I've got it covered! It's the next thing I'm going to watch. The batch of files I got had it in there, as "35.5 Special". Glad to know it's not another clip show!

Man, but, okay, now I've got a question for the panel. I've got the "Project G4" movie. The Wiki says part of it takes place after episode 35, with the second part taking place after episode 47. But the movie was released to theaters concurrent with episode 35. Can I watch it after the 35.5 Special without ruining anything? I'd assume if it ruined ten weeks of the show, they probably wouldn't have released it to theaters? At what point should I watch the movie for the best result?

Early Heisei Rider movies were generally alternate universe affairs in their own little world with nothing to do with the show -- they were much more an adaption and a new take rather than something that happened during the show.

Agito's movie... is actually an exception to this! But it might as well not be because it's really its own self-contained story. There's technically some lead-up to it in the show itself but it doesn't result in any actual consequences for the show, so just watch it whenever and it's fine, really.

Okay, but if the first thing they say in the movie is "I can't believe the Unknown were all created by Taiichi to get out of doing homework, I'm sure glad we solved that case last week," I will be speaking to your manager.

Joke's on you, I'm jobseeking at the moment!

... ah, that should not have sounded as triumphant as it did. But who cares, Shouichi doesn't have a job and he's doing just fine beating up monsters and making weed jokes at cake class!

I love Burning Form mostly because of how vividly I remember its debut. I don't remember there being any sign that a new form was coming, so when Shouichi summoned his belt and it looked different, I was like 'hm?', and then turned into this red, muscular monstrosity with flames seeping out of his veins! That explosive punch he delivers to that mook unknown has an amazing impact. It was just one long string of me losing my mind.

I too love Burning Form, I guess he speaks to the edgelord within.

Maybe it's like Kouta from Gaim, where you need to hunt to around to find out that you've already got a job: defending humanity.

Like, yeah, the shock of it is good, the ONE PUNCH of him taking out the Manta Unknown is epic, yes. Can't argue with the thrills of a form change that results in an overpowered protagonist. It's just, why did it have to be that suit? I have kind-of a viscerally negative reaction to it, where I see it and reflexively say, "Ugh." That's not what I'm supposed to say!

Which, y'know, as long as you're aware of it. I'm going to eat a bunch of garbage food tonight during the Super Bowl. I'm not going to pretend it's good for me, and I'm okay with it being bad for me. I'm owning my choice, you can own yours.

MASKED RIDER AGITO SPECIAL: A NEW TRANSFORMATION

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As movie advertisements go, this one was pretty painless!

Getting the G3-X/G3-Mild/G??? stuff out of the way, it's an okay plotline. I like that the basis behind it is that the cops are hilariously/troublingly bad at anticipating or preventing Unknown attacks, nearly nine months into the Unknown rampage. It's good to bring up. Like, "hopefully stall a murderous creature long enough for a superhero to finish it off", this is... is this a status quo that anyone should feel good about? Beyond proving that the Unknown target blood relatives, and that mutant powers might be what they're targeting, the police have zero leads on how to stop the Unknown for good. Having a story built around mass-producing G3 tech to create, uh, more speed bumps (?) for the Unknown, I can see where they're coming from. I don't know that a bunch of weaker G3's, just after you had to drastically upgrade to G3-X, that doesn't feel like a logical progression to me, though. It's a thread without a lot of tension, but it's forgivable in that it gives a small, pathetic spotlight to Omuro, The Other One. Just outright telling him (and bragging to Houjou!) that he's the perfect G3-Mild because he's so relentlessly plain and average, god bless this special. There's heroism to this story, though, and a chance for Omuro to show his quality. It's literally just patting Hikawa on the back (by installing a fresh battery), but it's a nice enough moment. Omuro doesn't get too punked out, which is maybe the best he could hope for in his own spotlight episode.

Well, it's maybe Omuro's spotlight, but it's still Shouichi's story. (Gills, in a very Gills way, doesn't show up until halfway through the story, gets one amazing scene of knocking Houjou on his ass, then is basically irrelevant for the remainder of the story.) We're introduced to Shouichi's post-amnesia psychologist, Kunieda, and he allows the story to get some insight into Agito's new Burning Form. (R.I.P. "S.I.C. Agito") Agito's Burning Form, with a little more room to explore it, is a neat idea. Even the suit works a little better for me here, with a larger weight to it than BADASS. I like the idea of all of the rage and anger Shouichi won't let himself express bursting out as this new Agito form, the Hulk to his normal Bruce Banner demeanor. It's not more powerful, it's power untethered from control. Accidentally lashing out at Kunieda after a monster fight, Shouichi runs away (AGAIN) in fear of Agito hurting anyone else. He's unable to see Agito as a force for good, necessitating a deeper analysis of how Shouichi feels about power and his emotions.

It's a storyline that I don't think there's a lot of in Kamen Rider that I've seen, an exploration of what these form changes mean to the Rider. We'll see Riders grapple with a lack of power, or the negative physical effects of henshins, but the idea of being afraid of what these powers can do, of this version of themselves that loses their humanity, I think it's really fertile ground, narratively. This special doesn't do a ton with it, largely using Shouichi's trepidation to talk about the need to control your feelings rather than ignore them, but I'm glad they addressed it at all. I'm also glad they used the storyline to make Buring Form into more of a chrysalis for the gorgeous Shining Form.

