It sure is considering Ichigo and Nigo and V3 were all about using wind energy to transform. Good find.

I’ll just skip to my counter-arguement

https://youtu.be/rlmnPGJAHUA

Very neat! Thank you both!

There's a thing that was said about the success of Star Wars worldbuilding, that George Lucas could've pointed the camera at nearly any character and you could've had an interesting story. That's hard to do! It's hard to create a world that has even minor characters making the audience say What Is That Dude's Deal.

Hibiki kind-of already managed that with Ibuki and Akira? They basically take over this episode from Asumu (a little) and Hibiki (a ton), and the narrative doesn't suffer from it at all. If the next episode would've been the start of 40-odd more episodes of Ibuki and Akira fighting monsters and being instructional for growing up into a responsible adult, I would 100% understand why the production team made that decision.

I really love how rich the world of this show is, how little of it seems to depend on directly supporting Hibiki as a character. It means they can tell stories about anything.

It took me embarrassingly long to connect W’s Cyclone to the Ichigou inspiration...


Either way, Akira! WONDERFUL character! These two episodes really stood out to me for how much they were about introducing the secondary rider and his own supporting cast (supporting cast of, uh, 1). Usually Rider shows will have a focus episode or two of the new hero but it’s often from the main Rider’s perspective and not quite as overtaking as this — it practically becomes the Ibuki & Akira show for a bit and I’m all for it! As already said I really like how it shows a ‘normal’ Oni situation, and how Akira isn’t framed as in the wrong beyond being a little too mean. Often female characters, especially younger ones don’t get that kind of respect— it’s almost like this was worked on by some of the Kuuga guys, or something! Talking of which I do kind of disagree on the ship thing, but mostly semantically — I said on Fish’s Kuuga thread once that the relationships are built so charmingly yet so grounded that I could genuinely read into any given relationship as anything from friends to romantic, and it’s the same here! Asumu and Akira feels very natural and neutral and real that I’m easily able to read into them as pals as much as others could see them as a cute baby couple. Just a great part of what makes Hibiki so nice!

Ibuki is a really stable character and Akira a wonderful apprentice so I’m glad you like them. I’ve got a lot to say coming up so I hope I can get that laptop soon...

Honestly, I'm usually with you on celebrating platonic friendships in a medium where fans frequently rush to pair off characters, buuuuuuuuut Akirasumu makes me feel like someone's pushy relative, peppering them with questions about that Nice Girl or Boy they've been spending so much time with. There's nothing wrong with platonic friendships in these dramatic and allegorical series! But these two are perfect together and I love them.

What I really love about Akira's full introduction into the story here is that we finally get a chance to see Hibiki do a take on the typical Kamen Rider antagonistic new arrival. Akira is the first character on the show to not greet Asumu with enthusiasm and a friendly smile. Instead she insults him to his face. But this isn't a Kusaka kind of situation. She has some legitimate reasons for not being happy that some random kid stumbled into their camp on the shore of monster lake. More importantly, though, she gets called out on her rudeness. So many shows before and after this let characters get away with being jerks, but Ibuki clearly - but gently - chides Akira for being rude. And by the end of the episode the two have made up and started becoming friends. It's a really nice inversion of the way most other shows handle initially hostile relationships.

Ugh, Magiranger de gozarimasu desu. The one black hole of quality in the otherwise stellar year of tokusatsu that brought us Hibiki, Garo, and Ultraman Max.

Now I am no huge fan of Magiranger either, but I don't remember it being that bad. It was delightfully whimsical and was what made the show work. Magiking is actually well thought-out regarding its combination and the Legend Magiranger super modes were quite top notch I must say. And Magi Shine in all his Okamoto suit-acting glory was great. I mean how often do you see a gold ranger with a cat for a genie as a sentai hero? :rock:

It really is! Having Hibiki tell Asumu that he screwed this one up, it's so important. Anyone else could be suspect, but when Kamen Rider Dad tells you that you screwed up but shouldn't feel too bad about it, you screwed up.

