I want to make a joke about how depressing it is for a cast if your favorite Rider is the bike... but my favorite Rider from Ex-Aid is also the bike, so it'd be a little hypocritical.

Also, I'm only four episodes in, but anyone besides Keitaro giving someone else credit for anything seems like it'd be WILDLY out of character.

Does it make me a bad person that I'm disappointed in how much of Yuka's gym class rampage happened off screen? After two episodes of unrelenting shit from those girls, it feels like we aren't getting the full catharsis from a few quick cuts, a dead hand, and a couple shots of Yuka closing doors. I don't need something out of a slasher film, but after Yuuji's very on-screen revenge it feels a little unfair that Yuka, who got it way worse than a crappy ex, was the one the show chose to go stylish on. I would've settled for at least one shot of her grabbing a mean girl by the throat before the cutaway.

Faiz's trailers lie a lot. The one for episode 3 also made it look like Keitaro was going to successfully transform into Faiz, too.

Those first four episodes of Faiz before they get to Tokyo will always be pretty special to me. Just such a nice little arc that makes getting all the pieces on the board an interesting story in its own right. I'm really glad you've taken such an immediate liking to the main cast, because I think whether you do or don't care about them is ultimately what makes or breaks Faiz. It's one of the more character-driven Rider shows out there, after all.

I'm also really proud of how you reacted to the Yuka stuff. It feels a little weird to say, but I think you kind of need to be able to laugh at this stuff to appreciate it. Like, it is unbelievably unbelievable, to a level even Inoue doesn't always go to, and while I'm not sure myself exactly how seriously you're supposed to take it, I do think having it be so extreme provides a very clear, strong foundation for Yuka's character going forward.

All I'm saying is I'm 100% with Mari on this one -- I'll shove Faiz onto someone else in point zero three seconds flat, but you gotta convince me to let you use the bike for 5 minutes. It'd take until TFP Arcee to get a bike transformer this good, I'm not budging!

That's a fair criticism. Part of me wonders if the show choosing to let it exist in the imagination is to avoid the visual of a teenager killing other teenages... but then I remembered this is Faiz, which will completely show young people jumping off of buildings, so it's probably not going to cut footage out of a sense of decorum.

I think I could defend the choice as something that has less heat behind it than Horsepower's revenge, less This Person Wronged Me And Needs To Die, and more a sense of Society As Represented By These Girls Needs To Pay. Like, the Yuuji scenes were about vengeance, while I think Yuka viewed her actions as justice. Yuuji's scenes therefore had catharsis, while Yuka's problems didn't really get solved.

Or they just couldn't spare the money to show all of that monster-suited action when they had to find the budget for FaizCyKill?

It's been interesting to me how slowly the show is rolling out what it's trying to do, you know? It's very deliberate, how it keeps letting the characters ignore the action in favor of setting up their motivations. It's a neat choice. I don't think it would work if the main characters weren't so different from what you'd expect out of a Kamen Rider show, which... maybe that combination of Slow Build-Up and Different Character Types is exactly why a lot of folks don't seem to dig Faiz?

Look, if we're going to talk about Transformers Prime, my way into my other favorite franchise, things are going to get quickly and irrevocably off-topic.

(My favorite Arcee bit is when Jack is working on his bike, and Arcee's trying to help but she's not a mechanic. Jack, incredulous, asks her how she can be a motorcycle and not know how to build a carburetor. "You're a human being, Jack. Can you build me a small intestine?" Killed me.)

That's an interesting read on it and something to think about as the show progresses.

Just realized while reading that quote, that, uh, the final line should read "Yuka's problems didn't really get solved", which maybe changes my explanation a bit? Sorry for the lack of clarity! I need to be better about editing!

Oh no, I was referring to the vengeance vs. justice angle.

I'm trying not to spoil things, but there's still a ways to go with those characters before we get to their main status quo for the series.

(I think - I'm going on a combination of rewatching along with you and remembering stuff that I watched 11 years ago)

Wow, that was fast.

Yuka's little sister was so lucky the car knocked her down or else she would've been murdered in the gym like everyone else. She totally would've deserved it after getting Yuka kicked out for saving her but a reckless driver and sprained ankle pretty much spared her that karmic death.

It's crazy how extreme the bullies go to torment Yuka at every opportunity. This episode is always engraved in my mind for how terrible they make her life and even though my school life wasn't as bad as what she had to endure, it does bring back a few bad memories. That's why I find her so relatable.

