries* to prevent the cards from being stolen by someone who’d misuse them and ensure the data is securely stored in one server.

* Given it’s implied every protagonist from Hongou through Ace (except maybe Eiji, but the dialogue hints they got OOO’s power from someone) gave their strongest powers away to Zein, that means Gai, the Ark, Foundation X, Asakura, Ren, Desast and Banno were more cautious and properly paranoid than the heroes who’ve laid down their lives to prevent potentially world conquering maniacs

If Zein isn't defeated because of his lack of resource management skills then this series will be a failure. Cause I'm sorry, one use cards and you're pulling out stuff like Hyper Muteki and Xross Saber this early? Nah you're going down lol

Anyway this was a fun one in the lead up to because we only ever saw the back of Yuuto and no one figured it was him because different haircut and also the style of clothing he had.

This one's a fun one but it doesn't have Desast so I'd say it's like either #2 or #3 for me in terms of episodes. Though the most recent one edges it out I feel.

Will say I appreciate Bronze Drive and his manic as hell energy. I was questioning why we needed another Drive repaint but the minute they went for gold jokes I instantly stopped questioning it. They did it purely for the bit and I applaud them for that.

It is horrifying to me to think that all of these Riders willingly contributed their most powerful Forms to this project because they were asked to by Tachibana. TACHIBANA! That man couldn't talk ink into staying on a piece of paper without either trying to kill it or having a nervous breakdown. You'd think Kenzaki at least would be like I Love You Like A Brother But Nah, right? And Fourze! Gentaro should 100% not trust a guy who looks like that!

Part of me wished that Nico would be like IT'S YUUTO and Tachibana would be like What No It's Kiriya From Hibiki and the fandom would just get real sad and quiet for a while.

Also, c'mon, that is not how late-30s Yuuto should be dressing. A vest? A jacket? Where is his beige trenchcoat? Where is his fisherman's hat.

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 4 - “THE TIMELINE GONE AWRY AND ZEIN’S TRUE IDENTITY”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders4a.png

Let’s say you’re writing an action-adventure serial, where two sides are in conflict. On one side, you have an organization that vacillates between malevolent terror and callous indifference, recruiting literally any lunatic they can think of. On the other side, you have a ragtag group of supporting cast sidekicks and reformed anti-heroes. If you planned on doing a twist where the ragtag group is surprisingly the bad guys of the story, I’ve got two writing tips for you:

1) Actually define the stakes and goals of each group in a clear, legible way. The evil organization needs to be stopping a specific, logical outcome from occurring, or trying to achieve a recognizable goal. The ragtag group needs to have a clear threat to face, and a clearly delineated plan to prevent it. We need to know exactly what each side is trying to do – and how they plan to do – for any twist be successful in shocking the audience. You can’t shock me if I never knew what you were talking about in the first place.

2) Do not have Tachibana as the leader of the ragtag group.

So, obviously, pretty big failure on both counts!

We get yet another meandering pseudo-explanation of Zein’s Masterplan this episode, and it continues to be a half-scene shy of actually making sense. I’m assuming this is all some sort of twist on the Ark, where a computer program has decided that humanity needs to be destroyed in order to stop their inevitable evil from spreading, but the way the show tries to lay that out (if that’s even what’s going on here; kinda guessing!) is needlessly obfuscated and confusing. While I want to blame the lack of clarity on a shorter runtime than your average Kamen Rider episode, it’s frustratingly more to do with how poorly this show uses the little amount of space it has. We spend a dumb amount of time with Brain taunting Banno, and Foundation X just sort of shrugging at yet another of their underdeveloped schemes going awry (they literally had no reason to think that Brain would contribute anything, but they brought him back to life anyway, where he instantly defected on them) instead of giving that time to characters like Nico and Horobi trying to figure out exactly what the hell has been going on around them. There’s not a lot of margin for error when you’ve only got about 17 minutes every few months, and this episode is almost wall-to-wall errors.

Like, it’s not even Yuuto? It’s, like, Daybreak Yuuto, from an alternate dystopian future? Then… why? Why even have it be Yuuto, if we’re not really participating in Yuuto’s decade-plus story? And Tachibana is either mind-controlled into turning on everyone in favor of genocide, or just once again betting everything on the dumbest possible horse, and I’m not sure which of those would be funnier to see explored. (The second one, obviously.) I can’t really figure out what these guys hoped to accomplish in the first place, so I’m not sure if this is a betrayal of what they’d said they were working towards, or the culmination of their original plan. Is this what Xross Saber died for?

At least we’ve got Brain, though.

He’s not my favorite guy from Drive (he’s not even my favorite Roidmude: Heart, Chase, then him) but I sort of like how this episode uses him to illustrate the ridiculousness of Zein’s plan/”plan” to destroy all malice from humanity by killing humanity and resetting the timeline. (Very slow shrug with a look of intense skepticism???) If even an inveterate coward and traitor like Brain can eventually find his way to fighting for humanity’s right to exist, there’s no reason to think that the future is hopeless. It’s a cute speech he gives to Zein, but it’s also such a dyed in the wool Kamen Rider concept – he even says that every Kamen Rider should already know it – that I cannot figure out how no one involved in this scheme failed to bring it up before. Like, just the basic Destroying The Malice In People thing… that already sounds like a pretty reckless and weird thing for a heroic group to want to do! How did Horobi and Nico hear that speech coming from Tachibana and go Sign Us Up? None of this works!

