Oh, man, smart move. She's definitely the thing Ore Journal was missing.

EDITED TO ADD: hey what if i talked about why

First of all, I love that the only reason she became a secretary is because she wanted to be a journalist and accidentally took classes to become a secretary instead. That concept, of her tripping and falling into a completely different career and her being, like, *shrug emoji*... perfect. Gold-plated perfection. I don't know if I've ever heard of a better origin story.

But, for the mix of Ore Journal, she's just the right kind of weirdo to level up the dynamic. Dedicated, but sloppy. Manipulative, but scatterbrained. Earnest, but untrustworthy. And she immediately creates an entertaining rivalry (unknowingly, because: Megumi) with Shimada.

It's a great time for more Ore Journal scenes, which is something I'm not sure I expected to ever say and mean.

So this is the time where, a dead topic usually ORE only follows is actually popular, with all the other journalists there. It's not that often for Shinji to ask for an Atori crew to help his ORE job... And also, does this remind you to the "Ren amnesia" 2-parter where everyone on a public transportation disappears except for one person (and the time you complained about how Mirror Monster works by that, yet it's maybe similar too here)? Asakura should've probably just feed his monster upon humans considering his morality, especially when he's extremely close to dying, but I guess that he likes it hard way (or rather, fun way in form of fighting as Rider, as seen where he gives his Rider opponents a chance outside Rider fight)? This is one thing even Asakura doesn't (but perfectly can as seen with Akira) do as habit unlike another evil Rider (Scissors).

Asakura is a red herring, people talk about Buzzstingers (the monster trio, yellow is Bee, red is Hornet, blue is Wasp), and he's the one having 3 monsters as Shinji knows, but there's actually other monster trio. And as usual, nobody is allowed to know more about the monsters. Well overall, this is just the mystery stuff which is one of the main trait of Ryuki, in numerous previous 2 parters. And no Shinji (and audience)! Don't be baited again by Asakura! Though to his defense, he does that for the well-being of Mika (requiring Asakura to calm down), instead of Asakura. And even aside from that when asking for Asakura's morality, Asakura pushes Mika out of the way in this episode... and she seems fine too. Poor Shinji though, the kids he want to take care about are all confiding more into the morally ambiguous Riders and refusing to contact with anyone else.

Obviously this is an Asakura episode. Shinji and Ren are just his judges (and again a bet between them if Shinji's ways are sensible or not). Battle-wise, Ryuki and Knight scans his Final Vent card but it somehow gets negated after the Buzzstingers escapes (while Ouja prepares Unite Vent, they're more scared of that?!)... Also previously, can we talk about how something (Buzzstingers) manages to survive Final Vent unharmed, knocking Ouja back?!
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...7560/block.png

And there goes next of Megumi's victims, undeserving one in Shimada, maybe even extends to whole ORE as they depend on computers. Always side with Shimada regarding computers. And apparently Megumi's idiocy runs in family too.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...4/grandma2.jpghttps://media.discordapp.net/attachm...28/grandma.png

How about Yui with long hair instead?
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...31611689/g.jpg

What was Okubo thinking? Looking for insane people to hire and prioritizes situations over performance. No wonder ORE is failing.. apart from keep following dead trends (Mirror stuff). Besides here Megumi got what she wanted in ORE, not that she's any better there and will torture ORE like she did to Kitaoka. Megumi is like the emotion pair to Shimada's intellect. And you have to remember that ORE gives the monster plot in this episode, so what were you saying again about this series workplaces?

Y'know, I didn't even remember that episode during this one, so, good connection to make!

I think it's a little different, though. One, in that previous episode a Mirror Mmonster was able to grab the entire contents of train car in a fraction of a second and in total silence. Here, it takes three monsters to pick off a few people in a room, and it usually takes them long enough for folks to scream and the heroes to race to get there.

Plus, having not seen the first boat attack, I'd just assume that the monsters took their time in grabbing humans.

I wonder if Asakura's monsters are like Kitaoka: they'll eat anything, as long as it's high-class. People are probably like junk food to Contract Monsters, good for a quick rush but with no essential nutrition. They need the vitamins of other monsters to sustain themselves. Picky eaters, you know? It's better to just give them what they want than force them to eat.

So, there's three of them that spin together to form a protective shell, and there's three Riders that are opposed to working together in order to defeat the monsters, so I just assumed that the conclusion of this story was going to have to see all three Riders doing their Final Vents to different thirds of the monster rotation to defeat them. Just where my head was at on this one.

Less into it, honestly? There's a thing she does in this one, where she uses some (I don't know anything about hair products for women) hairpins or something to bring the sides of her hair in, so it's not this dome of hair. I'll have to find a picture later. I thought it was pretty stylish and framed her face better.

I thought I was pretty clear that adding Megumi makes me excited about Ore Journal plots! It doesn't change how I felt before, but it's a positive change for that branch of the show.

I'm going to defend Okubo's hiring policies. I like that this dude took in the abrasive reporters and neophyte photojournalists and socially-awkward IT managers and clumsy office workers and made them all a workplace family. I don't know if any of these people could stay employed under anyone else. (Reiko's a great reporter, but she's terrible at following instructions and mostly disrespectful to her boss, and that ain't gonna fly at a lot of companies.) I think it's cool that Okubo takes the dregs and says I Can Make This Work, I Can Make Them Great, They Also Probably Aren't Aware How Much I'm Under-Paying Them.

I like how you've gone from thinking Yui seems pretty interesting, to thinking the show needs to do more with her, to thinking she's pathetic, to thinking the show's using her a bit better, to now just thinking she has nice hair.

That's the kind of critique that makes these threads special. It's like if you take time to blink, Die will already have a completely new wildly different hot take on Yui. :lol

It's gonna take a good year or so until we get there, but I'm so incredibly hyped to see how he reacts to Thouser.