Just to recap: They cut her bag, take her money, her parents don't care about her, they throw basketballs at her, she saves her little sister and gets kicked out as reward, agrees to go to gym so they can abuse her some more and gets her shoes stolen anyway, which are shown cut when she goes to gym.

That was the moment when she snapped and murdered them in vengeance. I don't blame her. Of course it was the wrong decision since murder is bad but they pushed her too far. They were terrible human beings. The only good thing in Yuka's life was Keitarou, a pen pal she only talked to in emails.

Speaking of Keitarou, he's an example of what makes a good human being, perhaps the nicest guy in the show, often to a fault. He goes out of his way to help others. No problem is too small or big for him. He has the courage to fight as a hero of justice and Takumi is fine with letting him be Faiz. The only problem is, as Cactus lampshades, "not everyone can be Faiz" which he proves immediately with his successful henshin. Like Mari, Keitarou is lacking something, but the fact that he tried is commendable enough. He'd make a great Kamen Rider, but Faiz wasn't meant for him. Takumi never wanted to be Faiz, but he's the best they got right now.

After Supra in Ryuki, here comes NSX (facelifted)!
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...101159/nsx.png

Also even if it doesn't really get you, how the f*** would you equalize Keitaro's suffering with Yuka's?

The 30cm less than Too Far Away part, again that reminds me of most of the (bratty teenage) girls I met IRL (it's started by don't get too close thing after all), and just like Takumi, it's a potential turn-off material to me (And even to Takumi... he wants to get off her BS. Also I only refer to this particular moment not to her overall, like particular moment of Takumi wanting to run away. Tbf she tried to give thanks a bit here, and helped Keitaro). Also the part where her wrist gets injured for real.... that hilarously reminds me of Ryuki's penchant for irony (particularly, Goro's Zolda sthick), but this time it's just an injury rather than actual death.

Like Yuji, I feel that, this moment, isn't really to get sympathy, but to show how horrible people in this world of Inoue's creation, that the real monsters are... humans. And obviously to get another fighter to join in (the end part at her "death", iirc, Death by Despair exists). Also people have said that Faiz is Kamen Rider Soap Opera, and Yuka's story is really reminiscent of it (especially, the place I live, where that kind is rampant on TV). A dysfunctional family where there's heavy favoring to the other sibling and ignore/abuse the other one (typically the main character), also typically that kind of abuse happens when you're a step child of that family (I read some sources where it says that Michiko is Yuka's half-sister) to the point where at one point, a family stated to me long ago that stepparents are always evil, also the excessive showing of bullying, and the emphasis of sulking about it (and many inner thoughts monologue). A̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶a̶n̶z̶a̶k̶i̶ ̶s̶i̶b̶l̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶l̶l̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶l̶.̶

For Keitaro, there's already side characters, not leads, that's given The Kamen Rider Theme before, like Minori in Kuuga. T̶e̶c̶h̶n̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶K̶a̶m̶e̶n̶ ̶R̶i̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶l̶s̶,̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶s̶k̶. His suffering is nowhere near as close to get his van damaged, one of his clothes getting squashed by a car, and getting into fight with Takumi (that tears his cloth), it's probably just a bad day compared to above.

Takumi now just fights by himself and instantly mastered Faiz Gear.... and the second finisher, Grand Impact appears. Unfortunately it's nowhere near close as cool as his Crimson Smash to me, where it's just usual powered punch. Oh I also forget to mention this before (all the finishers have this), I think the part where Faiz' symbol appears in the defeated monster before it explodes, I also like it despite it being simple, because it's so fitting that, as the monster no longer exists, it's crossed out (Faiz' phi symbol is like a crossed sign).

And it's neat that they're doing it this way, where instead of the monsters taking action and we eventually find out their motivation, here we start with the motivation. Like, it's getting the monsters closer to what I enjoyed about the Phase 2 Heisei approach, where there's some core trauma they're manipulating or inflaming, rather than just attacking people. I appreciate this more deliberate style!

Yeah, it's weird how universal it is to have had a not-great high school experience. Maybe it says something about my upbringing, but the horrible mistreatment Yuka suffers at home feels impossibly terrible, so as to be absurdly funny, while when I watch the high school stuff it's just Yeah I Can See That. I didn't have it particularly rough as a teenage boy, nothing that really stuck with me, but everything that happens to Yuka in school feels like what could happen to a teenage girl. They got it real bad in life!

