I realized my line of thought about the gender of Gates was based on the assumption that Gates will be a traditional secondary Rider, either a collaborator or a traditional rival-who-turns-collaborator. It just occurred to me that Gates might actually be the villain of the series. That'd make the sequence of form-changes we've seen a lot more interesting.

...Leaving him to do what he does best and write energetic and fun individual episodes with above-average characterization, without having to worry about coming up with an engaging overarching plot, thus preventing the main issue Ninninger had?

Like I said, this show is shaping up to be some good s***.

Shinichiro Shirakura and Naomi Takebe, the two most influential figures in the Heisei era of Kamen Rider, are producing this show. That's the good news about this show hopefully it be more like Heisei style and not boring neo-Heisei.

But the writer Toei could do better eh.

I hate time travel themes for the most part. And this better be better than decade. I have low expectations for zi-o the more I read about it and seeing the rumored cast.

Ninninger didn't have much of an over-arching plot, but I thought it handled MOTW pretty well. However, Sentai is much more MOTW than Kamen Rider so that likely won't fly here. We'll see, I guess. The premise sounds cool.

According to this quote, Kamen Rider Zi-O is the final Heisei Kamen Rider

“She gives the hero an ominous warning, the hero will become Kamen Rider Zi-O, the King of Time, the demon destined to rule the world. Can this be his fate? Kamen Rider Zi-O is the final Heisei Kamen Rider and will follow the story of a would be king, who will fight to save the past, present, and future as he will encounter various Heisei Kamen Rider throughout space and time.”

Make sense cause the Heisei period will likely end on 30 April 2019 (Heisei 31), the date on which Emperor Akihito is expected to abdicate the Chrysanthemum Throne. I don’t know how long Kamen Rider Zi-O run for but we do know that after Zi-O, Next Kamen Rider won’t be Heisei Rider and it will be first Rider of new TBA era.

Beside that, Kento Shimoyama?!?!?!?! :eek:

If this show is worse than Ninninger, I will go nut! :mad: To be fair, I feel Kento Shimoyama was inexperienced when he become head writer of Ninninger and hopefully he improves this after Ninninger ended.

This is the funniest typo I've seen in a while lmao

Ehh, give him a chance. *eats popcorn* I mean, yeah Ninninger was a heap of triceratops dung story-wise but who knows. If he does end up making this a cesspool of a show start the hate. Until then, give it a chance.*eats popcorn* And besides, potential future evil overlord who becomes a superhero cosplaying as a rolex sounds cool.

I'm giving him a chance, since when he wrote GoRider it was pretty fantastic. Plus with the producers being veteran producers and this being the final Heisei series I think they want to go all out.

Although I do hope the show also have a secondary writer. Yeah, GoRider was fantastic but I think he was able to write that because it was meant to be a miniseries, so I think if Kento has a secondary writer to help him helm a full series it'll be good.

Also, I love how Decade is pretty prominient in the poster. I hope he has a recurring role in the show and we all know Tsukasa is very easy to return.

Gates may also be like a "Time Cop" trying to stop the girl, but serves future Zi-O, so can't do anything to Zi-O or the girl because of reasons. Making them eventually kind of a reluctant partner. If Gates is a servant of future Zi-O then there's not really much Gates can do about past Zi-O without messing up that future.

So could go either way. Do expect some early antagonism though. It's rare any kind of secondary rider isn't at least a little antagonistic even if they are on the same side. But the story question and journey is definitely going to be focused on why.

It really does. This could be lots of fun. And say what you will about the writer, he does crossovers and cameos really well as we've seen before.