Yeah, Kanzaki's story, it's a good one. It felt weirdly disconnected for most of the two-parter (there is an astonishing amount of whiplash I get between Kuuga scenes, where it's, like, a guy drinking tea pondering his life's choices, SMASH CUT, Godai is getting choked out by a monster) but I really appreciated how, to paraphrase the Simpsons, Godai was the cause of and solution to this guy's problems. It felt, for the first time since the first couple episodes, that this show was telling one story. It also shed light on why Godai is the way he is, allowing several characters to reflect on what Godai means to them... it all just felt meaningful, like there was a reason to tell this story at this time.

Also, I hope Sakurako and Godai get Kanzaki real, long-term help. It feels like that dude is still holding on by a very thin thread. He is allowing random events he can't control to decide his fundamental worth as a person. That is not a good headspace to be in!

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 13 - 14

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga13a.png
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga13b.png

Aaaaand I'm less optimistic about Kuuga after these two episodes. A whole bunch doesn't work: Sakurako is stuck behind a desk for two episodes, the body count is ludicrously high, the emotional plot for the week is misguided, several characters come off as total assholes, a bunch of the subplots move incrementally without in any way impacting this story's plot... I felt real sour after this one. Yikes.

The big flaw, as usual, is that the emotional plot for these episodes doesn't work. It really, thoroughly, infuriatingly doesn't work. It's a guy who wants to be an Unidentified Life Form because he's got an unspecified, presumably end-stage disease. For some reason, despite the public knowing nothing about them except that they are murderous monsters, incapable of communicating with humans, he's decided that they're immortal and can make him immortal, too. Insane, but, y'know, a jumping-off point for a story. After that, though, it gets dumb. Godai tries to befriend him, mostly by spouting platitudes about the preciousness of life to a clinically depressed person at the very end of his short life, a person Godai has spoken maybe three words to prior to this. It's like the Mika story, where Godai's one-size-fits-all Protecting Smiles outlook is not just unequal to the task, it's condescending and tactless. Worse, the medical examiner shoves the guy's face in a dead body, tells him that death comes for us all, and then gives a potentially suicidal man his switchblade back, basically daring him to use it to end his own life. And these are two of our heroes? What is wrong with these people?! And to end the story, the Grongi Fan nearly gets eaten by Merman Grongi, gets saved by Kuuga, and then runs off, terrified, into the city. The end! What... what exactly is that resolution supposed to make me feel? Team Kuuga ignores this guy's pain, tells him death is inevitable, and then saves his life to abandon him. Heroism!

If that were the only problem... I mean, it'd still be bad, the emotional plots are the main point of these episodes, it's basically the only thing that differentiates one monster attack from the other, but the rest of the show could maybe make up for it. No dice! Sakurako is completely sidelined, spending scene after scene talking to Jean about some ancient beetle-themed device that won't show up for at least another episode. All set-up, no payoff. The Nana scenes are cute but pointless, since she has a maybe one minute interaction with Godai in the first part, and no interaction in the second part. Like too many other things in this story, it all just exists in isolation, nothing connecting to make this feel like a complete story. It's like five writers each wrote five random short stories, and the producers shuffled the pages together and called it two episodes.

The Grongi are maybe the only thing that comes out of these episodes without making me salty, but it's close. The bodycount for these episodes is getting grotesque. I'm longing for the days of Wizard, when the monsters only tried to gaslight victims into wanting to die. This, it's too much. I don't need a razor-toothed merman eviscerating and devouring his literal boat-load of victims. I don't! It's been interesting watching the weird struggles within the Grongi Gang, as they get closer to whatever their master plan is, but the violence is starting to get overdone, and it makes Team Kuuga look laughably outmatched. Uh, well, I guess the Grongi stuff made me salty, after all. Yay!

