I think the bugvisor is used by Ren to transform in to humans like Pallad. Poppy is human looking enough and her transformation is just a costume change. I've never seen ex aid really care about her and now they're stuffing that message down after halfway through the series.

That's true, but considering how close after getting Genm X, you'd think he'd wise up. My theory is Ren had a 'delete save' button in his speech pattern or something

I was thinking that.

By the way, who drew your signature? I'd like to see Champ or Balance drawn by the same person.

Okay, so I'll stop whining about Ex-Aid for a while. This was pretty great! It wasn't like the best episode ever or anything, but it answered more or less all of my questions from last week, and had a bunch of other great stuff, so I'm happy:

- All the stuff elaborating on Kamen Rider Chronicle was great. I like the way they're going about it. Yeah, it was actually kind of a poor plan because the Ministry of Health instantly tries to shut it down, BUT WAIT, that was just phase one! We knew that would happen the whole time! It makes both the heroes and the villains look more competent. Good stuff.

- And we see the same jerk from last week actually grow to accept that fighting Bugsters is a Kamen Rider's job through an arcane, ancient narrative concept known as a "character arc". This Tenma guy is like the best VotW this show has had so far. I guess all it took to make one of them feel important was to literally get them in on the action. Loved how once he steps up at the end all those other losers are just like "oh wait, maybe I shouldn't be hanging on to this thing either". It's rare for things to go that well for Emu. :lol

- Speaking of which, it's nice to really be liking Emu again. This whole arc is giving him back the purpose he was lacking for the second quarter of the show. Dude feels like he has some gumption again.

- And Hiiro and Taiga are still the bomb. Having them show up right as Emu is talking about how he's willing to fight alone was awesome. Really sums up the unique dynamic these three have among Rider groups. Sure, they'll never, ever truly get along personally, but at the end of the day they're all here to get the job done.

- Kamen Rider Poppy was pretty delightful. Ex-Aid has a mastery of tone-deafness that puts other Rider shows to shame. That's not a backhanded compliment, either. It's awesome that we can have this big dramatic scene where she shows up and then suddenly that zany transformation happens, and then it's right back to the drama. It's this kind of nonsense that makes me love Toku so much.

- Also, y'all are freaking out about Taiga dying like all these signs are new things. You wanna talk death flags, he's been waving his biggest one ever since the start of the show. "I'm the only Kamen Rider we need around here". Can you guys not see how obvious a setup that line is for a big ironic twist toward the end of the show where he says that before making some big heroic sacrifice? Any other flags are just icing on the cake at that point. Heck, he already did put a positive spin on it back when he first used Bang Bang Simulations.

I'm only belatedly catching up on these, but... Wow. Early on in the series, it felt to me like the show was trying to channel Gaim, but felt empty. Now, it's evoking much the same feeling that Gaim did - that this is way more engaging than modern Kamen Rider is supposed to be - but without the asterisk; it feels like it's finally figured out its own identity.

There's no character who makes me feel as strongly as Micchi did ("I utterly despise this guy, and wish someone would just kill him alr-- no, wait, he's the best part of the show now, isn't he?"), but almost all of our principal players now feel fleshed-out for me to be invested. Not Whatsername, Taiga's hanger-on, but I suspect that'll be remedied.