YES.:rock: I mean I kinda dozed off during the middle of the show but boy does that theme song get a person upbeat. Kamen Rider Eternal really did that song justice.

Oh boy, here we go again. Yuka isn't spiteful enough to sabotage Kaido's love for Mari. She just wants what's best for him. You've got it backwards. Yuka isn't trying to destroy Kaido/Mari, she's trying too hard to make it happen. She's projecting her own desire on to Mari to understand why such an infallible guys keeps getting rejected and concludes that the only thing better than being his girlfriend is being his wife. From her perspective, she would agree to marry Kaido if he proposed to her, so Mari should agree as well. It doesn't work since it's too much escalation and she fails to consider that maybe her idolization of Kaido isn't universally shared by all girls.

Yuka's suggestion may have damaged Kaido's chance but she didn't do it intentionally! That's why she was watching from behind the wall, waiting for Mari to finally reciprocate his love and annoyed when Kaido is rejected once more. She thinks she's trying to do Mari a favor by giving her what she would want and feels that Mari is being ungrateful and doesn't realize how great Kaido is. It's the same when Mari calls him an idiot, Yuka can't see how anybody could fault him.

His eyebrows are so expressive that the Kaixa manga caricatured them to resemble an X. I call them Kaixabrows!

Takumi said he would repay his debt to Kusaka for getting back Faiz Gear and this is how he does it, by saving him from Smart Brain. I also love how the secret elevator transitions from the rescue to the horror of the mysterious Ryusei School and underground dark laboratory with the failed prototype Gears and the first appearance of Mari's and Kusaka's adoptive father, the former president of Smart Brain. It's way more than they bargained for and Murakami knows they saw something they shouldn't have, sending Takuma and Saeko to pursue them as Faiz and Kaixa respectively with no apparent way for Takumi and Kusaka to defend themselves. It's definitely a major plot twist and a payoff for the ambiguous trapped miner subplot that had been otherwise irrelevant until now.

Kaido's life goes in a circle. His dream was over before he was turned. He thought becoming an Orphenoch would give him new purpose but he couldn't bring himself to kill humans. He thought Faiz would give him new purpose but career was short-lived as he couldn't bring himself to kill Kiba. He thought a relationship with Mari would give him new purpose but she wouldn't reciprocate. He thought joining Lucky Clover would give him new purpose but once more, he couldn't bring himself to kill Kiba.

Kaido already has something important that he takes for granted, his friendship with Kiba and Yuka. He led Rabbit astray so when Rabbit attacks Kiba and holds Yuka captive, I think it's a great development for Kaido who previously only cared about himself to accept responsibility for his mistake and come to their aid the way they came to his. He's like Takumi in that way, a man without a dream, but he has a purpose. He didn't ask for it, he didn't want it, but it's something that belongs to him. He doesn't want to lose his friends in Team Orphenoch even if he won't admit it.

I guess I'll be the first to mention this as well but the last piece of Kaixa Gear, the Kaixa Pointer, dramatically fell through the ceiling in to Kaixa's possession. Unlike Shot, Pointer has a unique design shaped like binoculars. Functionally, it's the same as Faiz Pointer but twice as strong!

I think they could've omitted Kaixa Shot so then he could equip Pointer in the left slot instead of the rear which looks like it would be harder to reach and easier for others to pickpocket. Notice how Faiz's rear slot is always empty.

Good job! I only bother to memorize the first verse of most songs. However, you know the second verse has its own lyrics for the chorus right?

My top 5 Heisei KR theme songs are:

5) Warera Omou Yueni Warera Ari
4) Justifaiz
3) NEXT LEVEL
2) Life IS Showtime
1) Be The One

I thought I was being pranked. I'm like, did Inoue not watch any episodes of Ryuki besides his own? Did he not know that a disembodied voice commanding people to fight was basically the main character of the show? Like, it's funny, but it is enormously distracting. I honestly couldn't focus on what Orphan Daddy was saying because I was just thinking about whether or not I actually heard someone tell a Kamen Rider to TATAKAE.

