People gave me the same reaction when I shared that Kamen Rider Snipe plays Hayato in Ultraman X. :lolol

Wait, what?

1 Google later:

Oh shit, he did. I guess, in my defense, I haven't watched X in ages and he was just one of the two support guys. Technically a regular but rarely in the spotlight.

So... Faiz arc...

Again, I've been going off of memory, while occasionally glimpsing the thread to sort of recap, but even that can only get me so far, but here goes nothing.

From what I remember upon my first viewing, Faiz and his bike-mech looked really cool, and the monsters, the Orphanoc, while slightly dull on their color palette, made up for it with their designs, which pretty much outweighs their colors, at least to me.

Not sure why they went with a high-school setting, probably to add some sort of theme for AR Faiz's world to make it memorable (which to be honest, kind of works, because that's one of the few reasons I remember this arc), but even for someone who hasn't seen Faiz (except for his cameo in the Showa vs. Heisei movie and Zi-O's tribute episodes) doesn't have too much attachment to whether or not they did him justice. (Of course, from what I gathered from people so far is something, something, cuss you, Kusaka.)

DiEnd, as mentioned, isn't too different from the Treasure Hunter trope(?)(but even I'd take that over a list of other tropes I dislike), but as a newcomer, I thought he was pretty neat. His design was a crazier look from the Decade aesthetic, he had a cool gun, and his theme song is good (of course, I kind of like Ride The Wind a little better). I don't entirely get Tsukasa's beef with him, even after the show, and the sea cucumber line still loses me, probably not high on my list of Secondary Riders, but I don't think he's the worst. But at least his Final Form Rides are a little more interesting (at least not as weird as Decade messing with the other Riders).

Also, thank you everyone for pointing out Ankh's actor being in this! My reaction was pretty much just like Enchalada's.

Auto Vajin showing up and being helpful, rather than trying to murder Faiz, was maybe the most DID YOU EVEN WATCH FAIZ moment of the story for me. Just a top-shelf failure.

I can't speak to the whole arc of their story, but I can hazard a guess as to why Decade and Diend don't get along: they're both monumental assholes. Kaitou couches his selfishness in a more pleasant exterior, but he's equally dismissive of others as Tsukasa is. They're both unable to work with people because they have too high of a regard for their own abilities, and they've each made their goals far too personal. They very similar... and also manipulative pricks. Like, I'm not sure there's a lot to unpack in this rivalry.

No offense, but while he's probably worth praising but I disagree if the praise is like this, when it's putting down anyone else with the claim of "he's the only one who can" or such. This is also what happened in medias which are considered overhyped, with its diehard fan making claim that their favorite media is the most original like the media is the only one who does <insert favorite thing here> and either don't (like if they're new to the genre or media type, like for example first anime someone watched)/won't know or outright ignore other stuff. Though of course I disagree too of the response against those overhypers being instead hating that media blindly, two wrongs don't make a right. To argue for this, I have seen other cases of someone learning to be better from a terrible person, and even it can have audiences defending those terrible person as innocent due to the learning factor others can take. For KR, there's something like that (learning from terrible people) in for example Zi-O (though yes, it being done well or not is a debate), but I can't further talk more about that.

True, the real secondary Rider in Decade is Diend (and it's quite common knowledge iirc), not Onodera. There are 2 secondary Riders named Kaito, like there are 2 secondary Riders named Kagami, there are 2 secondary Riders named Makoto. But for most of all, Diend's surname can be translated as 'thief', so his nature is in the name at the first place.

Though most of the secondary Riders are assholes and morally ambiguous, it's the outwardly friendly appearence and him being presented as affable in the debut that made him specifically like Kusaka? (I already knew about Diend before, but not much about the human identity, and I admit even I also thought he's the Kusaka in the story for a second before wising up that he's Diend, but like you said, him wanting to infiltrate Lucky Clover is the most Kusaka thing about him). Diend being treasure-based and wild card, this is a crazy talk, but I've seen that kind of problem in previous Rider series Ryuki, where Imperer fights primarily for money, demands outrageous sum of money to have him perform an action, and a backstabber when it came to deals. And true (anti-)heroes that are money-based have that as deconstruction, potential problem at both side. Of Sh Ranger refering him as wild card.... why don't have him debut at Blade parter before?? Joker is named as such due to him being a wild card!

And true Tsukasa is sentimental and that sets him apart from Tendou as I watch. Kaitou teasing Tsukasa for not eating sea cucumber reminds me of Deneb trying to make Yuuto eat shiitake mushrooms, though of course as Deneb does it for the good of Yuuto, dunno what's the aim of jerks like Kaitou forcing Tsukasa to eat that. And true, the helmet isn't my taste either for Diend, but I'd like to see if others can like the helmet and defend it. The abilities though, it's a contrast to Tsukasa's too where Decade had him turning into previous Rider, while Diend had him summoning past Riders. I'd think at least at first glance Diend's one is more effective due to using both of the Rider's abilities instead of 1 + the numbers. For Narutaki pitting Ryuga against Decade (another random Rider appearence like Hopper brothers and Todoroki), Diend uses Kiva to fight him off. That seems to not tie to any theme unlike Kiva vs Kuuga. For Ryuki Kiva should fight Knight as both are bat, or probably use other dark counterpart Rider like Dark Kabuto (Dark Kiva's probably final form level and would be too strong).

For Tsukasa taking Takumi's role of tennis, does that show another similarity to Tendou that Tsukasa is outright superhuman in human form too (there's Tendou showing off his insane reflexes at times)? I mean this even relates me back to Kabuto's School's Ghost Story about replacing the school's students with Worms to improve the school's standings, and it did due to superhuman nature of monsters (as well as in W where Akane improves her track field due to becoming Dopant), this also has outright Orphnochs who play a sports game, where their superhuman nature is seen in the tennis balls burning from their smashes, a la animes like Captain Tsubasa, yet Tsukasa schooled all of the superhuman players at once.

This is an inherent problem of anniversary series that wants to revisit/make a tribute for previous series. It has to balance between being a tribute/revisit or as its own story. So for this part, it's apparently the Decade's own story winning over against the tribute. I wish that I can get to realize something like fourth wall view you had there where Tsukasa and Kaitou are audience surrogates in different way, though true that there are many kind of fans like Sh Ranger pointed out, not everyone is the same (I very want to become transformative fan tbh, not only KR, but dunno about Japan being Japan...), but on the other hand, that can make someone look silly in a community, to be mocked as "writing manuscript for kids show" or such. So for here, Kaitou is a merch collector... so how about the intellectual who made the tools themselves like Kuroto? Them as Toei?

Not to subdue passion, but honestly if I would see a media piece I like getting revisited at the future newer media, I'd be skeptical if that newer piece would adapt the media well, I'd have more fear instead of excitement. I do agree with the Faiz complaints there, but I think it applies to any of the tributes so far? There are never tributes that have complete aspect of any series, like Blade lacking depth compared to the original series before partly due to it being crammed for 2 episodes. I think I just accept the fact that complete tributes won't work for cramming it for 2 episodes, albeit doesn't mean there are no room for improvements. Though still, I'd want to argue some for this; Yuri takes some part (not all) from Mari, her story about coming into terms about how Ogami is an Orphnoch is something Mari had too, ending with "Takumi is Takumi" bits y'know, so Mari was also ok with Takumi being a monster? Still, I'm actually having less feud that this is not an actual adaptation for Ogami not being a jerk part (I hate adaptations ignoring the original source), but I'd like for adaptations to not turn non-jerks into jerks either for the sake of funny or entertainment (I guess this is some of the response for Onodera, but this seems to be tolerated in something like Blade Missing Ace move...). And true it's weird the school excludes Orphnochs... but Faiz had Yuka (who was bullied but that's before she became Orphnoch). They did waste a chance to play a part of human and Orphnoch divide in the school as Ogami was apparently scared of transforming into Wolf Orphnoch, but if the theme is committed, it can explain it better (the only one who were shown affected was Yuri), or the other's reaction if they know that the idolized Lucky Clover are Orphnochs.

I think they did play on someone from Faiz, but only on the surface part where the Lucky Clovers have similar goal of forcing Orphnoch superiority to humans. But true that I want for series traits to not only be looked from the surface, but meme can lead into some people doing that. Oh, at least the Ogami turning into Wolf Orphnoch to fight him had some resemblance to the flashback about... well Ryuusei School in Faiz where Takumi fought Kitazaki as Wolf Orphnoch, and the source of some events like Kusaka's racism to Orphnochs, etc.

I kinda wonder if there are some ideas for those 2 to contribute here (with of course other than Onodera fighting as Kuuga).

Sorry about that, I may have been exaggerating a little by saying Inoue's the only one who can deliver those philosophies. There are probably others writers who can do similar themes to Inoue, like Kobayashi who uses a lot of the same tropes and ideas, but generally I think that Inoue's style is just more aligned with my preferences.

I definitely wouldn't consider Kusaka to be innocent, just for being the catalyst for Takumi's character development. Kusaka is the source of conflict, which is necessary for the narrative to deliver the moral to Takumi and the viewers. This is actually something I have personal experience with, due to having confrontations with a control freak bully in middle school. I feel like people just have an easier time acting against someone bad than acting for someone good, as they become more aware of their own hypocrisies and flaws by observing them in adversaries. But that selfish motivation establishes a starting point for the concept of heroism which can be refined later. That's a lot of what both Takumi's and Tsukasa's journeys are about. In Takumi's case, he learns what being Kamen Rider Faiz means to him and how that revolves around his selfless motivation to protect dreams. Those interactions he has with friends, rivals and enemies imprint on him to make him less of a terrible person.

Yeah, the major difference between the Kaitos is that Decade's Kaito is a surname, while Gaim's Kaito is a given name. The kanji is also different between the Kaitos and Kagamis. (Fukami) Makoto is spelled entirely in katakana, unlike Hikawa Makoto. Kaito Daiki, the Kagamis and Makotos are all blue Riders as well, with Kumon Kaito being the only exception as a red Rider.

Decade's "a bat for a bat" against Knight sounds a lot more specific and clever than Diend's "a monster for a monster" against Ryuga. He could've Final Form Ride Ryuki instead to have "a dragon for a dragon". However, I think Tsukasa has more wit than Kaito, so it makes sense that Tsukasa would have the better quips.

Yeah, just like his fluency in Unidentified Lifeform language, he also gains physical abilities to help him in his journey. He acknowledges this himself, boasting to Lucky Clover how he can do anything better than them.... Except for taking photos. But unlike Tendo, who is naturally perfect, Tsukasa has a more mysterious reason for why he's so skilled, due to his role as the alleged Destroyer of Worlds.

Being mocked isn't really a problem for transformative fans, but rather a problem for those people who disapprove of their work. The worst problem would be to have all that inspiration wasted by doing nothing about it, out of fear of how others might perceive it. We can't appease everybody all the time and we're not obliged to. As long as we're doing something we enjoy and that somebody else, even just one person, might enjoy and learn from, then I think it's worth it for that. Doing it for yourself and for pride can be a powerful and constructive motivation.

Kuroto is exactly the kind of guy who would bash transformative fans, like Emu innocently submitting his game ideas being the catalyst for pretty much everything that happened in that show. Kuroto was so possessive of his IP that he became jealous of Emu's creativity, instead of taking it as flattery like friendly game developers would.

