Pleasantly surprised that they subbed all the extra Ghost stuff, the subbers all seemed pretty disappointed with the show as well, so I assumed they wouldn't do those. Shame to hear the movie isn't great, it was one of the Ghost things I really thought could be good. I'll still watch it though, along with the rest.

On the topic of Ghost being "incomplete", yeah...I have mixed feelings about that. One on hand, I love when little extras like that actually feel like they matter to the continuity. I haven't finished it yet, but Drive has a ton of those that address things like the fates of certain roidmudes. The difference is that the TV episodes of Drive still seem like they could stand on their own, whereas with Ghost, even the Legend Rider specials, of all things, have relevance to the show in a way that the actual episodes don't explain.

Also, I haven't seen it yet, but from what I've read on the wiki, one of the plot points in the last HBV is something that REALLY should have been in the show. The Ganma weren't just based on historical figures, they actually were those figures the whole time? That's a gigantic plot point with a ton of potential. Why on earth would you address that in a Hyper Battle Video, of all things? How does a decision like that even get made? Even ignoring what you think of the show's quality, Ghost had some truly bizarre production decisions.

It's especially frustrating when the show spent it's last quarter wondering around aimlessly until Takeru learned all the reskinned finishers, when they were sitting on that goldmine. Guess that kind of turned into a rant, maybe I should take it to the general thread and ask people how they think Ghost could have been "fixed"?

I mean, I think my ranting might've oversold how bad it is. Despite my issues with it, I'd say it's just the slightest bit above average for a summer movie. Very slightly, and "average" for a Rider movie means *meh*, but still.

Yeah, Drive definitely handled things a lot better on that front.

I think the point it was making was more that they're summoned similarly to the way the Heroic Eyecons were. The MotW Ganma never acted in a way to suggest they were anything but themselves. Unless Nikola Tesla was known for helping try to undermine humanity and I just wasn't aware.

Akira Date is in these videos? :D!

I wish! :lol

SkyRider Episode 12: A Fantastic episode. Loved seeing Hiroshi go undercover in NeoShocker's base; he saw what kind of threat he is up against with how well-trained they are and how big their operation is. I enjoyed him going out of his way to help the little kid like normal.

Hiroshi managing to survive with his belt being blocked was great to see how strong and resourceful he is. Also, their was a lot of fighting and just SkyRider's spirit at the end after losing the first face off with Slugman was amazing. SkyRider really was fired up this episode and I can't wait for more.

Watched the last two Alain episodes.

I could take or leave the first part of episode 3. The ending was great though.

4 is kinda confusing. It's been a while since Ghost aired and my memory isn't the best but I'm pretty sure Onari was involved in Fumibaa's funeral, so why would he not...meh, guess it's a minor thing. Also thought Harumi would have at least gotten his name but eh.

Not bad, I suppose.

Finished Agito. Pretty damn good overall, though I believe the ending was pretty dull

Just watched the two Ikkyu things for Ghost. They were actually really fun.

TVN's translation of the first is like, just as bad as TVN's translations are stereotyped to be, so that's a shame. But it was fun once the Ganma showed up. Crappy Pun Ganma may be my favorite.

The HBV was great. Mostly because it featured Poppi Pipopapo in a previous life. Except, if anything, and this is almost unbelievable, I'd have to say she was even more ridiculous as Katsumi than she has been as Poppi. Either way, way fun. The rest of it was surprisingly humorous too ("why are you spinning triangles around shirtless?")

Was also surprised that Onari's line about liking heavier women in the third Alain episode wasn't just a throwaway. That's some consistency.

I've mentioned it before, but I always felt like the post-Kino part of Agito was a case of "... and that's how we'll finish the show! Wait, what do you mean we have four more episodes?"

Watched the Saionji HBV. It was pretty legitimately good, which is indeed pretty surprising, for a HBV. Evidently I'm the type that's super ok with joke HBVs, so I would have settled for that too, but it's nice to see something to give closure to a villain who in the show got so little.

I'm not sure all that went on it it really made sense (isn't the Eyecon system just not supposed to work without the Great Eye there???) but eh, it was cool.

Now that I've caught up on the extra Ghost stuff...I wonder if TVN ever did the Drive stuff, like Lupin, that OT never got to...