This story was an all-around miss for me. Sorry!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga14.png

Welcome to Toshiki Inoue! You've technically already seen him on the OOO portion of W x OOO and the Ghost/Ichigou movie, but this is his first episode in a very long saga of writing for Kamen Rider. He's a very love or hate it-type writer and I, um... I'll just say I tend to not like his stuff.

"It feels like five different writers done this" is definitely one way I'd sum him up. You'll see him get much crazier after Agito but his stuff's always been pretty wild.

Chouno is definitely one of my least favourite parts of Kuuga. He's just so deeply out of place and terribly handled, and bundled with him being done by a different writer I like to just write this stuff off in my head. Didn't happen! There was no episode 13 and 14! Don't know what you're talking about!

oh god no

It was so bad! Even the monster fights were just two dude shoving each other in knee-high water. And the violence, I mean, I felt gross watching that boat attack. I don't watch Kamen Rider to feel gross! Why were there two scenes that took place during an autopsy?!

Partly, it feels like someone who thought they were doing something Serious and Mature with a kids' action program, and, what is the smilies code for "jerk-off motion"? You're not cool or edgy for making something inappropriate for your audience! It all just felt miserable and cruel for no particular benefit, and it trafficked in deeper themes without sensitivity or the ability to pay them off.

Looking at the Wiki, I am now substantially less excited for Agito, 555, and Kiva.

I'll tell you as someone who just does not like this guy's writing at all; Agito is a series that just barely misses out on my top 5. I like it for a lot of the reasons that I like Kuuga and it weirdly stands out as something that is just not like how Inoue usually writes at all. I don't know what happened but I'll happily take it.

I should also note it's not quite just those series, either. He's responsible for almost the entirety of a certain character in Kabuto, and he had a substantial effect on Ryuki. He also penned all the movies before Kabuto's, and he took over Hibiki after Episode 29 in what is regarded as a, um... ahem. Not generally liked production thing.

It should go without saying, Inoue is a -massive- part of pre-W Heisei Rider. You'll either learn to love him or hate him.

I'm hating him even post-W but that's beside the point.

I've never looked up the writer(s) behind Kuuga before because all the individual stories were mostly cohesive in tone with each other, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the people on that boat also brought aboard their babies and puppies.

I'll try not to hold these episodes against those shows, then. I remember thinking that the Nobunaga OOO movie was pleasantly bonkers, so, I don't know, maybe he wrote these two Kuuga episodes on a bad day? Maybe he gets better? Maybe I'll forget these episodes happened and not feel this visceral rage during those other shows? Who can say!

Maybe it's just my subs (could be a recent scrub), but the boat captain does mention that everyone onboard the boat was one day from retirement.

I tried to watch Kuuga but I couldn't continue. I think it has good concepts that fall flat. I love that the monsters actually kill people but it escalates way to quickly like every couple episodes swaths of people are mowed down and it becomes moot. The action scenes are really good but I think every interaction outside fighting was boring as sin and I didn't care.

I can't really blame you. I'm enjoying parts of Kuuga, but nothing's really blown me away yet. If you can dial into the "X-Files, but superheroes" vibe of Kuuga, there's a little more to like, but between the languid pace and dour tone... yeah, it's not going to be for everyone.

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 15 - 16

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga15.png

The Grongi story in this one is a whisper of a sketch of a gossamer dream. There is nothing to this one. A Grongi is running people over in a truck, Kuuga catches him and blows him up. That's it. There's a little bit of a feint in the first half, when the Grongi escapes, but he immediately gets a new truck and keeps doing the same thing until Kuuga blows him up again. There's no mystery to what's happening, and no strategy to defeating it. It's all empty calories.

Luckily, the other two threads deliver. The first, obviously: NEW BIKE. I like the design a lot. Way more than TryChaser, which is just a dirtbike. TryGouram (thank you, wiki) is this beast of a machine, regal and dangerous. It looks weighty, menacing. If a superhero showed up on TryChaser, I would assume he got lost on his way to a touring stunt show. If a superhero shows up on TryGouram, I am running for my life because a deadly monster attack is imminent. A big, beefy bike is exactly what I want in a motorcycle-riding superhero.