For sure, Yuri cowering from Ogami as Wolf and the school setting, albeit high school in this case which is closer to Yuka's tragic backstory, is very similar to the events of Kitazaki's rampage in Ryusei School with Mari mistaking Takumi for the culprit. Honestly, if the Diend stuff was a little less dominant, I would have really enjoyed seeing them go all the way with these ideas of Faiz in a high school.

Maybe Natsumi could've infiltrated as a teacher, like how Takeru and Akari did in Kamen Rider 1.

There's your average, garden-variety bravery; and then there's the kind of heroism it takes to stand up and say Actually, Agito Is As Good As Kuuga. Those sorts of heroes are hard to find, but we're lucky enough to have one here on the boards. Folks, say hello to our Agito fan for these episodes - SWITCHBLADE!

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: Switchblade! Thank you so much for volunteering to work on this crazy-ass project. We're going to watch a little bit of Agito-tinged Decade shortly, but I wanted to spend some time getting your backstory. I mean, I'm hoping your backstory hasn't been washed away as the result of an ill-advised boat trip. Assuming that's not the case, where did you come from, tokusatsu-wise? How did you first encounter this genre?

SWITCHBLADE: I came into Rider from two places. The first was Power Rangers, which a friend had gotten me back into during Dino Thunder/the return of Tommy Oliver. Then Disney basically cancelled Power Rangers and I had a spandex hero-shaped hole in my life. The other was Transformers, specifically two of my favorite video reviewers/podcasters who were also big Rider nerds. They were the ones that got me curious enough to try out the show and I decided to check out the first episode of the current show at the time: Decade.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Lemme drill into some of that. You said a friend got you "back into" Power Rangers. I'm guessing it was something you had some experience with when you were younger?

SWITCHBLADE: Yeah. It started airing when I was in... 5th grade? Maybe 6th? Old enough for it to definitely not be cool to watch.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: But I'm inferring that you did anyway?

SWITCHBLADE: Up through Zeo, yeah. Then again for In Space and Lost Galaxy. That is why I never got into the merch side of it, though.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Why? I am like an enthusiastic puppy when it comes to Power Rangers: I have no idea what it is, but I know people like it, and that makes me happy. Why didn't you get into the merch?

SWITCHBLADE: I was of the age where it was just not socially acceptable to be into toys anymore. I was all about video games and comic books instead. You know, cool people things.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Very mature for your age, got it.

SWITCHBLADE: I did grow out of that eventually, but by the time I did I had put Power Rangers behind me.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And you got sucked back in by the siren call of Jason David Frank shouting KI-YAAHHH?

SWITCHBLADE: Pretty much. I was a huge Green Ranger fan back in the day. He's the primary reason I originally grew my hair out.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: At least you weren't influenced by another character, leading to a failed run as a juice bar entrepreneur. But then Power Rangers slipped away again. You had Transformers to keep you company, though? Tell me about that. Were you into the toys? The comics? The cartoons? All of the above?

SWITCHBLADE: Actually, that had fallen away, too. I'm an 80s kid. He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe, TMNT, and so forth were all big parts of my youth.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Same here! I am an old. When people on the boards talk about high school and college as present-tense concerns, I want to jump into a coffin and disappear into dust.

SWITCHBLADE: I got back into Transformers due to a combination of finding some old toys in a box and seeing the cool new toys on the shelf (this was ~2000-01, so we're talking the Robots in Disguise era).

KAMEN RIDER DIE: RID sounds like the thing that's going to call out to G1 kids. Were you just dabbling at that point, or did RID get you back to collecting?

SWITCHBLADE: To my longterm financial chagrin, I got back into collecting. Not the first time, either. I'd gone really heavy on the new Star Wars toys a few years earlier. Gotta recapture that childhood nostalgia.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: To be fair, multi-trillion dollar companies have turned Weaponized Nostalgia into a pervasive, consumer-bankrupting business model. You were just doing your patriotic duty by buying things you liked as a child.

SWITCHBLADE: That is a way to spin it.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I mean, the alternative is that we all make poor financial decisions based on unsolvable psychological flaws, and that doesn't sound right.

SWITCHBLADE: Oh no, it's definitely more the latter. I find that the self-awareness helps maintain some semblance of responsibility. There are reasons I don't drink or gamble.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Incorrect! We are blameless victims, and that is this thread's official position.
Back to robot toys! I am also a person who moved from transforming-toy collecting into tokusatsu, and it's an incredibly daunting financial/cultural burden. Both Transformers and Kamen Rider have a narrative and commercial output that is almost a full-time job, and juggling both of them as hobbies... oof. It's some Hard Mode shit! In short: why did you do this to yourself? Who in the world of podcasting convinced you to start watching Decade?

SWITCHBLADE: Mainly Vangelus but most directly TJ Omega. TJ did a review of the Decadriver and the whole "turn into other heroes" gimmick really intrigued me.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: A subplot of these various chats is me freaking out when people say they started a franchise with an anniversary season. It's more common than I'd've thought, but I still find it completely insane. Why did you want to watch a season celebrating shows and heroes you didn't know anything about? Explain this to me, if you remember the reasons.

SWITCHBLADE: Okay, so here's the thing: I started with the first episode of Decade, but I didn't continue watching it. I watched Decade purely as a "let's see what these guys are talking about" thing. I did not commit to continuing at first. But I had two immediate reactions: This is awesome and I do not understand any of these references. And this is why I relate so much to what you've been doing these last two years to get context for Zi-O, because I did the same thing with Decade. I watched one episode, loved it, then decided that the only thing to do was watch the other nine shows first.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I love it! It's the only sensible way to approach the problem, for Weird Fan values of "sensible" and "problem". The idea of watching Zi-O without watching all of Heisei made me both nauseous and viscerally angry.

SWITCHBLADE: And you had at least seen Phase 2.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, but then there was this random Phase 1 Guy Guest-Stars In Zi-O headline on TokuNation, and I was like Welp.
So, in the present, what sort of toku fan do you consider yourself? Only Kamen Rider, or do you check out the other franchises?

SWITCHBLADE: (also I should point out that the plan hit an immediate roadblock in that it was 2009 and no one had subbed Kuuga past episode 4)
Anyway, today I'm still into Kamen Rider, but I've added other shows to my world. I'm not that into Super Sentai. I'd tried it before Rider and it didn't click. I've seen a few shows, but they are very hit or miss for me. I absolutely love Garo, when it's around. More than anything now, though, I've really gotten hardcore into Ultraman. I'm watching Trigger, rewatching Orb, and sometimes tossing on a 70s episode for fun.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I can see why you'd be hanging out on TokuNation, then! How'd that come about, actually? How'd you land on these boards?

SWITCHBLADE: I've been here from day one. I was really active in the older Rider Kick thread on TFW2005, so when Tokunation was spun off I followed over. I spent some time at Henshin Justice Unlimited, but never felt like I really fit in there.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Well, as someone very very late to the game, let me thank you for making this collection of threads into a home. It's a nice site, with nice people. Good folks, the lot of 'em.
Where do you find yourself spending most of your TokuNation time, thread-wise? Any particular favorites?

SWITCHBLADE: I mostly hang out in the show discussions, these days. Sometimes the news forums. I've never been much of a general discussion user, even at boards that predate this one.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Merch threads? Do you collect any Rider/Ultra/Garo merch?

SWITCHBLADE: Not anymore, outside of blu-rays/dvds. I used to collect Figuarts and the small SIC figures, but I had a year where my income really dropped and I fell behind. It was either pay hundreds to catch up on stuff I missed or just call it a day. And then the mini SIC line died unfinished, which helped me make up my mind.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: They realized it was pointless to go on without you.

SWITCHBLADE: I was still there for those. They just made everything a web store exclusive and then just stopped making stuff. Even then, they never completed any line-ups. I still have the Faiz and Kaixa on display with no Delta to slot in beside them. It's a pity, they were a nice 4" scale with really cool and/or questionable stylized designs.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: That's my fear for any non-SHF/SODO thing I like from Rider merch, that they'll do two or three random characters and then pack it in. I feel like it shouldn't matter - it is okay to only get a few suits! - but it 100% does.

SWITCHBLADE: I don't know how bad Bandai is about this now, but it was a recurring issue during the '10s. Do not bring up Sentai Figuarts if you don't want to cause some PTSD.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I would never! I've picked up enough Sentai knowledge to know to call that one Dekaranger. But we aren't talking Sentai, we're talking Kamen Rider! Specifically, Agito. Why was Agito on your shortlist of Phase 1 shows?

SWITCHBLADE: Because like I said, I decided to go back and watch all the pre-Decade shows before I really dove into Decade. Kuuga wasn't available yet so I moved on to Agito, which became the first show I watched all the way through. I think it was also the first one I watched a second time.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Well, it's basically Better Kuuga, so that makes it a good show to start with. (I KID! So many people just got mad at that line.)

SWITCHBLADE: Whenever I rank Rider shows, I always put Kuuga and Agito at an essential tie.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Agito was a revelation for me, because it mostly wasn't even on my (admittedly limited) radar before I watched it? I remembered the Is Agito A Sequel To Kuuga section from the wiki, and that was about it. I never really remembered folks bringing it up in other threads. Actually watching it, I was immediately hooked. Was that your experience? Were you into it from the start?

SWITCHBLADE: Oh yeah, absolutely. I went into most of these shows completely blind. But I'd had some experience with Power Rangers, of course, and that had given me a basic idea of what Japanese superhero shows were probably like. Agito was absolutely nothing like I expected and it absolutely blew me away. It was a supernatural mystery with a lot of cop stuff and the superhero usually only appeared at the very end of the episode. And there was a ton of cop stuff and a mopey swimmer. (I just realized I listed cop stuff twice, but dear lord did I not expect that part)

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And the superhero's just this super sweet guy? That's the part that really sticks with me, a million shows later. Shouichi. Such a great primary Rider.

SWITCHBLADE: Definitely, but the real standout for me was Hikawa.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I mean, yeah, obviously! Her and Houjou are endgame for me. Whoops!

SWITCHBLADE: I was going to say. But yes, also great characters.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I am thinking of Ozawa, because I'm ALWAYS thinking of Ozawa.

SWITCHBLADE: Entirely understandable. And for me, Hojo will always be the best of Inoue's jerkass drama boys.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: But, yeah, talk about Hikawa. I had a huge swing on my opinion of that dude.

SWITCHBLADE: I remember that.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Why was Hikawa your guy?

SWITCHBLADE: I had only seen two episodes of Kuuga, though, so I didn't have Ichijou as a strong counterpoint. I think what I loved most about Hikawa is that, god bless him, he's really bad at all of this. He's a questionable detective, a useless Kamen Rider, and often the show's designated butt monkey. And none of that ever stops him. He's this normal dude with an Iron Man suit that was made for last year's monsters and I'm so impressed with how he just keeps on going in spite of all that.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, his main flaw as a character is his intense and unwavering awareness of his own limitations. He is ready to hand G3 over to nearly anyone who is confident enough to ask for it. His whole arc is basically trusting other people that he can be more than he thinks.

SWITCHBLADE: There's an earnestness about him that I really respect. He's so committed to doing the right thing by other people, even when it makes his own life harder.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: One of my favorite Hikawa bits is when he loses G3 (I honestly can't remember which time), and Hojo goes to rub it in his face, and Hikawa, like, wishes Houjou luck? And offers his assistance, should Houjou need it? He's so certain he deserves to fail that he can't see why you wouldn't be a good sport when you fail. It's adorable.