Watched the first 2 episodes of Drive. Ignoring how easy it is to compare to W, it seems quite interesting. I like the concept and I'm an absolute sucker for mysteries, although the cast seems a bit excessively quirky. Shinnosuke also feels like he will be an enjoyable lead, and I get the impression that this one one of those seasons where even if I don't absolutely love it I'll have a lot of fun anyways. Looking forward to tackling this and seeing if I spoiled this show for myself as badly as I think I did!

Spent the last week catching up with Amazons after watching like the first 3 episodes a good couple of months back and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The character development for the main cast of the Extermination Squad and their evolving relationship with Mamoru was really good. The same goes for the gradual role reversal of Jin's cool controlled style and Haruka's more wild tenancies, completely swapping by the final episode. Really looking forward to where this world goes with S2.

So it only took me 4 months or so, but I've watched through episode 13 of Saban's Masked Rider. I guess that means I've watched around 130 episodes of Kamen Rider in the last 4 months. That's not too bad, really....at that rate it should only take like, the rest of the year to finish this mild fart of a show.

Anyway, this episode...the anthropologist in me wants to find it objectionable as hell, because that's what it is, the rest of me still thinks it was probably the most entertaining the show has been so far, which is not really saying a lot, but still.

That's not what this post is about, though. It's the ending. Because...originally, I planned to just write something like "this episode is madness given form," as that is how I felt about it, but...turns out the weirdness is just because this is one of those weird ones where they decided to use stuff from J and ZO. Which is, again, a weird as hell thing to do, but eh.

Incidentally, ZO looks...interesting....

Tbh, like the most I get out of this show is curiosity about RX and how it handled all this stuff (the stuff not inexplicably taken from the movies, at least). I'll probably find out someday.

Watched the Ghost summer movie and it was alright. No Surprise Future, but better than Great Soccer Battle. Maybe a bit better than the Wizard movie?

I liked the setting and Dark Ghost, although all the stuff with Makoto's dad was waaaay too underdeveloped. That's the kind of stuff that should have been in the show, or at least developed more than just the "hey we have a summer movie coming up" snippets we did get.

Ex-Aid cameo was fun, especially since I'd forgotten it was happening. Cool to see all the "hit" bubbles done with a different font.

Ending was a little weird, but it didn't really change the way I feel about the film as a whole. The actual fight scene looked fantastic so there was that.

I think the biggest problem with this film is that it had so much that would have worked so much better in the series itself. But is that a fault of the movie or the series?

Watched the Super-1 movie. Certainly better than the average Heisei movie, let me tell you.

It's not a horribly original story in any respect, more of an expanded episode of the series, which really, is fine. It was slightly bigger in scale, made use of some nice special effects, and was able to tell a concise story that fit right int...o...wh...?

...wha...there's like eight minutes left in the film, why did the Eight Riders just pop up for no reason? This is...why? And then they're gone after three minutes of screentime. That sure was necessary.

But anyway, it was also able to wrap up decently enough, even though events at the end of the first arc in the show sort of throw things into disa....r...wh....no, not again! There's only one minute left, stop arbitrarily hijacking the movie, Eight Riders! Darn this.

Anyway yeah, pretty alright movie, basically just a particularly good episode, just with some extraneous Riders.

Through episode 13 of Drive. Gou seems like a rather unconventional secondary Rider. One thing I really like about Riku Sanjo is he always seems to have some kind of important thing going on each episode. New power ups, new characters, new plot. It definitely doesn't seems like the plot is in "top gear" yet though, but its been enjoyable and pretty dang funny.

Watched the Kamen Rider Brave special. It was really kind of lame and underwhelming. It didn't bore me or anything, but it seems a little half-baked all around, though I'm not sure what I was expecting.

Ohja isn't really firing on all cylinders, although I can't describe why very well. He does plenty of classicly messed up Ohja stuff, but it doesn't really feel right. It's still cool to see Ryuki get some love though, given how much I like that show.

Second, and tying into the whole problem with Ohja, the upped level of violence mostly amounts to an offscreen beating or two and a whole lot of glorified ketchup. Again, there's nothing really wrong with that, but... maybe it's a problem with the atmosphere? If this literally were Ryuki or one of the shows from around that time, this would probably work, but given that the whole thing is distinctly Ex-Aid in style and tone, it just sort of doesn't really fit together quite right.

Finally, Hiiro, despite being the focus, isn't in a lot of it and is characterized as he was in the first quarter of the show. This means he's sort of boring. The whole 22 minutes basically adds up to "Hiiro may seem distant and cold, but actually really values the lives of the people around him". Which isn't news at this point. I did like seeing his nurse babes get fleshed out a bit, though.

