https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU7IUprPqag

I know I'm late but hush

That's an interesting take you have on Yuka. I partially disagree though. I'm pretty sure Yuka's affection for Kaido and Keitarou (pen pal) are sincere. Like Takumi, she has no self-confidence and is scared of hurting people. Which is justified, considering she actually does kill people, bad people. I don't think it's that she doesn't want to think about herself, rather she's idolizing people like Kiba, Keitarou and even Kaido as an example for what she should be.

That fear of hurting people is now coming back to haunt Takumi. The heroic Faiz isn't just protecting people from Orphenochs, he's killing Orpenochs, bad Orphenochs, bad people. Takumi's sins and Yuka's are actually the same, which is why I think it was a smart move to have these two characters interact. Takumi found his purpose as Faiz and now that purpose is making him question his own morality.

Kusaka may be an awful guy, his hostility towards Kiba was uncalled for, but he didn't instigate the Faiz VS Kaixa fight. He was doing his job, fighting an Orphenoch, who had likewise been doing her job of killing humans albeit remorsefully. Of course, I support Takumi's decision to defend Yuka, she deserves to live and seek redemption, but everything about his rivalry with Kusaka is just making him look bad.

Kusaka is an excellent manipulator and Takumi is more honest, maybe not so much about how he feels intrinsically but definitely about others. He's playing to Kusaka's tune right now, getting beat up by Kaixa as soon as Mari and Keitarou are out of view and scolded for his actions, even when he goes against his nature to attempt to spare Keitarou's feelings. Team Faiz has become Team Kaixa as this point and Takumi is now the outlier.

Kaixa's bike, Side Basshar, really shows just how much his equipment outclasses Faiz's right now. Not that Auto Vajin ain't cool or anything, it's a transforming bike robot after all, but Kaixa gets his own mech with some totally crazy firepower. You can really see that "Oh cr*p!" in Faiz's stance as he's about to get blown up by missiles before the credit cut. He just recovered from the injury he received last episode! Dude can't catch a break.

Yeah! It's those same majestic wings she spans in the OP but now we actually get to see them in action after all her other murders happened offscreen. I love that shot in the OP and after what Takuma said about advanced Orphenochs using their abilities in human form, it looks very foreshadowing.

I think "a complete dick" is maybe underselling it!

Aw, thanks!

So, after spending a few weeks reading over Fish Sandwich's (very excellent) Kuuga thread, and really getting to see his approach to the material, I figured out how to compare our styles.

I'm Indiana Jones to his Professor Henry Jones Jr.

I like diving in head-first, taking risks, making mistakes. I'm all about getting into that deadly labyrinth and trying to figure my way out of it. Sometimes it can get a little dicey. Sometimes it means having to run from a giant boulder! But with my wits and little bit of luck, maybe I'll have something cool to show for it at the end. (Also, people like punching me.)

Fish is great at taking the cool thing that came out of a deadly labyrinth and giving it context, explaining why it was even in a deadly labyrinth to begin with. He's got the whole picture, and can explain exciting, specific details about things most people would overlook. (Also, everyone thinks he's dreamy.)

I've already got a weekly podcast my business partner and I do on comics retail (not counting the weeks where it's him complaining about a painful injury), but I do love talking about Kamen Rider!

More like SERIES highlight! I was completely thinking of this scene when I said Bone, so thank you for posting it. That said, this is maybe my favorite Brooklyn Nine-Nine cold open:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1CtS2KA3Zs

Sure! I can see that version, too.

I think this is a neat way of Takumi withholding crucial information from Keitaro. Takumi's just starting to put himself out there, just starting to make friends, and he's so scared of pushing people away again that he screws it all up by mistake. To protect Keitaro's feelings, he makes himself look like a terrible friend.

I don't know, there's an aggressiveness to Kusaka's attack on Yuka that feels too punitive to be him just doing his job. He's not even fighting her at a certain point, he's beating on her.

Wait, but Indiana Jones is-

You know, I'm just not going to read too hard into this comparison. On the subject of overlooked details, though, I somehow completely forgot there was something I wanted to say about episode 14 still, so let's just pretend it's a day or two ago for a second.