I usually forget to talk about new suits, but since the second-most important reason for this special is a new form (PROJECT G-4, NOW IN THEATERS), let me sing the praises of our shiny new savior. It's so pretty, you guys. I love the silver in the design, the way the engraving on the torso provides some texture without being overpowering, the use of red as an accent color on the shoulders and helmet, it's all so goddamn pretty. It's a pretty suit! And, yeah, I like that it's something Shouichi earns by harnessing his emotions instead of hiding from them or ignoring them. I like how it's a more powerful Agito thanks to a more centered and emotionally honest Shouichi. I like that Shining Form was a reward for his journey, not the goal. It's a good story that resulted in a great suit.

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MASKED RIDER AGITO MOVIE: PROJECT G4

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This was okay! Shot beautifully, terrific action sequences, an unforgettable death scene, not a great story, and the character motivations are... uh.

It's a weird story, for an Agito movie. I get that it needed to feel separate from the main story, to have something that could be a complete story in 70 minutes, but, man. This felt like it came from a completely different show, full of mutant test subjects, government conspiracies, weaponized orphans, and mad scientists. It's not a bad concept, and it's something other Kamen Rider series/movies have handled well, but the scale of it felt both incongruous with the Agito aesthetic, and sort-of baffling for how it would fit into their world.

The idea of the military crafting their own response to the Unknown, and how that comes into conflict with Team G3-X, that's a good idea for a movie. It only makes sense that more than one branch of the government would be interested in stopping the Unknown attacks. But the focus of this one on the mutant kids, that they'd be trained in secret to harness their powers, that there's facilities and goon squads and all that, I don't know. It feels less like someone trying to tell a story with and for the Agito cast, and more someone who really wanted to pay homage to Evangelion.

Was I the only one getting an Eva vibe from this? First it was the piano piece that Shouichi and Mana were playing (I'm bad at/with music, you probably know the one I mean), but then it was all of the parts about using children to help occasionally-rampaging machines fight better, and how the desire to transcend the limitations of humanity risks losing what makes humanity special, and I swear to God I wouldn't have been surprised if someone shouted GET IN THE EVA MANA. I wouldn't say it's homaging it exactly, but it definitely felt a little influenced by it. I'm probably reading too much into it, though.

So, yeah, the story was alright, if a little too military-oriented for what I'd like an Agito movie to be like. Looked phenomenal, though. Like, goddamn. It's the one thing about every Kamen Rider movie that's a given, that the increased budget and better equipment is going to make for a more visually appealing product, but I thought this one exceeded that with an eye for composition and storytelling that was worth noting. Plenty of beautifully staged fights, some great variations on standard Agito stuff (that Gills henshin where the Gills hand blocks a strike on Ryou?!), some great exposition scenes (the cuts between the Ozawa/Fukami talk and the Hikawa/G4 talk!) and this all-time great death scene:

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Holy shit! A great callback executed in such a cool way. The method of illustrating his second death, it's so awesome. My favorite thing about the character of G4, mostly since I don't really get the character of G4.

If there's a weak point in this movie, aside from your feelings about telling a Sci-Fi Military Conspiracy story with the Agito cast, it's that chunks of the character work don't make a lot of sense. Fukami, for one, feels cartoonishly thin. She's just some evil mad scientist? Why is she okay with kidnapping someone to copilot G4 until they die? Why is the government okay with G4 chewing up pilots at a kind-of alarming rate? Like, what is her motivation beyond a maniacal belief in science? I get that this thing needs a villain who can get devoured by ant monsters (!) without anyone getting too uncomfortable, but for a series that made Houjou one of the most entertainingly smug sons-of-bitches to ever bedevil a hero in a Rider show, this lady was just nothing to me. Did not care about her at all.

G4, though, I mostly cared about. He's a character that's interesting in so much as he comments on Shouichi (a little) and Hikawa (a lot), but I don't know that I 100% keyed into his character. It's an interesting version of a Rider, someone who thought his death was imminent and now can't move past it, someone who fights to the death since life is for other people. That fatalist, nihilist hero, the selflessness of service becoming suicidal martyrdom, I do think that's a rich theme to explore. (Kamen Rider Snipe what what.) Where this one lost me, though, is that final fight with Hikawa. They're both defending the base from ant monsters, there's a lull in combat, and suddenly G4's like We Settle This Existential Discussion Now With A Fight To The Death. I mean, what?! I don't for even a second understand why they had to have a fight to the death, other than to give G4 a tragic death. But, like, why try to kill Hikawa? G4 bites it any other way, saving another hero or one of the kids or just taking the fight against the Ant Unknowns too far, you've still got the same story but it ends better. It's still about someone who'd rather die fighting than live after fighting. Trying to kill Hikawa, it's just some lunatic? It's not tragic or disappointing, it's baffling. I don't get it, and it made me not get G4's character in retrospect. Weird choice, movie!