Bikes in modern Kamen Rider series are, at best, an afterthought. Most Riders just leap into frame to start a fight, or run up to a monster and then henshin. There might be a few scenes, especially in the early episodes, where a Rider shows off their bike, but there's rarely an origin story to where the bike came from. (OOO and Gaim had one, Build sort-of had one.) It's cool to see how big a deal the bikes used to be, how integral Riding A Bike was to these series. I don't, like, miss it in the newer shows. I don't care if Kamen Rider as a franchise has outgrown actually riding anything. But, still, it's cool that Kuuga devoted a full two-parter to Godai's new ride.

Well, "devoted". I mean, there's still the other major part of this story, where we get a bit more insight into Ichijou's dedication to his job. Some if it's because he's honoring his dead cop father (ALL DADS ARE DEAD). Some if it's because that's how his whole family is, where his mother collapses while on-shift as a nurse and then gets out of her hospital bed to continue her shift, even though no hospital on the planet would be okay with her doing that. But, mostly, hilariously, that's just who Ichijou is: someone with the single-minded focus to work on after-action paperwork instead of visiting his hospitalized mother. Like, it's not even as though he's tracking down a dangerous monster, he is filling out paperwork about a monster who just blew up. That is not dedication, that is obsessive-compulsive disorder. That is an illness. It's not some wacky character trait. It's not "oh, Ichijou takes his job seriously." It is way beyond a lack of work/life balance. It is troubling.

I'm scared for Ichijou, you guys!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga16.png

You gotta have a bike!

It's literally 50% of their name!

It's Kamen RIDER

RIDER, sure. But what if they're not just riding bikes anymore? What if they're riding justice?

Lady Justice?

Well now we've entered another genre of film entirely.

lol

Shame on you! You've disrespected justice, and a Kamen Rider's devotion to it. -10 Rider Points, and Takeshi Hongo glowers at you disdainfully. Please adjust your TokuNation Scorecard appropriately.

I love that big, bad beetle! I also love the TryChaser but obviously it's bigger brother is a lot more impressive. The dirt-bike's obvious advantage is being part of much more acrobatic stunts, but sometimes it's just good and visceral to see Kuuga ram a Grongi with his gigantic, metal, engine-powered mount.

Hongo would laugh and we'd hang out in the Tachibana racing club and drink some beer.

I think the big fake bike just looks more real than the actual dirt bike? That armored warbike has heft, has majesty. The dirt bike... it's cool that he can do tricks, but I'm not afraid of it. It's like the more punishing a Rider's ride looks, the less I see it as a prop. When it's a legit bike, I don't know. Seems cheap, seems fake.

The judges have reviewed your appeal and it has been denied. To compensate for court costs, an additional -1 Rider Point penalty will be added to the initial verdict.

I've always loved the idea that a bike is just a modern horse, and the beetle is totally compatible with that. That's the natural evolution, baby!

It's, I think, a weird point in favor of Kuuga's relentless, at times exhausting, need to be methodical and procedural about every element of this motorcycle-riding superhero sci-fi/horror show. Someone clearly asked, "Wait, how can Kuuga's dirt bike get a boss mystical upgrade when the upgrade would need to have been created thousands of years before dirt bikes?" And so, yeah, "Horse armor." It's commendable.

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 17 - 19

Well, Episode 17 is a clip show with a couple new fight scenes, so there's really nothing to talk about there. We can skip that one. On to the next two-parter!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga18.png

Godai is sidelined for this two-parter, poisoned by a Kissing Grongi, and it's a weird choice. I mean, it's not an unusual choice. Rider shows (that I've seen) frequently take the main Rider out of commission for a story, to better spotlight the supporting cast and talk about how each of them views the main Rider. (I just watched Build, and they did a similar "the main guy is poisoned and the rest of the cast reacts to it" story, to mixed results.) And, you know, that's what this one does! Godai's hospitalization/"death" causes the other characters to work in his absence to stop the threat, while reflecting on Godai's value to the team. Luckily, Godai resurrects just in time to stop the monster and save the day. A solid story.