It would be like if midway through Ghost, you heard someone shouting TIRE KOUKAN as he used the Enzo Ferrari Eyecon in the middle of a huge revelation. Like, it'd be awesome, but there's no way I'm paying attention to the next twenty seconds of TV show.

Neat! And sad!

Oh, golly, I hope not. That'd be a bummer.

Yeah, I sort-of figured! Exciting!

Everything about that theme song is designed to get you hyped for a adventure program. Perfectly designed. But I'd expect nothing less from Eternal!

Maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but in Episode 24, Yuka slowly smiles as she watches Mari scream at Kaido that he's an idiot while attacking him with flowers. I definitely feel like she set Kaido up!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/yuka1.png
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/yuka2.png

Perfect! Love it!

I just love how last place Kiba and Yuka are for Kaido. He's basically lost everything, and they're what's left, so okay fine. It's such a perfectly Faiz emotional climax. What on another show would be a stirring declaration of friendship and togetherness is just I'm Less Terrible At Being With These Nerds Than I Am At Everything Else.

When I saw Kaixa's new gear, and I saw that it was double the barrels of Faiz's, all I could think of was Tarn from Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye. He's such a Megatron fanboy that he has two fusion cannons. I definitely said this out loud during Kaixa's finisher:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/megatron.png

The Ghost theme song is one that really didn't work for me, until it all of a sudden did. Snuck up on me for sure. Good list!

:eek:

:)

I think it'd be quicker to list the ones that don't work for me? Kabuto, Wizard and Drive. Rider (and Toku in general) is consistently good on OPs

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 26

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz26a.png

--1--

Torn on this one!

Aesthetically, this episode is sumptuous. The cinematography is jaw-dropping. The music (or lack thereof!) is perfectly deployed to heighten every emotion. It's an episode that eschews all of the things that make Faiz Faiz, in favor of finding a new way into these characters, this premise. There's a grounded nature to what's happening that makes it all feel like a slow collapse, the inevitability of misfortune.

Narratively, it's kind-of a nothingburger? It goes in hard on the return of the Ryusei Cram School alumni ("Go Meteors!"), bolstering the dwindling ranks of nobodies with a few more nobodies. You could cut almost all of the dialogue scenes with the human characters and just have them all saying Delta Is Coming. Almost all of the narrative energy is centered on Kusaka's reactions to what's happening, and holy shit do I not like Kusaka in that way.

This one, it's like lipstick on a pig.

--2--

Pretty great lipstick, though!

Visually, it feels like the director read this script and went Oh Man I'm Going To Have To Save This One. So many fun tricks to make a bunch of shitty dialogue scenes work at all.

The best one, by a mile, is the one with Houjou and Kageyama and Murakami. They're in this art gallery, and it's rectangles of flat colors, each of them looking at a different painting. As the scene starts, the camera focuses on the person listening, not the person talking. It's a brilliant choice, making the reaction matter more than the action. It matters more how someone is processing the information, how they're conveying it on their face, than what the information is. (Mostly because the information is that Lucky Clover doesn't like that Murakami is keeping secrets. There is not a lot there!) It sucks you completely into the scene.

The other scenes are no slouch! The scene where Takumi finds out Kimura is a nekojita, and he gets up from the opposing couch to sit next to her and be polite, and it's all one shot. The breakfast scene, where the action (Kusaka and Mari) is one shot, and the reaction (Takumi and Keitaro) is the other shot, a bisected setup. A beautiful static shot of a doorframe, and Kusaka leans back into it to start his line.

And, god, every single one of the new Orphnoch's scenes. The way the bus he's on goes into the tunnel, blacking everything out, and he's illuminated by the burning origami crane? Yes.

--3--

And the sound! Such smart choices!

Up until the end, it's all diegetic sound, which pays such enormous dividends for this episode. Even if you don't notice it, it's changing your perception of the story. Instead of fun music or tense music or spooky music, there's just... scenes. It's not telling you how to feel about it. It's not leading you emotionally. It's just saying Here. Here is a story. It's happening. Watch.