I think you need to have the narrative counterweight of Keitaro. You always need someone in the cast to push against the other characters' assumptions and strategies. What I love about Faiz is that in any other show, Keitaro would be the hero character and Takumi would be the disgruntled anti-hero. Keitaro would be the voice of the plot, the focal point for the story, and Takumi would be the one acting in opposition. Here, they switch it, and Keitaro is the contrarian, asking terrible people to be slightly-less terrible, while Takumi is the Only If I Have To spirit of the show. It's such a fun inversion of the Kamen Rider formula.

I was more or less just talking about the transformation and how each form looks (... and subsequently, their toys. Fun fact, SHF Auto-Vajin can completely transform!) but if we're talking about character stuff, god, there's no way Ultra Magnus doesn't top my TFP character list. Loved his arc. Sort of similar to what I enjoy in a lot of Secondary Riders, actually; where they're trying to do the right thing but they need to step back from being very tight on authority and learn to embrace their found family.


What was my point here again? Right! Auto-Vajin deserved to be on the Lost Light. V3 and Den-O got to be there!

I definitely wouldn't! The comma was there to separate "the hilarious suffering of Yuka" and "Keitaro, the world's most impossibly dedicated dry cleaner". Sorry if that was unclear!

What's interesting to me is that so far Keitaro is the only one who has that Rider sensibility. On other shows, yeah, the supporting cast frequently follows the example of the primary Rider and fights for justice, protects smiles, saves innocents, etc. Here, it's just Keitaro. And the other two hero characters look at him like he's tragically confused. It's so fun!

Yeah, that punch isn't as cool as the kick, for sure. And the killed monster being Zeroed Out is a very cool effect.

Okay, first, did not know that there were two Kamen Riders in Lockdown's crew, so thanks for that. (To be fair, I was reading MTMTE way before I was watching Kamen Rider, and I still haven't watched Den-O, but this is neat info!)

I'm also very much looking forward to your essay "The Trials Of Authority: Ultra Magnus, Kamen Rider Accel, and the Value Of Flexibility In The Pursuit Of Justice".

I was, in fact; mostly thinking about Birth, Chaser and Vulcan as I was typing that! Heck, Geiz as well. Ichijou doesn't loosen up that much but he also fits the bill. Ah, Meteor too! Rogue--


THERE'S SO MANY

It's almost like the primary Riders are largely characterized by their ability to adapt to new situations and empathize with others, leaving the secondary Riders to explore themes of rigidity and questioning of authori---nah, it can't be that.

I note a distinct lack of feline projectiles heading my way. I am not surprised, just disappointed.

But onto the main topic, I do appreciate that after three seasons of only slight different heroic nice guys who want to protect people just because they are so nice and it's the right thing to do out of sheer angelic niceness, we get a main rider who is nothing like that. Not sure whether self-centered jerk is where I would have gone with it, but it does break all that up and we get more complex and varied protagonists from here on out. And having a group of monsters are secondary protagonists is definitely a different way to do things. It starts the trend of monsters as people who we get to know that many rider shows after this have done. Parad and Graphite owe a lot to this show, among others.

A lot of deliveries are being delayed as a result of the covid-19 outbreak. Please be patient! I'm sure OmegaEclipse is doing their best.

My avatar is a monster who chose to make art instead of doing evil (where my Rider Time: Cubi at, Toei), which is not just the most depressingly on-point description of myself that I've ever accidentally made, but it's also what I want from the monsters in Kamen Rider. I want dimensionality in all aspects of storytelling, and that includes the one- or two-episode chumps who usually just exist to be a cool suit that gets detonated.

So much of what Kamen Rider is about to me, empathy, needs multi-faceted antagonists to really work. The Orphnoch stuff so far, with Yuka and (especially) with Yuuji... it feels at times like the Very Serious a-plot to Team Faiz's Very Funny b-plot.

Some very exciting and unusual choices being made on a concept level with this show!

The cat projectiles were launched; however, due to a mistake in the aiming caluclations; they are instead aimed at our glorious comic book overlord, kamen rider die. As an apology we are sending a second cat hand delievered by kamen rider ouja

Oh no!

OH NO!