Akira's attitude, it feels like it comes from a place of belief, where what she and Ibuki are doing is super-critical and people outside of their group will never know what they're risking to keep people safe. I think her anger towards Asumu is how it feels for her to keep this secret? Some of it's her being an adolescent with The Hormones that are causing her to be a little weirder around Asumu than he maybe deserves (and vice versa), but I think some of it is her having a tougher time living the double-life of a monster fighter. I don't know. I think she (like Asumu!) is a super fascinating way to examine a Kamen Rider story. Very into seeing more of these kids!

So there are at least 3 toku Akira's it seems.
Akira from Hibiki,
Akira Date from OOO
and
Akira Nijino from Toqger
Y'all got any other Toku Akiras?

Only the greatest Akira of all-time, since he's played by the best toku actor of all-time!

Oh, you prefer it rather than "angry person being cruel to some unfortunate soul" (which people also can give free pass for 'comedy factor')? Sums up how normal people will do on toku world, which is putting jeopardy in their life for the work of those experienced. And yes, "jerk has a point", rude ones (at least, in debut in this case) can be seriously deficient in the morals/logic department, at least from the point of view of the perspective characters, a moment where they say something undeniably true, others can't deny that they're right without deluding themselves. Cases typically involve the listener conceding the point or a trustworthy source agreeing with the rude. Words from those people is probably the last thing you wanted to hear. But the worst part is that he's right. Still, even if someone like Akira is right, this is taken too the extreme like others and eventually she admits. But unfortunately, others also can give free pass to this kind of foul act, no matter how someone takes it too the extreme just because they're right.

Asumu is the one that wants the support from Hibiki, so yeah, he won't support here, he comes to receive the other's help. But this would be not the right time as they're in work. I guess Hibiki teaching Asumu like this is also another lesson to improve yourself, to also give instead of only take (which is what Asumu did to Hibiki).

Well, Hinaka is the foil to Kasumi, she's meant to be the airheaded and cheerful compared to Kasumi's intelligent and serious, it'd be nonsense. And wdym about primary or secondary played out like that? Secondary isn't primary's sidekick that obeys what the primary wants y'know... Ibuki not asking Hibiki's permission and work on their own is something happens in pretty much every Rider series. If Ibuki specializes in taking down flyers as he had a gun, I wonder what Hibiki has in advantage, at least in ground fights.

Oh sure, I'm just talking about potential risks of this role model mentoring type.

HOUJOU WAS IN DRIVE???

Your incredible obsession with this man has taught me things I never knew I wanted. This is great

The Blu-ray miniseries spinoff of Drive, specifically, but still! Die is right; everybody really is in everything. Part of me still doesn't believe that Dr Maki was a main character in Ultraman X!

And on the subject of actor trivia, since Magiranger just came up a bit ago: has anyone mentioned that Seiji Takaiwa was off playing Magi Red during Hibiki yet? Hibiki was instead played by Makoto Itou, stepping up from previously doing the suit acting for every single secondary Rider to that point, from G3 all the way to, er... Chalice. That debate really is never going to end, is it?

Anyway, I've always kind of assumed Takaiwa going back to being a Sentai Red (something he was doing a lot of before Agito) had something to do with that period of preproduction where nobody was sure if Kamen Rider was still going to continue, but that's totally baseless, and if there's any hard facts behind how that happened, I've never heard them. Whatever the case, Hibiki remains the one break in Takaiwa's otherwise uninterrupted streak of playing Heisei leads after Kuuga.

And then he got to play Hibiki anyway when Decade rolled around. And Kuuga, I guess.