So yeah, it was a pretty okay thing. If you just can't possibly get enough of Hiiro (or Asakura), and I mean if you really just NEED more of him, than it's probably not something you'll regret watching, but you're not really missing out on anything too great if you don't.

Oh, and remember how back after Lazer's whole backstory got revealed everyone was all like "oh boo hoo, Kiriya-san is such a woobie and stuff"? Can we please throw some of that love Emu's way?

http://i.imgur.com/DHcEl7R.jpg

I think the poor guy could really use it.

I liked Brave's odd horror movie tone and enjoyed old Ohja. Beyond that, I agree with just about everything Fish said, though. Hiiro seems to get characterized backwards in these things.

Through some sort of arcane magicks, the torrent I was using to download some old specials actually pulled through, so I finally got to watch the All Together! Seven Kamen Riders!! special.

It was. Not really worth going out of my way to watch, but eh.

Pretty much just a 45 minute series of recaps of the first five Rider shows. A chunk of which I skipped, since you know, spoilers and all that...what little actual new content there was wasn't horribly interesting, but it's nice that all seven Riders were actually present in person, and as a sort of send-off to the franchise (at the time) and, in a sense, to Tachibana as a character, it's not bad.

edit: Hm. Also watched the Immortal Kamen Rider special. Unlike the previous one, it wasn't mostly recap...but only because, straight up, like 30 out of this 45 minute special was the second V3 movie. Literally just a movie, within a special. The rest of it was recaps though.

Not very exciting, to be honest, but I guess I can see why they made this.

Most surprising thing about it was hearing the name "Skyrider" used before the show aired. No one even calls him that in the show until the 20's, I was convinced it was something they came up with after the fact when they had to distinguish him from the other Riders, but I guess they were calling him that for that very purpose from the beginning. Shows what I know. (nothing, it turns out.)

Drive 20:
http://www.tokunation.com/picture.ph...&pictureid=723
I laughed way too hard at this. But like many of the more recent episodes, there wasn't exactly a happy ending. I'm very interested to see where all the stuff with the Roidmudes goes, I'm getting (good!) Faiz vibes from the more sympathetic ones. Classic Neo-Heisei mood whiplash! I'm starting to get more into this show, really enjoying most of the characters at this point, despite some of my initial impressions of them.

You're about at the point where the show really takes off. From about the midpoint on is when Drive really finds its voice.

Just watched the Brave special and personally I absolutely loved it. Mainly because I love Asakura as a character. I'm currently watching Ryuuki via stream and Asakura's been an obvious highlight of the series, with is extremely primal dog-eat-dog personality and twisted morality. Everything from his pipe to him eating fish raw to all the subtle Ryuuki references he makes were perfect. Not to mention the fact that they really let him go to town with his ruthlessness. Stalking his victims and beating two of them to near-death was something we didn't see all that often in Ryuuki. Seeing it here in an Ex-Aid special of all things was shocking yet super engaging.

Favorite part though was the final scene. The reveal that Foundation X is still active and not forgotten by Toei made me so excited to see what they may be planning to do with the concept in the future.

In honor of my Kiva-La figuart coming in I'm sitting down and re-watching the Kamen Rider W + Decade: Movie War 2010 and honestly I'm not enjoying it as much as I did my first couple times watching it. I enjoy it yes but its not as wonderous as I remember. I'm starting to notice all the little things that drive people nuts XD Tsukasa's hair throughout the first chunk of the Decade story for starters

Watched Eight Riders vs. Galaxy King.

I've been watching a bunch of Showa movies lately, and for the most part they're really just glorified episodes of their series. The already extremely episodic nature of the Showa era lends itself to this particularly well. That they don't go to any lengths to distinguish them from the show's usual storytelling only makes this more obvious (also, they're on the short side). They're not necessarily bad, but they're pretty forgettable. I can barely remember the first Black movie, and I watched it like, two hours ago. I'm sure I'll forget all about it by tomorrow. It was a pretty nothing movie.

