If I’m remembering how the fights with Worm dude are structured it’s supposed to be that he can only stop time for a short period and there’s a cool down between uses, with Tendou using hyper shooting to bait the time stop and the way it functions rendering the time stop worhtless

Maybe! There certainly don't seem to be any rules about it in this episode, and he doesn't seem to use it sparingly at all. At one point he uses it to skip five seconds of walking!

There is a bit with Hyper Kabuto taking a shot, letting Worm Widower stop time, then having Hyper Shooting arc around and hit Worm Widower when time restarts. After that, though, Worm Widower just has a bunch of Worms run at Hyper Kabuto? It's very strange. If there are rules to the fight, no one says them out loud.

Brags so much that Tsurugi forgot that he was actually demeaning himself. What's the good about having a negative and undesirable trait like recklessness to boast?

At this point I still had no idea too, what I'm confused was that, why the later Worms are more evil like usual MOTW? While the Natives are more like usual humans with varying morality, from the pacifistic Daigo, to the anxious Hiyori, to the barbaric Kusakabe parents. For you questioning about Worm's plans, you didn't for usual MOTW? Even for a series where major monster characters are more nuanced like Phase 2, a good number of the MOTW on those series are the same.

Tendou is the self-proclaimed center of the world, so constantly taking advantages of manipulations is a way of him doing that, also using other's wishes to also get what he wants, to keep climbing to the top? So then how about previously regarding something like ep. 32, keeping secret is just his character right? With Tendou mindset here, to just be focused on mission and use the truth to their advantage, this also brings back to the part where Tendou views emotions as weakness (it's not and this is common misconception about the audience I've ranted about, emotions also can play a part in "wanting something"), and for narcissist like him, the proof will be only when he makes rash decisions based on Hiyori or Juka. Kagami thinking that it needs a reason to achieve something, that also can relate to follow things that are related to passion, to know what are you doing and feel meaningful of it. What Kagami wants is to, protect humanity from Worms right? He had done some parts of it as Gatack, killing off some Worms, but this is about what he did only helping Natives.. another kind of Worm right? But he had found non-malicious Natives like Hiyori and Daigo...

I mean what should Kagami do previously if this makes him feel like a pawn? And Kagami at the end, it seems that his vengeful side against the Worms is the one returning? Previously, he points out that Natives are Worms for their contract with ZECT, and also, he here seems to be unable to accept the others being Worm even if Tadokoro didn't act anything suspicious other than him acting like a drone to ZECT (which as some others said here, gives it more sense about ZECT being up to no good), that's my question here about Kagami, here him cannot accepting any Worms at all, which is his reaction to Tadokoro, also differing from Hiyori before. I think Kagami just suddenly changes here, or this being the true side of him while he can also occassionally show Worms mercy.. Sorry no offense but, I want to know if, for ep. 15 you talk about this part of Kagami as Inoue sthick, but for here you consider him being a baby?

Of course lies won't last forever and sooner or later it'll be uncovered, and by the time it does, things'll revert back to what once it was (or not if every party was hurt, but not Tsurugi here to Kagami or Misaki). In this case, Kagami and Misaki lying about being couple. If you want to convince others about it, you have to truly act it out, which is no different than becoming actual couple. It being made up of lies, it's quickly revealed here that they're just setting him up, and of course if Misaki isn't owned by anyone then Tsurugi reverts to his skirt-chasing ways. This is probably yeah, creepy (though I still wonder why there are previous cases of this you accept), but this is inevitable and I saw this coming right away. Actually I'd still prefer the scene where Misaki calls out Tsurugi's bad behavior before rather than this one (l̶i̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶l̶d̶.̶.̶.̶ ̶o̶p̶p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶r̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶?̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶r̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶!̶), it's a rejection and also a potential room for improvement (I still have an unanswered question to you regarding that). He later gets a room for improvement though to a relief of the creepy chasing, but not coming from the crush itself.