One of my first few posts here was gushing about the first few episodes of Faiz, and while I didn't articulate them as well as you, 90% of your impression was what I felt too. Love the tragicomedy vibe, the insanely cool way the suit and henshin sequence come together, and the playful deconstruction of hero/villain archetypes (good news: more of that coming!).

At the risk of exposing myself as a pure sucker to melodramatic bait, I truly feel the Yuka/Keitaro bit. OTT moments of Unholy Family and Classmate Alliance aside (although yeah, the girls-to-girl bullying depicted here wasn't really that far from the reality I've seen), it's genuinely heart-breaking how much of a complete doormat she is, and how she felt the need to invent a fanfiction of her life just to keep up with Keitaro's sincere enthusiasm and endlessly positive vibe.

As for Keitaro, he initially felt like a caricature/parody of a Kamen Rider persona, but he quickly won me over. Dude really walks the talk, and just look at how crushed he was, to find out he can't get the power to do what he really wants. Just an excellent foil to Takkun and Mari, and show's got an absolute mileage early on milking the way the three bounce off of each other; I really wouldn't mind watching a sit-com series about just the three of them running a laundry service.

That was me, and yeah, I think I now have a good idea on what Amazons' like! Love your description of Faiz; four episodes in, and we've got two selfish jerks, a sucker, a doormat, and a luckless loser. This really is Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers, but what can I say, they're my kind of jerks and losers.

It just... it feels so personal, so auteur in the story it's telling and how it's telling it. Nothing in this show, from the heroes to the villains to the belt to the pacing, none of it feels safe. Like, the most sympathetic people on this show are the literal monstrous killers. Making this show, they are flying on wings of God They're All Terrible People, and if they run the risk of those wings melting from flying too close to the sun, well, innovation sometimes isn't pretty.

There's something here I didn't touch on before, and it's the neat Romeo and Juliet-style Doomed Romance the show's got brewing. Keitaro is a pure-hearted good guy who wants to protect smiles and stop monsters, while Yuka is someone who just massacred a gym class. Star-crossed lovers, man! It's a big emotion, and I'm sure this show is going to do something suitably memorable with it.

Like, it's a testament to how much the show wants to dig into these characters that Keitaro is both a parody of a Kamen Rider AND a full-formed character. As the heroes are slowly won over by his Aw Shucks heroism and, uh, basic human decency, we get permission to see his over-enthusiasm less as a laughable handicap, and more as an innate empathy striving for a way to help others from a dude who unfortunately has zero chill. There's some effort in the early Faiz episodes to emphasize channeling your energy effectively, and Keitaro's a great example of someone who doesn't yet know how to channel his energy.

They are all great! It's a great cast. I'd imagine Takumi doesn't have a lot of boosters, compared to other primary Riders, but I love him. It's hard to play the straight man, to play the killjoy, and I think he's found a great way to manage that character type AND be the superhero of the show AND not get blown off the screen by the flashier parts.

I like "Kamen Rider: Jerks and Losers"! It's very accurate! Part of me thinks, and it's something I thought of during the exchange in Episode 4 I screencapped, when Keitaro asks Takumi for help and Takumi rolls his eyes, that the show and hero should be called "Kamen Rider FINE.", all resentment and aggravation on the "FINE.", period as part of the title. Everything I love about the show is balled up in Takumi eyerolls, how theatrical they are, how he could not give two shits about trying to protect people's feelings, let alone their smiles.

I'm also partial to Kamen Rider I Didn't Come Here To Make Friends.

(Oh! And Amazons is worth checking out at some point! I enjoyed the first season, at least. Some folks really seem to loathe it, and it's probably not for everyone, but I thought it had some really solid ideas in the first season.)

Yuka and Yuuji finally meeting up at the end of Ep 4 gave me chills for multiple reasons. At this point, the show had put a lot of effort to make them sympathetic figures and justify their actions, but it's also made clear that these two have cold, deep-seated anger, for the rest of the world (Yuka moreso than Yuuji) and they've basically reached a point of no return in terms of what they've did. It's a brilliant set-up for the eventual collision with our dorky group of 'heroes', and at the time I was watching, I got simultaneously excited and scared for what's going to happen next.

(I dig that you're mentioning the belt, by the way, it has such a noticeably strong presence throughout the series it might as well be a character in its own right. A thematic axis, if you will).

....not going to comment much on this for fear of accidentally spoiling anything, but yeah, man. Yeah.