The other Riders, I don't know. Wasn't really their movie, you know? Shouichi doesn't really have an arc in this one, at least outside the Burning/Shining stuff that was also in A New Transformation and had a lot more meat on the bone. (Still good, but, like, not new!) Gills... this is still at the point where he can't even think of the word Henshin without needing to be hospitalized, so he's not around much. There's a thing that was killing me, though, from his scenes with that mutant kid. The kid brings him food, Ryou's all So You Stole This, and the kid's all Fine, I'll Go Earn Money, Dad, and then gives strangers massages (?!) until he has enough money to buy Ryou the candy he needs to recover. But, like, doesn't Ryou have money? Couldn't he give that kid, like, 2000 yen to get them both food? Also, was Ryou going to leave that mutant kid in that abandoned building? And did that kid run all the way back to Tokyo on foot to get Ryou to come fight monsters? The Ryou parts of this were very confusing to me.

Otherwise, it's too well shot to be too put off by. It just looks real good. The G4 death scene I'll remember for a long time, but I don't care if I forget much of the rest of this one. It was okay.

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(Also, the Takeshi Hongo and Wendy's scenes took me right out of the movie, and Exceed Gills is definitely not for me.)

... ooooh, right, Exceed Gills was in this one.

Whoops.

Hey, at least Hiroshi Fujioka's scene in Project G4 was a nice, wholesome passing the torch moment, where he didn't look like he was about to kick the s*** out of Shouichi for not playing enough Sega Saturn, like most of his scenes in Kamen Rider Taisen. :lol

But yeah, Project G4 is absolutely stunning visually.

This is actually going to be a thing right up until Den-O if Die plans on watching the movies based on when they came out. Before movie-exclusive forms became a thing, sneak previews of final forms was the shtick. Mind you, most early Heisei movies don't have a particular place in continuity, so avoiding this won't be much of an issue.

Speaking of final forms, congratulations on avoiding the trap so many (including myself) have fallen into over the years of spending the back third of Agito wondering why Shining Form's debut was so lame because we didn't realize we had to watch the special where it actually debuted. Not counting the movie that came out like a week before, I mean.

Agh. You see, Agito really is the true start of the Heisei era. There's already too many extraneous side-projects to keep track of. :lol

I'm not the only one?!

Having watched that special last night it's now my headcanon that Shouichi changing from Burning to Shining is not the result of him receiving direct sunlight, but Shouichi calming himself by looking at the sky.

Yeah, for me, I'm super specific about viewing order, not so much for Continuity Is King reasons, but, like, I want to create what it might've felt like to be a fan watching these as they came out. When did the movie drop, when did the HBV drop, all of that.

Movie continuities in general are all sort-of not that great? With the way that they're written and shot (I'd assume) before and outside of how the episodes around it are shot, it never really feels like any episodes lead into or out of movies. (The OOO/W movie has completely the wrong dude as Birth at the end!) This one's got its share of screwed-up chronology stuff, like Burning Agito existing while Gills is still falling apart, which puts it on the level of every other Heisei movie for me.

I do like the movies in general, though. They're fun, even if they're occasionally (usually?) more concerned with spectacle than telling a coherent story.

That's kind of what I try to do as well, yeah; though I still tend to leave the movies till the end. Very much recreating the experience of the "too poor to go to the cinema so have to wait till your friend gets the DVD" kid.

I hope you add to the reality of the experience by watching the episode that aired before the movie's release, then reading a recap of the movie on a message board, then watching the next episode in sequence. Just live that broke otaku (broketaku) life.

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 36

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I can't tell if I hated this episode or not.

It's full of Kino stuff, as it probably should be. He's the newest Rider, he's a big ol' question mark, and it's nice to get a better read on him. But, holy shit, did I hate his story in this episode. Ryou falls in love with him, Majima dedicates his life to being more like him, he's a helpful bike mechanic who can also do double surgeries, whenever he's not onscreen all of the characters ask "Where's Kino,"... it's a lot! He's, like, a parody of a hyper-competent badass. All of the cool characters immediately respect him, and he's not just good at what he does, he's so good that men swoon and society trembles at his greatness. (Double surgery! That's not and never will be a thing!) I could not stop laughing at how hard the show was trying to make me think Kino is awesome.

Then he tries to kill Majima, boasting that he's the only Agito the world needs so every other Agito has to die, and that whole hyper-competent setup played as a lot less funny. It's a solid swerve, a surprising reveal, and I'm a lot more into what Kino brings to the story now. Like, I still think it went hilariously too far (maybe he's just a cool guy who's a good surgeon, maybe he doesn't have to break the world's record for surgeries or whatever), but it's nice that there was a deeper reason for it.

So, yeah, Kino's an Agito-killing lunatic, and that's pretty much all we get this episode. I guess that was the other reason I hated most of it? There's basically no time for anyone else. Ozawa and Omuro only get one scene to set up a later Houjou scene that reframes the series problem as maybe not Too Many Unknown but perhaps Too Many Agitos. Topical, what with Kino losing his goddamn mind in the next scene, and I'll never say no to Houjou, but it's a set of scenes that barely get to breathe in this story.The Uncle/Taichii scene is fun, and it's nice that they've let Uncle be really really weird lately. That dude's mind broke back when Mana ran away, and I don't think he's been right since. I love it!

This wasn't a great episode for me, what with all of the Kino Admiration, but I'm glad it was just a one episode swerve. I'm really into Kino being a hyper-competent Nice Guy murderous lunatic, so we'll see if the next one gets me back.