SWITCHBLADE: He has such a bad read on so many people. I will never not love that he is the last character on the show to realize Shouichi is Agito.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE AGITO EPISODE! (Well, that or Double Surgeries. With an Inoue season, I'm spoiled for choice.) The way everyone else tries to get him to realize Shouichi is Agito, and he keeps getting it hilariously wrong... it's only topped by Hikawa acting like a bashful child around Shouichi afterwards.

SWITCHBLADE: Because, of course, he now has another person to feel inferior to.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Everyone's better than Hikawa, and he's very happy for them! Just like I'm happy to watch these Agito-themed episodes of Decade with you! SWITCHBLADE! Count to zero, because it's almost time to watch DECADE!

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KAMEN RIDER DECADE EPISODE 12 - "REUNION: PROJECT AGITO”
Team Decade arrives in the World of Agito! G3-X, a shiny new Kamen Rider substitute, battles the Unidentified Lifeforms, but only Onodera can help… wait, didn't I write something incredibly similar for the Kuuga episodes? Weird. Either way, Onodera sees a woman with his dead crush/mentor/sister(?)'s face, and it sets him on the path to become a new hero for the World of Agito! With Kaitou also gunning for the position, and a grizzled Shouichi Ashikawa refusing to help, how will Tsukasa save the day? And-- wait, how will TSUKASA save the day?! Huh?!

KAMEN RIDER DECADE EPISODE 13 - "AWAKEN: TORNADO OF SOULS”
Tsukasa's true plan comes to light: he's trying to help his good friend Onodera by trying to help Onodera's crush Yashiro. But Yashiro's not Yashiro, despite the Inoue trope, and Onodera realizes he needs to let go of his past and change for the future. With our thematic motivation nailed down, it's time for Tsukasa, Onodera, and a newly-mutated Kamen Rider Agito to save the day. All without Kaitou's help, because - Kaitou!

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https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../decade12a.png

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Look at her! Look at our shiny new Ozawa!
Of all of the things I assumed an Agito-focused Decade story was going to elevate... in my wildest dreams, I didn't think it'd be Ozawa.

SWITCHBLADE: Considering how far so many of these worlds have drifted from the source material, it's kind of nice to see someone taking on such a familiar role.
Especially coming hot on the heels of Faiz.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And the actor NAILS it. She's a good three to four feet taller than Ozawa, but Yashirozawa gets at all of the anger and frustration and certainty and vulnerability that I remember from Agito.

SWITCHBLADE: There are some moments where it almost feels like they got the original actress.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Like, it's funny how everything that's not Ozawa that gets carried over from Agito The Series feels like an afterthought. It's this weird testament to how iconic that character and/or actor was. Sheer undeniable charisma, from either performer.
As likely less of an Ozawa fan than me, how did this story's focus on Yashirozawa work for you?

SWITCHBLADE: That is a very high bar, to be fair.
But I loved it.
There's a lot about this arc that I really enjoy, but one of the high points is not only taking the idea that Agito was originally a sequel to Kuuga and running with it, but finding a way to do it that also ties into Onodera's character.
And Yashiro Ozawa here instead of Yashiro Ichijou is a really cool part of that.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, it's maybe my favorite homage this series has done yet, despite the fact that the Legend Rider only shows up in the last fight scene. The idea that the one thing they really wanted to pull out of Agito was how incredibly difficult it is for Ozawa to take care of Hikawa, and then looping that into Onodera needing to care for Yashiro, and then straightening that knot out with the realization that sometimes you need to let people take care of themselves... just a super smart way of doing this story, utilizing all of those different elements to their utmost.
The main thing I remember from Agito was all of the Team G3 stuff, and this story got that. I love it.

SWITCHBLADE: It does show that sitting around the photo shop doing very little has been a big learning point for Onodera.
Hikawa's story was my main initial draw into Agito, so it is really nice to see the G3 focus, yeah.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's a great way to utilize the Ozawa character, because it sort of dissects and interrogates the paternalistic qualities of our heroes. Yashiro is desperate to protect Shouichi/Hikawa in the same way that Shouichi/Hikawa is desperate to protect Yashiro in the same way Onodera is desperate to protect Yashiro, and it's all so unsustainable and destructive. I like that it's a story about how overbearing it can be to put someone up on a pedestal like that, to presume they can't take care of themselves. Ozawa was always a character that couldn't do nothing about Hikawa's tendency to self-sabotage - dude couldn't miss a bus without cheerfully giving up on himself - but she also needed to let him do the work on his own shortcomings.

SWITCHBLADE: She really is an interesting character to base this arc around. There's this undercurrent of tragedy to her, but also the frustration at others failing to live up to her standards that was very Ozawa at times.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: She gets so (justifiably?) mad at the early-story G3-X operator!

SWITCHBLADE: But there's also all of the stuff with Shouichi and wanting to both protect him while having faith that he could take care of himself at the same time.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: All of the meatiest scenes in this story are given to Yashirozawa. She's got to seem like absolutely the last woman you'd ever let down, but also someone who is maybe impossible to work with.
Ozawa is one of the most She Gets Results Dammit supporting cast members of all time, and this story zeroed in on that.

SWITCHBLADE: I love the bit where she completely ignores the fact that Onodera is standing right up in her face for several minutes because she's in the middle of a conversation.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Her indignant response to a press corps that is wondering if G3-X has to detonate quite so much private property while fighting the Grongi! That temper! Yashiro brings it all out of the Ozawa character!

SWITCHBLADE: The actress must have watched some old Agito episodes because there is so much Touko Fujita in her performance.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: She does that stone-faced Ozawa Rage perfectly.
As for the rest of our Agito The Series characters...

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../decade12b.png

KAMEN RIDER DIE: The Decade creative team decided to shovel all three of the non-Houjou male heroes into one character for this Decade story, creating Shouichi Ashikawa, a man who is 80% Hikawa, 15% Ryou, and 5% Shouichi. Thoughts on this guy?

SWITCHBLADE: One other quick note: Yashiro's actress, Hiroko Sakata, would go on after this to appear on the third season of Garo as... a cop who gets caught up with monster fighting.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's what she's best at!

SWITCHBLADE: The insane chimera of Agito's three main characters is probably the single best idea that Decade had for an alternate Rider.
It is genius.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Also, holy shit, I just got that his name is AsHIKAWA. Brilliant.

SWITCHBLADE: Huh.
It is, isn't it?

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And Ryou's last name was Ashihara. Goddamn!
The three-in-one Rider name!

SWITCHBLADE: That is some clever wordplay. I am all for that.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: How did you feel about this guy's role in the story, though?

SWITCHBLADE: I will argue with your math, though. I think Ashikawa is more Ryou than Hikawa or Shouichi.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I feel like Yashirozawa's history with him elevates the Hikawa elements, as does his history as G3 Disappointment.

SWITCHBLADE: His powers are mutating out of control, he's living on the run, and his primary motivating factor is the fear that his girlfriend is going to get murdered because of him.
Either way, he's definitely way more Ryou and Hikawa than Shouichi. But it works for me.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, that was a thing that threw me for the first few Shouichi scenes: he's totally not Shouichi for the entirety of this story. He's Ryou's isolation from humanity with Hikawa's self-sabotaging earnestness. But Shouichi? I'm just not seeing any of that character in this one, besides an eventual form change.

SWITCHBLADE: I kind of feel like Onodera is the character that fills the Shouichi role in the story. He's the one that brings the optimism and commitment to doing the right thing to help people to the story.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, just like Kaitou is the Houjou for this one.

SWITCHBLADE: It's hard to know what Shouichi was originally like since we only get to know him secondhand, but he's not in a tennis-with-a-frying-pan place right now.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: The little bit we see of his pre-mutant days paints him in a thoroughly Hikawa light. He just seems like some cop/crimefighter, nothing more.

SWITCHBLADE: Right. And even that is filtered through Yashiro's perspective of him.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: True. His house doesn't really give a ton of clues, since it's either demolished or abandoned.

SWITCHBLADE: I'm willing to say that he's a Hikawa who's just been going through a lot of Ryou lately.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: He's a bit of a cipher in this one, getting through the narrative largely off of Yashirozawa's concern and the Exceed Gills suit.
Which, man, Exceed Gills: not my favorite suit from Agito!

SWITCHBLADE: So the suit thing.
The show used Exceed because the original Gills suit fell apart in storage.
It was water damage and/or mold.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Interesting! I had no idea. That explains things!
That's what they get for flinging Gills into the river so many times.

SWITCHBLADE: Another Agito was rumored to have the same fate, but it was either replaced or restored for that Ex-Aid thing.
Something I've noticed watching the show in higher definition is that some of the older suits are definitely wearing down. One of the Orphnochs had visible foam peeling.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Huh! Not something I'd picked up on, but I guess it's to be expected. I'm sure none of those early suits were expected to ever be needed for close-ups after the series ended. Background shots for movies, sure, but I don't think the suits being needed for speaking roles was a consideration, mechanically.
I'd assume that with Phase 2 suits, more care was taken for inevitable anniversary stories.

SWITCHBLADE: I hope so. I don't want to see Fourze showing up in a few years looking like a Jetfire that got left in direct sunlight for too long.
Or another golden Blade head.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, the important thing for these shows is to plan ahead. To put in the time and effort so that when you need something later, it's ready to go.
On that note!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../decade12c.png

KAMEN RIDER DIE: A big turn in this story is that, while everyone's worried about Tsukasa's uncharacteristic vow to protect a total stranger, it's all for a heroic reason: Tsukasa is protecting his good friend Onodera's dream by protecting Shouichi for Yashirozawa.
Of all the things I loved about this Decade two-parter, Tsukasa Loves His Good Friend Onodera was a thousand percent not one of them. This deep and abiding friendship comes completely out of nowhere, considering Tsukasa and Onodera have shared about four lines of dialogue in the last four episodes. I didn't buy this development at all. Did you?

SWITCHBLADE: First of all, I honestly think this was one of Tsukasa's better showings as the protagonist.
Probably because he was isolated from the main plot and just hanging out with Natsuki and Tentacle Hobo.
Second, no. Not for a second.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: He's very heroic in this story, to a degree that Natsumi hilariously lampshades (it's very un-THE HERO OF THE SERIES to protect people without getting something out of it!), but the eventual admission that he was doing it all for Onodera's benefit... like, they don't really even share any scenes in this story! This story that's partially about their strengthening bond!

SWITCHBLADE: Tsukasa is a really frustrating character sometimes.
I think that part of it is that he feels like a guy who watched Kabuto and decided that Tendou was what a Kamen Rider is like, but had no handle on any of his nuances.
But a lot of it is just that his goals and motivations tend to lack much consistency from episode to episode.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Him getting closer to Onodera, despite ignoring him for the last month's worth of episodes, reads a bit like a reaction to Diend's introduction. It feels like the production noticed how similar Decade and Diend came off in the Faiz episodes - they are each more or less solo acts, and happier for it - so this story has a plotline where Tsukasa is a more team-oriented guy, a friendlier hero.
It's not completely unwarranted, as character growth goes. We'd already had a couple stories about working with people, and about believing in other viewpoints. I get Tsukasa respecting Onodera, and maybe feeling a little abandoned by Onodera's imminent departure. But Tsukasa's whole Of Course I Care About Onodera thing just feels like something entirely different happened in the last two episodes, instead of Onodera staying home and sometimes getting knocked out.

SWITCHBLADE: It feels a lot like the show wants to do a Kagami/Tendou or Ren/Shinji thing with the characters but doesn't have the patience to work it out naturally.
In the show's defense, they are working with a reduced episode count, but that doesn't really fix it.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I mean, show's half over! Not a lot of episodes left to be patient with!