This show was pretty mean to its characters, and sometimes it does feel like it's mocking them, but I also feel that it's got a lot of genuine love and sympathy for this collection of flawed, broken, people; just not in ways that we'd typically assume from a series of this ilk.

One of my highlights in watching Faiz was how my first impression of Takumi as stoic no-nonsense badass was hilariously wrong, as he's in truth just a super theatrical dork. There's like, this Intense Dramatic Action-y Moment, and Takumi just had me rolling all of sudden with his antics (and it's not even framed as a comedic moment with wacky sound effect and all! Takumi doesn't need that to get laffs!). Him being a nekojita is exactly the way I like a comedic character quirk/trait to be written, too; it's such a small and grounded thing, but always made me smile every time it comes up.

If you think the noise during the Exceed Charge sequence is noisy, then it’s probably for the best you’re not trucking with Showa for the moment. The show I’m currently working through has an accordion at the end of his transformation (and the start of the OP), and it kind of gets irritating after 4 episodes (since that’s where I’m at).

Personally, I love that winding tech noise Faiz's gear does. RIP to your ears though, Die.

The Faiz Driver voice is just SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH as butter.

Unfortunately, while it's a little contrived how all the terrible abuse Yuka suffered is compressed in to 2 days, that abuse could totally happen in real life to a person with no friends or popularity. This is an introductory arc in a superhero show rather than a school drama so I guess Inoue wanted to make it as dramatic as possible. I talked about how it brings back bad memories, but when I first watched it in 2015, I was still in high school. It's a totally different experience rewatching it now since I can identify with not just who she is at the start but who she's going to become as the show progresses.

Keitarou acts a lot like a typical heroic Kamen Rider and his name even has the first 3 kana of "keitai" which makes it even more ironic that he can't become the cellphone Rider. He plays an important role in the Faiz trio as an equivalent to Kiba in the Orphenoch trio, being the moral center of the dynamic that keeps Takumi from being too apathetic and unmotivated. He may not be Faiz, but he's as much a part of what Faiz is as Takumi. There are "Kamen Riders" and then there are Kamen Riders and that's the ideal that he wants to imprint on Takumi.

Yuuji's performance is, like, 80% of why that end scene works. He's got this way of... it's not that he's underplaying the melodrama, but it's like he's internalizing it? You see it in his expressions and in his delivery, where it's like he's still trying to process everything he's going through. That, for me, it tamps down on the easy hysteria of what Inoue's building, and it creates space for me to empathize with Yuuji's journey. That dude basically has me completely won over.

The other 20%, it's the super smart way the episode leaves out Yuuji until that final moment. It's half Hell Yes and half Oh Shit, and I love it.

I love the Faiz Driver voice! I unbelievably hate the whine of the Exceed Charge! I might have to have my remote handy for Faiz Fights now, be ready to shoot the volume down at the finish.

Yeah, Yuka's story has this weird thing where the specifics are insane and hilarious, while the story is intense and sympathetic. I mean, I'm going to remember her getting hit with MULTIPLE BASKETBALLS probably forever, but the rest of what I think about is the broad strokes of a shitty school life, an abusive home life, and the boy she hopes will make it all better. There's like an alchemy to her story, where I laughed until I wanted to cry. Very weird experience.

It's weird, because Keitaro has some of the same mannerisms as Shunpei from Wizard, who I really hated (clingy, pushy, desperate to prove himself, barely tolerated by the hero)... but I really like Keitaro. I think the difference is that, with Shunpei it was all hero worship, while with Keitaro you can see him trying to fix Takumi and Mari. He realizes almost immediately that they are terrible people, which is why he takes the burden of Faiz on himself. But at the end, he's trying to make the best of a bad situation, and trying to harness their skills and goals towards justice. He's got a real clear purpose on this show!

I’ve been thinking this for the last couple days, too. Keitaro is basically Shunpei if he wasn’t a clown who looked like a toddler that dressed himself for the first time.

And I even feel a little bad ragging on Shunpei, because I don't really think it's the actor's fault? He's got some great comedic timing in some of the Net Movies (he shows killer improv chops as Koyomi's sidekick for the fortune-telling ones), but on the actual show he's given such an irritating character to play.

Some of it's also the costuming, though, yeah. Keitaro dresses like a normal young man, while Shunpei feels like the adult lead during the second act of a kid/adult body-swap comedy.