Eight Riders vs. Galaxy King, though, was different. Or well, it started off that way. The scale was a step removed from that of the show, the effects were too. The cast of the show was entirely absent from the film (Hiroshi himself excluded, obviously...and I guess Admiral Demon), with a lot of the driving conflict and characters being the film's own (as opposed to most of the others, which just had the same evil organization). And the cinematography was also unlike anything the show, or really any of the Showa ones, ever really did. I don't want to oversell it because it also isn't like it was something mindblowing or anything of the sort, but it was different and promising enough for me to get kind of excited,

Kind of ended up being too much excitement, though. Eight Riders vs. Galaxy King had one big problem, by which I mean seven big problems, by which I mean the fact that it's a purely Skyrider movie that had seven other Riders in it, for reasons. What those reasons were, I could not say. When I watched the Super-1 movie a few days ago I criticized it for randomly including the eight previous Riders for no reason, and now I feel like I owe that movie an apology. At least that was for like, four minutes, and not any sort of selling point. Eight Riders vs. Galaxy King sort of felt like it sold itself on the whole "Eight Riders" thing, on the other hand, but well, their inclusion in the movie was no less pointless than in Super-1's, yet it took up far, far more time. It really added nothing to what it would turn out was an already very nothing film. It's difficult to describe just how little having the other seven mattered. It was all for some random fight scenes with a bunch of reused monsters that took up most of the middle of the film. It's just absolute, absolute nothing. I'm having an extremely difficult time recalling it and I literally just got done watching it. And what surprised me most is that they were all suit only, despite the film, again, selling itself on the eight's inclusion. Not that I was expecting all of them to be in it, but I would have expected at least Nigou, V3, or Stronger, since they were the ones that appeared most often in the show.

An aside, but I do find it amusing that even back then they couldn't be assed to get voice actors that sounded anything like the characters. I mean, it really isn't like there were that many, even.

The actual plot of the film ended up being just stock showa plot number 3. Or 2, or 7, I don't know. I don't keep track of these things. All I know is it's nothing I haven't seen before, except this time there's like 15 or 20 minutes of pointless Rider on kaijin action shoved in the middle. The vs Galaxy King part of the title also ended up being kind of a misnomer, as none of the Riders ever really fight him, and when he does fall, it's just about the most underwhelming thing in the entire world. Not even any sort of final battle in this thing.

Movie was also weirdly rapey in a couple of parts, which is also not great.

So...anyway, yeah. It started off maybe promising, then a bunch of other Riders showed up for no reason, and then maybe it looked like it could have still ended interestingly, but it didn't. I'd say that represents Skyrider pretty well but I'd sort of be twisting things a bit. Regardless...yeah. Not the best Rider movie I've seen.

Up through Drive episode 41. The show really has shown better direction in the second half, although it is feeling like too little too late. I would have really liked to see some of this stuff like Banno and the motivations of the Roidmudes gone into earlier so we could get more details. I guess we'll see how it fares in these final few episodes. Probably going to take a little break to tackle the Drive x Gaim, Super Hero Taisen 3, and the Surprise Future movies (since I remembered that the Neo-Heisei movies LOVE randomly becoming relevant at the end of their respective shows). Currently though, this series is looking like it's going to be in the "good not great" category for me.

Super-1 29

"What a weird uncle."

XIG. XIG, no.

Kamen Rider 66

So it's starting to feel like I'm just ripping on XIG, but this

https://i.gyazo.com/9bca57f6fe34d00c...e88992e0eb.png

Why would anyone ever, ever do this.

A few lines in this episode were also subbed as <Mystical Gibberish>, which frankly is not a very elegant way of subbing mystical gibberish.

This episode though...I actually was giving too much credit to Shocker while watching it, since I thought they had some sort of complicated plan involving an impostor Rider, but I guess Fujioka just wasn't available when this episode was being made, since he never appeared in person and that definitely wasn't his voice (which is what threw me off). Plan actually was pretty standard Shocker fare.

There was one very funny moment in it though. A bunch of monsters charged into the Racing Club supposedly in pursuit of the victim of the week, and then chased him out. A while later they go back to the Club and Tachibana just scolds them, like "hey, get out of here, you already got what you wanted," as if Shocker wouldn't take the opportunity to harm them regardless. It's pretty hilarious.

But anyway, in keeping with the theme of criticizing XIG...

Super-1 30

I really don't know if it was always this way and I'm just starting to notice/pay more attention, or if their work started deteriorating in quality, or if the ones I'm watching recently are just outliers, but man. The subs for this one were kind of awful. They really couldn't have been more stiff and unnaturally written if they tried.

Episode itself was pretty absurd though. These Jin Dogma monsters are as a whole kinda silly, being based on things like glasses, umbrellas and other silly things, who use these things in equally silly (and sort of repetitive, when I think of it) schemes to control people with their evil glasses and umbrellas. But this one has really gotta take the cake. Controlling people with evil roller skates is a pretty novel concept.