SWITCHBLADE: At least W's second wave of toys will coincide with Christmas.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I wonder if maybe it'd've been better to introduce Diend after this development, rather than before? He certainly doesn't have much to contribute to this one.

SWITCHBLADE: Kaitou is so weird in these episodes.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: He's just here to find some irrelevant MacGuffin.
That Yashirozawa destroys anyway.

SWITCHBLADE: I get what he's trying to do, but the method is so needlessly complicated for a guy with a literal Invisibile card.
(Loved that moment with the G4 chip - both a "fuck you" to Kaitou and a statement of faith that Shouichi doesn't even need it)

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Also, this is the second time he falls for the whole The Real Treasure Is Something Else thing, and it's still not a physical thing he can steal! Kaitou doesn't understand metaphors!

SWITCHBLADE: And then that bit at the end where he just randomly gloms onto the word "precious" just to find out it's a person is almost a parody of himself and it's only his fourth episode.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I keep waiting for him to end up helping our heroes due to the dazzling allure of Hostess Fruit Pies or something. He's not very discerning, for a treasure hunter. That said, he Nopes out of the final fight when it's clear there's nothing to take, and that was a fun character beat.

SWITCHBLADE: It's hard to see a metaphor when you're wearing a barcode on your face.
I don't like Kaitou on the series. My favorite version of him is as Tsukasa's clingy bipolar ex from Super-Hero Taisen.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: That's where I first met him, and it's hard to forget that version here. Definitely coloring my appreciation of his antics.
But this wasn't much of a Diend story, really. It was an Agito story.

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: How do you think it did as an Agito story? I nearly lost it at the story getting that Inoue Tautology in.

SWITCHBLADE: It feels a little weird if you're going in expecting Shouichi Classic and his upbeat, slightly goofy optimism.
As an episode of Kamen Rider G3 or Kamen Rider Gills, though, it's fantastic.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I think it did a decent job of landing some big Agito themes by the end. Using the Unknown to take out the Grongi, but framing it as Protection vs Keeping People From Achieving Their Full Potential, and then having the Shouichi/Yashirozawa/Onodera story run alongside that... it's muddled at points, but I think it gets at the messiness of what Inoue was after with that series. Agito was about change being unpredictable but necessary, and these two episodes honored those themes, I thought.

SWITCHBLADE: What I always come back to with Agito's theming is that so much of the show is about evolution and these episodes really nailed that for me.
It's a big part of why I love how they handled the three Riders: Shouichi starts as G3, goes into Gills as a sort of pupal state, then emerges as Agito.
Onodera definitely wants to go back to the relationship he had with his Yashiro but realizes he can't and decides to do what he can to help her get what she wants instead.
Tsukasa is... also there.
It's a good literal and metaphorical take on the concept.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: True! Despite this one being a tougher pill to swallow in some aesthetic ways (Agito mostly isn't in the Agito story!), I think it's one of the most successful tribute stories Decade's done yet.
I think that covers the stuff that jumped out to me. Was there anything else from this story you wanted to touch on? At the very least, we need to talk about how perfect it is that the debut of G3-X in this two-parter is a humiliating fiasco.

SWITCHBLADE: I do love how incredibly clunky the G3-X suit comes across here. I love that costume, but it feels like such a relic.
But I do have two more things I want to make sure not to let slip by.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Please!

SWITCHBLADE: First of all, I think this was the first episode to do silly things with Tsukasa's hair.
There may have been some of this before, but it's going to get noticeably more prominent as we go on.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/decade/hair.png

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Oh, man, yeah.
I didn't mention it in the Faiz story, 'cause I figured it was just a high school thing.
I mean, I think it looks good, but it comes out of nowhere.

SWITCHBLADE: Later phases of Decade are very much a combination of "how is this world doing its Kamen Riders" and "what the hell avant garde stylist did Tsukasa go to this time?"
But that was the cute thing. The other thing is that this arc was the final one written by the show's original head writer, Sho Aikawa.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I had read about this! This was the portion written by Second-Half Blade guy, and we're about to see the return of Kabuto guy for the remainder of the run. I think?

SWITCHBLADE: Yeah.
I heard recently that Aikawa had a falling out with the producer over some of the plans for later episodes (the inclusion of Showa stuff, for one). I have no idea how accurate that is.
But while it's not another Hibiki, there are definitely some issues that come up with the writer switch.
Not all bad things, but some frustrating ones if you were really into the deep lore of Decade.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Well, I look forward to grappling with those changes (Agito!) as we move to the World of Den-O next! Our team has to deal with the normal insanity of the Imagin, and the additional insanity of what looks to be every single cast member getting possessed by a member of Team Den-O! It's going to be a wild ride as we continue our Journey through Decade!

the next two episodes is preview for the next Den-o Movie.

That is my understanding, yes!

Ah Agito, while this didn't do much for me to get me immediately hooked onto Agito (Big shocker huh?) I did appreciate the Onodera focus on this one. Making this one basically a sequel to AR Kuuga, along with bringing in Yashiro as the Ozawa proxy was probably a real genius move.

Also yeah now I'm recalling things that I noticed when I first watched this show. And that's Tsukasa, while he still has his noticeable edge, I don't think he ever gets as volatile as he was in the Ryuki and Blade Arcs ever again. I could be wrong since I haven't seen this show in like 9 years but hey. Because well, this is the start where I feel Tsukasa becomes more genuine in his actions? Just the fact that he was genuinely alright with Takumi and and photograph girl in AR Faiz, and only pissed off Lucky Clover while also trying to show off against Diend. The fact that he's going out of his way to help Mr. Agito here for Onodera's sake.

Especially to make it contrast more greatly with Diend who is very much slowly but surely taking the jerk role of the series. At least that's how I'm seeing it.

Tsukasa's softening definitely feels like a reaction to Kaitou joining the cast, but I sort of wish it felt more like Tsukasa changing, not the writers changing Tsukasa. There's not a lot of explicit storytelling that goes into Tsukasa suddenly having this sincere bond with Onodera (like, even Onodera is a little surprised at Tsukasa thinking they're such good friends), and it's a big enough change to the dynamic where it needed to be less subtextual.

It's a positive change - Tsukasa is at his least Awful To His Friends than we've seen him since the debut episode - but it needed a little more groundwork laid for it. Comes off a little sudden.

A Kuuga-esque setting that shifts into an Agito-esque one? Insane!

As you’ve probably picked up, there’s a theme to Diend’s summons. Last time, he summoned anti-villainous Movie Riders (Kabuki and Rey), here he summons tertiaries with guns as transformation items. (Delta and Drake)

Our new G3/new Gills/new Agito is played by the same guy who played Habataki in the Hibiki movie.

Also, they didn’t kill the villain of the arc. Which totally fits with Agito (which had a similar ending), but still stands out.

What is really great about the Agito world was that Shoichi fulfills all three quotas for each rider identity. As G3 he was trying to be a rider, as Gills he became a rider, and as Agito he already is a rider. This really took me by surprise at the time and boy was it fun. Also, Onodera's subplot was fun too.
If I may point out a correction, Shoichi was Kamen Rider Kirameki in the Hibiki summer movie, the shachihoko motif oni who literally rode a kite to get around. :lolol

Diend definitely has Figuarts displays that seem random, but there's a secret reason why those five suits from different shows are all on one shelf together.

Yeah, these episodes did a good job with how they turned Agito's Riders into just, like, The Agito Rider.

It's a cool idea to have the World of Agito as a sequel to the World of Kuuga, since those two shows are loosely connected. This arc just takes that concept to the next level, by having actual fights between the Unidentified Lifeforms and Unknowns. Even Yuusuke using G3-X is meta, since that suit was based on Kuuga. Speaking of Yuusuke, he's the real MVP of this arc. After how much of a bystander he was in the World of Faiz (which doesn't get a Kamen Ride here, what gives Decade!), it's nice to finally see him get some more development. Especially since it involves him scoring hero points against Kaito. Even though G3-X is basically a downgrade for Yuusuke compared to the lightweight and versatile Kuuga, I commend him for wanting to honor Yashiro's invention. He also learns to accept that what Yashiro needs isn't him, but his counterpart in this world, Shouichi. So there's a good moral about moving on and not getting too stuck in the past and Yuusuke's and Kivaala's friendship gets a few cute scenes as well. Enjoyable arc!

Agito is 17/19 in my Heisei Rider Ranking, just above Kuuga. I agree with Die's assessment that Agito is a better Kuuga, which makes sense considering how Inoue wrote the best episodes of Kuuga IMO. Although I think Hibiki is also a better Kuuga, in a different kind of way. Man, even this paragraph is talking more about Kuuga than Agito! Well, one improvement with Agito is the villains. The Unknowns are boring characters, but as a faction, I think they're more interesting and philosophical than the unambiguously evil Unidentified Lifeforms at least. The summer movie is just awful though.

It's also pretty unique to have Ashikawa Shouichi be the counterpart of the whole Rider trio from Agito, who are all represented in his name. He goes from G3-X to Exceed Gills to his true Agito form. So it's like what if Hikawa was a dormant Agito and had to learn how to control that power, which is an intriguing concept that I think would have been cool to see utilized in the show, so I'm glad they did it here. Similar to Tatsumi Shinji, he seems to be a little edgier than his usually plucky main counterpart.

I think the thing that maybe didn't work for me in Decade's Shouichi is that, for almost the entire story, he's just Ryou? I know that my initial formulation for Shouichi was that he was mostly Hikawa, because of the Yashirozawa of it all, but he's missing so much of Hikawa's personality.

Like, the easy description is "G3-X who became Gills", but that misses how much Ryou and Hikwawa would deal with adversity differently. Ryou would grit his teeth and brood as the universe shit on him, then lash out at anyone who would pity him. Hikawa would assume that he brought it on himself... somehow, and then cheerfully step to the side so that his cosmic annihilation didn't upset or distract any of his friends/enemies. This Shouichi misses out on the Imposter Syndrome that defines Hikawa, the unshakeable belief that he isn't good enough to be worth cheering on.

I wonder if this Shouichi would've felt less like a cipher to me if he'd had that weird I Appreciate You Giving Up On Me energy that Hikawa had, rather than Ryou's more stock Please Watch My Misery antihero thing. I don't know.

This is easily one of my absolute favorite two-parters from Decade. It basically defines everything a good Decade story ought to be, with a plot that's firmly focused on its own original drama, while paying tribute to earlier shows in new and creative ways.

Exploiting the connection between Kuuga and Agito was just the smartest possible decision to make, for one. It's just such an enticing concept for die-hard Rider fans, and yet adding a few scoops of Kuuga into the recipe manages not to detract from that Agito flavor. Heck, while I think Yashiro makes a so-so Ichijou, she's a heck of an Ozawa.

But like, even more than that, she's Yashiro, and I think that's what ~maybe~ most impressed me about these ones – how well they work as Decade episodes. (It's a tough call though; the all-in-one Agito Rider concept for this Shouichi is utterly brilliant, both as another fun concept and as a way to streamline the narrative.) It's a story all about Newsuke that very successfully grounds its drama entirely in what viewers of this show know about him, and it's a great example of why it's really not that crazy that so many people watch Decade without having seen the previous nine shows. You can go into this with no context beyond it being about our pal Yuusuke Onodera arriving with the rest of the gang into this weird new world that's kinda like his weird new world, and it works simply on that level, above all else. I think his character arc here, basically overcoming this temptation to chase something that isn't there, is super compelling, and everything that springs out of that all ties together very cleanly, in my opinion.