Well, there is:
1. Akira Shinmei aka Aorenger from Gorenger, played by Hiroshi Miyauchi who we also love as Kamen Rider V3, Kaiketsu Zubat, Miura from Ohranger, Masaki from Winspector to Exceedraft, and Tobei Tachibana from Kamen Rider The First
2. Akira Momoi aka Denzi Pink from Denziman, a tennis player
3. Akira aka Blue Mask from Maskman, the wushu expert(actor is a legit wushu practitioner too, used to be in tournaments during his prime and I think he is an instructor these days)
4. Akira Dentsuin aka Sazer Remls from Gransazer, the surgeon

I did that thing where I took a quick nap and woke up more tired than I was before, so let's see how this goes.

Yeah, it's a plotline that could've gone real wrong, but the kids learn their lessons by the end and everyone's cool. It's a really nice way of teaching constructive criticism!

It's mostly that another series would have the title character more insistent about helping, or more worried about not helping. Here, Hibiki never really seems too concerned about Ibuki not succeeding at his task. It's a way of making the non-title Rider seem as competent as the title Rider, and I don't recall that being done before. Usually it's the secondary either being a total sidekick or a virtual antagonist. Here, Ibuki is just... another Rider? It's treated more like the modern-day Legend Rider appearances are, which is very fun.

it is so much effort to even watch these things when i know houjou won't be in them

Nobody has, and that's neat!

Did not know that existed. There's a lot of Drive side stuff that I never really looked into.

Dr. Maki was all over the toku shows for awhile. He was also Yuuki's dad on Fourze and a guy who ran a Sentai store on Akibaranger.

He's also a main villain in Amazons, where he plays a scheming executive. In fact, that was the first place I ever saw him, which made watching him be a traumatized ("traumatized") scientist who is obsessed with a doll even weirder than it should've been!

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 9 - “WRITHING MALICE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki09a.png

“And hey, it’ll be nice
To be see-through for a while
And hey, it’ll be cool
To be feather-light for a while”

-Say Hi, “I Think I’ll Be A Good Ghost”

This one… not sure it 100% worked?

I’m likely to be initially skeptical of any episode of Hibiki that foregrounds the monster plot, even upgrading it to a legit Monster Mystery, but I think this episode had problems beyond that.

But, hey, let's start with the Monster Mystery. It’s a very standard Kamen Rider plot, where what seems like an open-and-shut monster plot suddenly takes a few unexpected turns, leaving the heroes playing catch-up. Ibuki and Akira are out looking for a flying Makamou that Hinaka can’t quite narrow down (probably some form of giant bee), which ends up probably not being a flying Makamou after it crushes a car and maybe strips two dudes (???) before fleeing down a mountain. Meanwhile, Hibiki is putting his recent training to good use by detonating a giant ant with his newest maneuver, Unified Burst Fire Style. It’s an episode with a whole lot of monster tracking and fighting.

Which, I’ll just say it: I super don’t give a shit. In general, I don’t care that much about the monster stuff in Hibiki, but here I just found it incredibly dull. The biggest problem is how isolated everything in this story feels, including the two monster plots. Hibiki fighting the ant is a fun visual, but there’s zero setup for it in the episode (his first scene is him defeating the Douji and Hime) and it never really connects with anything else in this one narratively. Even Unified Burst Fire Style is just him saying Unified Burst Fire Style a few times before simultaneously hitting the ant until it explodes. (Again, cool visual! Not disputing that!) It’s Hibiki stuck in a dull and formulaic plot, with next to none of the style that usually makes those parts of the story more palatable to me. (He does make a dumb pun after fighting the giant ant, to absolutely no one, and I sort-of respect that.) We don’t really see any of the cool minutiae that Kasumi and Hibiki get up to, or the funny camaraderie they share. It’s just him as an action hero, and that’s just not enough for me.

(Also, going back to that first Hibiki scene, it's the third time in a row this episode where they play the Hibiki theme. Once for the actual intro; then for Asumu's dream sequence, where it's got more of a lullaby tone; and then again, done straight, for Hibiki's fight. A) it's too many times in a row for any song, and B) it's a little lazy for the first fight to not have any cool, unique music. That's this show's brand!)