And those scenes with Skullcandy, the EDM Orphnoch, amazing. Amazing. The first attack was brilliant, only the second scene in the whole episode with any music in it. (There's a radio playing as Takumi works the counter.) The camera zooms in on his headphones, music filling the soundstage, slowly drowning out all of the incidental noises. Then a monster enters the frame. No screams, just panicked victims, trapped with a monster. The music not sculpting the emotion, but adding to the wrongness of the scene. This isn't right. This isn't what a monster attack is supposed to be like.

The second attack twists it, leading with one track and then zooming into the headphones for a harsher, more aggressive track.The killing happens with club lights and dance music, wrong, all wrong. The last victim is another Orphnoch, caught up in the carnage.

It's all so purposeful, finding a way to let us know that this isn't just a more powerful monster, but a killer that we haven't previously had to contemplate. This isn't a funny monster, this is an inhuman beast. It's taking Faiz, the funny show about jerks, and making it into an episode of Kuuga.

--4--

I got a little disappointed at the way the big Fighting Score came up after Kaixa ran after the Drop Bear Orphnoch. (What in the hell was it doing on top of a wall?) I thought they'd go the whole episode without non-diegetic music, and I was so ready to knock points off for ruining it. But they did it so they could drop it all out again. Kaixa rounds the corner and sees the tunnel. He freezes. It's just the sound of him breathing, hard. It's fear. You can hear it in his breathing. Faiz rolls up, sees Kaixa immobilized. He tenses. It's all tension, speaker to speaker. The Orphnoch stumbles out of the tunnel, burning in red flames.

Delta.

It's Delta who did this.

--5--

And, like, hopefully I described that in a way that sounds like it worked it pretty well! That's the stuff I like talking about, the stuff that works. Because I could've done points 2 through 4 on how much no one cares about random Ryusei Cram School alumni ("Go Meteors!"), how it's ridiculous to think the show's effectively heightening tension by killing them off, how I don't love that Kusaka wants to keep Mari in the dark to protect her (one of my least-favorite tropes!), how I don't really get why Lucky Clover is so worked up about Murakami keeping secrets when he immediately tells them what's going when they asked, and just basically how dull I found the story that all of this smart construction was in service of.

There's such craftsmanship here, but it's covering up a pretty forgettable plot.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/faiz/faiz26b.png

so this is the episode I will die on the hill for the original music choices in the broadcast version. You know the super generic music that plays whenever the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going on a murder spree? Guess what song is playing? if you guessed that it was one that had the N word in it every other line you'd be correct.

And to explain why I love this it isn't because of the song as a matter of fact I to absolutly hate music and speach with slurs in them, it's because the fact I can say with proof (as far as I'm aware at least) that this happened in a show aimed at 6 year olds to sell role play toys crosses so many lines it goes from terrible to a surrell form of hilarious

Aside from Mari and Kusaka there are maybe three Ryusei students you need to bother trying to remember. Their main role is to serve as Faiz’s version of Star Trek’s redshirts. There are a lot of them and they die very easily, but there always seem to be more waiting in the wings.

Today’s casting trivia: young Mari is played by a girl named Aoi Yuki, who would grow up to be a professional voice actress. Among her roles are the title character from Gen “Gaim” Urobuchi’s Madoka Magica and Yurusen from a Kamen Rider Ghost.

Oh thank goodness, it wasn’t just me. I could have sworn there was originally a rap song that kept playing during Spider’s scenes, but it wasn’t here this time. I wasn’t sure if I misremembered something or not.

Oh, yikes! That is super unfortunate! I've seen that happen at least one another time, when (I think?) Shinji in Ryuki is wearing a shirt that says he's an asshole or something? It's, like, all of these negative words and it's on a shirt worn by the heroic nice guy. So weird.

Incorrect! I will remember none of them.

Neat! Thanks!

You may remember two. One of them will definitely defy any form of long-term memorization, but I'll talk about him in a couple days.