Reiji Nogi, the Cassis Worm, is a new Executive and yeah, he replaces Reina, but he focuses on the power part of the Executive and lives up to it where he was able to fight while in human form, beating Gatack even. And for Kagami not using Clock Up, yeah my pet peeve about Rider fights is when they don't utilize their powers well, but for this time, Cassis can outright stop time (I never hear about him in any Rider discussion about speed/stopping time, even for Cronus comparison it was Clock Up or Slowdown was used), moving at any speed is useless when time is stopped. Also continuing from above, anyone is on board with you for the characters like Tsurugi shit being endgame, but don't tell me if you appreciate what Misaki said above... you'll also do the same like her to those who follows about the plot side of Kabuto here.

I spoiled myself..

I'm pretty sure I brought it up once or twice in the beginning as something I didn't feel as engaged by, but eventually didn't care to keep bringing it up. It was just, like, This Is How The Show Does Monster Stories.

The difference now is that we're talking about big picture stuff, endgame storytelling, and it's just as vague and unimpressive as a one-off monster story. This is where it all needs to come together, where the threat needs to feel insurmountable, and I don't even think that's the case? Nothing about the Worms feels like a coherent strategy that will require the focus of our heroes. It's just, like, more Worms?

Was that when he ran off crying? I honestly can't remember why I said that, so I can't really compare it to what I was saying for 41. What I'll say about how he behaves here is that he comes off less as wounded, and more as a brat. Multiple people are trying to console him, and he's just getting grumpier and grumpier. It's not fun to watch!

I'd forgotten about this, but I'm really let down by how useless all the Riders that aren't Tendou and Kagami feel at this point. I know that the show is hyping up the new villain as being virtually unstoppable, but Sasword and the Hoppers have been jobbing to pretty much every Worm they fight for awhile now. I get that they aren't the show's heroes, but it is a little disappointing to see them just lose constantly. It's like the show has three Kamen Rider Beasts on it at this point. I think the only reason Daisuke is allowed to win fights is because he's not around enough to become a joke.

I did enjoy the callback to the tofu battle from early in the series, though, complete with way-too-easily-amused tofu vendor (he should open a restaurant with Tadokoro's brother and serve food with a side of ridiculous over-acting). The bit at the end where Tendou completely forgot about the rematch was a pretty decent gag.

Also, while I'm really not sure where the hell the show is taking Kagami Sr. at this point (and literally cannot remember which side he ends up on), I really did like the quiet pathos of him playing catch with Kagami. Again, totally uninvested in their relationship, but that was a really well done scene.

Can’t say anything about this episode (I’ve got more to say about the next one though). Most I can come up with is that this is probably the B.O.T of the series.

True! The one episode he was in that wasn't a starring role for him was when both he and Sasword got beat by Worm Widow. It's pretty lucky his availability was limited!

It's a nicely underplayed scene at the end, but the fact that I couldn't understand (at all!) what Kagami was going through in this episode made any emotional catharsis feel completely out of my grasp. The show's trying to wrap up themes of forgiveness and being able to see your parents as flawed while still loving and respecting them (which is a very cool theme for a Kamen Rider show to explore!), but the specifics of how Kagami treated Tadokoro and Outrageous was so inexplicable (was he seriously going to leave Tadokoro as a hostage?!) that whatever thematic work they were going for fell flat. Bad writing! An episode with a lot of bad writing!

Oof, I got that reference, and that is harsh but fair. A whole bunch in this episode just doesn't make any sense.

https://i.imgur.com/LQrVy9g.png

Wow, a set of episodes by Ishida where everything is on fire by the end! That's almost as surprising as me taking a positive stance on an episode Die didn't like!

I mean, these aren't great episodes, by any stretch, of course, but... gosh, most of the stupid things just didn't bother me, I guess? Like, I want to have some stellar defense prepared here, but even I can tell I'm probably just easily amused by anything with a Kamen Rider in it. The whole Anti Mimic Bomb plot is nonsense, just like Die said. I got nothing to try and talk that premise up. There's a chance we missed something in the exposition, I suppose; more likely, it's simply is totally and completely illogical. But I'm willing to roll with that, because any Kabuto story not involving Hiyori is automatically fighting an uphill battle for my attention, which means I'm already trying to meet whatever it's doing halfway.

