Yay I love Buster! Mostly the suit design though, the character feels underutilized.

A manga about his younger years would be cool.

My assumption is it is either that or the illustration that was revealed is a front and it is actually gonna be a 4-panel manga of him and Sora and their day-to-day non Sword Of Logos life drawn by the Pop Team Epic guy. :lolol

A Kamen Rider Buster manga? I've never actually read one of those before, but this sounds interesting. I'm all for side stories and backstories, and this'll probably be one of those.

Wonder when we'll see Kento make a comeback as Calibur? It'd be nice for Mei to become the next Espada.

Kento becoming Calibur for a brief time and/or getting a "Espada Shin" form is more likely than Mei ever becoming a rider. She's being set up as another "Sophia" with the white book she has and the key to the Northern Base. They could pull the same thing they did with W and have her transform as a rider for a gag, but I doubt it.

There were fan-theories that she becomes Kamen Rider Flint because she's the "Flint that sharpens the swordsmen", but we'll just have to see. Reika has more likelihood of becoming a Kamen Rider than Mei, on pure personality alone.

Yup.
And Reika has "Shin" in her name meaning "God" somehow. Every character with "shin" or "kami" in their name so far became riders. While Mei don't have it.

Although I also strongly doubt Mei will become a rider, I think it’s worth pointing out that it wouldn’t be the first that a hyperactive comedy relief heroine became a Kamen Rider, and I don’t think anyone would have predicted it for Poppy either.

To add to this, kami depending on the kanji can be either paper or hair, though considering this season is not about hair stylists saving the world one snip at a time we can limit the wordplay reference to diety and paper probably.

Except Poppy was revealed as a Bugster since the first episode, so her chances have never been low.

Except most Bugsters were villians, so I don't think that her chances as a rider were all that high.

Her being a Bugster did not, in any way, indicate that she could, or would, be a Rider. Koyomi wasn’t human either, and yet, outside of one movie where she jacked her dad’s powers, she didn’t become a Rider - and nor did Graphite - another Bugster in that same show. Other human heroines are are clearly ‘special’ from day one, like Misora, for instance, don’t become Riders either. Being more than human =/= going to be a Rider.
No one here thought that Poppy would become a Rider, and yet she did. Like I said, I don’t think that Mei will become one, either. But saying that she’s got no chance is ridiculous, because stranger things have happened.

It's typically kinda rare for the female lead to get a rider belt, unfortunately -- though some of the only few exceptions are the leads of the last two seasons, Tsukuyomi and Izu; meaning it's more likely for Mei now than ever. But it probably just means that she'll get something small extremely last minute.

Yeah, Toei's afraid of making merch that acknowledges that girls also watch Kamen Rider most of the time, and the only other options I know of are to give her her own version of an existing rider form (IXA) or have her be a rider from the beginning (Valkyrie), and she hasn't been a rider from the beginning.

I was hoping Reiwa would be different this time in the female rider thing.

I hope Reika is a Megid and not a rider.

Precure has mostly handled the female toku audience for a while now, and even then, I don't think they've been doing well sales-wise? At least that's what I think. I've seen more precure stuff on clearance than rider stuff when I went on a trip to Japan.

Although, it if it means anything positive, it kinda seems like Toku is slowly but surely trying, at least, to push heroines/villainesses into the spotlight. Ultraman Z had a major character in Yoko being the sole mecha pilot, not sure about Kiramager but Yodonna is a major villain general(?) and I saw that one screenshot of three Kiramai greens for one episode. Zero-One starting with Valkyrie as the tertiary rider, Naki (technically? Kinda? Maybe?), one of the Abaddons, and one of the new villains for Zero-One's MBJR.net V-cinema.

Saber also teased a female swordsman during the trailers, and also have Sophia and Reika in very important roles.

If there's a future for heroines in tokusatsu, it'd likely be the P-Bandai market. Retail toys are mostly geared to kids, and if Bandai feels like they can't capture the girl demographic for it, then they'll relegate the heroine merch in the P-Bandai market where older audiences can obtain them and Bandai gets to take all the profits.

Yeah, I think think the "Female Rider" situation is heading in the right direction. It's gonna be slow progress, but it's still progress.

Though, I don't want to "actually" anybody, but Naki doesn't actually count, due to being a different kind of representation. They're non-binary, making them the first non-binary Rider.

Which is hilarious because as a robot, they probably do run on binary XD

Considering your avatar, I'm surprised you don't know about this, but Nakayama Satsuki themself said that Naki's gender is determined by the viewer. So if TheRaizin wants to count her as a Female Rider then that's his opinion.

