With a clearer look at the helmet, I'm thinking the retail toy line gimmick is a Rider figure that starts off looking like a Showa design, then turns into a more modern Rider. Given the bits on the side of the face, it looks like the top portion of the helmet slides upward to form the goggles, while the "mouthpiece" parts rotate to the sides of the helmet. That'd certainly jibe with the chest piece that looks like it's meant to rotate.

I guess it explains why an organic and inorganic card are paired to transform. He's basically using alchemy but with cards. Kind of a cross between Build, Decade, and Blade's gimmicks. On a side note, I wonder how many people who collect FRS are already worried of Gotchard coming out in the future as a FRS kit, because I think it's got metallic blue plated painting and plated metallic painting on model kit parts are a hassle after you clipped them off the runner.

Man's helped carry so many Rider and Ultraman shows, it's great to see him finally headline his first Rider show.

I definitely like the suit after seeing that teaser video, very unique and cool looking! Also... not to state the obvious with my Symphogear signature and all but an alchemy theme sounds fun.

I'm not entirely sure what I think of the two co-writers though. I see Hasegawa has a good reputation as someone who caused a shift towards better drama in tokusatsu, but I'm not familiar with anything he was head writer for. Among the episodes of Kamen Rider he did there's actually quite a few that I remember thinking were not all that great and fit poorly with the show! I did generally enjoy Saber though so maybe it'd work out. I'm also not too familiar with Uchida but hey, Saber again. But besides that... wait, he wrote Revice: The Mystery? That's awesome actually, really enjoyed that!

Really though, I'm glad to see people who haven't been head writers for the series before. I think I'm going to use Gotchard as a chance to take time off from watching live, but I'm rooting for the show!

Plated metallic is a chore no matter what. Nobody's really invented a good chrome paint that you can apply a coloured clear over yet.

Unless Bandai were to vac metalize it themselves, most people would probably just paint it regular metallics. Though since Bandai is apparently not doing Reiwa in FRS so far I doubt we have to worry about it for some time.

True. Come to think of it, Bandai does seem to use less chrome paint in general for kits these days, unless a kit was originally released that way and said kit is a re-release.

Chrome is something that doesn't jive with model kits too well. Nub marks and gate placements will always spoil it, due to chrome being applied in layers, and you can't clean up nub marks without obviously ruining the finish. And because it's applied in layers it tends to render sculpted details softer than the rest of the kit. Plus if you want to customize a kit you'd have to remove the chrome entirely, which is tedious and time-consuming.

So yeah, Bandai tends to avoid it on their plamo.

An FRS kit of Gotchard would just use metallic blue at most. Color and material accuracy isn't exactly the strong point nor priority of the model kits.

If everyone watches Yu-Gi-Oh! & Battle Spirits, do you see the protagonist like Yugi Muto or Dan Bashin? Or both!

Would be nice to see this series crossover with Blade. It'd be nice to see Garren, Chalice & Leangle again altogether.

Plus if the secondary rider is gonna be its rival, I'd imagine like Seto Kaiba.

Here are some of my observations and opinions regarding the poster and staff update:

We can see new Chemie Cards. Kamantis the praying mantis with 9 points and Col Borsh (I think?) the motorcycle with 7 points.

If we look closely in the background, we can see a typical Japanese high school rooftop, which is commonly used for dramatic or scenic moments in high school J-dramas.

There are 101 Chemies, which sounds random, but it could be symbolic. 101 is binary for 5, like how Gotchard is the 5th Reiwa Rider.

Not only are Gentarou and Houtarou both high school student protagonists with names ending in "tarou", but as Riders they're both associated with the number 40. Fourze being the 40th anniversary Rider and Gotchard being the 40th Primary Rider.

I'm relieved to know that the show is in Hasegawa's reliable hands. He's done a lot of good work as a secondary writer for Rider and I look forward to seeing how he will handle Gotchard as his own. Curious who the producer will be though.

P.S. 1800th post, yay!