I’ve not much to say here, since I’m still holding off on who’s playing Kogure until the next episode, and you may or may not figure it out by then.

But I will say one of the Oni shown losing his power, Shouki (Victorious Demon) is played by Ibuki’s suit actor, in the same way that Danki is played by Hibiki’s suit actor.

I also looked it up and with this episode having all active Oni but Ibuki and Sabaki that we know of losing their powers, that means the quarter of Japan they’re in charge of (they only cover the Kantō region, with nothing said for Kansai, Kyushu or Hokkaido) is currently massively understaffed.

And my next time lyrics.

Carnival! Kanari up!
Survival no step!! Matsuri no hajimari da!
Kimero dancing no action!
High tension na beat! Mou tomerarenai ze!

Kono mi ni uzumaku atsui melody
Sekai ni hibikaseru ze
Shouri no uta da, Carnival!
Akaki shin no yuusha
- Showgo Kamada, Chou Shinka! Kyoryu Beat!

I originally shared who plays Kogure on this post but realized belatedly Androzani84 is hyping it, so forget what I originally wrote here. My bad Androzani, did not mean to steal your thunder.

The new production team had no loyalty to anything Takatera set up. I hadn’t heard this before, but according to a video Androzani posted a few pages back, dropping Asumu from the show had been on the table at one point.

He looks sort of familiar, but I'm not getting there yet. We'll see if I figure it out tonight. I would not count on it, though!

I mean, that sounds terrible, and it absolutely would've ruined the show, but... yeah, I can see why it would be on the table. If you get hired to fix a piece of art, everything needs to be on the table. The story-breaking session for the second phase of Hibiki needed to examine every possible new configuration. If they went in with a big list of Don'ts, they probably wouldn't be the right team for the job.

But! That's all pre-show discussion, and it's to see that (not counting the last episode) they've realized how core Asumu is to the show's identity and purpose. I don't think them entertaining cutting Asumu is disqualifying, since that's not a decision they ended up making.

Especially when you’re going in with the specific remit of “this is broken; fix it.”

Well, maybe this one apparently being a bit of a misfire explains why I went so long thinking New Hibiki started after the Asumu's dad plot. Overly wacky construction and characters that are too broad certainly sounds like a more unpleasant reminder you're watching something written by Inoue.

Oh, and while suit actor trivia is relevant again, Ibuki's suit actor Yoshifumi Oshikawa got bumped from tertiary Rider to secondary the same way Itou got bumped up to primary as Hibiki. He previously played Gills, Zolda, Delta, and Garren, which you might think makes him complicit in the "Chalice is the secondary" conspiracy, but actually, I heard that Delta is so cool, Oshikawa just needed to play Tachibana-san the next year to balance things out. :p

He'll always mostly be Red Buster in my heart, anyway.

I will add that, from what I've found out (which is mostly reading the same Wikipedia page I think Taka was in that video), it seems that Shirakura himself was actually surprisingly loyal to Takatera's vision, and was going out of his way to defend it from the people who were seriously throwing out ideas like "let's get rid of major cast members!" There's even a quote sourced from some magazine interview in 2008 where he says protecting Hibiki was his greatest priority for that half-year.

Which, like, obviously he'd put it that way, but looking up stuff about the show, it's still further evidence to me that Shirakura is maybe overly vilified by some of the fandom. Although he apparently also actively encouraged Inoue to do whatever he wanted with his Hibiki scripts after realizing forcing him to mimic the old style wasn't going to work out, so make of that what you will.

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 33 - “ARMORED BLADE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki33a.png

“I’m working
But I’m not working for you”

-Superchunk, “Slack Mother******”

Remember when this show used to be about something?

I mean, there’s a moral here, ostensibly. In the one and only Asumu scene, Hibiki sort of compares Kiriya’s inability to see Asumu’s worth with Todoroki’s inability to see past Kogure’s brusqueness. Hibiki says that there’s value in getting to know people, no matter how irrelevant or off-putting they may be, because there’s a chance you could learn something from them. Don’t judge a book by its cover, basically.