Zero-Two is based on quantum physics which use qubits (0s, 1s and 2ns which is basically both 0s and 1s simultaneously), so I guess you could say that Naki's not the only non-binary Rider in Zero-One. :lol

It's Rei now, actually. I picked a dumb username which I thought was cool when I made this account lmao.

I only counted Naki on the pure basis of appearance. Them and the rider suit, while certainly has qualities of androgynity (that even a word?), do lean on a more feminine vibe for me.

Going on-topic of Saber, leaks suggest that Saber's super form is called "Dragon Star" and appears to be a bookmark/lever that plugs into a WRB (dunno if an existing one or exclusive to Dragon Star) and then a new sword for Saber. With Blades having a "Northern Lion" upgrade that is going to be obtained from the previous Blades.

Sorry about that, Rei. I'll note your name for future reference.

The word you're looking for is probably "androgyny" which is pretty close. I also count Naki as a girl based on appearance.

If Saber's power-up has a bookmark then maybe it has a similar function to the sword crest on King Lion Daisenki? I'm curious about Kenshin, the previous Blades. He hasn't appeared in any of the flashbacks with the other Riders of 15 years ago.

He probably was killed by Zooous before the main Saber vs Calibur event from 15 years ago.
But it's true he never appeared in flashback even in the headquarters or anything (while Kamijo and Hayato did with Daishinji and Ogami).
Maybe Blades users are kind of a very "solo" side branch/clan or something

Source?

Yeah, that's what I was assuming, that Zooous killed him before the events of that day. I would like to see some flashback interactions between him and the other 4 in Northern Base, or even just acknowledgement from them that he existed. As for Blades users being solo, that doesn't really seem like Rintarou at all. Maybe that's just how Kenshin preferred to operate.

Here you go!

You'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit taken aback by an hour-long podcast with no english translation... is there a translation somewhere?

I feel like I might have derailed this tread a bit. I'm sorry.

After Saber possesses Saikou in the coming episode, will Saikou pass himself to another swordsman as a means of each one returning to Touma's side?

I hope Blades is next. Hope he doesn't forget the promise from Kento to look after Touma.

After Blades will be either Buster/Slash. Kenzan will be least as he'll probably go Megid like Desast in some way.

Yeah, I suddenly got a bad feeling about Ren after he tried to attack Mei. In his Retsuden episode, Desast said he was one of them so maybe you're right.

I just looked around but unfortunately, all I could find was the citation from the often incredulous Rider Wiki. However, I couldn't see anything that contests it either. And I'm not confident that I'll be able to translate the whole interview myself.

If Riderwiki is what's being relied on here... yeah, I'm not trusting that. Seems like something they jumped upon without context.

They have a very consistent habit of doing that, in my experience. Good chunks of info on there tend to just come off as fabricated, unverified, and at times fan-fiction-esque. :o

It's simultaneously annoying and yet very humorous how wrong some of their information is! I wish I saved some of their most embarrassing mistakes for posterity.

Here's how I picture Ren's death near the end of the show!

0:55-6:37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DZA...nnel=LouisChou

I'm not sure how much of the wiki is actually that bad, but yeah, there's some stuff on there that requires a grain of salt or two.

Like, if you need forms or items, or names of characters, it's probably fine, but after that, there's quite a bit of guesswork going on there.

As for the Naki thing, I remember seeing that statement on the wiki before, but it's not there anymore, so I don't know.

So, why does everyone think Ren is going to die? Did I miss something? Or is it just that some people don't like him? If that's it, then, like, I can't help you. You're on your own.

I don't think lot of people are thinking that.
People are more thinking he will defect to bad guys side (or more likely a different faction side) because of what Dezast said during the "Ren episode" spin-off.

Huh. I haven't been able to find that yet. Does anyone know where I could find it?

Tv Nihon has the specials subbed.
Ren was around Ep9

All Retsuden episodes can be watched here:

https://toku.fun/post/kamen-rider-sa...ie-english-sub

Okay, thanks. I wasn't using them before, but that works. I don't really have a problem with them, other than being overly wordy. I guess you don't need to know all the details.

I remember there was also some speculation that he was going to die because he didn't have a stock footage transformation like the others. The logic went "he doesn't have stock footage" -> "the showrunners don't plan on having him transform enough times for stock footage to be worth making" -> "he's going to get killed off."

But then IIRC he did get stock footage in one episode, which we haven't seen again since, and meanwhile Kento who did have stock footage died, so it's anyone's guess now which swordsmen will survive.