Apparently the next episode is about evil hairspray, though, so who knows. Maybe that'll top it.

So I ended up not watching Super Hero Taisen GP after realizing it was somewhat Black related (don't make fun of my Wikipedia infobox rules for which Kamen Rider movies I watch when). So instead I just did Drive x Gaim, Surprise Future, and the Ex-Aid Brave Special.

Gaim x Drive: Kouta, you are the weakest Space God ever I swear. A good, fun, and silly crossover, just the way I like it. I loved seeing the Gaim cast again, and Kouta and Shinnosuke's interactions were really funny. I also really liked how the Gaim part focused mostly on Micchi and Takatora, I thought that was neat.

Surprise Future: Why was this so good. That blew Paradise Lost out of the water, and they even had similar concepts. The plot was surprisingly compelling, and it had some really nice moments for Shinnosuke and Mr. Belt. It's always a pleasant SURPRISE when a summer movie manages to actually be good instead of just good in a kinda bad way.

Brave Special: It's just kinda there. I did really enjoy watching Asakura act like a psychopath again though. Also that disproportionate level of violence was really something.

I can't find the full length version of the Brave special anywhere. Care to share where you watched it?

Drive is all finished now! The climax was stellar, but yeah, ultimately there is so much that I would have liked so have seen more of earlier on. Like, I really would have liked to have seen more of Banno in particular, because as good a villain as he was he was only around for the last handful of episodes. Similarly, I still think that showing more of the Roidmudes motivations early on would have been a good idea. I liked the more sympathetic approach, but it felt rushed. It's not even that I thought the first half was bad, just that it needed to add more juicy details and foreshadowing. Basically, I think the show's kinda dichotomous first and second halves ended up undermining both. On the positive side, the characters were very good and generally had really compelling interactions, what I generally consider a big strength of Riku Sanjo. Gou might be my favorite secondary rider, I though they took a good route with him, he had conflict with the other riders, but it was all pretty reasonable and had understandable motivations. He was very interesting. I teared up during Chase's death scene, but ended up crying during Heart's death, which got to me even more, so yay, I've cried at Rider twice now. I'm still debating where I would rank it, but I think I would put it right under Kuuga and above Wizard.

TV-Nihon recently subbed it, so if you aren't willing to torrent or directly download it, it might take a while to go up on any streaming sites.

Something I forgot to comment on in this special: FOUNDATION X?! I really thought they had forgotten about that.

All the talk of Showa Rider recently has gotten me to finally do something that I put off well over a year ago: finishing Black RX. I finished episode 38 last night, so I have less than 10 episodes to go. I really don't see why this show got so much hate for so long. Yes, it starts off with a big tonal shift from Black, but as the show goes on it does get more serious (by Showa standards). Kotaro is still a great main character and I generally like his supporting cast - Reiko is great, the Saharas have gotten far less annoying, and the only thing keeping Joe from being a great character is the fact that I get pretty tired of every third word out of his mouth being "Aniki!" The villains, likewise, are mostly really good, too. Maribaron, in particular, is relatively well developed for a Showa general. The only real letdown is Dasmader, who is up there with Archbishop Wing and Dr. Maki in terms of villain impotence (he joins the cast mid-season as an observer meant to get General Jark and co. back on track; in practice he shows up once an episode to announce that this is their last chance to defeat RX, then never does anything when they consistently fail... at least until episode 38, where he finally decides to execute one of the generals for failing, only to be immediately stabbed in the back by Jark). I'm having a lot of fun with this and I regret waiting so long to finish this series up.

Just finished the short but sweet Ghost Alain minisodes. All the feelings.

Watched Five Riders vs. King Dark.

I'm not sure this movie makes any fucking sense, and not just because the DenScrubs scrub is, to put it politely, "not great," but it's just a mess.

And like Eight Riders vs. Galaxy King, the title is a total lie.

But at least that's done. I watched the third movie for the original show earlier (nothing to say about that) so I'm through all the movies for the three Showa series I'm watching, at least. All that's left is to finish them! 30 episodes of the original show, 12 of X, 15 of Super-1. Won't be long now.