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Fun fact about the movie: During the final fight between G3-X and G4, the script called for G4 to die halfway through the fight, with the rest being carried out by an AI in the suit. But then the guy playing Makoto ad-libbed a line that changed the entire context of the scene.

Ha ha, that's great! Robots don't adlib, Makoto!

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 37

This show has never done a great job, for me, of making the Unknown interesting. They're frequently well-designed, and some of the kills are real clever, but they don't have any character to them. They just show up, murder, then get murdered. Even Spooky Man and Truegami, who seem to be on an extended sabbatical, don't do a lot to flesh out the threats Agito and his allies face.

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So goddamn is it good to see Kino as an antagonist. His presence, his energy, it makes these episodes of Agito into a taut thriller, with allies unwittingly aiding the enemy as the walls close in around our heroes.

It's not totally tense, thankfully. It's hilarious to see Hikawa all starstruck and fawning over Kino. (That dude has zero chill!) And it's a blast to see Ozawa just cut right through the bullshit, hearing about Kino for maybe twenty seconds before realizing that he's a liar and a creep and definitely undertips when he gets delivery. She's, as always, the greatest.

Otherwise, it's a consistently bleak episode, with Ryou nearly killed and suffering from pretty serious Rider Kick-related injuries; Houjou and the police restarting the Agito Capture Program and accidentally/fortuitously snagging Shouichi instead of Kino; and Kino getting a gift from the heavens as a comatose Ryou is totally at his very-non-Hippocratic mercy. Things are just super shitty for our heroes this time out.

It all makes for a great episode, though. Kino's an adversary this show has desperately needed, someone who can match wits with our heroes, and someone who complicates the Mutants Good, Unknown Bad dichotomy. (I mean, okay, Aki, but she thought she was avenging Ryou.) More than anything, though, it's Kino's fanaticism that's refreshing to see, his weird devotion to being Agito and protecting people even if it means murdering potential rivals. He's like a less sympathetic Snipe, an unlicensed doctor who believes it's his responsibility to save everyone. But, like, on Ex-Aid it was something that felt like a burden, like something he didn't want to have to do alone, really. With Kino it's Full Villain, lying and betraying to get everyone else out of the way, to... it's like divine providence, like he alone shoulders the burden and deserves the power. It's a complicated character, and easily the best villain this show has had. I'm liking where this story's going.

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So I went skimming back through the A New Transformation special on a whim (I think I mostly wanted to see Ryou punch Houjou in motion), and I just want to take a second to mention that the new-viewer-friendly opening narration (WATCH OUR MOVIE) describes the Riders using what I think were actually like, taglines or something to promote the show throughout its run, but were almost certainly part of the elevator pitch for the show used by whoever thought up the idea to make a Kamen Rider show with more than one lead.

Really really loosely (because you tell me how to translate なってしまった in a way that stays as succinct), they're:

Shouichi Tsugami: The man who is a Kamen Rider.
Makoto Hikawa: The man who wishes to become a Kamen Rider.
Ryou Ashihara: The man who wishes he never became a Kamen Rider.

I love those descriptions so much. They convey so clearly what each character's function in the story is, and exactly how they reflect one another as protagonists. All in so few words. I've raved about this a bit in this thread already, but Agito has such... precision, I guess, in how it uses its at the time unique premise that I can't ever get enough of. Agito was actually one of the last Heisei shows I watched, so I spent a good couple years mostly just hearing about the premise like that, and seeing this perfect, beautiful trio of cool mystic looking dude, mecha-Kuuga, and gross guy, that it built up tons of hype in my mind.

I have to say, it lived up to that hype.

Oh no. I've seen this happen at least a few times, though it's not like I have a list written down or anything. Everyone feel free to jump in and share your story of confused reaction about Shining Form! Mine was something like "Wait... is Agito... solar-powered?"

Kino is definitely a very Toshiki Inoue kind of character that way. It's a thing about his writing style that can bounce between being a positive and a negative, which is just how much he likes to deal in extremes, even as he handles other elements in subtle ways that make it clear he's perfectly capable of using a lighter touch.

I don't know the guy personally, obviously, but I get the feeling if you asked him why Kino couldn't just perform one surgery at a time, he'd tell you "because that's boring".

Wait, seriously? What line is that?

I believe it the "That Enough" line Hikawa says before he shoots at G4 is the one that was ad-libbed

So, that whole thing... it's great. It's a really great summation of the protagonists, what each of them does to explore the concept of being a Kamen Rider. Yes. 100%. But, like, it also spells out a thing I think Agito does better than Kuuga, while still falling into some of the same narrative pits.

Hikawa and Ryou, they want something. Either to be a Kamen Rider or not to be a Kamen Rider, but they are grappling with their circumstances. There's drama to that, as we've seen! Hikawa's stress and constant failures, Ryou's grim determination and quest for meaning, these are strong arcs that propel characters through the series.

But, Shouichi? He is a Kamen Rider. He doesn't want, or not want, anything. He exists. He is. And, yes, that's what's special about his character, the zen nature of the man who loves everyone. But holy shit is it bad at generating stories. It means that Shouichi has to be acted on externally to get a story out of him, and even then it's other characters who go on the journey because of that. Kuuga had the same problems to me at times, where Godai was content to just hang out and cook, and the story happened around and occasionally in spite of him.

