The Ridermoji thing is definitely weird as I thought I heard it was officially confirmed somewhere but I guess I just adopted it accidentally?

Unsure! But it's definitely one of those things where a decent chunk of people use it.

First day of a storewide sale at work (so much packing and shipping and ringing people up!), so I've not only been out of pocket, but I'm burnt to a crisp. Let's see what we've got!

Ha ha, yeah. It's funny to me now, after watching a couple dozen series, that I barely clock the toyetic nature of this stuff. Like, there's a goofiness to the plastic toy book that Touma's interacting with, that's working him like a puppet, and I sort of don't think it distracts or detracts? It's just... I don't know, they live in a world of magic toys! I can't get too grumpy about it.

It's a great track! Agreed!

It's nice that, in the absence of Kento and Rintaro, the show has really re-emphasized the natural teamwork of Mei and Touma. They genuinely complement each other well, and Mei's capabilities give Touma such an underappreciated series of advantages. Hell, this whole break-in scheme was her idea! Which, y'know, didn't work out great for Touma, but still!

Thanks! I don't know how long it's going to be before Touma can have a friendly moment with Daishinji again, so I thought I'd pop that in there while I had a chance.

As for Daishinji's data-heavy and dryly-analytical report, "Brilliant Sound: A Tale of Swords and Swordsmen"... man, this is a family website! I can't post that!

My go-to is an probably always will be Build Hazard. I love how dire the plot gets because of that suit's introduction, and how easily a Berserk Form story escalates a series about technology and war. Also, this scene's from that story, and it's unbeatable:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...isorasento.gif

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...sorasento2.gif

I really like Dragonic Knight, but I think Primitive Dragon keeps so much of the show's aesthetic while subverting it, that I gotta say Primitive Dragon is the best so far for that guy.

Daishinji's almost always going to be the voice of reason in any group, but even he can see that this team's going to need a bold swing or two if they're going to convince Rintaro, Ogami and Ren to join them.

Any sort of heist-y story usually has me paying attention, since it means (hopefully!) a more complex plot that provides a million pitfalls for our heroes. And this one doesn't disappoint in that regard, since Storious also decides to pull a B+E (book and entering) on the SoL. Just a super fun, clever plot that inevitably becomes a chaotic nightmare. Very happy with the choice and the result!

Did you sell anyone a cursed tome of knowledge that will turn them into a berserker warrior, or has that been pushed back to next month's release cycle?

Hey, it was going great, right up to the moment when it really wasn't!

Unfortunately, that was all we sold. In my defense, I hadn't seen this episode of Saber back when we were planning the sale. I was unaware of the inherent problems of Cursed Tomes Of Forbidden Knowledge, which, looking back now, seems sort of self-evident. Mea culpa!

Ah! I had the good sense to go and check, and the early magazine scans for the show explicitly used the term, which is where I figured it came from. So it's definitely at least kinda official! I just don't remember it being pushed at all after that, is sort of the part that confuses me. I'd imagine that might be because it doesn't make much sense on an in-universe level, given it's clearly just a general purpose old writing deal within the setting, rather than something specific to the Kamen Riders?

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 24 - “A FATHER’S BACK, AND THE FUTURE IT CARRIES”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber24a.png

It’s the ending that I really locked into this time, which is a little rare for me?

I feel like the description of Primitive Dragon at the end by Master Logos is one of the first times in this show that I’ve gotten to the middle of a mystery and thought Holy Shit That’s Great. Just the idea that Primitive Dragon is at its most dangerous if you can’t empathize with it… so they gave it to Touma? I love that. I love the villains (?) being so smart about the heroic attributes of the protagonists that they can use those positive aspects in furtherance of their own diabolical plans. I just really love when shows can leverage that kind of character development to make the superhero plots more complicated and fascinating.

And it's so fun, to see the villains try to weaponize Touma’s empathy. Touma’s captured by Primitive Dragon, which is an interesting twist on a Berserk Form. This isn’t Touma leaning on a crutch, or addicted to power; Primitive Dragon is forcing itself into fights, and removing Touma’s agency. The book itself has an agenda, and a pathology. It’s a neat way of exploring depression, where the very people who might try and help you -- like Touma -- can also be damaged by an untreated illness. The Sword of Logos clearly doesn’t care if Touma is broken in the attempt to tame this eldritch insanity, so we get a compelling story of sorrow run amok.

That’s the biggest part of the episode for me, which otherwise was a mix of TWISTS and solid-if-unsurprising storytelling.

The TWISTS part first: Calibur’s back! From a dark portal! To stop Primitive Dragon from killing X-Swordman and maybe Mei! It’s probably Kento, but that’s almost irrelevant right now. It’s a mystery that’ll probably percolate for a little while (it was, like, a dozen episodes before we found out who Calibur was last time), and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to react to it.

Also, we’ve got Reika semi-revealed as the smoky suspect who maybe swiped Calibur’s sword, probably kidnapped Sophia, and definitely snagged a bunch of Wonder Ride books while lying about Master Logos’s orders. I’m half-expecting this to all be chalked up to Reika doing shady shit for good reasons (mistrustful of Master Logos’s plans, safeguarding things from the traitor, low blood-sugar), but it’s still just Reika being Up To No Good with nothing in the way of legitimate obstacles to her continued unimpressive dominance, which is super good drama.