The shot Die is talking about here, it's really hard to get across just how simple and elegant it is just by talking about it. For such a minor moment, it's great, and I think, in my ongoing quest to try and find out what makes Kamen Rider directors stick out from each other, this kind of thing might be Ryuuta Tasaki's unique talent when it comes to visuals. He's not wildly creative in the same way guys like Ishida and Kamihoriuchi are, but he's really good at getting in there, and quickly finding appealing yet straightforward ways to shoot scenes. There's a hypothetical version of that scene where it starts with a wide shot that immediately shows Takumi at that table well before he speaks, and probably even a version where nobody thought to emphasize the physical distance at all, but Tasaki, I think he probably makes snap judgments like that on a dime. Have Takumi sitting off to the side. Only put him onscreen once Keitarou asks for his opinion. Make sure he's looking away from the group, and right into the frame, so we can see his pouty expression in all its glory.

Somebody has to actively think of all those little things for them to happen, and assuming Tasaki is the one doing all that, I mean, I've described him as "workmanlike" before, but just know that is most definitely not an insult.

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 16

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz16a.png

--1--

If Ryuki broadened the idea of what a Rider could be (Zolda 4eva), I think Faiz is doing the same thing for the monsters.

For me, someone who came in through Ex-Aid's marvelously complex and occasionally sympathetic monsters, these early Heisei shows have been... a little lacking. There've been fun villains, and some neat antagonists, but the weekly monsters have been little more than uncommunicative beasts or nearly-alien killers. It's been missing something that I'd guess I'd taken for granted, and that's that the monsters should have a point of view.

(So, yes, Kuuga, the Grongi, sure. I don't know that more than two or three Grongi really popped for me as characters, though. Other than those two or three, they've all got the exact same motivation, which is mostly what I'm talking about.)

The monster of the week this time is emphatically not what I'm referring to, though. That dude comes out of nowhere and is nothing more than a random nuisance. He's a spree killer, an obstacle for Kamen Riders to detonate/immolate. But.

But maybe he isn't? Maybe he's been driven to these murders and assaults because of some deep trauma, or because he's been forced to by Smart Brain, or because these people wronged him somehow, or any number of other possible reasons. We don't know his story. When we look at him, we see a monster, and Kamen Riders kill monsters. Open and shut.

Except Takumi's seen an Orphnoch with feelings. He's been saved by an Orphnoch. He knows that Orphnochs can have fears, can have dreams. How can he destroy a thing that might have a soul?

That dilemma is really fascinating to me. Kamen Riders Fight Monsters is, like, an autonomic process for these stories. It's something that barely needs a justification. So to slow everything down, to cast doubt on the very language of the franchise, super into that.

And, god, making Takumi the focal point of that? Yes. Yes. He's someone who sort-of hates slowing down, getting to know people, trying to understand them. Having him be the guy who sees the humanity in the Orphnochs is great because he doesn't even know what he's seeing, let alone how to explain it. He's so lost in this story, so unsure of what to do, and I find that introspection and confusion weirdly heroic. He can't ignore someone's dreams, even if they're the dreams of an Orphnoch. But Orphnochs are responsible for killing people, robbing them of the chance to live out their dreams. It's an impossible situation. Which, y'know, those are the ones I want to see Kamen Riders deal with!

--2--

Making Takumi's episode even more stressful is that, uh, all of his friends hate him?

Some of it's Takumi's fault, in that he can't really explain himself at all, and I don't blame his friends for turning on him. I mean, they've only known him for a few months, during which he's been varying levels of insufferable. He's always been tough to be friends with, and him rudely declaring Keitaro break up with a girl because Takumi has a bad feeling about it, along with being incredibly aggressive with Kusaka, it's all a pretty bad look on Takumi.

I get it, though. This is a guy who in the second episode kept trying to run away from people who wanted to get close to him. The fact that he ran away from their accusations this time and then came back for more is, like, probably the toughest thing he's ever done. He hasn't learned how to fight for what he wants, but he's sure as shit learned how to absorb people's scorn.