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 05

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz05a.png

1. One of the things I was curious about was how exactly the show could balance the unique hilarity of the nebulously-motivated Team Faiz with the need to, y'know, actually progress the plot. They struck upon a pretty solid formula in this episode, where all the investigative beats get hit (Mari can't seem to get ahold of her dad) and the worldbuilding continues (Team Faiz runs a dry cleaners), but it's all done with a mixture of irritation and poor decision-making. That's pretty great? Having Takumi be the impetus to get Mari's story moving is a little unexpected, but it's also totally in-character: he wants to get this shit over with as soon as possible, and standing around wringing their hands isn't helping. Similarly, drawing backstory details out of Keitaro and Mari happens with him mocking Keitaro and ignoring Mari, which, A+. It's incredibly tricky to keep a grumpy, funny tone to the show while still making it feel like it's all going somewhere, and this episode manages it perfectly.

2. Growing Takumi's character was another thing I was sort-of skeptical about, since the more you humanize him, the more you start to define his antisocial tendencies, the more I feel like he's less fun? Ren on Ryuki was a fun character because even at his most heroic he was still a total dick, and that's not usually how these hero's journey stories go. We find out their trauma, there's a cathartic reckoning for their past behavior, and now they're all friends. (See: both of the secondary Riders from Ghost.) Here, it's more that we begin to see Takumi's behavior as stemming from insecurity, a belief that he's a terrible person (true!) that will inevitably hurt the people around him. The problem is that his belief in the second part is so all-consuming that it becomes self-fulfilling, with him pushing people away and treating them poorly so they won't care about him. It's a nuanced take on an antisocial character, and even his apology to Mari for how he's been acting is wrapped in backhanded insults and some small amount of snottiness. It'll be interesting to see if Takumi starting to let Mari and Keitaro in will rob the show of some of its complicated humor, but the first steps were promising.

3. The Orphnoch plot... it was okay? It's a lot of information delivered by a brand-new character who immediately died. It's okay at imparting context, but there's not a lot in there that I cared about. The Yuuji/Yuka stuff around the edges, though, real solid. Some nice touches for Yuka's part of the story (her leaning her head against the car window in contemplation is a nicely-observed bit of physical acting, and I love how the sound drops out as she writes Keitaro an email she can't send), and the way Yuuji's interest in discovering the truth of their condition curdles into terror as they're told to kill, that was great. The more the episode focused on Yuuji and Yuka's reactions, the better that plot came off.

4. I had a night job, some years back. Third Shift (8pm to 4am) at an insurance company, doing a backup of the database and delivering prints around the building to different departments. It was me and a guy named Mike. We overlapped with Second Shift (4pm to midnight), which was Joel and Mitch. Our desks were all in the same room, so people could chatter pretty easily. Mitch would always do this real specific laugh when he'd read something online, where he'd go HA real loud, and it was clear he wanted to share what he found funny, but he needed you to ask him about it first. He'd never just say, "Hey, here's something funny,” he'd go HA and he'd do variations on it until someone finally said Hey Mitch What's Funny. I hated it, so much. It got to the point where I would never ask him. I'd let him make that goddamn noise forever, but I wouldn't ask him what was funny. You're an adult! If you want to say something, just say it! All of that is to point out that I am 100% on Takumi and Mari's side for not asking Keitaro why he's sighing. Just say what you want to say! It's so annoying, Keitaro!

5. I feel like Faiz settled into a pretty enjoyable rhythm with this episode, getting all the various pieces into play while still leaving plenty of room for fun jokes (Keitaro shouting TAKUMI when he throws Takumi the Faiz belt, then a very small takumi when he throws the phone after he sees the Orphnoch), gentle sadness (Yuuji walking away when he sees a sad Yuka on the balcony), and great action (the whole Of Course We Forgot To Bring The Belt chase sequence with Takumi and Mari transitioning into a Faiz Fight). Just a really fun episode to watch!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz05b.png

Episode 5 of 555? I think that means you're finished with the show. Great thread! ...Oh wait, you probably still have another 550 to go.

Or maybe I'll just watch these first five 110 more times? A 700-page thread on the first five episodes of Faiz, two years of writing where eventually it's just three paragraphs about what the gas station attendant is doing in the background of a shot and two paragraphs on the glass partition in the Smart Brain lobby.

Really loved Auto Vajin in this episode, especially how he rides around for a bit. Really good stuff

It's that stoic heroism that's really his hallmark. He does a lot with a little!