I do enjoy Shouichi as a Rider. I do. He's a perfect cinnamon roll of a man, and I'd say he's easily my third-favorite character on the show. (Houjou first, obviously, followed by Ozawa.) But, it's just... he's not a character that generates stories, and that's sort-of the job of the main character? It unbalances the show, at times, to have to depend on the secondary Riders like Hikawa and Ryou (and now Kino!) to actually create drama and stakes for the series.

It's just, double surgery. Double surgery. It's so laughably, stupidly childish. Why wasn't he also riding a skateboard and telling his mom he won't take out the trash?

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 38

God, it's just firing on all cylinders, isn't it?

It's very difficult for me to not just post a few dozen screencaps to demonstrate how excellent this episode was, how much the dialogue feels evocative and still informative, how the performances make every joke pop, how the idea to keep Shouichi on ice for this episode does wonders to align everyone against Kino in organic ways, how there's just no fat on this thing, how it's lean and clean and so goddamn good.

Okay, I said some words, let's go to the tape!

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I love this sequence. It's great to see trusting, hero-worshiping, deferential Hikawa start to figure out that maybe he trusted the wrong guy, but only after that guy cracks him in the face and tells him to stay down. Like, it's so in-character for Hikawa to be so far past the point where something's obvious, and he's still like I Don't Know, A Lot Of People Are Making A Lot Of Good Points. My dude. Come on.

But it's... I don't know, it's sort-of adorable how naive and trusting Hikawa is. As Ozawa has pointed out before, those are attributes that are probably terrible for a detective, but it's appropriate for a Kamen Rider. And, hey, he's thick as shit, but he does realize after getting punched in the face that maybe he got it wrong on Kino, so, okay, he got there in the end.

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This is it, the best scene in the episode, and maybe one of my all-time favorite Agito scenes. Houjou and Ozawa are easily my favorite characters in the show, and this scene is why. Houjou's got proof (I mean, "proof") that Shouichi is Agito. Getting that proof was alternately ridiculous and thrilling, which: Houjou. But now he's got it, and the first thing he does is track down Ozawa to hang it over her head. (I think it's great how Houjou needs to so blatantly show off to Team G3-X. It's so needy and pathetic, and totally transparent. God bless him for being so jealous of their bond.) But, it's Ozawa, so she immediately guesses it's Shouichi that's Agito. Of course she does. She's the only one on the show with a brain! Which, that's great, she's awesome, but then Houjou is crushed. He wanted to gloat, and she robbed him of that. His whole body language changes, the smug confidence transformed into moping defeat. It's like he shouted Henshin and became Kamen Rider Just The Saddest Man. It's a great, great scene. I will never get tired of scenes where Houjou comes in a braggart and Ozawa completely owns him. Never.

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And, god, the easy bond between Ozawa and Shoucihi. I wonder if she's ever looking at Shoucihi and thinking, "So this is what it would be like if Hikawa didn't suck." Like, she believes in Hikawa, but she trusts in Shouichi to save the day. At a point in the series where trust is in short supply, the way Ozawa instinctively knows Shouichi is Agito, is a good person, can help her friend... it's the perfect capper to this episode.

Everything about this one sparkled, with the right amounts of warmth, danger, action, humor, and Houjou getting kneed in the gut. A+ episode.

Middle of an episode, but, JFC HIKAWA:

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ACE INVESTIGATOR, EVERYONE! STICK HIM IN A TIN CAN AND NEVER LET HIM OUT. OH MY SWEET JESUS.

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 39

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Look, I know some big, serious stuff happens in this episode. Kino tracks down the still-injured Ryou, faces off against Agito and G3-X, and we get a big TV-series debut of Exceed Gills. (Still don't like that suit!) It's all done very well, with some great flourishes. (Kino keeps Ryou at gunpoint while he's fighting Agito and G3-X!) And, yeah, it's a nice framework for the episode to go into what humans think of Agitos, what they assume about them. It's smart. But, like, come on. That's not what anyone should remember this episode for.

The biggest improvement over Kuuga, for me, is how much the comedy in Agito lands. Sometimes it's big, broad physical comedy, the kind of wacky-faces-and-mugging you'd expect of a kids' show, but a lot of it, the best of it, is all rooted in character. It's a great gag that Omuro doesn't know who Shouichi, the star of the show, is. But it's a better gag because that's a dude perennially on the outside, never getting the whole picture or the whole story. While the rest of the cast is fretting about monster attacks and crazed antiheroes, I'm pretty sure Omuro is heading home to play Zelda and fall asleep on the couch. Houjou and Ozawa scenes kill because we know that Houjou's going to find some way to spin his never-ending defeats as some weird moral victory, and that Ozawa has zero patience for his schtick. It's great, how the character development necessary to tell a season-long story can be leveraged to have me laughing my ass off.

Behold Hikawa.