It’s not good writing, this episode. It wastes time on pointless humor (Banno! Who cares!), stays about three sentences away from having the stakes of the series make sense, and then makes everyone but Brain look like an idiot. And Brain was never actually that smart that was the joke oh my god this shoooooowwwwww

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders4b.png

George ends the first “season” by saying what were probably all thinking. Not sure what he expected to happen when he was tasked with building a Rider, programmed it to run primarily on Legend Rider powers and modelled the resulting suit on Daguva.

And despite the initial trailer’s impression, the actual “guy with a new toy” in this is Tachibana, rather than Brain (they even released a different trailer halfway between episodes, with the Drive BGM replaced with Revolution’s instrumental). Despite Garren King being something anyone with the Blade and Garren CSMs has been mocking up, I’m guessing the need to create a new mould for the Garren King Rouser has prevented an actual release.

Anyway, there’s only one episode left, and it’s Takahashi crossing over all three of his shows, so let’s see how you receive that.

Based on the preceding episodes, probably less well than I would like to!

Why are you doing this to yourself? Watching this sounds like a very, very specific form of torture.

Fair question, but much like Episode 4 had Brain tell a whole bunch of people who should've already learned this lesson in their respective series: On a long enough timeline, there's always hope that things will improve. I have watched enough uneven tokusatsu over the last few years to know that even the most dire episode can be followed by something sublime, or the dumbest plot twist can be redeemed by a thoughtful re-examination within the narrative. We all have the capability for change, even a show as weird and occasionally repellant as Outsiders!

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 5 - “THE GODDESS OF CREATION AND THE THIRD SINGULARITY”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders5a.png

I mean, you start things off with Tsumuri at the Geats Shrine, and you’ve already got me rooting for you.

In typical Outsiders fashion, we eschew the budding story of everyone we’ve been following for the last three episodes to have Ark and There debate the future of AI, while Kuroto and Tsumuri take on Zein. It’s significantly more straight-forward than the rushed-yet-meandering work of the previous few installments, with room for both gravitas and, like, a coherent plot.

I don’t know that it’s any great shakes – Zein is another Ark-esque malfunctioning AI that is keen to eliminate the malice in humanity by eliminating humanity – but at least it’s something to latch onto for this episode. It gives the characters something specific to oppose, and something tangible to try and defeat. There are parameters to what’s happening that enables us to get an actual strategy, rather than yet another Foundation X improv squad blundering through obvious betrayals. Kuroto knows what he’s up against, he knows what he wants, and he knows how he can get it.

Of all the things I wasn’t expecting in Episode 5 of Outsiders, a story that takes Kuroto seriously has got to be near the top of the list. While there’s for sure the now-standard cackling and mugging, there’s a middle section where Kuroto has a stillness to him. He’s been a caricature for so long (SEVEN YEARS!) that it’s easy to forget that he’s a child of trauma and loss, who wants to leave something of value to the world. The idea that he wants to defeat Zein by making rogue AI like Zein into his children… I mean, sure? Sure, that feels like an appropriately bizarre and grandiose plan for a lonely boy that needs to have control over a chaotic world. Making it insanely convoluted – Kuroto needs a hidden power-up to force Zein to use the Zero-Two card so he can steal the power to send to Zero-Three and then get murdered so Tsumuri will cry and Zero-Three can take that tear to grant Kuroto’s wish and bring him back to life so he can create a Singularity that will avert Zein’s plan – is just the icing on the cake.

The Zero-Three of it all... it’s fine? I like the V3-themed costume. The fight against Zein is very cool, showcasing the high-level move sets that both AI can utilize, but now in a nice, well-lit arena. It’s just hard to love this development, when it jettisons 90% of the cast of the last chunk of episodes to bring in two brand-new characters that are crucial to saving the day. (The last episode ended with the Juuga Driver, and George doesn’t even get mentioned in this episode!) It continues to make previous episodes feel retroactively pointless, and that’s not super fun. In isolation, I think this focus on AI and the legacy they want to leave to the world is fun; in conjunction with Ouja and Garren and Thouser (remember that guy?) and the Orphnoch King (holy shit, remember THAT guy?) and everyone else that’s accrued like quickly-forgotten toys in a kid’s bedroom, it feels less fulfilling than it should.

Which… I guess that’s Outsiders, at least until September. It was consistently and thoroughly less than the sum of its parts, and one of the most disappointing TTFC projects since that godforsaken Bravo/Gridon thing. As a fan of basically every single show they pulled from, I’m not gonna say there was nothing in here for me – Tsumuri, Nico, Desast, Ren, I see that Mii-Tan’s getting called back up. I’m not immune to nostalgia! But I wish there had been a story here that utilized those characters in the way those actors – and fans – deserved. What we got is a mess, and rarely a compelling one. I’m sorry if this wasn’t fun to read! I really wanted to come away with some optimism!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...utsiders5b.png

Fun fact: The Zero-Three Henshin Jingle got shortened in this episode due to time constraints. Here's the full version if you're curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRC1sW38MOc

Super glad I preordered that DX toy now! Thanks!