Something I'm appreciating a lot as I go back and look at these episodes again is the variety of the scenery. We've got the office building, the cafe, the park, the gas station, and so many other places that aren't the same stock Toei filming locations that we see over and over again in modern shows. I usually associate more location variety with Hibiki, of course, but it's so nice to see it on something that's more urban, too. I know we'll see more of the familiar locations as the show goes on (including the debut of one that the franchise will go back to a lot), but for now I'm enjoying the change of scenery.

This episode sees the start of one of my favorite recurring features on Faiz: the emergency phone call for help with zero location information. We're not at "Takkun! Orphenoch!" yet, but I'm still happy to see the debut of the characters' miraculous innate GPS.

Oh, just to deepen things, wht I mean for The Kamen Rider Thing, to me are those that is actually having a full sheer angelic niceness, not merely those who saves innocents or fighting for justice (anti-heroes can have that too, it's rare for the supporting cast to have full Kamen Rider Thing, Notice I only mentioned Minori for Kuuga as one of the few examples). And for a show having very few with Rider sensibility, it's not like shows such as Ryuki is different in this matter too.

Michiko being ungrateful bitch and repaying those who helped her with vile act... oh yeah that's very soap opera (at least the ones in my country, t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶e̶l̶e̶v̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶o̶r̶r̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶q̶u̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶i̶v̶e̶r̶s̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶p̶i̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶, and that kind of moment being one of the many reasons). I guess this comes with Faiz being the one to have a monster as a part of the main cast right? (Burgmon, Cubi, the likes of Yuka and Yuji are your real predecessors).

Keitaro's story is really Kamen Rider protagonist's! Finding a belt, noticing that the power can be used to do more good deed (becoming a Rider is something that shows your heroism more clearly, someone's goodness wouldn't be as clear/significant in their daily job), taking up the mantle of Kamen Rider (by stealing but they refuse so..) and trying to henshin. In any other series, that'd quickly happen espeically with Takumi and Mari not being interested in that with Keitaro as the protector and the only problem being the burden he carries. But this is Faiz.... and yeah, this is the part where at the beginning, I talked about how it's unfair to mock Faiz for females failing to henshin, as you see here, the males aren't exempt from this, gender equality! Keitaro attacking Takumi's personal space though, asking to instantly calling him Taku-chan. Also here...

It's Auto Vajin. The character that got made as a total joke in Kamen Rider Climax Heroes OOO (based on how's him in the series). I'm quite surprised here that it... attacks Faiz here?! And also.... beating him? I wonder why Auto Vajin didn't transform before when Mari was attacked.

I don't know but boxer feels like the most simple form of self-defense, and brawler moves can be similar to that too, typically applied if someone never learns to fight but has enough power to pack a punch. Not a criticism as it makes sense for someone who never fights to throw simplistic moves like that.

The new Orphnoch, Kiaido, is one of the first three things I remember about this series, as a result of coming in from later media. The other two, you’ll find out what they are in I think it’s episodes 12 and 13 respectively.

Yeah, they're really all over the place in these first episodes, aren't they? It sells the whole Wandering angle, which you need if them deciding to settle down has any weight. I mean, they still manage a few favorites from the good folks at Rider Realty: that stairwell for Yuuji and Yuka's first meeting is in at least Ryuki, but probably Agito; I think the embankment Michiko gets run off of by the car is all over the franchise, but especially Fourze; and the sidewalk where the girls rob Yuka is from Ryuki. Still, a lot of the Takumi/Mari scenes are different enough locales.

And, maybe it's just in the copy I got, but there's a scene in Episode 4 where Keitaro laments that Takumi is going to be a hopeless Kamen Rider, and he'll probably try and run off again, so he injects a small tracking chip into his neck while he sleeps. He just wants what's best for Takkun! Don't judge him for caring too much!

I don't know, I think this is in line with how Ryuki treated Wanting To Be A Hero, where that character is best served by having that dream denied. It's easy to imagine a version of the story where Keitaro takes over and is either a) just the wrong hero for the mission, or b) immediately killed by a monster because he's got a good heart but weak muscles. Keitaro getting what he wants from stealing the belt and assuming he knows best... that would not be a great lesson!

Yeah, I don't think of Takumi as a very strategic fighter, one who's reading his opponent like a martial artist. He's a very Let's Get This Over With fighter, and that's what a quick-hitting boxing style says to me.

Neat! I'm looking forward to it!