It's just, that's practically every Kuuga story. While the threat to Godai is new, the concept of everyone else doing their job in relative isolation to stop the threat is more common than one that's got Godai in a primary role! Those types of stories are only maybe the last few episodes. The first, like, twelve episodes were ones where Ichijou tracked down a monster, Sakurako translated bits of ancient inscriptions, Pole Pole scenes happened for no reason, and Godai showed up at the end to Rider Kick a monster to death. That's the Kuuga formula! This story tried to position itself as an alteration to the routine, to make Godai's absence mean something, but he's mostly absent from this show. He only just recently became the star. Why do this type of story now? Like I said, weird choice.

Still, it is solid. The pace is consistent, the acting and direction has flashes of craftsmanship (the scene where Creepy Medical Examiner has to tell Ichijou that Godai's dead, and they frame it heavy to each side, and Ichijou's silent in his car, really emotional stuff), the Grongi scenes are compelling, and the fight songs are terrific. Have I mentioned that? The last couple stories, there's this guitar-heavy fight song that's energetic in a late-80s hair-metal way. It's kitschy but exciting, and I totally dig it.

So, yeah, it's not a bad story, it's just weird to do a "Godai is missing" story when he's almost always missing from the story on this show.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga19.png

I'd link you what I believe is the song you're talking about, but, uh, the video uses an image of Kuuga's final form so...

Either way, if it's the one I think you're talking about, yeah. I fuckin' love that track! It's essentially Kuuga's insert before inserts were a thing and it always gets stuck in my head from time to time. It's just got such a good beat and pace to it.

Is it this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hxi3kpBPiQ

This is generally the track people think when they think Kuuga. Although bits and pieces of it are mixed in all over the place, which is one of the great things about the soundtrack. I adore Toshihiko Sahashi's work, and one thing about Kuuga in particular is the really strong use of motifs for everything. He's also just crazy varied in terms of what styles he can do. He did the BGM for Agito, Hibiki, Den-O, and Zi-O too, so look forward to that.

It's not that one, but that one is also great! That track has a great soaring, building quality to it. The one from the Episode 18 fight is, honestly, barely even a song? It's a very brief bit of, like, shredding guitar. It's got a more aggressive feel, and it makes the largely dialogue-free fight feel more dangerous. Both are good, though! Thanks for finding that!

I'll give this one more shot, but "exciting guitar shreddage" describes a lot of tracks from Kuuga, so this might be hard to narrow down. :lol

Yep! That's it! Amazing work! +5 Rider Points, and Shinnosuke Tomari declares your brain to be in Top Gear. Please adjust your TokuNation Scorecard appropriately.

Anyway, it's such a cool bit of fight music. I miss the dialogue and driver noises and stuff of the later Heisei fight scenes, so aggressive music like that makes the fight scenes feel, I don't know, thicker, like there's more going on.

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODE 20

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga20a.png

So, uh, yeah. Sorry! This last month has been relentlessly busy (built a new store, my birthday happened, Thanksgiving, etc.) and I had to take a time-out on, like, everything nonessential. No Kuuga for Kamen Rider Die, unfortunately. Luckily, things have settled into merely So Much Work and I'm able to get back on the Kuuga viewings.

It was incredibly gracious of the production team to time this episode for my return to the series (that's how time works right?), what with it being a relaxed check-in with every character and every plotline. I was a little afraid I'd've forgotten too much in the last month, but I was able to follow what was happening in the episode.