I honestly don't at all agree that this development for Tsukasa is abrupt. Pointing to the lack of focus for Newsuke over the past four episodes seems like a bit of a... mathematical way to look at things? There's been a month of distance, sure, but I don't think that changes how the Ryuki arc made a huge point of how much Tsukasa values Newsuke's friendship. (That two-parter literally ends with Tsukasa calling a picture of the two of them together a photo of the best team.) I don't see much about Tsukasa's attitude throughout these episodes as being particularly out-of-character, especially with how he refuses to be explicit about his motivations (even changing the subject the second Newsuke figures it out.)

That whole "don't make me sound like a villain" exchange is one of my favorite Tsukasa bits ever, and the whole reason why is because Natsumi really isn't giving him enough credit? He's got an attitude problem and he revels in trolling people, but Tsukasa, since day one, has never actually been that hesitant to help people out – he's mostly just bad at it, because, by his own admission, he's not great at understanding people. So yeah, he pulls some stunts every now and then, but if he can do something nice for the one guy cool enough to stick up for him even when he's mocking Blade for getting fired, and maybe score some Agito trading cards in the process, I mean, why wouldn't he?

Mind you, I also don't expect much from character development in Decade, so I don't know, I'm probably just giving a way too optimistic reading of Decade's apathetic attitude (...just like Newsuke in those Blade episodes!) Still though, yeah, even with potential issues regarding Tsukasa here, this is a very strong set of episodes all around.

Which, yeah, they've definitely done some episodes that draw those characters closer together, but there hasn't been much follow through lately. (Also, man, I don't know if the Ryuki episodes were as much about Friendship as they were about Respecting Differences, at least to me.) They left this partnership at Pleasant Coworkers, and that was a month ago. For Tsukasa's sacrifice/vow/heroism to make sense to me, I feel like we at least needed a couple warmer scenes at the Photo Studio. I don't think it's asking too much for a big plot development like this to have a bit more buildup than something that occurred two stories prior? These types of stories are so much better when they're incremental, and that wasn't how this story played for me.

I always felt like it wasn't that Tsukasa didn't understand people. it's that he could read people too easily. In most of these adventures, his abrasive tendencies are down to him lacking the patience to let people tell their own stories. He already knows what they're going to do and why they're going to do it, so god just let him take care of this already. Even here, he knows exactly what Onodera's doing and why he's doing it, which is why he's declared himself Shouichi's protector.

It... I don't feel like Tsukasa's unaware, or disinterested. I think he's a guy that doesn't fit in, and he's trying to be a good friend/hero, but he keeps rushing things.

Given how close Agito and Kuuga is in certain aspects, I do love the idea that the Agito world is a parallel twist on the Kuuga world. It's like Jay Garrick and Barry Allen to me.

I mean true people can have preferences, but it's different yeah between praising him while putting others down or explaining while acknowledging it as subjective like being your preferences. Like how it's difference to express that you don't enjoy something; between "I wasn’t a fan of <something> due to weird pacing, inconsistency...." and "<something> is terrible and people shouldn’t enjoy that, it contains everything people should hate....". Also I wasn't refering to you for the Kusaka one, but it's also another excuse for some people to defend terrible characters (Kusaka's mostly known as terrible and people meme that).

I didn't refer to myself or such of being mocked, not talking about appease everybody. What I want for being transformative fan is to influence the developers or such from fan's suggestions to make it better or such (me and others). Another example of this is about how most of game's adaptations like movies are done by companies with no passion regarding the media, making them a terrible adaptation, while fans will probably handle it better due to their passion, but don't have the publicity or occupation for that. I mean you did bring up Emu submitting game ideas to Kuroto, but for real life one, my point isn't about , but about the fans being unreachable to the companies so any of their contribution cannot be known by the companies.

W̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶k̶s̶,̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶m̶a̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶l̶i̶c̶t̶?̶

Though both have the same family name in Yashiro, their given names are actually different which obviously explains that they're not the same, the Kuuga world's given name is Ai, and the Agito world's given name is Tohko. Also no, Yashiro's actress Hiroko Sato have the same height as Ozawa's acrress Tōko Fujita. The one that is actually really tall but wasn't addressed before was Yuri Aso's actress Yu Takahashi. Oh speaking of that, I wonder if Yashirozawa's given name is based on Ozawa's actress is purposely made as reference? For Yashiro being angry at the early G3-X operator, I won't condone that like you asking if ti's justificable (though Yashiro takes significantly softer stance to Onodera). Of course it's practically a defense force, and that everyone must be subjected to trials and challenges, but still giving overboard burden to them is still a wrong approach, if right from the start someone's subjected into the very toughest's training programme, it'd end up breaking their body apart, if not killing them, because that sort of training programme is too tough at first; put them in a less intense programme, and let them hone their body and work their way gradually up to the more intense training regimen.

I guess it's in the name at the first place for him being 80% Hikawa. Like you said it's AsHIKAWA and the family name is combination of Gills' and G3's, but other briliance.. English way is that if you spell out the full name while separating the Hikawa part, it'd be "Shouchi as Hikawa". From Faiz's one before, I think this is the reverse scenario of Faiz's revisit, where Ogami wasn't a jerk, but this Shouchi was a jerk, example is him roughly keeps others away like Tsukasa's assistance to him. He's the combination of every Agito's primary three Riders, but even with Shouichi's namesake, like you said, I do feel that ironically the actual Shouichi part is the least dominant of this composite character (and with him being a jerk, I think inherently he's mostly Ryou), which I dunno what'll Agito fans who wants Shouichi adaptation think regarding this. But my problem is that, him being Agito at the end is just kind of shoehorned at the end to prove that he is Shouichi for me (probably like you said too of him not being known much pre-mutant), it just suddenly appears and Tsukasa declares that it's his real power, without any set up or such. Otherwise, you'd be ok if a revisit did adapt something even if it's only a few part, not all of them (if you think Faiz adapted none of the series except the surface)?

But it's a lucky stuff for Shouichi! Because of the weaker suit being damaged, he had the stronger one to fend off unwanted threats! Design isn't important, what's important is the power it holds as it's a survival!

I think the others questioning Tsukasa about him being suddenly altruistic here kinda confirms your view at the talk in the beginning of the episode where Tsukasa wants to save the world, but only because he lives there. You also claim that saving multiple Earths means he is very heroic, but other's suspicion of Tsukasa kinda confirms about my reply there where people who succeed doing that aren't necessarily more heroic than others, just that they have much more power to do that (and anniversary Riders tend to be OP, and Tsukasa's certainly OP in human form too like the tennis match against 3 Orphnochs). But true like Switchblade said, I see this including the suspicion for Tsukasa as more of an inconsistency, like how DreamSword discussing about Tsukasa forgetting lessons before. Like the end of the 2 parters have Tsukasa seemingly learning his lesson like making speeches that favors humans (not only here) or helping/encouraging kid Wataru. Though if I have to sum up, like you said before, Tsukasa wants to save multiple Earths, Tsukasa's someone who mostly focuses in only the saving people/the world part, but is apathetic to life problems other than living or dying (and probably only so that he'd survive). You said that there's character growth and this is unwarranted, but this is honestly a bad take and misinterpretation of it when they pile up changes on characters each moment which can lead into inconsistency.

Probably Kaitou is here for the usual entertainment for what morally grey characters can do where you don't really know what they will do in a situation (though I'm personally not swayed by that, I know that someone selfish can help out if they got mutual benefit). Or even then, I wonder that you don't see him as an entertaining shit-stirrer like usual dick-ish characters, such as you mentioning him as Hojo before (or he's somehow fits, not as bad, but similar to the likes of Kotaro in Den-O movie...)? I think Yashiro assumed something significantly worse (justified though) regarding Kaitou that she'd better destroy the MacGuffin rather than letting him use it like for evil purposes in Yashiro's assumption.

No offense, but personally this story also had some unnecessary difficulty for me, with, yeah, many complaints about Onodera not using Kuuga's power. I'd probably tolerate it better when there are reasons of Onodera not being able to henshin into Kuuga, but here, it's just unnecessary difficulty for the story to have him undergo probably unnecessary set up for G3-X to fight off monsters like Grongi or Unknowns. With no reason, I think Onodera should've been able to easily prove himself by turning into Kuuga, either for him going back into impressing Yashiro (probably also getting him accepted into work at the G3 team), or him fightiing for others here.

It's mostly that it feels like you could completely cut out Kaitou from this story, and it'd pretty much still work the same? There's no real drama or intrigue to Kaitou's plot here. Onodera still gets on Team G3-X, even if it's only as the new Omuro. The G4 chip isn't really brought up beforehand (just as a concept, something Yashirozawa hopes will bring back Shouichi), and it's of zero use to the conclusion of the story. The entire dramatic weight of this story is on Onodera, Yashirozawa, Shouichi, and Tsukasa. Kaitou's relatively large spotlight feels... poorly motivated, story-wise.

Hopping aboard the Decade train for these Den-O episodes is my fellow collaborator from the TN Let's Play project, Enchilada645!

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: Hello!

ENCHILADA645: Hey there

KAMEN RIDER DIE: So, first off, thanks for agreeing to participate in this project. You and I are talking a few weeks (months?) before the episodes we'll be talking about, and I hope the experience is going smoothly for future Kamen Rider Die and future Enchilada645. Let's assume they're both loving life.
Here and now, though, I wanted to hear more about what brought you to this project. To start with, tell me a little bit about how you came to tokusatsu. What got you into this genre?

ENCHILADA645: Well, the easy answer to that is well... Power Rangers. As admittedly predictable as that sounds, there was just something more interesting about Power Rangers alongside other Saban Brand shows and clones that drew them to me. Drawing me even more than cartoons and the occasionally localized anime. There's just something about people in real life, in colorful outfits fighting monsters, that resonated with me more than the standard action show.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: That definitely sounds familiar, the physicality of the genre as a hook. What was your first Power Rangers series?

ENCHILADA645: It's hard to really recall off the top of my head, given how young I was. But I do remember a lot of MMPR from my childhood as the like defining Power Rangers show that I remember watching first. Admittedly that might have been the reruns that they'd do all the time in the day of the old PR Shows. But I'd follow along pretty heavily with the last season I stopped watching along with being SPD.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: So, Power Rangers was your gateway drug. How long did it take before you went to the harder stuff, the pure uncut Japanese tokusatsu?

ENCHILADA645: That took quite a while admittedly, as I had fallen off of PR for a while. I had mostly been getting into anime, but also the one thing that was a major roadblock to my access of the internet was always the dial-up. Getting actual wi-fi in 2011 was what opened me up to the internet at large aside from the minor stuff I'd been doing. I did a lot of video surfing from 2011 to 2012 and eventually settled into one of my hyperfixations, which was Live Action Yugioh. To the point where I followed the Facebook page of one.
Now what I didn't know was the main lead of the show's page was into Kamen Rider. He shared a simple clip, it was the transformation sequence of Kamen Rider Skull. It enamored me and hooked me almost immediately, I felt that rush again when I had first started watching PR. When I asked where it was from he mentioned Kamen Rider but specifically W, so I did some digging. I read some wikipedia articles to get a better grasp on the franchise, and thankfully because this was the early days of the 2010's that meant Youtube had full Toku Series up with ease of access because it wasn't a Copyright Claim and DMCA wasteland at that point.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Whoa! I didn't realize that you could just watch Kamen Rider episodes on YouTube back then! Was this subbed stuff, or just raw episodes?