It's good hair!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...egoodhair1.png
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...egoodhair2.png
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...egoodhair3.png

(Also, it's a total accident, but I maybe could not have picked a more representative image for my thoughts on Yui than her looking confused and saying "What happened to you?")

My main thing is that I never want to be unfair with these threads. If I dislike a show and it does something good, I want to call it out. If I like a show and it does something bad, I want to call it out. Yui's character has, for me, been remarkably inconsistent (her only scene this episode is thinking about her brother and watching Ren go do hero stuff!!!), but her hair was on-point this episode, and I wanted to compliment it. I would love to have a consistent take on her, but the show would need to have one first.

I love Thousand! He's my favorite. I like the way he fights/is a monster.

MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 32

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I feel like this is the best kind of story you can do to deepen Asakura's character. Let other people try and divine his motivations, let them project their biases onto him, but never really nail down what he's thinking.

The more mysterious you can make Asakura, I think the better he plays. Mika's certain he's a good guy, Ren's certain he's a villain, and Shinji is the audience, wanting to believe he can change but knowing he probably won't. It's tricky, to find that balance. In the Asakura's Brother story, the show veered too far into having the heroes be trusting dopes. In this one, there's circumstantial evidence that Asakura didn't hurt anyone on the boat, that he protected Mika with no ulterior motive, but he never really defends himself or explains his actions. (I mean, there's the bit at the end where he says Mika was just his hostage, but it's not real convincing.) It makes him complicated, in a dramatically compelling way. Having a complete redemption story for Asakura, I feel like it'd ruin his character the same as keeping him a maniacal killer. This middle ground where maybe, under exceptionally heightened circumstances, Asakura might have a sliver of empathy inside of him... I think it's the smartest way to evolve his character.

It's funny, to lead this write-up off by talking about Asakura, because in opposition to last episode's It's About Asakura Even If He's Not In It story, Asakura's all over this one, and yet it's not really about him. It's about what he represents.

He's a killer, and an unrepentant one at that. He's a monster, and there's no restraining him. The longer he's free, the more innocents are at risk. He's made his bed of surrounding himself with hungry monsters, and now he gets to lie in it. It's justice, by nearly anyone's definition.

But.

But Mika cares for him. Mika needs him in her life. She needs him to exist in the world. Asakura's death would hurt her. His death would make someone's life, even if it's only one person's life, worse. And that means he deserves to live, same as anyone. The loss of a life isn't just about the person who dies, it's about the people they loved, the world they inhabited. Asakura has earned his fate, but he deserves to live. Not for himself, but for the people who care about him.

It's a sweet message, and one only Shinji could properly articulate. It's hard to give a speech advocating for the continued existence of a man who just had his brother devoured by a monster, but the actor's performance and the beautiful spring There Is Beauty After Rain montage really sells the necessity of saving Asakura. It's a monumental ask of the audience, but I was like, Yeah, Shinji should save him. That's the crux of the episode, a make-or-break point for the story, and I thought they landed it gracefully.

I sort-of wish that was all that was in this episode? The last one gained points for staying pretty laser-focused on the boat story, while I felt like this one lost points for trying to serve other plots. There are a few scenes of Reiko investigating what happened to Shiro in America, and I found it typically dull. One, I can't believe that, after Tezuka's death, someone else has hijacked Yui's only plotline. Hilarious! This show! Second, I just don't care about the small amounts of information Reiko gets about Mirror Worlds and Secret Science Societies and things that viewers have known about for 30+ episodes. It's so boring to me, watching her catch up to the rest of the show. If this was shocking information that changed what we knew about Shiro and Rider Battles, I'd be into it. But, like, she's just learning the plot of Masked Rider Ryuki. I already know that! I've been watching that for 32 episodes!

That part was a bummer, but the rest of this episode was a surprisingly sweet story about the ways even the worst people have value, and can enrich other lives. A real pleasant episode.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ryuki/ryuki32b.png

Hmm I think I understand more about your complaints right now that time. Like being in total slience. Though I think in that part, the train iirc also wasn't seen and the monster actually take time too to eat all the humans? (Or your point was that, the train were in total silence as the humans are wiped out one by one).

I think I get it now. Humans are "standard" eatery among monsters and the killed monsters are "special" eatery among monsters to you. But dunno, I thought that, as Shinji explained in ep. 4, Mirror Monsters still prefer humans over the dying monsters' essence, and because of that you should be careful about handling Contract Monsters?

This whole episode is ORE Journal plot of sending Shinji to the ferry. And yeah I lowkey also want you to explain more about Okubo like that, to change my mind (and it does). So thanks for this one. There are some cons in this way like how Okubo's frustrated with Shinji. Though (not only Reiko) actually the only truly incompetent one he hired is Megumi. And I have to note for Shinji, Okubo is already his longtime friend, his senpai, and he knows that Shinji is into journalism.

If memory serves, for the train car scenes, Reiko looks away for 1-3 seconds and everyone is gone. That's one monster grabbing a few dozen people so fast they can't even scream. I don't think it fits the monster M.O. we've been seeing everywhere else on the show. Most of 'em struggle to grab one person without alerting anyone, and this monster grabbed dozens, multiple times.

I don't know if I mentioned it earlier in the thread or not, but one of the things that I really love about Ryuki is the nature of the monsters' threat. There's no rampaging through the city streets/industrial district/warehouse/quarry/Tokyo stadium; the average person has no idea that they're in any form of danger or that Kamen Riders are protecting them (even if only as a by-product). But look around you right now and count how many reflective surfaces there are. In the world of Ryuki, any one of those can kill you. That's a fantastically terrifying concept and I've always been impressed by it.