The Ibuki stuff isn’t so bad, but it’s mostly just setting up the next episode, and it eats up a ton of time to do it. It’s another plot in isolation, with Ibuki not interacting with Hibiki and Akira not interacting with Asumu. We get to see Team Ibuki working to defeat a monster, but it really doesn’t tell us anything new about them, which a plot like this really should be doing so soon after their introduction. It’s, like the Hibiki plot, pretty basic and not that unique.

All of that would’ve been less important to me if the Asumu plot (also completely in isolation, this episode was like watching three different shows) had delivered and… I guess there’s such a thing as being too opaque? You can read a lot into Asumu’s dilemma with the shoplifters here, but there’re no definitive answers to be found. He’s got no one to talk to or confide in, so we’re left with what looks to be a continuation of Asumu’s tendency to choke when he needs to be decisive, but, y’know, maybe it’s not? He’s all internal in this one, which I’d normally praise a show for, but there’s enough ambiguity to what’s motivating Asumu here that I really need someone to clarify what’s happening with him. Does it have anything to do with him being aimless over Spring Break? Or Hibiki not being around? Or Akira? Or his friends finding him unreliable? Or the sheep in his dream? There’s a bunch of things happening to/with Asumu in this one, but very little that’s being said about him, at least for me.

So, yeah, didn’t really work for me. Everything was too isolated to feel like I was watching one story, and the individual pieces were either too straightforward or too vague. I feel like this script needed a few more passes to be a Hibiki-level story.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki09b.png

P.S. Please don’t shoplift from bookstores! You’re more likely to be taking money directly out of the owner’s (very meager) pockets, rather than committing a “victimless” crime. Replacing stolen stock is not cheap, and stores can lose sales due to inaccurate inventory. Please don’t steal from bookstores!

I promised to comment on the debut of major or recurring characters and one shows up here in the form of the bully who steals from Asumu in his episode (since he makes appearances in two later episodes, before being dropped after the retool)

He’s definitely my least favourite character on the show, mostly for a) how one-note he is as a character, b) he offers little that couldn’t be taken out with no trouble and c) he never receives any comeuppance or redemption for his actions.

I like Hibiki, and I'm glad that you've been receptive to it's unique style. I remember distinctly how one of the earliest scenes, of Asumu having a meal with his family who are talking about him, and both they and their voices fade away in favour of the music to show how much he feels like an outsider to what's happening. Those kinds of moments hit incredibly close to home. In fact, a lot of the themes about finding your way in life struck such a chord with me. It took a few episodes for me to get along with Hibiki's particular way of doing things, but once I did, I was really into it.

As for episode 9, I get what you mean. It's kinda all set-up, but you would have also come to expect this show to just show 'things happening' to Asumu and letting you decide the meaning or worth of it by yourself. Sometimes you'll decide 'i dunno if i needed to see this', though.

That has been one of the issues I had with the show. The monster fights get less interesting the more you watch them till they reach a "filler" level in the episodes and you just wait till they're done to go back to the more interesting character stuff.

It's definitely not a great sign for the episode that the moment that excited me most was this cameo from Blade and Leangle (check the bottom left corner!):

https://i.imgur.com/EjnlH6F.png

Despite featuring 100% more Strongest Rider than the usual Hibiki episode, I definitely agree with Die's criticisms. That being said, it was still super enjoyable in a comfort food kinda way?

Like that first scene with Hibiki, how the episode just throws you into this fight with zero context beyond "we need to remind viewers Hibiki is cool too after last week", I can't help but love it. But I definitely didn't get a ton out of the story, either. It's all atmosphere in this one, which is what Hibiki is best at, so not a total loss, but still.

And at the risk of bookending this post by proving how unengaging the actual plot is, those scenes of Hibiki just kinda walking around in suit made me realize a potential secret reason this show has such a comfortable vibe – Those Disc Animals hanging off his belt make those jingly noises constantly, and it totally makes it sound like Santa Claus is about to show up at any moment. Like Hibiki comes with built-in Christmas cheer. Truly genius sound design, and I'm only kind of joking here.