ENCHILADA645: It depended, but there was surprisingly a lot of people uploading subbed episodes to Youtube. It was basically how I ended up watching a good chunk of Kamen Rider back when I first got into it.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Man, that sounds unreal. Most of my early days for Kamen Rider were spent trying to figure out how/where to watch it. YouTube! That would have been delightful.
W is a great series to start with, incidentally. Probably in my Top 3 for series I'd use to introduce people to the franchise. How did it work for you? Did you find it entertaining? Were you as won over by the way Terui said "Henshin" - like he was giving himself a hernia via his desire for vengeance - as I was?

ENCHILADA645: As a first series it's simplistic enough to sort of settle into, and given it helped start up the second phase of the Heisei Era it definitely succeeds at setting a precedent. It was when watching it that I noticed that I definitely connected to the characters and story's more than I had previously. Was it because I wasn't watching them early in the morning while eating waffles like with PR? Maybe. But it was definitely the duo of Shotaro and Philip, their boss Akiko and the cold but eventually warmed up Terui that made my stay worth it.
So much so that I knew I had found the show to get me off of just watching cooking shows during the week and Adult Swim on Saturdays. Plus given it was starting to be Summer at the time, I commenced a gigantic Rider Binge Watch that I've barely replicated ever again.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: As someone who has also been known to enjoy the occasional waffle for breakfast, I can see how a good waffle could make it difficult to invest emotionally in a show. That is a high bar for any show to clear.
I think I had a similar response to W as you did, where right after that show I just devoured Phase 2 shows. I think I did all of OOO in three days?
So, by this point, you're a full-on tokusatsu addict. What led you to TokuNation? How did you first become aware of it as a place to share your thoughts on toku?

ENCHILADA645: I think it started as I finished my Rider binging, I was catching up with Wizard. Gaim was starting to be next, and aside from the occasional video creator... I wanted to see more opinions. So I scoured around for like any kind of website talking about Kamen Rider. There had been a few but I generally didn't really try and plant my feet anywhere as a user. I was mostly content in just watching as a guest.
I'd admittedly like to say what drew me was... well, I'll be honest I'm genuinely not sure as to why I joined TokuNation in the first place. It just sort of... happened. But even then I didn't really talk as much as I do nowadays.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: You were lurking for a while?

ENCHILADA645: Quite a while, honestly the only times I'd genuinely do minor interactions was at the figure galleries whenever a Toku Toy Box event happened. But eventually I started to get more semi-active but I never did really try and get too heavily deep into discussions honestly. I'd just post every now and again whenever scan's would come out, or a new episode released. But not much more than that, at least until this year.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: What changed? What made you want to get more active on the boards? To put it in W terms, were you a Phillip (just trying to gain a greater understanding of people's motivations), a Shotaro (looking for a good time while also trying to be of service), or a Terui (vengeance; NO, YOU LISTEN; grudging acknowledgement of other viewpoints)?

ENCHILADA645: ... you know if Cyclone Accel Extreme was a representation of just all three of them, which it technically is if we're going by photo editing/kitbashing laws... I'd say I'm a Cyclone Accel Xtreme.
Like, I suppose it started from me interacting more with people thanks to Discord and just the lack of Toku Discords I'm in that I figured. Yes I wanted to know more, I want to have fun with others while also just saying "Hey I think this is cool" even if people think it sucks, but I want to know why they feel that way to acknowledge that yes, not everyone is me.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Character growth! Definitely a big part of the toku community. We're all just trying to reach our final forms through teamwork and friendship, man.
How have you been finding TN since you've been more active on the boards? Fun experiences?

ENCHILADA645: While there are some rough patches, it's honestly been rather enjoyable interacting with more people. Just seeing more people's thoughts on things, the extensive thought threads, the excitements when rumors abound, etc. Compared to other boards I see nowadays, Tokunation is definitely the most friendly to get into I feel.

KAMEN RIDER DIE:They're good people. I usually feel like it's truthful to say that to new members.
So! Kamen Rider Den-O!
That was on your list of shows from Phase 1 that you had feelings about. Tell me a little bit about your Den-O history. When did you watch it relative to your other toku shows? What about that clicked with you?

ENCHILADA645: Well the way I went about how I watched was simple... I went W, then OOO, then skipped all the way back to Decade. Now Decade was a bit of a buffet and I decided that I'd pick the three shows that interested me the most out of all the tributes. Among those were Den-O which I proceeded to binge for the most part and then occasionally watch his slew of cameos and extra movies after I finished the other two shows I set out to binge as I continued forward through Fourze and onward.
There was definitely something different about Den-O to me, it might've been the fact that the cast was comprised of a hefty amount of suited characters (probably why I enjoy Zenkaiger so much). While I can hardly remember much about the actual plot, it was the characters relationship's, these four distinct and unique humanoid monsters and this sort of weak shy kid that drew me in. Cause well, I see a lot of Ryotaro in me and I remember his growth resonating with me a lot. Also just anything character related that was emotional, that gut punches me. Give me some distinct and fun characters, add in a hefty amount of angst or just emotional drama into it, and you have me wrapped around your fingers.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I think about Please Get Along With Yuuto, like, nightly, so I definitely hear you on Den-O landing its emotional punches. It's a show that... like, I think I hate the plot of Den-O? A lot? I just watched the Farewell movie, and there's this Edo Period version of Sakurai near the end of the film. It's a cute moment, but seeing even a version of Sakurai instantly set my teeth a-grinding. That dude is everything I dislike about Den-O under one oversized hat.
All of which is to say: Den-O's puzzle-like plot structure. Were you into it at all?

ENCHILADA645: To be honest... I feel like, and what I feel like Toei feels like nowadays. Is that really the magic and charm to Den-O is it's characters or at least the ones that aren't big enough that they can get back. Even if you know we've been going quite a long time with the Den-O appearing at least once a year since their last main series appearance. There's still a charm to them showing up again.
And while the plot was okay from what I recall, I don't remember really enjoying it specifically. I think I was mostly neutral on it to be honest. What I enjoyed was whenever it pushed the characters into having meaningful moments.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: My absolute favorite plot moment for the entire series was the Big Bad shrugging at the heroes when they tried to interrogate him. I like how sort of self-aware the show was about the planned-for endgame maybe not being what folks were going to care a ton about.
But now Den-O's done, and we'll get to see how Decade pays tribute to a show of memorable characters, fun costumes, and iffy arc-plotting. Enchilada645! Let's board this train and watch some Decade!

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KAMEN RIDER DECADE EPISODE 14 - "SUPER DEN-O BEGINNING”
Team Decade arrives in the World of Den-O, and, naturally, cannot take literally four steps outside their front door without being possessed by Imagins and caught up in an ill-defined adventure. Momotaros is lost and alone, while the rest of the Den-Liner crew thinks Decade is responsible. It's possessions aplenty and cliffhangers galore as Team Decade squares off against Team Den-O!

KAMEN RIDER DECADE EPISODE 15 - "SUPER MOMOTAROS HAS ARRIVED!”
Much like the tantrum-throwing child he is, it takes all of our other heroes (well, not Diend) to track down our wayward peach. It's Tsukasa, though, who helps Momo understand that he's going to have to be responsible for his own sense of self going forward, just in time to defeat the laziest villain this series has had yet. Luckily, it's also the funniest climax this series has had yet, thanks to Momo and the Den-Liner crew. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed this Decade adventure enough to go see the currently-in-theaters Cho Den-O movie! Totally a coincidence!

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: Look at him! Look at our... shiny new Den-O?
This two-parter is, for better or worse, entirely a story that centers Momotaros as the once and future face of the Den-O franchise.
How did that sit with you? Was it inevitable, with Ryotaro moving on, that the franchise would just throw its hands up and say Momotaros Forever?

ENCHILADA645: I do feel like it was an inevitability, especially given how easier it is to get a voice actor back than it is an actor. With Momotaros well, he managed to win me over enough in his own series that I didn't really mind this change going forward when watching Den-O stuff.
But yeah these two episodes right here definitely are the main shifting point into a new era of Den-O.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And I think it's successful at that goal, maybe more in the second half than the first half. There's all the normal Momotaros bluster and idiocy (this story is twice as long as it needed to be, thanks to Momo), but there's a sense of him needing to step out of Ryotaro's shadow and become, like, a real boy. He's always been the most fleshed-out and nuanced Imagin on the show, but we're starting to get him in a full-on Legend Rider mode. The arc of it, that evolution, I think it worked well here.

ENCHILADA645: Yeah I can agree on that point, there's definitely a lot more clarity in the second half in regards to the goal of this two-parter. Because this is such a different world that we've stopped at.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I mean, I'm not sure it was for me!

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: The absolute weirdest thing about this story was how it was just 100% a continuation of Den-O The Series. Just, zero changes.

ENCHILADA645: Oh yeah definitely, and that's what I mean by it's so different. Like, this world from the get go is absolutely trying to tell you that it isn't like the usual AR Worlds we've visited.
It's different but familiar in a sense, and I feel like only Den-O would be able to pull this off to be honest.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Maybe? It really detracted for me, honestly. Coming off of the Agito story, where this show picked and chose what it needed to tell a story about both Tsukasa and Agito The Series, here it's just Decade Meets Den-O. There's no sense of variation or interpretation, which this series has spent thirteen episodes dedicating itself to. Instead, it's just all your old Den-O friends, doing a lot of the Den-O things you used to like watching them do.

ENCHILADA645: It's definitely very jarring, I'll say that for sure.
I suppose it was the fact that it was Decade Meets Den-O that helped contribute into making Den-O one of the three Riders I watched after Decade. There's definitely a sense of it being the full genuine thing that made me get a stronger feel for Den-O than the other past Riders.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Oh, yeah, this is in so many ways a Greatest Hits Of Den-O two-parter. If I'd never watched Den-O, I'd've jumped to it next. It ends up making for a story where the Decade cast gleefully takes a backseat to the Den-O cast, to a degree that I was... maybe not that enamored of. Like, I feel like a Decade viewer could skip these two and not really feel like they missed any crucial plot or character developments.

ENCHILADA645: Oh there's no denying that.
Tsukasa, Natsumi and Onodera are very much along for the ride, and I don't think we even see Kivala here at all either? There's definitely not much deep substance here for them. They just sort of... roll along with everything going on.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I mean, they each have very important jobs here: showing off all of the various looks when an Imagin possesses them!

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KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's... the entire first episode of this story is just folks getting possessed. It's cute, but it's pretty much all you get for 22 minutes.

ENCHILADA645: Yeah very much so, the first episode was pretty much the costuming department having a bunch of fun playing dress up with Tsukasa and Natsumi.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: And it's, again, cute. (Everyone Ura possesses looks stupid hot.) But it's indicative of this set of episodes being more about showing off how cool Den-O stuff is (Natsumi manages to show off Ax, Rod, and Gun Forms in about two minutes), rather than telling a solid story. There's some interesting emotional stuff in the second half, and a few killer gags, but the plot of this story is, like, Episode 1 Den-O stuff. An Imagin is going back in time to destroy stuff, and the heroes need to stop him. It's boilerplate, and that made me pretty impatient for the first part of this story. I love the characters, but there's almost nothing interesting for them to do here.