Just, the "Hikawa suspects everyone in the cast of being Agito except Shouichi" runner, amazing. Amazing. Never got sick of it. Wouldn't have minded if they'd done ten more versions of it, with Hikawa eventually thanking Taichii for his service as Agito. I don't know if I'm supposed to read Hikawa's obliviousness (literally everyone in this episode knows but him and Omuro!) as stubbornness, or what, but it's an insane story for this show to do. Like, this is their square-jawed hero, the pride of the Metro Police, and he just cannot figure out that Shouichi is Agito. And they keep piling on the jokes at his expense! I love it. I love that they had enough confidence that viewers would go along for the ride, that it wouldn't ruin Hikawa or G3-X or anything, that you could do all of that insanity and then close it off with a brutal fight scene where Shouichi has a gun pointed at his head. It's... it's like this series got a swagger to it, where crazy tonal shifts are handled deftly, where any type of scene they want to try is within their grasp. (Okay, maybe not every scene. The shot where the Child Of Light pitches forward 90 degrees to bond with Ryou? Hilarious, and so cheesy.) The storytelling feels confident and assured, nailing the basics so they can take a few big swings here and there. It's making for some surprising and fun episodes.

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I've just gotta say, it's been really nice seeing you find a show you just absolutely love and almost always have nice things to say about; given your biggest criticisms so far are "one episode has a really bad camera" and "I don't like this one suit"

Thanks! It's a really fun show. If there're larger criticisms to be had (the Unknown can be a little dull, I'm not sure the Spooky Man stuff is clear enough considering how late we are in the series, why is the show not 20 minutes of Houjou each episode), they're generally obscured by how delightful and optimistic the show is, certainly relative to how dour and morose I found much of Kuuga.

And, y'know, I like Kamen Rider shows? It's fun to watch them, and it's fun to process those feelings with a bunch of (far more) knowledgeable fans. I'd have a tough time watching a show I disliked, let alone spending weeks complaining about it. I think there's enough interesting elements in any Kamen Rider franchise to find something positive to say about them... wwwwwhich I hope aren't words that come back to haunt me later in the Heisei Era.

So, I'm still thinking about that last episode. I'm feeling like I missed talking about a major, positive element. I was so into how funny it was, I think I missed how poignant it was?

I mentioned before that the framework of the last episode, the "what do humans think of Agitos" part, was really smart. It's just, there's a thing they do with Hikawa and Kino and Shouichi that feels like a mission statement for the show, and a road map for the franchise.

Hikawa's inability to realize that Shouichi's Agito, it's funny for the obliviousness, but it's true to how Hikawa would think about Agito. Hikawa's conception of heroism is of someone like Kino: serious, strong, dedicated, cold, hardened by sacrifice and duty. That's the sort of masculinity Hikawa associates with heroism, and it's a reason he frequently doesn't see heroism within himself. That's an ideal he doesn't feel like he lives up to. Shouichi, he's 100% not that guy that Hikawa would see as Agito. Shouichi's goofy, empathetic, nurturing, sweet. Those aren't the things that Hikawa would see as a heroic nature.

The reveal, then, is that Hikawa's gotten it backwards. Kino's aloof nature doesn't speak to a dedication to justice, it's because he's a power-mad asshole. Shouichi's sweetness isn't because he's weak, it's because he cares about people so deeply he can't hide it. Kino wants power for himself at the expense of others, while Shouichi accepts power to help others. Kino isn't someone to emulate or idealize, Shouichi is.

That's a lesson Hikawa learns over the course of the episode (in the funniest way possible), but it feels more like a message to doubting fans, that Shouichi is a valid Kamen Rider, someone whose version of heroism might not be the taciturn badass version that Kino's coded as, but an equally real hero. Someone who believes in justice can still be funny, absent-minded, domestic, emotionally-present, and a contributing member of a household. There are a million different ways to be a hero, and every type of person is capable of heroism.

Kuuga was a show that was difficult for me to see a lot of what I liked about the Kamen Rider franchise, while Agito's been more of the things I love. This episode, in retrospect, it really feels like they're making a case for all those good parts of the franchise.

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MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 40

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Oh, let me write up a few paragraphs about Hikawa's unyielding view of heroism and how Shouichi's nature runs counter to that, it's not like I'll get another chance to OH WAIT THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT.

Ha ha, whoops.

Yeah, so, I pretty much already accidentally talked about the things I liked about this episode. Just, like, scroll up a bit.

It's all still true, though. I like that Hikawa completely loses his shit, needing to get advice on what to do when he's around a boy he likes from Houjou (!) and Ozawa. The more over-the-top they go with Hikawa, the more endearing it is, and there is maybe no more over-the-top than him running away because he can't talk to a boy he likes. (And, look, I get that it's manly respect and whatnot, it's not romantic, but between Uncle's suggestion that Shouichi would make a good bride and Shouichi telling a nervous Hikawa that their discussion isn't a marriage interview, like, man. They are doing a very specific reference through this story, and I don't think it's out of place to call it out.) It's a cute story, sort-of low stakes considering The Secret Identity Of Agito is a thing the show's been building towards for a little bit, but I definitely prefer it to the alternative. I don't need another Capture Agito plan, spearheaded by Hikawa or whatever. (How could Hikawa think Houjou was Agito when Houjou ran two different Capture Agito plans?!) I like the consequences of the reveal being inflexible Hikawa losing his goddamn mind and acting like a lunatic. That's unique to Agito, you know? It's sweet and goofy, but feels drawn from the characters. And, hey, there's the Bonded By Battle finale, with Agito and G3-X officially teaming up to take down this episode's absolutely nothing Unknown. (How the hell does Hikawa beat Shouichi to the fight? Shouichi left before him, and Hikawa would need to meet up with the G3-X trailer and get into the armor. Shouichi should've beat him there by minutes!) Them teaming up makes for some first-in-the-series visuals, like Agito and G3-X riding the snake bike together for the climax and what do you mean I'm reading too much into this episode?