SkyRider Episode 13: Well taking a break from my CarRanger addiction to return to my other shows. Dear God was I greeted with the most intense episode of SkyRider I've seen. NeoShocker's Plus Alpha Bomb! (Basically more powerful than a Hydrogen Bomb.) They played up the seriousness of this a lot! I mean I thought SkyRider and all of Tokyo were going to die it wasn't just oh SkyRider will just find it and save everyone. No He had to go from place to place find the fake bomb, fight NeoShocker, Escape from NeoShocker, Drive around with no clue where to look, Fight Neo Shocker again so they don't kill the scientist who betrayed NeoShocker, Wait for him to wake up, and still fight NeoShocker and the AntLion Man before he could stop the bomb with 1 second left! Dear God! Was that something else! Give this man a medal he freaking deserves it. SkyRider is damn sure a Super Hero! You could even tell he was stressed out from the entire situation. I loved that Hiroshi knew his priorities of trying to stop the bomb first and trying to escape the enemies a lot. Oh yeah I also forgot he had to break out of a collapsing room with spiked walls! I'm sure that Hiroshi is happy to take a rest after this day. Man this episode was something else.

I went from happy go lucky CarRanger to oh yeah NeoShocker is going to blow up Japan SkyRider. That shift was out of this world lol.

I can't wait for more.

You saw those, but you forgot the best one! Hanuman vs The Five Riders!
EDIT: It's up on YT. https://youtu.be/yOSSptr3MZo

...You know, I was going to just ignore that one, but considering I'm forcing myself to go through even Saban's Masked Rider for my completionist tendencies, so I guess I really should, huh...

But man that things's like 2 hours long. The longest Showa movies are only like 40 minutes.

Maybe one day if I literally run out of things to watch.

So, Ex-Aid Episodes 12-13. I knew it was coming, but it still hurt. RIP Kiriya. You were my second favourite rider, and without you, the shows going to be harder to watch.

Well, it took a long time due to stopping, starting, restarting, restopping, and re-restarting, but I've finally finished Black RX, the redheaded step-child of the Showa era. So what did I think of the garbage baby show that almost completely ruined Black's legacy and is probably single-handedly the reason why there was no Kamen Rider series for a decade?

I liked it. Quite a bit, in fact. Honestly, I have no idea why RX has such a bad reputation and I say that as a huge Black fanboy. I mean, sure, it probably started off a little rougher than it could have and there is totally a shift in both the show's tone and Kotaro's personality, but it did eventually find its voice and there is some legitimately great Kamen Riding in here. The mini-arc that introduced Robo Rider and Bio Rider is especially great. I really enjoyed the villains (even Dasmader, who did rally a little bit near the end) and all the Amemiya monster designs. The supporting characters grew on me, too; Reiko was great and the Sahara family got really toned down by the end. I liked the little era near the end where Kotaro had his own little combat squad following him around and generally helping out in the few moments where they weren't getting captured by monsters.

I'm a bit more ambivalent about the return of the 10 Riders near the end of the series. For a start, it felts completely random and out-of-nowhere, especially after 95 episodes of Kotaro being the only Rider in town. I don't mind that none of them were played by the original actors and no one ever un-transformed, but I feel like they really didn't add much to the series and I don't think the ending would have played out any differently if they weren't there.

On the whole, though, I thought Black RX was a really good show and I'm glad I finally finished it, even if being completely done with the Minami Kotaro era leaves me with a lonely, lonely heart. :(

As for what's next, I've decided that this is the year where I'm going to finish up my backlog of unfinished tokusatsu shows. I want to finish up Zubat first, then I think I'm going to come back here and polish off Skyrider before moving on to the original series (I know I'll enjoy the original more, so I want to get Skyrider out of the way first). After that, all that's left will be finally watching Super-1.

Ex-Aid episode 13 thoughts
I know this is more of a fiction thing in general, but Emu's friend/colleague died in his arms. Do they not have some sort of councelling that he can go to?

Hiro's dad pairs Hiro and Emu together, like Hiro doesn't want the guy to leave him alone. I know he's practically useless, but now he's just adding to my annoyance. At least Onari tried to help with the plot...

Parad's plan is pretty good. He reminds me a lot of DJ Sagara, but here it's a little different, as we know he's trying to kill Emu, not be vague and mysterious. It's a nice twist, even though we knew Emu's not going to die. But it does raise a lot of questions about who/what he is...

Who is this girl, why is she hanging around Taiga, and how do I make her leave?

I feel you'll learn to like the girl as she's very complimentary for Taiga after a few episodes. And Emu's got an internship at the hospital, meaning they probably have psychiatrists :p