Talk about product placement, awesome find. :lolol
Funny how the two suit actors for the two riders on that thing were busy with Magiranger that year.

Oof. That is... that is pretty much his arc that you just gave me? After he had a grand total of a minute onscreen? Man. That is a bummer, knowing all that. Definitely less excited to watch the next episode now.

It's very cool that you've got things you want to share about Hibiki, that's the entire reason this thread exists, but if we can keep the discussion to just the current episode (and anything prior), it would really help me out. Talking about how many future appearances someone has, or how well/badly their storyline plays out... that's exactly the stuff I don't want to know in advance.

I appreciate your help with this!

I think one of the things that made 9 not work for me is that it needed Asumu telling someone, anyone, a little of what he what he was going through. We see him isolated from his friends and stressed out after the bookstore confrontation, but there's no way for him to vocalize those emotions, leading to something where I can care that he's upset, but I'm not that clear on why he's upset. It's a plot that needed maybe one or two lines of dialogue (a voicemail left for Hitomi, maybe?) to indicate where the story was heading. Something to help set our compass, you might say.

The other thing is how sort-of overstuffed this episode felt, and how overstuffing it with plot meant substantially less of the normal Tiny Delights, but that's a different problem.

I just don't like it when the monsters that Kamen Riders fight are just non-communicative animals. It's not that fun for me? I like monster plots that can have some variety to them, while Hibiki's (to be fair, five) monster plots have mostly the same arc to them.

The other thing is that the monster plots are all something far outside of the city, happening in mostly sparsely populated areas. It's made the monster plots feel less urgent, maybe even less heroic? It doesn't feel as much like The Day Has Been Saved, as it does like This Is A Mix Between Animal Control And Forest Management. Definitely useful! But a lower-tier useful than fire fighting or crime fighting.

It was a little less enjoyable for me, I think, because I'm not crazy about the trend of the first part of a two parter being all set up, and the second part being all resolution. I don't know that viewers should feel disadvantaged by watching a single episode as it aired? This is the second story in a row where I kind-of wanted to reach through time, grab the production team collectively by the shoulders, and say IMAGINE IF THIS WAS YOUR FIRST HIBIKI EPISODE. There's a way of doing serialized storytelling that still honors the unit of entertainment that people are engaging with, but this isn't that.

Ha ha, amazing. Not the vibe I got from Hibiki, but I'm glad he can create some timeless Christmas cheer for you. He mostly just makes me thinking of camping?

More like standard... tokusatsu hijinks? (which is why I think with "turns into a superhero to defeat monsters, with a heavy emphasis on human connections and allegorical struggles for growing up" as something to describe this, it's not necessarily Kamen Rider show, more like the genre). And well, this is similar to what I said at Faiz thread regarding Lucky Clover vs team Faiz/Renegades, as what Akira's ideals given in previous episode, obviously expect this among the Takashi group. They take their job extremely seriously, so their routine will only that monotone monster hunting, unlike the relatively "directionless" Asumu and the school, who spend time on less important daily activities like watching at cinema, going to book shop, trying out foods, etc.

You just described my beef with some (actually a lot) of the Rider finishers. Like the Unified Burst Fire Style here, the attack seems no different from the usual attack outside saying "Unified Burst Fire Style". Like said in this post (and some of my idea here), to me finishers should have something that differentiates it from ordinary attack, either in attack or effect, though it depends on what powerset you have.

If Akira interacts with Asumu, it'd seem betraying her (overboard) ideals established in previous episode. Focus on the job, without involving anyone that is no help. Unless somehow they can be on break. Hibiki and Ibuki just work in separation like before.