Did, y'know, did anything happen in this episode? I liked that this one took pains to show that there were stakes to Godai's death and resurrection, even if Godai is his typical goofy self, but it maybe spent too long on acknowledging stakes. There needs to be a middle ground between Neo Heisei's "walk it off” attitude to being cosmically eradicated and reconstructed, and half an episode of people telling a Kamen Rider that they're glad he isn't dead anymore.

Maybe if the episode was structured differently? It's very, very front-loaded with dialogue scenes and emotional connections, with a monster attack only occurring at the very end. Worse, it's a monster we've already seen Kuuga beat, and one who doesn't even blow up at the end. It's an anticlimactic fight (which is noted in a way that I assume they'll come back to) in an episode that desperately needed some kind of big action finish.

(There was a very cool shot, though. After Kuuga defeats the monster, as he's standing next to Ichijou, the camera pushes in on Ichijou past Kuuga, then pulls back out and it's Godai standing there. One fluid camera move, no edits or effects. Totally immersive. Big round of applause for that shot.)

So, yeah, weird one to come back to. It felt like a nice refresher, but it was hardly the rousing superhero show that'd get me back in a good routine.

I am trying to get back in a good routine! I promise not to disappear again. Unlike Ichijou and Godai's dead fathers (ALL DADS ARE DEAD), I won't abandon you.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga20b.png

Wait, you have a store?!?

Worse, I have two!

If anyone's in Chicago and wants to talk Kamen Rider at a comics shop, nothing would make me happier.

Oh hey, was just wondering about you the other day! Was worried I'd scared you off, haha

Congrats on the new store!

Honestly I think at this point that Kuuga as a whole might not be your kind of rousing superhero show, but I hope you'll have found plenty to like about it by the time you reach the end.

Congrats and all the best with whatever more work comes your way!

I definitely like Kuuga, but much like with Fourze I'm pretty surprised when people tell me it's their hands-down favorite Rider Series. I feel like both shows suffer a bit from leaning too hard in one direction.

But hey, I like Kiva and Faiz, so everyone's different.

Also, I'm glad to see you're back Die, this is my first time commenting on this thread but hardly my first visit.

Thanks! I really thought I'd be able to juggle night and day, 24-7 work with 30 episodes of a Japanese superhero show, but that was maybe a miscalculation. I'm excited to be back watching this weird-ass horror show, though!

Thanks! Yeah, it maybe is never going to be my favorite Kamen Rider show. But, like, I don't hate it. It's just so weird, in its bizarre dialogue scenes and anti-humor and bonkers violence and confusing commitment to procedure at the expense of pacing... It's, I don't know. I'm glad I'm watching it, since it's a Kamen Rider show and I really like those, but it's so long before the franchise added all of things I think of as "a Kamen Rider show". It's like telling someone you like hamburgers and they hand you an uncooked beef patty. It may eventually become a hamburger, but it needs so many more things done to it first.

And, I'll acknowledge, that it's definitely a Your Mileage May Vary sort-of situation. I'm someone who came in through Ex-Aid and Double, so, yeah, this is an adjustment. I do like trying to figure this show out, enjoy what it's trying to do without judging it unfairly. (That Godai/Kuuga switch-out shot! So cool!) Hopefully these posts aren't too frustrating to the Kuuga fans out there. I don't know that I can ever see the show you do, but I really want to see what it's doing.

Thanks! I'll try not to take another unadvertised break again. I really want to try and wrap Kuuga up before Christmas, then maybe a week or so off before Agito. Fingers crossed!

The Kuuga as a favorite, while it's not me, I can see how folks would say it. It's definitely doing a different kind of thing to the modern stuff, while not feeling as janky as the Showa stuff can. It's a very clear middle-ground to the horror aspects of the Showa era and the form-change-heavy Heisei era. Not to keep making food references (I should really get lunch) but Kuuga, for the right kind of fan, is a very Chocolate In My Peanut Butter type of show.