But! There’s solid, sweet character stuff in Ogami’s defection from the Sword of Logos, which became inevitable when Reika decided the best way to ensure dedicated-father Ogami stuck with the Sword of Logos was to tell him to stop caring about if his kid lives or dies. So! More top shelf management technique from Reika, and Ogami has one last duel with Touma to solidify their manly bond.

It’s a continuation of Ogami’s talk with Sora from a little while back, with Ogami needing to leave a broken home to better provide emotional support and a good example for his sword kids. It’s hard to serve as an ideal of chivalry and stability while knuckling under to the shadiest lady in the shadiest room, after all. Like, sometimes one family needs to be two families to keep from being no family, you know? Ogami’s making the hard choice today to make good choices from now on.

Which is all well and good, but I’m pretty much just thinking non-stop about that Primitive Dragon explanation. It’s so smart!

—

SUNSET SOON FORGOTTEN

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber24b.png

Mei walked with Sora back to the bookstore, as his father and Touma limped behind them, congratulating each other on their fight.

Mei sighed a little. “Ugh, I wish they all didn’t have to fight so much,” she said to herself. “Every time they want to be proud of one another, they’ve got to try to hurt each other. I can’t take it anymore! It's too stressful!”

Sora tugged on her hand lightly, and she looked down at him. “It’s okay to be scared when they fight,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s okay to be scared.” He looked toward the sunset. “I used to get scared when my dad would fight a friend instead of a monster, because he’d always tell me not to fight my friends at school. I didn’t get it right away, how it was okay for him but not for me. But I got it. He’s not mad at Touma, he’s happy that they’re friends, but he wants to make sure Touma’s as happy to be friends as my dad is. They’re good friends, Mei. You don’t have to be scared.”

Mei smiled down at Sora’s scrunched up, serious face. “Okay, buddy. You’re right. I won’t be mad about them anymore.” She looked at that sunset, all orange and red. “I mean, hard to be mad when everyone’s friends and the sun’s going down so beautifully, right?”

“Yeah!” Sora raised his right arm in the air in excitement, as Mei held his left hand and swung it. “It’s so pretty!”

“Sure is. Lemme get that real quick.” She snapped a picture with her phone, and posted it to Instagram. They had a little time before they got back to the bookstore, so she figured she might as well cross-post it to Twitter. Huh. Come to think of it, she hadn’t logged into Twitter in a while. It wasn’t her main social media connection, but it might be good to see if she was getting any traction over there. She opened up the app, and checked a recent post. Not bad: ten retweets, fifty likes.

Wait… who was ‘@desasterpiece’? A click on the avatar and… no. NO. “Desast?!”

Sora looked up at Mei, worried. “Desast,” he asked, “where?”

“On Twitter!”

“Oh,” Sora said with relief, “I thought you saw him just now. If he’s just on your phone, it’s okay.”

“No,” Mei said through gritted teeth, “it’s NOT okay. It’s TERRIBLE. He has twice as many followers as I do!”

TO BE CONTINUED!

Again, I really love what they do with Primitive Dragon. It's why I did the comparison to Putotyra, because they're similar... but very different at the same time. And it's probably why Primitive nearly edges out Putotyra as my favorite of the two berserkers.

If you're liking stuff now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I feel like you're like in for a treat the further we go along.

And like... I just love how it forces its way into fights. Like yeah you could tell Touma to not fight but he's not gonna just not fight, you know? So he charges in and then suddenly, boop! Primitive Dragon just came in for the save! I also feel a bit of catharsis in which Primitive decides to make usage of the head decoration of Saber for actual functional combat use.

That being said, I do love Touma and Ogami's fight, in which Ogami's like "Just go all out with me, that's the only way you're going to prove to me you've got what it takes" and so we get a very different duel between the two. And of course I do like that we're getting a legitimate reason for why the Riders likely won't be using other forms anytime soon. While it isn't as hectic as say OOO, I do love it when collectibles change hands and gives reasons for why characters don't or do use certain items.

Meanwhile with the story, I love how profound Sora is for a kid, and really... it fits super well. Also nice to see Mei being more active on social medi-ohoho I see a certain Megid managed to sneak his way on there!

That certainly was a cliffhanger I wasn't expecting... so there's only one way to follow this up!

===Zero Presents: Desast Walk===

Desast Walk #6:

"Hello, humans.

I'm Dessert.

You humans are still playing with these things, aren't you?

It's called "Manga"?

...... Well...

It's not a bad way to pass the time."

I laughed out loud when Primitive Dragon used the headsword! It's like, if you have a sword on your head, why aren't you doing a ton of headbutts? Primitive Dragon is the only one thinking tactically about these fights, I guess...

Reika has many excellent skills. Subtlety is not one of them. Thankfully for her, very few characters on this show are good at reading people.

It's not even the lack of subtlety, it's her staggering inability to understand how to keep people from defecting. Like, Ogami has very few recognizable traits in this show, but his MAIN ONE is being The Dad. (His other traits are Dated Popped Collars On Polos and Still Being The Dad.) So for her to look at his wavering commitment and decide that this is the best point to put forward an ultimatum where he has to choose between his only beloved son and a dimly-lit coven of sword cultists who are an anxiety attack away from being a Workplace Incident... like, she could not have miscalculated worse than if she told Ren he wasn't allowed to be powerful anymore. It's mind-bendingly bad management!