Moving on to the other characters, uh... not much of them here! After mopping up Kino with his new Exceed Gills form, Ryou gives Kino an I'm Not Mad At You, I'm Just Disappointed speech, and that's pretty much it for both of them this time out. Super curious where the show's going to go with Kino after this. Semi-redeemed hero feels like the logical place, but I'm willing to allow for a surprise.

Seems like next ep is maybe going to bring back Spooky Man and Truegami? There's that letter Houjou found, all runes and whatnot, plus some decidedly apocalyptic imagery to end things on. Fun!

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The last image you posted makes me wish we had more early style kamen rider designs. Damn those suits look good. Its a fantastic show with a surprisingly dark setting. The characters are adorable and awesome at the same time.

It's a very fun show! It's sort-of insane to me that this last episode could contain both a ridiculously sweet Shouichi/Hikawa thread AND a grim You Were My Hero But Now I Despise You thing with Ryou and Kino. But it all works!

For suits, I don't watch it, but Zero-One's base suit feels real clean to me, especially compared to the ten or so shows that preceded it. Couple colors, basic bug motif... seems like what you're looking for, at least that I can tell?

I'm a little late in commenting on this, but I have to mention the scenes with Shouichi getting interrogated are all not just some of my favorites, but what I think are some of the most definitively Agito scenes in Agito. The way Shouichi immediately screws up lying about not being Agito, and then just gives up and admits it outright in his typical carefree manner, which actually succeeds in making it seem less like he's Agito to these two guys who were probably expecting someone a little more dignified? It's all brilliant. Not many shows would think to handle a big twist like that in such a comedic way. "When are they gonna find out Shouichi is Agito?" is a question viewers are going to be asking from day one, and then they get there, and it's just a downplayed, humorous series of events culminating in Hikawa being embarrassingly locked out of the loop for several episodes straight. It's an extremely bold choice, and yet it's so true to the style and tone the series has always had, nothing else could've been better.

Speaking of things that can't be better, I'll also just throw out there I kind of think Agito is the single best designed Heisei Rider costume ever? I generally don't play favorites to that extent, but that's just it. He's not even my favorite per se. But every single time I see Agito, I'm always struck by how absolutely perfect each individual line is. Like, just the... geometry of it, I guess, is stunning. Agito's shoulder pads are nothing more than a round black bit and a pointy silver bit, and yet I could stare at them for hours and never stop thinking about how pretty they look. It also maintains a sort of continuity with Kuuga, while still being its own, more divine looking thing. There's absolutely no extraneous bits, anywhere you look, basically. It's as lean and mean as can be. Hence, best designed costume ever. I mean, I actually like Burning Form plenty, but it's no wonder why it and Exceed Gills rub you the wrong way when you've been beholding the majesty that is Ground Form for 40 episodes straight now.

It reminds me a lot of Build, honestly. That show had a very winning way of saying, "We've got this huge piece of information that affects nearly every member of our cast, and we've been teasing it for weeks. What's the funniest, dumbest way we could write that scene?" Like (and my mind is so shorn of details regarding a show I watched a few months ago and wrote pages about), there's that scene later in the run, I think it's about Ryuga's alien biology, and the scene is just Sento going "Hey, you're not human." Taking this huge bombshell, and going naaaaaah. It's playful, you know? Having fun with it all, the expectations and conventions of this franchise. These shows should be fun.

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 41

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A lot of housekeeping in this one. I mean, it was still utterly delightful, but it's mostly folks getting on the same page and bits of backstory being revealed.

It's all done with such style, though. That Shouichi/Hikawa scene, it's all just each of them telling each other things the audience already knows, but when they're telling it while eating between one and two ice cream cones each, it becomes sublime. It takes a boring, perfunctory scene (they've got to learn all this information onscreen at some point in order to operate effectively as a team) and sprinkles enough lunacy on it to make it fun to watch.

The hospital stuff has some of that same energy. It's a bunch of pairings we haven't gotten before, Hikawa/Ryou and Kino/Shouichi, and it's all just dialogue scenes, but they way each pairing's scene rhymes with the other one, same shots, same staging, same cadence, it's easy to forget that nothing's really happening.

But, I guess, enough things are almost happening to make this episode a good one. We're nearly to an actual Team Agito, Spooky Man's plan/goal/motivation is almost fully explained, we're edging closer to getting the full deal on Truegami and the Akatsuki-gou... even Shoucihi may've gotten Rider Kicked into getting his memories back! Everything's falling into place, and Agito's final string of episodes feels like it'll be a good one.

Oh, wait, no Houjou or Ozawa in this one, F-, Agito is cancelled.

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There's certainly a similarity there. Shouichi's wholesomeness gives Agito its own edge, though:

"Tell us about your daily activities as Agito."

"I grow vegetables."

It's too good.

