To be fair, I think I actively prodded you into that line of thinking. Actually, you know what, let me just give everyone a quick recap of Die's complex relationship with Inoue. I mean, while we're on the subject anyway, right?

Missing Ace is a good movie. I've never considered it a great one, or one of my favorites though, so it was really cool to see you getting so much out of the story here. I don't have much to add other than the regularly scheduled reminder that this Kamen Rider thing you liked visually was directed by Ishida, and, although I can't squeeze a whole post out of it, just know that Leangle gets an unending amount of s*** from the meme crowd for using that Float card at the end when Blade and Garren are soaring into the sky on their majestic sets of golden bird wings.

Here ae my barely coherant thoughts on Missing Ace from 3 months ago. And I [mostly] stand by them!

So like this hit really close to home right now, and just how it can feel like the crisis never ends (which for some people it doesn't).

Since I haven't super been following this thread, I just want to wish you all well. Sometimes the hardest thing to do can be to take care of yourself.

I thought they'd already mentioned humanity winning the earlier Battle Fight on the show? Karasuma, I think, mentions it as the reason why humanity is the dominant lifeform, and that leads to Kotaro getting very excited theorizing what other animals could've won.

Neat to know that Elements was almost a one-and-done! And thanks for the card info!

I knew I could count on you for the flashback. Thanks for the exhaustive detail! When I see it laid out like that... I feel like he and I are going on a journey, you know? It's really something magical.

I'm a big fan of structuring the movie around the emotional clarity of Hajime and Amane's story. His absence through the film gives a ton of weight to the climax, and creates a strong sense of finality to the ending. Just a super smart choice, I think. However...

...it's so in keeping with the flaws of Blade The TV Show to have Blade The Movie not really have Kenzaki looped into the emotional stakes of the film. He's a hero, and he wants to do heroic stuff, he's still a very sweet boy, but this isn't really a story for him. It's totally fair to wonder if maybe the title Rider should've been the focus.

I guess I could argue that Kenzaki is the star of the movie, even as it's about Hajime and Amane, and maybe that's a good substitute, but I feel like I'm making excuses for it. Definitely not a flawless film!

There's a great moment at the end of this movie where, regardless of what they've all just gone through, everyone gets together to celebrate Amane's birthday. They've all fought and suffered, and she's not even aware of what the stakes were for a battle she never knew about, but the story gets to end on this one girl feeling like it's okay for her to be happy.

It's not a celebration of victory over violent monsters, or a remembrance of the cost of that victory. It's someone, by herself, overcoming years of emotional turmoil, while her friends and family are there to celebrate her.

Just, man, yes. The value of empathy in a world of violence. That's my favorite Kamen Rider theme, and I think it's important even in a world that doesn't have monsters from eternity. I hope everyone is keeping things together, and that we're all on the other side of this someday soon, ready to be happy.

This is only tangentially related, but at the risk of kicking back up the "who's the secondary Rider" argument, I happened to notice lately that Hajime always gets billed in the credits second, behind only Kenzaki himself. In the first OP, that initial sequence of everyone ends with Tachibana, so he's kind of acting as a bookend, but for Elements, it's explicitly Blade>Chalice>Garren>Leangle, right from the very first shots of everyone's helmets.

I guess to loosely tie this thought back in with the movie, it kind of seems like Hajime was just always intended to be core to Blade's overall story. I mean, I'd even make a joke about him being the "heart" of the movie, but you already did that.

Maybe it just takes more work than the film could manage to make Kenzaki's character more directly invested in the plot? I mean, we have established that, by design, he's more of a follower than a leader, and also tends not to think too deeply about things in general. It seems like if you don't know what you're doing or just don't consider it an issue, it would very easy to accidentally write stories that don't give him a lot to actively contribute. Maybe! I'm mostly spitballing here, and a new guy just started writing the show at the point you're at, so it might be better to not get too deep into this until you've got that extra perspective on how you feel Kenzaki is or is not handled differently under Aikawa's pen.

So, yeah, not to get too far ahead of stuff that I might feel differently about in a few days, but this is something I was thinking about during the first Aikawa As Showrunner episode.

I think Kenzaki is central to the plot, but he's not (currently or previously!) central to the themes or emotions. As a more direct character, one who is substantially less traumatized than the other three Riders, he's not really someone who gets to have Big Emotions or the sort of sweeping, thematically-rich stories the other characters have.

But! As the show becomes more about plot machinations and combat against the Undead, he's your guy. He's the one who's front and center, driving the plot. Tachibana only gets invested when it's something he can feel guilty or ashamed about (those emotions are his rocket fuel), Mutsuki has broken bad, and Hajime is maybe more of a WMD than a fellow superhero. Kenzaki is all that's left, and he doesn't need any outside force getting him to want to save the world.

The movie's got to be about more than plot, though, and that limits Kenzaki's usefulness. He's okay in the middle section, as it's the kind of hero stuff he excels at, but he's a bystander in the beginning and end because those things need some complicated emotions. Kenzaki's most complicated emotion is confusion over why people keep secrets!

Kamen Rider is so good my friends.

Part of me want's to say this is because of the suit ranking (Spade > Hearts > Diamonds > Clovers) but I really don't know.

In my experience, card-based Toei hero shows have 5 archetypes.

A spade-themed character who ends up in the background (Spade Ace, Blade, Cure Sword)

A diamond character who’s the strongest of the ensemble (Dia Jack, Garren, Cure Diamond)

A heart character who gets shipped with the spade character (Heart Queen, Chalice, Cure Heart)

A clover character who’s probably the weakest of the bunch (Clover King, Leangle, Cure Rosetta)

And a fifth character who’s much more badass than the others (Big One, the Missing Ace riders, Cure Ace)

Considering how bittersweet or depressing the previous two rider movies were prior to this I actually enjoy this movie. Of course, no other summer rider movie will surpass the Kamen Rider W summer movie but this movie I say is a favorite. Kiba and Murakami as two interviewers who bicker with one another was fun to see as well as Kaido. Personally the best scene of the movie was the first time we see the new gen Ace trio strut their stuff early in the movie. One of the best choreographed scenes ever.

I really loved the whole vibe of the New Gen Riders. They flood the zone when they're interacting with the old crew, keeping them totally off-balance. For all of their little internal dramas, they present a unified front of Eff You Dad that I found really entertaining. Good team, sorry to see them go.