I can easily forgive some boneheaded plotting if it uses that to do something fun or interesting enough, and that's where my opinion splits hard with Die's, because I overall found this to be a surprisingly satisfying conclusion to a two-parter I didn't expect to like all that much? A lot of it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, which is where it definitely stumbles big time, but the broad strokes of this one hit a bunch of notes I ended up thinking were pretty neat.

I liked Kagami in it, is maybe a big one to mention. It's worth noting I'm definitely sure he wanted to save Tadokoro from the very start; he's shown blaming himself for him getting taken hostage in his very first scene, and I think throughout the episode, that's the key thing motivating him to want to go and bust up the Worms holding everyone captive. He's torn anyway, because, first of all, I guess it's bad if the Worms have that bomb, and I'll take the show at face value there, but also, much more importantly, because he thinks his dad is asking him to be an unthinking pawn. That's the crux of his beef with the Natives, too. He can't stand this idea that his whole life is just some big script being written by someone else, and I like where the episode goes from there.

I thought it was solid turning point for Kagami to consider, with some prodding from Tendou, that maybe his dad wanted him for the job of negotiator because of who he is as individual with his own free will, rather than in spite of it. That his dad both knows him well enough that he'd go there and try something stupid and heroic, and cares for him enough to tacitly encourage it. And sure enough, Kagami gets his groove back, goes in there, does something stupid and heroic, and manages to beat the odds with his friends by his side. There are a lot of details in the middle that don't make sense, but I thought it stuck a nice enough landing. I especially appreciated how it built off of existing plot points, too. It's cool that Kagami's history with baseball is still relevant, for example, with the big emotional beat at the end even being his dad showing up with what is presumably Kagami's old glove from high school, since it has his name on it. Kagami's dad is in no way a character I'm invested in, so I don't want to downplay the achievement of this episode for making me care even slightly.

And the Tsurugi subplot, I mean, that thread is golden. Way bigger fan of that comedy than it sounds like Die was. It's wonderfully surreal in a way I have to imagine Ishida helped bring to life. The more absurd it got, the better it was for me, with the absolute highlight being Tsurugi transforming in his stage magician getup, throwing his wand into the air and having his sword come back down. Utterly delightful, and I appreciate the way it tried to tie back into the main plot thematically in the end, even if that wasn't ~entirely~ airtight either. I definitely loved Tendou telling him how messed up his interest in Misaki has been though. Much like Kagami, he's kind of responsible for all his own problems here, and in both cases, that seems to be the intent. It's sort of like a mini-redemption story for everybody... except Yaguruma, who is clearly being laughed at harder by the writers more than any characters in the show could possibly match.

Yeah, at the end of the day, I don't really question Die's animosity towards this one, but I don't feel an ounce of it myself. I thought this was a very enjoyable episode, despite its many flaws.

I really liked this, too... in principle. The idea that Kagami Outrageous secretly thinks his son's determination and tightly-held morality is way more important than Kagami's many failings, I do love that. That is a concept that bubbles under some terrible plotting, though, to the extent that I'm left wishing it was a turning point in a completely different episode.

Like, the idea that drives me insane is that Outrageous secretly wants Kagami to not hand over something that I cannot see the relative value in at all. If this was instead a story about ZECT not trading a random, replaceable weapon for Tadokoro, I'd be 1000% on board with Kagami's objections and rooting for his heroic resolve to reassert itself. But the episode goes the opposite way, where ZECT is totally willing to hand over some dumb piece of tech to save a dozen lives, and Kagami is instrumental in endangering everyone involved by trying to take it back. Tadokoro almost gets killed during Gatack's fight against Worm Widower! This was all for no real gain!

Anyway, yeah, I agree with you that that Tendou/Kagami scene is a good one, but I hate that it's a part of this episode's story.