I think that's the heart of the "miscommunication”, or whatever. It's that Takumi can't talk about what he's feeling, can't express the conflict in his heart. He sees everyone turning against him, and he wishes it wasn't the case, but he doesn't have the tools to defend himself. Worse, his reflex is to lash out, mope, run away, make things worse. He doesn't want to be in this position, but he at least can handle it. So he keeps plugging away, hurting feelings and confusing his friends, letting them get over it, then doing it all again. He's probably his own worst enemy in this one.

--3--

Ha ha NOPE it's definitely Kusaka. That dude... I'm pretty sure he's the devil?

He's great here, though, for real. Every time he'd trick Takumi into looking like the bad guy, and then Takumi would make himself look even worse than that... I mean, it couldn't've gone better for Kusaka if Takumi had been in on it.

Real curious what his endgame is, though. He's got two moves, manipulate or destroy. Keitaro and Mari could be manipulated, so they seem safe. They treat him like a hero, take his side in his rivalry with Takumi. He seems happy with that. But Takumi didn't buy it, so he's got to be forced out, humiliated, reviled, probably killed. But what for? Why all of these machinations? Right now, Kuasaka's all schemes, and I dig it, but I want to see where all of this is going. Like, currently it's Control and Sadism, but, and then what?

--4--

Besides the two Riders, we get a bit with Team Orphnoch, each of them doing their own thing.

Yuuji, hilariously, inexplicably, is having to team-up with his murdered girlfriend's brother to hunt down her killer... which is still Yuuji! It's totally bizarre for this story to pop up now, out of the clear blue sky, but I do like the position it puts Yuuji in. He's been talking a lot of heavy talk about not harming humans, and now here's a dude reminding him that he definitely murdered a human in cold blood. There's always been a little hypocrisy to Yuuji's pacifism, a feeling that two murders or less is an acceptable number, but more than that is No Thank You. (Or, perhaps, he's okay with sampling murder? He killed a man, he killed a woman, and now he's okay saying it's not for him. He's a very open-minded Orphnoch!) Having this all thrown back in his face by someone he's legitimately wronged, it's got some potential.

Yuka's story is mostly her trying to explain her conflict, what she wants out of life, how she kills but doesn't want to be a killer. I talked a ton about this all last time, and here it's mostly for Takumi's benefit, for him to get a better understanding of what could drive an Orphnoch.

Kaido only gets a couple moments. The first is a quick little scene where he wants Yuka to stop obsessing over him, while the second is a joyous comedic scene with Mari. All of the Tidying Up With Mari Kaido stuff has been adorable, and this one's no different. Love him smooshing his face against a window to get her attention. Love him fogging the window to draw a little heart. Love her exhaustedly dropping her head out of view. Love him asking if she really likes him. Love her shaking her head No. Love him asking if she likes him. Love her shaking her head No. Love him asking if she likes him even a little. Did not love Kusaka barging in to scare him off. Goddamn you, Kusaka! I was onboard with the torturing of Yuuji and trying to kill Takumi, but this is too monstrous. Keep your nose out of my ship, Kusaka! I'M COMING FOR YOU, KUSAKA!

--5--

I really like the journey that Takumi was on in this episode. God, the shots at the end where a contemplative Faiz has to literally sit out a fight, so evocative. I love the show asking if and why the monsters deserve to be detonated/immolated. I hope they come up with a good answer!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz16b.png

Yeah, you're starting to get into what makes Faiz such a special show. Or at least, it's really coming to the forefront in these episodes after so long of already following Yuuji, Yuka, and Kaidou around. See, the fact that Faiz went out of its way to try undermining like... the absolute most essential premise of a Kamen Rider show is why I love that the monsters are literally gray.

And Takumi, yeah, it is entirely based in his character for him to be handling this situation the way he is. He's got... he's got a lot going through his head right now, and with the kind of person he is to begin with, you know, of course he doesn't know how to talk about this.