(Fourze is just great, though. They defeat the main enemy by telling him that they're proud of him. It's probably in my Top 5 shows, and I can easily see it being some folks' favorite. Without getting too deep in this parenthetical, I really enjoy how committed Fourze is to its themes and motifs. It's Degrassi, if they had a clubhouse on the moon and fought monsters. It's about friendship, and accepting people, and how no one's beyond redemption, and it's doing it within the language and framework of both a high school dramedy and a superhero show. High degree of difficulty, and there are some late-game pacing issues, but it never didn't feel like a Kamen Rider show to me.)

I'm real interested in seeing Faiz and Kiva. They both have (from what little I've checked out), uh, reputations. But, like, so did Ghost, and I'm incredibly glad I watched that show.

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 21 - 22

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga22.png

A fairly standard Kuuga two-parter (there's a Grongi murdering people, the team investigates, a short fight, Kuuga explodes the monster) that has a total grab bag of subplots (Nana's drama teacher has been murdered, Enokida is a shitty mom, Jean failed a child in the past) that, like, it's hard to see the story that's being told here. Events are washing over me without feeling like there's a coherent theme being explored. It's hard to talk about this story without just, like, recapping it. That's not fun for me! So, here're two things I wanted to pull out from these episodes.

First, the Grongi plotline is coming on incredibly strong. It's shot beautifully in episode 21, super-saturated colors and bizarre angles, a weird fever-dream haze to the scenes. We start to get a bit more info, just enough to make the Grongi seem like more than bloodthirsty monsters. There's a bunch of stuff in this two-parter that feels undercooked or unimportant (So much Jean! Why so much Jean!), but the Grongi scenes just snap into focus. Their culture feels appropriately alien, making any new nugget of info something to be treasured. It's a slow-burn that has somehow not made me impatient. I'm really enjoying how this mega-arc is progressing.

Second, it's weird to me how much of the investigative stuff in this series takes place in the present tense. For the most part, we don't get any, "Hey, here's info we learned off-screen and now you can know it so we can get the plot moving." If someone learns something crucial to the plot, we have to see them learn it, then see them tell Ichijou, who then conveys it to Godai. Similarly, if something's happening somewhere, we have to see the police find out about it, see them deploy Ichijou, see Ichijou tell Godai, see Godai ride to the location, then see Godai encounter a monster. It's an, um, interesting choice? As someone who fairly recently was watching Ghost ("Takeru! A monster is attacking!" - how 85% of storylines start) and Wizard (five seconds of monster followed by Haruto jumping into frame), this sort of point-by-point plot progression is the single largest adjustment for me to make. I don't feel like I'm doing too great. It's deliberate in a way that I don't see enough value in, relative to how long it takes for a monster fight to happen. I don't know. I've said before that this show has more of an X-Files vibe to it, but even Mulder and Scully could be in a place and just tell us in dialogue how and why they're there. I am not going to assume Godai's full of shit if he tells me he got a call from Ichijou to go to the place we're seeing him in. He's a trustworthy guy!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga21.png

I did read once that Kuuga has been called the most realistic Kamen Rider show and I can kind of see why, I especially like how it tells you the time things happen.

Yeah, it's almost like it's not a TV program about a superhero fighting monsters, but a reenactment of the time Japan had a superhero fighting monsters.

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 23 - 24

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga23.png

Conflicted feelings about this one!

For, like, 90% of it I was going along with its pleasant sense of impending doom, the ways both Sakurako and the Grongi seemed to be waiting for another shoe to drop, the weird-even-for-Kuuga overexplaining of plot points, the standard Pole Pole anti-humor... regular Kuuga stuff. A little transitional, sure, but we're at the (roughly) halfway point of the series, so it's fitting for things to get more... something. Dangerous, or darker, or whatever. (I mean, over 1400 people are dead by the end of episode 24, so, more dangerous?!) I thought this would be one that didn't thrill me, necessarily, but one that was doing the work to progress the story. A workhorse of a story.

