As far as I remember, Saber also made some steps towards the Chinese market and even succeeded there. I wonder, given that Komura did this show too, if Toei wants something similar, but better?

In any case, Komura should have become the first female head writer of the riders (or was there someone else?). Like Hasegawa, she took a long time to achieve this and deserved it.

This buggy also reminds me of the ride gatriker from Sabre. Honestly, he looks so toy-like that I even thought that Toei decided to try to get around the motorcycle ban by shooting miniatures. But I think it's too troublesome. In any case, multifunctionality is cool.

Yasuko Kobayashi was the first female head writer of a Rider series with Ryuki. She also wrote Den-O, OOO, and Amazons.

As already said Kobayashi was the first woman to head write a rider.

However Komura is now going to the the second woman ever to be a rider head writer, and is also the first one we've had on a main series entry since OOO from 2010-2011!!

It was pointed out to me recently (hopefully I wasn't misinformed) that only looking at the main televised series, after Komura wrote for Drive we didn't have a single script written by a woman for the show until Akiko Inoue joined Gotchard in 2024....! Which is just... wow...... that's a long gap...

I concur. This kind of secretive marketing tactic almost always (if not always) aim to create hype, curiosity, and enthusiasm from fans. I'm 90% sure that the main writer (or the writer) must be a famous writer with a true star power, a rockstar writer within the anime/toku/sci-fi/fantasy genre. No way Toei would delay the reveal for this long, only to announce at the press conference that the script would be written by no-name writers with zero star power. It'd be the most epic self-own and marketing misstep ever.

My personal speculation is that the writer is Gen Urobuchi. Urobuchi's return to this franchise would be the best case scenario to me. As far as I remember, the last time (or perhaps the only time) where the reveal of the name of the writer created more hype than the series itself was when Urobuchi was revealed as the writer of Gaim. I still remember my clueless, 14-y.o.-self asking several of my friends who were anime buffs what the fuss about Gaim was all about.

This. One of the reasons for my initial high expectation for Gotchard, beside the alchemy theme, was Hasegawa's reputation as a writer for many Ultra series, especially Nexus. Maaannn, I worship Nexus, haha. His performances as a side writer in KR series such as Fourze and Saber were also usually good. I'm disappointed in how bad his performance in Gotchard is. Gotchard is arguably Hasegawa's worst performance, perhaps in his whole writing career. This could be due to Bandai's heavy-handed involvement, or creative limitation by the producers, or him simply losing his touch, or a combination of those factors.

I read in several Japanese toku forums that Gen Urobuchi has never returned to KR due to the same reason of Bandai's heavy-handed involvement. There was a rumor circulating that Bandai intervened way too far in Gaim's production, especially in the writing. He was rumored to be demanded by Bandai to revise his script several times to integrate more toys into Gaim's story, at the expense of quality. Urobuchi has been known to stick to his gun when it comes to anything that has something to do with the quality and consistency of the story. So, naturally, it seems like working with Bandai in Gaim left a bad taste in Urobuchi's mouth.

Maybe my speculation about Urobuchi's return is just a futile exercise. I can only hope!

Where was it mentioned that Junko Komura is the writer? The leaked information was just 3 thumbnails of the first 3 episodes, and no credits were shown, only "for review purpose only" text, lyrics of the OP, and some subtitles. The circulating rumor about the writer has never mentioned nor shown the source of the original information.

About the actor for the main protagonist, several gossip forums have speculated that he's Hidekazu Chinen (知念英和) from the agency Stardust.

As far as I know, the actual videos on iQiyi were locked behind password, and only the thumbnails of the first 3 episodes were leaked. The episodes being shared on Bili Bili for a very brief time before it was deleted by the copyright strike system is very likely just an unproven rumor that has been circulating and echoed in several forums. If it had been true, then it would've only taken 1 person to access the pages, download the videos, and redistribute them in other sites/forums/torrent sites. So far, I haven't heard that news. Maybe we'll hear it in the next several days.

Rough appearance of KR Valen's Chocodon form from an unpainted So-Do figure. The main colors are likely metallic red & metallic silver, similar to KR Baron Banana Arms. The gun's name is Valen Buster, and it looks completely different from KR Gavv's gun when he uses the same RG. Perhaps Valen Buster is KR Valen's main weapon, similar to KR Valvarad's Valvarusher and KR Brave's Gashacon Sword which are used with all their forms. KR Valen also has the same talons like KR Gavv does. I wonder if those are the Gochizous' talons.

https://i.imgur.com/DGCXPcP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ckWNSAC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/8WD0ZZP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/3F3B2bL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/1zQFV5a.jpg

Credit to the original uploader.

Dang, that is pretty ridiculous if true. I kind of assumed there must be some more secondary writers who were women at the very least!

Let's hope Gavv will have itself a female rider soon.

And if Gavv could possibly be a bit Hibiki, he and the other riders better shout "Henshin!".

Hope not too much like Hibiki.

So from what I'm gathering, they were put on some sort of some of chinese video hosting service and the only reason the thumbnails were the only thing people could see was because they still had administrator only permissions so no one could actually see anything other than the auto-generated thumbnail.

Said person who put them on there was the one who mentioned Junko Komura under the title of "Auntie Komura" lol

Not posting any actual anything on it other than what I can make out because I'm not about to do anything insanely risky online about Gavv. Toei's already started hitting people who even have the thumbnails. All I can say is go onto twitter and try and seek out the information that's still there.