It feels like watching multiple shows if the cast didn't always gather around (like some of the Phase 2)? I mean yeah, sometimes I want the focus to each characters as individuals, though admittedly it can be harder to watch, depending on scene cuts. And for this one, Asumu just found a shoplifter, and he tries to stop them, where he only helped stopped the girl (and got a nasty smack on the face for it). It's likely just basic human decency, though I want to ask why you didn't accept this as much as when someone like title Rider is doing this? Hibiki's heroism may have partly rubbed on him (not fully, his tendency to choke there). It's right though that the episode didn't show anything that happens in Asumu's head, which I've been wondering to know too.

Y̶e̶a̶h̶,̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶h̶a̶r̶d̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶A̶m̶a̶n̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶B̶l̶a̶d̶e̶:̶ ̶M̶i̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶A̶c̶e̶.̶

I don't recall the secondary Rider often being total sidekick in other series, probably iirc only G3, Gatack, Cross-Z, and probably Specter post-ep. 12 occupying that role. Mostly yeah, the "virtual antagonist" part, but I have to explain, they're the Rival archetype (famous example: Vegeta in Dragon Ball), which description is "Character who clashes with the protagonist, but isn't the main antagonist", as mostly, the lead Rider is ideal hero, while the secondary Rider is anti-hero. And by that it's actually inverted from what you say, the secondary Rider is usually the one seen as more competent than title Rider.

If there’s one issue I sometimes have with Hibiki - and Daimajin Kanon is really guilty of this, too - it’s that it has a tendency to go with a “more is more” approach to establishing how downtrodden the main character is. I’ve never liked the shoplifters arc because it doesn’t tell us anything new about Asumu - he lacks self-confidence and has trouble standing up for himself. We know that already. This is just another example of character traits that he’s already demonstrated several times by this point. The show is built around him growing up and maturing, but it also has a bad tendency to go for “one step forward, one step back.” The imaginary sheep was nice, though.

This episode also features the debut of Hibiki’s flaming Ongekibou, which was the only thing I knew about the character for a long time.

That works too!

Anyway, I definitely see what you're saying about the way the episodes are structured. From what I understand, Rider screenplays actually are written as wholes, which would maybe explain the disconnect here? It's probably pretty easy for the production team to forget that back half is going to take the viewer a week to see when all they have to do is turn the page?

It might also be another quirk of Takatera in particular, since Kuuga was often pretty brazen about this kind of thing too.

It's weird, because in some ways I actually like how the show approached Unified Burst Fire Style? They just did a whole two-parter about Hibiki training and trying out new techniques (including a very long segment of him actually drumming!), so the idea of him having a new move he wants to try out is both firmly established in-show, and also thematically appropriate because he achieved it by training hard. That's Hibiki's thing, being well-trained!

It's just, beyond the flaming drum sticks, the move itself is a little underwhelming. If they hadn't bothered to to call out how this move was some highly-anticipated tactic, I'd've just assumed it was the same finish as always.

I got complicated feelings about Unified Burst Fire Style!

Which is how they could've done it. I don't want to write the show for them, but there's any number of ways Akira and Asumu could've crossed paths in an episode. They're the same age, living in the same area, going to (soon) the same school, and they both frequent Team Hibiki Bar and Grill. (I can't call it Tachibana's, I spent two months typing that name, I need a goddamn break.) They have a half-dozen ways to meet up in a story.

I definitely don't think Asumu meant to stop her! It seems like she ran into him, since he was pretty much a deer in the headlights at that point, and then she tripped over him. He was an obstacle to her escaping, but he didn't really try to stop her. If he did, he might not've felt so bad for the rest of the episode.

If there'd been even a little explanation about what the sheep meant, it would've been one of the screencaps for the episode. But then the bookstore employee reminded us all about how financially imperiled your local bookstore is, and then I wasn't going to use anything else.