You know, I was actually starting to wonder a bit now that you've been at this for a while if taking the time to actively sit down and write about batches of episodes has helped with the whole "everything blurs together" problem. I'm guessing not that much? :p

Ooh, I'm glad you brought this up! This is something I noticed rewatching Inoue's episodes of Ryuki that I really liked, where he'd insert little throughlines like this, that are comedic, and often a bit surreal, into scenes that otherwise exist largely to be "functional", in an attempt to spice them up a bit. It can make for some entertaining moments.

Writing stuff up, it's less about aiding in memory and more about being able to appreciate the moment. (Like Shouichi! Topical!) Burning through episodes is easy to do when you've got decades of content to watch (including, uh, Decade), but it risks overlooking the individual episodes. Writing stuff up forces me to pay attention, think critically, and focus on what's happening in a show. It helps me to see a bit more of what's going on, to get at themes and arcs and storytelling. Plus, like, it lets me talk to other fans about it, which makes the experience more fun.

It zero-percent makes me remember it all better. There have been a scary amount of times where I've needed to go back to the Wiki to get the name of someone from a show I watched less than a year ago, someone who was a main cast member. But, upside, I should be able to rewatch some of my favorite shows with a pretty clean slate. Hooray for the limitations of human memory and my likely approaching senility!

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 42

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Uh, I don't know about this one.

In the present day, nothing really happens. G3-X, Gills, and Another Agito generally get their asses some degree of kicked by the Manta Unknown. The beginning of the fight, from the end of the previous episode, had some flash to it, with the Unknown using the Riders attacks against other Riders. This one, it's mostly just an unstoppable badass who stands up to every attack and form change. It's a time killer, and not much more.

In the past... hoo, boy.

As the end of the series approaches, we'd have to get the final word on what went down on the Akatsuki-gou. It's been danced around for nearly the entire series. What happened on the boat? Why won't anyone talk about it? Did Kino really know Shouichi? Did Aki really know Shouichi? How do the mutant powers and Agitos factor into it?

The answers (and bless them for actually providing real answers instead of another variation of We Don't Talk About That)... honestly, I found it all slightly underwhelming.

The big reveal here is the introduction (I guess? Technically?) of Agito Jesus, the white chocolate bore to Spooky Man's dark chocolate intensity. Good ol' AJ (if you will) fought the Spooky Man at the dawn of time, and used his last moments of life to seed humanity with the power of Agitos. Spooky Man found that abhorrent, and millenia later, for some yet to be disclosed reason, AJ shows up on the Akatsuki-gou, drops dead (or is murdered), waits for the boat to be enveloped in evil weather, bestows his powers on the passengers in general and Shouichi in particular, and then leaves just before Manta Unknown shows up to knock Shouichi into the water and threaten the mutants.

Agito Jesus, it's an okay idea. The motivation is fine, playing into the duality of man, the light and dark, whatever. It's a little trite (why always light and dark as motifs), but the familiarity fills in a lot of the gaps in the narrative, letting the visuals of Agito Jesus and Spooky Man help you understand the stakes, the conflict. It's nothing stunning or surprising, but it's not bad.

And, honestly, that's a lot of my feelings about this episode. Nothing that happens on the Akatsuki-gou, that backstory, is bad. It's just sort-of dull? I'd be more into them bringing back all of the dead mutants for a flashback episode if those mutants had felt like real characters to me. Like, remember the Fourze summer movie? The emotional climax of that film is that everyone that Gentaro interacted with, everyone he saved and befriended, they all play a role in saving him at the end. But that beat only worked because we spent time with all of them, saw them change and grow. Here, with the boat mutants, most of them were barely a quirk before they were monster-murdered. Seeing them here, it's just, Oh, Aki, or Oh, That Glasses Girl Was Always Horrible. (The one cool thing is seeing Casual Kino tell everyone that they're responsible for their own future and no one else can affect it. This guy, who is obsessed with saving his dead brother, is telling everyone else how to live for the future. Hilarious! Ironic!) It's like the show was so proud of itself for bringing everyone back that they forgot that only three of these characters really matter to anyone. It's all just putting pieces together, but there's no heart to it. I don't care about these people, and I know how they end up, so it's just... it's all just so inert, narratively. Things happen, we learn details, but it's all just, like, Okay, So?

Plus, man, some of those details are dumb. The Manta Unknown decides not to kill them on the boat for what reason, exactly? Some vague sense of honor? But first he swears them to secrecy, despite the Unknown constantly murdering people in broad daylight? I'm not sure there was ever going to be a good enough reason for why no one could ever give a straight answer as to what happened on that boat, but this, god. I'd almost wish the Manta Unknown had said "You're not allowed to tell anyone what happened on this boat until episode 42! FORTY-TWOOOOO!" It all feels like the show wanted to keep the boat details for a late-series reveal, but also didn't think of those details until the week before filming this episode? Like, some of these answers are not worth the wait.

I don't know. This information all had to come out, and I guess it's better they dramatized it in an episode than had someone exposition-vomit it out over a bunch of scenes. And this episode was a much, much better take on giving Shouichi his memories back. (Why... why does he only get his memories back when he's almost killed by Agitos?) But, yeah, it was very much a brain episode, but not really a heart episode, if that makes sense. It was necessary information without a compelling story.

Also, still no Ozawa, D-.

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