So episode 3's sushi chef humagear seems to be played by Kenta Uchino. Mebius fans will recognize him as GUYS member Teppei Kuze in Ultraman Mebius, and Masaru Honjo the former host of Kintaros in episodes 9 and 10 of Kamen Rider Den-O.

The Aruto's grandpa is really suspicious. If the grandpa are the true villain, I think he will be similar to Banno from Kamen Rider Drive .

Maybe the grandpa will transfer his consciousness to HumaGear and this is really similar to Banno who transfer his consciousness to tablet and later to Banno Driver......

Have to agree. It looks amazing. It probably won't appear in the show but at least we know what it'd hypothetically look like.

I know it could be misleading or actually means nothing, but Korenosuke name is composed with the Kanji of "Justice" and "Help/assistant".
Korenosuke is literally "Justice's help"
So I would tend to think he is a really good guy.

If I had to suspect someone I would say Soreo is more likely (KR = daddy issues). Not the humagear one but the real one (Soreo's name doesn't give anything though, I think it translates simply to "that man")

In Gold Drive's case it's not even speculation that it was driven by the show though, since the belt debuted in the series a long time before getting any kind of toy announced and when it was announced it was so late it wasn't really part of the show's toyline run proper - only coming out after the series was over for months. Recolors and remolds are pushed by the show production due to the low cost, with unique items coming from Bandai because they're the sponsors paying for them. Cronus and Evolt later just seem like Bandai and Ohmori working closer together since their plans clearly line up (villain Rider and merchandising pushing him).

Also, technically, Zi-O did have a third remodeled belt with the Mirai Driver - it debuted fairly early in the show, but toy-wise only was released around episodes 30/31, which is pretty close to Evolt's debut. So, the early debut and lack of story relevancy compared to the previous ones seems almost certainly down to the show's staff.

There is a huge difference between Premium Bandai items and mass-retail items, as far as toy development goes. Premium Bandai items often are added much later, and are influenced by the show. Mass-release items, though, are decided months and months in advance of both their in-show debut and release to the public.

The Bannou Driver and Mirai Driver were Premium Bandai items. The Evol Driver and Buggle Driver Zwei were not.

Thusly, the Evol Driver and Buggle Driver Zwei would have been planned very, very early in the show's run...if not even before it had started. Stuff like the Mirai Driver and Bannou Driver would have been decided upon very shortly before they went up for order on Premium Bandai - in fact that is why there is such a delay between order and release on Premium Bandai.
To use an examble, Bandai would have produced thousands of Evol Drivers, as it was a mass-retail item, and would have needed a lot of time to do so. Whereas, they would have produced only a couple of hundred Mirai Drivers - to satisfy however many people ordered and then have a few left over. Premium Bandai items are made in quantities to match the amount of orders, more or less.

Buggle Zwei was absolutely a retail item, it's how Poppy and Chronus leaked in catalogue scans

Yes, that's what I said.

That's what I'm saying though. Ohmori's trend of pushing a Rider as the main villain wouldn't be known by Bandai's staff during the planning phase of Drive (or if it was known they wouldn't know if it would well received) but when they were working with him again in Ex-Aid and Build, it was a known factor, which is why it was incorporated into the main toyline (but still as remolds/repaints since it's not really a big focus for Bandai itself).

Someone like Shirakura has no interest in that, and it's still a relatively minor element for the toyline (which is why they didn't push unique toys) so it got sidelined again. I really think you're underestimating the influence of the main producer if you think those changes are just in response to sales. Even in q1, you can see that Ohmori's series have been pushing antagonists with some exclusive roleplay toy (Chase, Genm, Rogue/Stark) but that disappeared from Zi-O (which seemingly replaced that with the old gadget type toys) only to return now with Zero-One (Jin and Horobi). I'd guess we'll see the same thing happening to the 3rd quarter driver.

Oh I misrewd your post, sorry