Oh, and what you do know, this episode pulls that trick where the insert song cuts out, in this case right after Takumi remembers he maybe doesn't want to "heroically" murder people? Really effective way to emphasize how wrong everything is right now. Faiz just gives up, and so does the music.

I think my favorite choice this episode makes is to surface Takumi's conflict during a fight with an Orphnoch that basically has just been attacking people all episode. It's easy to see the complexity of a character like Yuka, or Yuuji. It's easy to get the audience on Takumi's side if it's protecting a cast member we're invested in. But this dude? Merderman or whatever? It's all projection on Takumi's part. There's nothing we've seen that says that this dude deserves to be spared.

But, like, that's what makes the story work for me. If Yuka can be worthy of protecting, why not Merderman? Instead of working from All Monsters Must Die, and making exceptions, why not work it from the other direction? Why not ask why any monster deserves to die?

The show took the most basic monster and had Takumi unable to ignore the possibility that it didn't deserve to be killed. Huge choice, and I love it.

If you ever make your way onto Metal Heroes (which, let’s be honest, I don’t see happening within the next few years), they have a few shows where episodes discuss the concept of killing the monster, even if those monsters haven’t done much to earn sympathy.

Yeah, boy, pretty booked, but that's good to know! Thanks!

Yeah, bringing that up because all the other Faiz' characters are in any of the big categories I mentioned and she's the one who isn't really. And the "sort-of Yuka's identity", that's also part of my point, differentiating between bad acting, or if that's actually the part of the character. Like for a simpler example, people who consider an actor as bad because he can't emote, but the character he portrays is meant to be stoic and devoid of emotion.

It's the good thing if you make humans, the species you suppose to fight. Like Ryuki, the monsters are still nonsentient beasts, but the antagonists are Riders, and they're humans, creating this dilemma although in a lower scale. Faiz now is the one to make the monsters directly root from humans (Kuuga did but, all of the humanity disappeared as Grongi), where the ambiguity all comes from the different moral views a human have. With Orphnochs originating from humans, they all have the same exact ambiguity as humans, so don't lump Orphnochs as worth killing because "Orphnochs are responsible for killing people, robbing them of the chance to live out their dreams", just because there are human who kills doesn't mean all humans should be exterminated (though certainly there are those with that mindset). Though other than the Orphnoch trio, so far the other Orphnochs are standard villainous monster of the weeks. If you already know the Smart Brain's deal, there would be an easier way to get through this dliemma (wa owaranai - that wouldn't end!), any Orphnoch that is targeted by Smart Brain are probably the good ones, though Yuka makes it more difficult for those that kill only bad guys.

Stressful that his friends hate him? Don't he want to brush off people away from him, and this is what he wanted? Or also like Faiz, deep down he strives for it, for the proper one, for the one that can't be ruined with his behavior. And there's truly signs of miscommunication here yeah. If Takumi told that an Orphnoch saved him, it's all clear. I don't know what's the excuse for this one other than Keitaro break up (he shouldn't know the truth that Yuka is an Orphnoch).

The devil? Kusaka's not infamous within the fandom without a good reason, y'know. And like I said for soap opera elements for Yuji and Yuka's story, this comes more in full force on the main story part, at least Kusaka embodies it. All the stunts he pulls, all the scheming, all the expression of him gloating through the other's misery, that's all I see on my country's airings. Yeah truly, no kidding. Being so self-important and threaten others for petty reason that they may take their spotlight? Check. Faking yourself in front of the other people you want to impress while hiding a much more sinister side? Check. Manipulating others to ruin someone else while you can for your own amusement? Check. Exaggerated expressive gloating over others and your schemes? Check. I see that everyday on my country's plethora of soap operas (the one resembles the most was Yuka's thing with the stepparents and siblings though).... which is also one of the reasons people hate them. But probably at least here this gets a free pass for some reason.

For Yuji I can only say a reminder that any victims have their close ones. For Yuka she also persistently helps Kaido. For Kaido... just be prepared for the Kusaka stuff. And Mari, your move to Kusaka there, watch out.