ENCHILADA645: Yeah I can see how you'd feel like that given Den-O wasn't that long ago for you. Even less time given how you've been tackling it.
For me it sorta felt like a nice nostalgic wave since I haven't revisited older Den-O Content until this point. Admittedly I was mostly trying to figure out if the ending of the first part feeling weird and confusing to me was just a "Me as a first time viewer thing" or not. And I'll still say I never really got what they were going for with the end of the first part.(edited)

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's a very weird set of cliffhangers! There's Momo getting rocketed off of a building by Diend, and Owner giving us a portentous speech about upcoming danger. The thing is, the story ends up blowing both of those things off? Momo falling off the building ends up as some Looney Tunes-esque gag, and the end of this two-parter is Owner going No Wait, The Real Danger Is In Our New Movie. In a story that is not at all concerned with making the stakes seem larger than Momo's struggle for identity, it's a couple choices that are in line with this story's ambivalence about its narrative.
But, yeah, to your other point, it has not been a year or two since I watched Den-O, so maybe this celebration just needed a different audience.

ENCHILADA645: Oh I was less talking about the cliffhangers and more the way the Decade and Den-O fight progressed with the weird time stuff.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Oh, yeah, I don't understand that at all.

ENCHILADA645: Glad I'm not alone on that.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: If I'm guessing, I'd say it's related to the overall Decade arc, where the big Rider War isn't supposed to happen yet.

ENCHILADA645: True.
Though much like the rest of the arc past that point, I sort of just push it off since I'd rather not think of timey wimey stuff too hard with Den-O.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Ha ha, me neither! Definitely not the parts of Den-O I most keyed into. Den-O was, at its non-Kai best, a fun hangout show. And, as much as this two-parter wasn't that enjoyable for me (the first episode drags), I think they completely nailed the tone by the end. The final fight is so whimsical and chaotic that I sort of forgive everything that came before it.

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ENCHILADA645: That entire final fight is a magical experience to witness again after all these years.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: THIS GAG! WITH ONODERA FINALLY BECOMING KUUGA AGAIN AND KICKING THE WRONG GUY!

ENCHILADA645: The fact that he even hangs in the air for a good several seconds too, still in kicking position really helps too!

KAMEN RIDER DIE: AND HE'S JUST FLOATING THERE WHILE EVERYONE ELSE IS EMBARRASSED!
It's maybe the best gag this series has done to date, and it's maybe no surprise it comes in the Den-O episode. The runner-up, of course, is the forced perspective shot used to convince the audience that Den-O's Final Form Ride is a MASSIVE Momotaros, instead of the regular-sized one.

ENCHILADA645: Oh yeah definitely.
There's a lot of great stuff to see in this final fight. And probably one of the most absurd finishing attacks Rider has done in its history.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I kind of love that, after probably a dozen episodes of folks getting frustrated that Onodera doesn't contribute to the fights, this is how the show decided to get him involved. Him Rider Kicking the wrong guy, getting forcibly Final Form Rided into a flying metal beetle, and then getting a giant sword launched right up the ol' Arclehole. After this, I will definitely not be asking why Onodera forgets to Henshin.

ENCHILADA645: Dude at the very least deserves a bit of a break given everything he was forced to endure these past two episodes, both while aware and unaware of everything going on.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: That was something I did want to bring up from this story. I want to say this is the first time we've seen what the possessed people are going through when an Imagin hijacks them? We've always heard disembodied voices and stuff, but actually seeing the terror on Natsumi's face as her body moves without her control, it was a little dark?

ENCHILADA645: Yeah there was definitely a bit of dark undertones with that.
And I'll be honest, just skimming through my future Den-O knowledge I think this is the only time we see this sorta inner suit view at least for Den-O. It's an interesting quirk they decided to add.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I assume it was done to bring Decade viewers up to speed on the Imagin possessions.

ENCHILADA645: That would make sense

KAMEN RIDER DIE: So, yeah. This two-parter.
I don't think we really touched on it, but how did you feel about this show's attempt to tie Tsukasa's amnesia with Momo's need to define himself? I appreciated the way it got Momo and Decade on the same page, but did it feel a little thin to you? There's really only one Tsukasa moment of brooding - which I liked! - and the eventual Tsukasaffirmation. It didn't feel like much of a throughline, to me.

ENCHILADA645: I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to connect as hard to this plot as I did? I guess it's just current circumstances. But Tsukasa's line about losing one's self and wanting to return to normal even if they can't, ended up resonating with me a lot.
And then I sort of looked at Momo and how frustrated he was feeling. It's like, not the exact same thing but I know why he feels like that. And I suppose that's why I ended up enjoying this little emotional beat that they chose to focus on.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's a fun parallel, Tsukasa and Momo. Tsukasa's a guy desperate to find the world where he makes sense, but is slowly learning to appreciate the life he's built for himself. Momo's a character defined by his relationships to others, who literally can't exist without someone defining him. Having Tsukasa be the one to tell Momo that it's better to find some comfort in your current circumstances than to be frustrated at what you don't have... like, I did not see that moral coming!
And, just, I love morals about self-actualization, and about brushing aside outside views in favor of being true to yourself. Very happy when that's the point of a story.

ENCHILADA645: Of course.
It's an interesting combination that managed to work out well for the two even if getting there was a tad rough.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's always rough with Momotaros! He's not easy to teach!
Anything else from this two-parter you want to call out or discuss?

ENCHILADA645: Well there is one thing I am curious about.
And that's your reaction to Tsukasa's outfit when he first steps out into this world.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Oh, his Sakurai cosplay? Is that what it was supposed to be?

ENCHILADA645: Yes, pretty much.
Since I can't really think of any actual detective work Den-O did, even if some movies will try and tell you otherwise.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Well, they definitely kept an Internal Affairs division busy during one movie, I remember that much.
As for the Sakurai cosplay... not a fan? Not a fan! I appreciated the gag of Natsumi and Onodera trying to figure out just what the hell Tsukasa-as-Sakurai was supposed to be dressed as (A detective? An undertaker?), but I don't generally enjoy being reminded of Sakurai.

ENCHILADA645: Yeah I figured.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: You figured right!
And with that, we leave the World of Den-O for... the World of Den-O Movie! Enchilada645 and I will be back in just a couple days to see how Team Decade deals with giant warships, teenage Ryotaros, and an unpredictable amount of Movie Forms in (deep breath) "Cho Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade Neo Generations: The Onigashima Warship". We might not be going anywhere, but the Journey through Decade continues!

Ah, Den-O: The juggernaut so powerful, a series devoted to AR Worlds gives up and basically does Den-O but more. They didn't even invite Koutarou. But yeah, Den-O was bound to be a comedy episode, because it's Den-O! Sure, you could reimagine it as a dark edgy world where people get possessed by malevolent time travelling demons, but it's Den-O! Momotaros is here to be funny! And amnesiac, for some reason. (This is where Den-O Imagin rules start to get messy, don't worry about it too hard.)

(I love how the Decade cast as so unimportant to the entire arc Kaito isn't even mentioned in the write-up).

Much like all-time classic villain Kai, it is very difficult for me to give a shit about the Rules of Den-O. The explanation here - time distortions sort of broke Momo - is, honestly, more than sufficient for a story about Momo needing to start living for himself rather than tying himself to someone else for validation.

As for these episodes not doing anything new with the Den-O formula for a new setting... I mean, I definitely wouldn't want a grim-and-gritty Amazons-esque version of Den-O! Ever! (Well, maybe for an hour, as a laugh.) But I wonder what this series might've done with the raw materials of Den-O: memories and contracts and imagination monsters from the end of time and trains and passes and astronomy and coffee shop creeps. The Agito episodes really impressed me with how and what got remixed, and it's a little disappointing we didn't get a chance to see that for Den-O.

I barely understand what Diend's even doing in this story, that's why! He's just shouting BE A TRAIN FOR ME ALREADY in Momo's general vicinity, and acting perturbed that that pitch isn't exactly what an enraged imagination monster who misses his friends wants to hear. It's a plan with about no logical steps to it, and I already regret thinking about it.

I think the funniest part is the word Diend is in our discussion once and that's more about a cliffhanger than it is about Diend. Because man, I seriously wondered what Diend was even doing here.

It's so weird to see Diend have this rather solid debut, and then just kind of peter off for these next two arcs. Cause like, I didn't really care about his stake in the G3-X stuff, he was just here in the Den-O Episodes. And I'm wondering "Did I only ever like Diend because of his post series appearances?"

And I think back to Super Hero Taisen (my favorite of his appearances) and realizing what happened there with him and like... okay yeah that would paint my bias of what I want Diend to be a bit because he was great in that.

To play the devil's advocate here for a hot second, I do find it sort of charming that Diend genuinely can't fathom why Momo wouldn't want to be a part of Diend's collection of Rider ephemera. Diend's pitch - BE A TRAIN FOR ME ALREADY - seems so self-evidently appealing to Diend that, when Momo's like I Am In The Middle Of An Existential Crisis And Your Offer Is Weird, Diend feels like he's got to haul out the tough love to make Momo see reason. It is insane.

But yeah, the past couple stories have been rough on Diend's coolness factor.

This. :lolol
https://challengerscomics.com/images.../decade14d.png

Yeah, I found Diend’s approach in this storyline bizarre to say the least (why is he requesting of Momotaros something he can just do to him? Did no-one tell the writer how the FFR gimmick worked for the first episode?)

And worth noting that, despite what people say, there are some ARlements here. The DenLiner looks subtly different on the inside and the Imagin in-series don’t just go around possessing people willy-nilly.

And now, we get to what I spent my Den-O thread posts doing: doing a dedicated credits list for the Aligator Imagin’s VA.

Kenta Miyake

Notable Anime roles: Scar in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Jirobo of the South Gate in Naruto, Tsume in Wolf’s Rain, Vector in Sonic X, the Narrator, Shigi Taishiji and Kanshou Kochuu in Ikki Tousen, Landmine and Omega Supreme in Transformers Energon, Sydonay/Senpen Shudonai in the Shakugan no Shana series, Stags in Spider Riders, Yoshida in Black Lagoon, Giovanni and various others in Pokémon, Seishirou Klaus in Hayate the Combat Butler, Bobby Margot in Macross Frontier, Benkei Hanawa in Metal Fight Beyblade, Genma Shizume in Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor, Buccha in Air Gear: Break on the Sky, Bane in Batman Ninja.

Notable Tokusatsu roles: Zeus Org in Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: the Fire Mountain Roars, El of the Earth in Kamen Rider Agito, Furious God Gai in GoGo Sentai Boukenger.

Notable video game roles: Zangief in Street Fighter, Bass Armstrong in Dead or Alive, Gladiolus Amicita in Final Fantasy XV, Masayuki Sanada in Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada, Kratos in God of War, Nicholai Ginovaef in Resident Evil 3.

Notable dubbing roles: Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Will Johnson in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, John Diggle in the Arrowverse, Anthony Anderson in Brain Games, Koba in the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy, Bedlam in Deadpool 2, Arthur Conan Doyle in Houdini and Doyle, LeBron James in Space Jam 2, Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D, the narrator in The Twilight Zone (2019), Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen, Grim in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Scorpion in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miscellaneous roles in Thomas and Friends, Spike in Tom and Jerry, Shockwave in Transformers Prime.

Also, the recurring silver guy, beyond having some importance in the coming movie, is a repaint of the main suit from Kamen Rider The Next (the horror reboot of V3 starring the guy who played Drake, with the girl who played Hitomi in Hibiki as the main villain). His henchmen are replicas of a monster from Ryuki (since, as I mentioned in the Ryuki thread, the producer of KR Dragon Knight requested it get replicated into an army).