It’s just an incredibly stupid moral, is the problem.

Kiriya has been a monumental (but entertaining!) jackass to Asumu, treating him terribly and then having the gall to act offended at Asumu’s reluctance to tolerate him. When Kiriya sees Hibiki, he asks him right in front of Asumu why he’s hanging out with Asumu since he’s so lame. Asumu not telling Kiriya to go to hell is actually the kindest thing Asumu’s ever done on this show, including swerving his bike to avoid running over Hibarki. (Just like Hibiki!) This isn’t a case of Asumu being too quick to judge, it’s arguably a case of Asumu being too much of a doormat.

So Hibiki just going Befriend Everyone, like some sort of proto-Fourze… I mean, it’s got nothing to do with Kogure’s plot, honestly. Kogure is a stern disciplinarian, but he’s also a) their boss, and b) someone who actually wants the Oni to succeed. Kiriya’s just being an all-the-time dick, and Asumu is almost certainly better off dedicating his time to his training and his actual friends (hey remember hitomi and akira) than feeding Kiriya’s bottomless narcissism.

I appreciate the show trying to have Kogure’s weird taskmaster thing reflect onto Asumu’s storyline, but it’s unbelievably strained to compare Kiriya/Asumu to Kogure/Oni, and even that connection is literally one scene. We don’t see Asumu or Kiriya for the rest of the episode. It’s the slimmest, most tenuous connection the two main storylines of the show could have while still technically connecting, and it’s not super fun to think about. Bad writing, plain and simple.

Which, that’s my biggest (and, maybe only) criticism of Inoue. He’s a Big Swing guy, which results in either home runs or strikeouts. If he gets ahold of a topic or theme or motif that he really has something to say about, it’s genius. When he can’t really figure out something deeper than A Fun Concept, it’s frustrating and mediocre. There’s no inbetween with that dude, no singles or doubles or triples. If it’s not a total success, it’s probably going to be an abject failure.

Which… yeah, hard to find more than surface pleasures in this one. The Kogure thing really only has one move on it (he was a great Oni once, you should respect him), and it’s asking a lot to forgive how just plain mean he is for the bulk of this story. Like Kiriya and Asumu, it’s a beat that needs the Oni to just take it for the entirety of the story and then be like Oh He Was Right All Along.

Even the Oni getting their powers back, and Hibiki being able to use the Armed Saber… it barely feels like they did anything to deserve it? They just train a bunch, get browbeaten by Kogure, HENSHIN, new form, monster explosion, roll Shounen Yo. Hibiki didn’t really change his opinion of Kogure over the course of this thing, didn’t really learn or grow. Todoroki maybe learned something, but he’s irrelevant to the defeat of the Makamou. It’s just a dumb plot (they lost their powers!) that gets treated as no big deal and has a nothing resolution.

Overall, yeah, god, this one’s a big bomb for me. There’s some cute character stuff (this new phase of Hibiki seems to have promoted Hinaka to Main Sister) and… I don’t know, it eventually ends? I’m not still watching this story? I guess that’s a positive.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki33b.png

... but, hey, at least Armed looks cool! Right?

look just is the sword supposed to be a fishing rod or what

it's driving me crazy

Yeah, this is starting to come back to me a bit; I'm pretty sure I kinda hated these episodes? I've long resented Armed Hibiki for how it symbolizes Hibiki having all its unique flavor torn away, and if the episode it debuted in was this fun, it makes sense I'd have those feelings.

Because it is, admittedly, a very cool design in its own right, and for that matter, it was definitely part of the plan for the show even if certain Big Changes hadn't happened. Kurenai was already a deliberate ploy to appeal to kids, and Midori (who is not the same character as Hitomi!) specifically has a line of dialogue in one of the last pre-retool episodes mentioning how she's making Disc Animals that can turn into armor.

So I feel bad that I hate Armed Hibiki, but yeah, when the thing I remember most from the episode is the dumb gag leading into the ED playing (did you figure out who's playing Kogure yet?), it's maybe not a good sign?