But then we hit the end of the story, and I can't believe how mad I got. Furious. I was briefly contemplating learning fluent Japanese, flying to Japan, and questioning everyone still alive who was involved in this story until I got the answers I deserved.

So, this one's got a Grongi knocking off folks who rode together on a train, while Godai tries to figure out why he's got problems fighting as Purple Kuuga. The show spends, again, a weird-even-for-Kuuga amount of time laying out how the Grongi picks its targets. We see every step, then we have to see Ichijou and another cop slowly, incrementally, put the sequence of events back together. Which, totally redundant, but, y'know, that's Kuuga's thing. I'm not mad that they spent so long investigating clues that viewers already saw when they could just tell us Ichijou pieced it together, and convey his knowledge via a dialogue scene with Godai, or a TV news bulletin that they also gave us. It's only frustrating because of how they didn't use the time they spent telling us stuff twice.

Specifically, they didn't tell us how Kuuga overcame his power shortage. They didn't tell us how the hero of the show became powerful enough to stop a rampaging monster. Godai goes to see Enokida, she sticks him in an electrical room (never explained why she has one), he turns purple and gold (which I guess is better?), defeats the Grongi... then he, Sakurako, and Ichijou just stand around for five seconds until the episode ends.

What? What?! WHAT.

They spent the whole episode double-explaining a fairly simple The Grongi Is Tracking And Killing People plot, including an entire scene of Ichijou interviewing a shop owner to find out that people were giving out lighters in a train station DESPITE ALREADY SHOWING US THAT SPECIFIC PIECE OF EVIDENCE IN ITS ENTIRETY, but they don't bother putting in one line of Godai explaining how and why he's fine now?! They don't spend ten more seconds to explain why Enokida has A LIGHTNING ROOM?! They don't skip the pointless Pole Pole scene, where literally nothing of consequence happens, to have ANYONE explain why Godai is more powerful now?!

Like, I can probably fill in the blanks. They kept referring to a weird lightning prophecy, there's a "joke" mention of the defibrillation having lingering effects, whatever. I'm not completely confused by why a superhero on a Kamen Rider show got more powerful midway through a series. It's just, for a two-parter that stretched out a simple Grongi Spree Killing (which happens basically weekly now, I'm not sure how there's anyone left to kill) to over 40 minutes, and couldn't let one piece of investigative information not get explained in minute detail, it is infuriating that the superhero part of the superhero show is left to narrative hand-waving and viewer inference. I don't mind a show that feels like it has to spell everything out, but then they have to spell EVERYTHING out. You can't double up on one thing to shortchange another.

That ending was... I did not have a good time with it.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kuuga/kuuga24.png

Like I always say, you gotta treat it like a police investigative drama than a Kamen Rider show.

You know, I just checked, and it turns out this is another pair of episodes written by Toshiki Inoue (he also wrote 18 in-between this and his first two-parter). It's going to be interesting seeing how you react to Agito right after Kuuga, because this guy seems to be on the fast track to becoming your arch-nemesis. :lol

Anyways, I'm tempted to try and argue some points about these episodes, but considering I'd be doing that based on my memories of watching them years ago at this point, it probably wouldn't be that fruitful. I will say I remember the explanation for what was going on with Kuuga's powers feeling fairly clear-cut.

Well that's not fair; he's my arch-nemesis!! Though, I did like Agito... mostly because it feels like he's super reigned-in and none of his usual tropes are present, or at least not as extreme as they usually are. As if he calmed down for a second before someone asked him what this "faiz script proposal" was and he immediately burst into excitement once again.

This guy seems frustrating enough to generate multiple nemeses. I am willing to share!

It's like he's building a square table, but he puts three legs on one side and one leg on the other side. It's got the right number of legs, and it doesn't immediately collapse, but it could be so much more stable my dude it is not that hard to build a table.