Yeah, the Den-O episodes explicitly not being some wild alternate take is a rather off concept for Decade, but then, Den-O always was the odd one out among these ten shows. With Kobayashi handling the script and some manic direction from Ishida, I think these episodes turned out to be very entertaining, without having a ton of substance. It's got elements that are trying to get somewhere – Tsukasa's usual speech comes together nicely, and I appreciate it reminding us of Natsumi's angst over the whole destroyer of worlds thing, even if that only results in a very surreal fight scene at the halfway mark. (The emotionally charged yet vaguely defined nature of which does ~sort of~ capture an aspect of Den-O's style, I guess.)

Still though, you definitely want to be watching these ones for the wacky Imagin antics. Like, even Diend's scheme here is hilarious. It makes absolutely no sense, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Momotaros is holding the plot together of course, and he's great as always. Apparently Ishida specifically had Takaiwa playing Momo too, even in shots also featuring Decade, so I'm glad to know he appreciated how much Takaiwa brings to that role. It's sort of crazy to think that these episodes were probably my first real exposure to these characters, but it definitely created an interest for me, so just on that level, I can say they did their job well.

I mean, Den-O spent an entire movie with the Den-Liner cafe car as a cop bullpen, so I'm not sure a slight redecoration really counts as an AR element.

Honestly, this is the origin story that makes the most sense to me. This isn't partial Den-O, or alternate Den-O. This is Den-O. Sure, there's no Ryotaro, but the tone is dead-on, and the whole point of this story is that the Imagin have maybe always been the stars of that show. It's hard to see anyone watching the Faiz episodes of Decade and then being won over by a tiny, moping man who works at a dry cleaner while being a metaphor for the way society demands people label themselves; it makes perfect sense that someone could watch these episodes and fall in love with Den-O The Series.

Yeah, this is less, AR Element and more "We're going to be milking Den-O for a while and we need a new mainstay Den-Liner Set".

Also on something I only thought of now to touch on. But I thought it was rather clever for them to not bring in Kotaro or Ryotaro's kid actor until the very end. Even if it's the same one who played kid Ryotaro in the first Den-O movie, if he had shown up and been a major part of these episodes that would have made what they were attempting to do a bit more confusing.

Which was basically making sure you know that this is the real Den-O, this isn't an AR World, this is the real deal, for sure.

Part of it's to make sure this plays as Real Den-O, in the run-up to the movie, but I think a bigger part is to reorient the Den-O franchise onto Momo and the Imagin gang.

Like, the last Den-O movie was this big baton pass between Ryotaro and Kotaro, for better or worse. What these episodes are doing is sort of recalibrating that transition, making it more that Kotaro is a new piece of the puzzle, rather than the star of show, and literally saying that Momo is the star of the show. Having a human Rider in these episodes would dilute what they're trying to do with Momo, how his story is that he doesn't really need a human to give his life meaning.

True, Den-O's the revisit that actually keeps the original cast, except for Ryotaro. I guess as the Den-O's actors are all very available (except Yuriko Shiratori) due to Toei milking out Den-O so they have to standby (not yes sir) for more of that. But still that'd mean it's unknown how would the Imagins got parted away from Ryotaro at the first place, as Kohana is a.. family member of him, and she's there. The Imagins here freely possess random amount of people like you said below. If actually Ryotaro wasn't there, I wonder how the Taros formed a team or such (it's due to Ryotaro). I guess because Den-O's mostly character stuff rather than plot, so they tell what's primarily about Den-O which is about the Taros hijinks and how Imagins and DenLiner work?

I guess the part of Tsukasa, Natsumi, and Onodera getting possessed, is instead to show off their actor's skills to portray the different personalities of the Taros, as Takeru Satoh got his fame due to that. You said "only" about the one getting possessed by Ura becoming stupid hot... but while Tsukasa's nickname for Natsumi is Natsumandarin, the fanbase's is Natsumelon. For the episodes being skippable without meaningful story, that'd be what I think (probably misguided) about formulaic tokus, but I guess they'd still have appeal from the fanbases in those medias, like these revisit not being without merit. I don't know about how Momo falling off a building being cliffhanger.... as it's a Kamen Rider and thus falling from heights isn't a fatal danger, all the way since Kuuga.

I̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶a̶s̶y̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶I̶'̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶f̶f̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶D̶e̶n̶-̶O̶.̶ Though personally I think the explanations in this 2 parter are rather easy to understand, just basic stuff that Imagins (a boss and his henchmen) time travel to the past and their activities in the past affect the present.

True, that gag is golden. Onodera mistaking Momo as an enemy due to him being technically an Imagin and thus kicked him. I'd think this is one of my favorite gag in the entire franchise. I wonder if Tsukasa was a part that dragged the 2 parter as well as Momo's main complaint is about him losing his physical body, and the solution is only to become Decade and perform a Final Form Ride on him, but it's probably neglected due to Tsukasa's airheadness or such. For Onodera, him forgetting to henshin for me is especially prevalent on the last Agito 2-parter, like he's already Kuuga, why focus on controlling G3-X, when you already have a better weapon? For Natsumi, one of her first episode scenes was running away from Imagins, and I think they wasted a chance to bring up that, albeit throwaway moment, and she should hear them wanting to grant wish on her. But for Den-O series, I don't think many of the contract holders got possessed? Only Singularity Point like Ryotaro got directly possessed, typically Imagins when possessing a contract holder manifest a physical form based on their imagination. I think even among the Taros Imagins, there are parts of them sharing a body and fighting over control as Climax Form.

Other than Tsukasa telling Momo that, it highlights another one of Kaitou's unpleasant nature, his racism/prejudice for non-humans (who he're already jerk too) like Imagins, treating them as only valuable collections instead of living beings. This one's not the only portrayal of that in KR, like how the franchise can have a human Big Bad turn themselves into a monster by the final story arc, kinda sending a signal to the audience that "They're not human any more, it's okay to kill them now" (other than their power up ofc), and it happens in several series as well, like Parado in Ex-Aid voicing up for this with humans being hypocritical by creating living beings with villain roles in video game that they could beat up to feel better, as from his point of view Bugsters matter as much as humans do.

Still, I think being true to yourself isn't necessarily something moral. As 'be yourself' and 'brushing aside outside views' can be abused by rotten people who'd reject any suggestion to better themselves, embracing their nature and insists others to mind their own business, which is being true to yourself in horrific way.

Of all the arcs from the first part of Decade, this is the one that always stuck out the least to me. That's mainly because it's just more Den-O and it doesn't take the opportunity to do anything wildly divergent from the original series. That makes it both the most familiar tribute, but also the least dynamic for me. The only thing that really stuck with me is that not everyone can do the Imagin acting as well as Takeru Satoh or Yuichi Nakamura.

Thank you for this.

She looks great (that leather outfit!), but that comment did not specify characters! "Everyone Ura possesses looks stupid hot" means that Tsukasa here is also ridiculously sexy, and I want that on the record. He may be a creepy turtle, but he manages to glam up everything he touches.

I don't know that I'd blame Tsukasa this time? For one, a lot of the plot is trying to track down Momo, and that's nothing Decade's powers are going to help with. For another thing, it's only when the cards get filled in that Tsukasa realizes he can give Momo his own body back. That was not an obvious outcome of working through Momo's emotional problems!

Yeah, I'm gonna have a tough time in a year not just thinking this was all part of the crossover movie.

Man, that was faster than usual! Okay, I have a few more points about Agito I want to discuss first and then I'll move on to Den-O.

I guess Shouichi being an Agito would go against Hikawa's traits. The whole point of Hikawa is how he thinks he's useless as just a regular human in a show full of Agitos. So having a version of him who is a dormant Agito and apparently excelled at being G3-X rather than doing merely an average job would mean he wouldn't have any reason to feel like such a constant failure, right?. I mean, I agree with you that he doesn't really have that personality, but maybe it's just hard to integrate that personality to an Agito, instead of a regular human who lacks self-confidence? It sucks though, since I could relate a lot to Hikawa and this composite Shouichi character is missing a lot of that.

But Yuusuke scolded Kaito for using Diend instead of G3-X, considering him to be mocking Yashiro's invention. This shows development for Yuusuke as he doesn't just think about looking cool anymore. He actually wants to help and support Yashiro with test driving her Rider System. Due to the magical stone in his body, he can probably use it easier than most humans. However, I thought it was weird how G3-X was deemed obsolete to Agito in the end, which it kind of is but still, that's not really a good way to get people to think the Secondary Rider is cool.

Wow, En-chan's doing Chou Den-O & Decade with you as well? That's dedication!

He was a villain throwing a tantrum in SHW though. Or is that what you liked about it?

Now for my thoughts on the World of Den-O, which as others have said isn't very different from regular Den-O. I was expecting Momotaros to acknowledge Decade Kamen Riding in to Kiva though, since he should remember him from Climax Deka. Or was that a side effect of his memory loss?

Den-O is 10/19 in my Heisei Rider Ranking. Terrible plot (Time Nonsense, future Sakurai, etc), saved by amazing characters and Ryutaros' subplot with Airi. Den-O is kind of like Decade in that way, these characters can Ore Sanjou in to any story since they don't really have one of their own and as it turns out, that's not entirely a bad thing.

Momotaros is the same Momotaros. Why fix what ain't broken? Or rather, he is broken and that's what Tsukasa's job is in this world, to help Momotaros remember who he is. Imagins rely so much on their contracts to give them their appearance, so it's a nice moral to have Tsukasa encourage Momotaros to just imagine himself back to normal and it's fitting for his Final Form Ride to change from Denliner to literally himself. Memories are time after all, so as long as Momotaros remembers he has an identity, he can't truly lose himself.

I have a lot of free time admittedly so you know. It helps pass the boredom, among other things. Ha ha.

As for my take of Diend in that, you see, I'm a very petty man. So I in turn love it when I see people do very petty things. In this case Daiki acting like a spurned lover and deciding to just have everything go to hell because he couldn't handle a ruse cruise and making everything harder for the heroes as a result.

Fair enough. He's very caricatured in that movie with his pettiness being worse than usual. Yonemura does that a lot, including other weird behavior like Retsu deciding to blow up the Earth and the Showa Riders basically saying "Get off my lawn, you Heisei kids!" Yeah, those movies are crazy.

Alright, looks like it's two of my favorite Decade arcs, which is a win for me!

Agito: I knew that Agito was like a "spiritual successor" to Kuuga, so it was cool to see Decade present it as an alternate sequel to Kuuga. AR Kuuga got to play a great role here, that really gave him some spotlight over just being along for the ride, and being the "good cop" to Tsukasa's "jerk cop."

Agito was definitely played really well here, especially how AR Agito is all three Riders introduced in his show. I may not know much about Kuuga and Agito's shows, but here, it culminates rather well, and it was one of the more interesting arcs in the season.

Den-O: Needless to say, this is why I want to watch Den-O. It's not an AR world, as people have mentioned, but straight up Den-O, and that's certainly enough to interest me in the show. I loved the Imagins shenanigans, controlling both Tsukasa and Natsume, and the aesthetic of Den-O just works for me. Time Travelling Train, colorful cast, amazing opening, and cool suits to boot.

The arc is definitely more of a comedic one, also setting up the new Den-O movie (Which I liked), but it was definitely a ton of fun. This was probably my favorite Final Form Ride, since it's just straight up Momotaros, and the presentation was hilarious (though the finisher with Kuuga is still just "what?"). And that scene with Kuuga attacking Momotaros killed me, just a great introduction to Den-O, and Tsukasa actually somehow made this even more fun.