But, yeah, Asumu. I don't mind the idea of them going back to the well of Asumu Lacks Self-Confidence, since that's his defining trait. (That image of Hibiki saying he's well-trained, but it's Asumu doing the salute and saying "I find it difficult to believe in myself!") Doing stories about that... there's really no way around it? But stories like this where it lacks perspective, where it feels like there's no awareness in-character or metatextually that we've hit some of these beats before, it can make it hard to feel as invested in a character as we'd like. If, again, we'd maybe gotten a moment where Asumu says that he knows he froze, and that he's beating himself up about it, I think some of the criticisms about this plot being repetitive fall away. Keeping it all in Asumu's head, all we can look at are the results of his actions, and they can be a little underwhelming!

Yeah, some shows balance it better than others. I think one trick is to make the first part (where there will be no resolution) a little bit more fun, a little less plot-heavy. That's what's made some of the other Hibiki stories work when they've got the same structure as this one. If either the Ibuki or Hibiki plot had carved out some space for jokes or prep or something that didn't feel so plot-driven, I might not have felt as bored with them.

The show's still figuring out how to most dynamically handle Hibiki's finishers. We're still on the journey, not at the destination.

Wait, you're telling me that once Blade ended, Tachibana-san took his retirement money and bought a bar? I'm proud of him, must have been a big move to go sideways into the food business, hope him and his accountant Shiori are doing well.

I wasn't really upset about it or anything. It's more that they seemed to be hyping it up, and then... not that big of a deal? A little underwhelming, that's all.

1) The food business is "sideways" from a secret organization that fights monsters from eternity? Does KFC have a black ops division that I don't know about? Is there a covert group of Subway Sandwich Artists that are holding back the apocalypse with overly-sweetened bread and alarmingly-fatty bacon? Please walk me through how Tachibana's ability to constantly fail his friends in a way that reduces the amount of monsters from eternity in any way has prepared him for being a food service entrepreneur.

2) Hirose deciding to hitch her wagon to Tachibana's restaurant business instead of running for the goddamn hills at the end of Blade is the most ridiculous thing in that paragraph.

You've never worked food service and had to tell customers that you're out of something, have you? Because as someone who has, lemme tell ya, the result is a force far more frightening than any Undead.

I work in retail, and I'd say 80% of my job is apologizing for things that are completely out of my control. (DC Comics can go straight to hell.) On the one hand, literally no one in the Kamen Rider pantheon is more used to apologizing to people than Tachibana, so, sure, maybe he's well-suited to running a restaurant. On the other hand, *gestures to Tachibana's many, many failures that resulted in tragedy*, sooooooo... not sure I'm going to be hanging out at the new restaurant whose main gimmick is being constantly on fire.

Actual image of the average customer at "Tachibana's' Bar & Grill:"

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qtE...63/658.0.0.png

This is why I’m sad the winter crossover movies weren’t a thing yet. What I wouldn’t give for a Blade/Hibiki crossover that’s just a battle between Takeshi’s, Tachibana’s and [forgets to look up Amane’s restaurant name] Chalice Dé Vours

Shame on you! Everyone knows the name of the restaurant in Blade was "Cri de coeur".

Yo, I'm all up for a sitcom spinoff of Blade where Tachibana fails at running a restaurant, but only if they bring back Ryou as the eccentric yet skilled chef holding the whole sinking ship of a business together singlehandedly. You could bring Inoue on to write it... maybe give Taiyaki Master some form changes for Bandai's sake... it'd be at least as much of a hit as Hibiki!

Fun fact about Tachibana and Ibuki. The former was Tuxedo Mask for the Sailor Moon Musical prior to Blade and the latter was Tuxedo Mask for the live action adaptation TV show by Toei a year prior to Hibiki circa 2004 when Blade and Dekaranger was airing. N Daguba Zeba from Kuuga and Tyrannoranger Geki from Zyuranger were also Tuxedo Mask at one time for the Sailor Moon musical.

Don't forget the Special Guest Star Legend Rider, Kamen Rider Agito!

Amazing. Everyone's in everything! Thanks for the info!