Sounds like someone's hating on Infinity, the best Wizard design, no I am not taking questions at this time.

Pfft, no way.



Shining's way cooler.

(I also adore Infinity Style.)

My hope was that we'd eventually get to Shining after Burning. Like, I'd say something about which Cross-Z design I like best and you'd get so furious that you'd become Burning Kurona. Then, the clouds would part, you'd remember that Kurona Is Kurona, and bam, Shining Kurona.

Then I'd be detonated for thinking wrong things.

No, I meant Ghost's final form. I had to look up what it's called and Google said "Infinity." The wiki apparently just calls it "Mugen Damashii," though, which feels very TV-Nihon. I legitimately cannot remember what the fansubs I watched called it.

I see your a woman of culture *high fives*

Sometimes, this thread is just the best.

The best.

I have a much more positive outlook on this subplot. The way I see it, there's two conflicting things the Takkun, Orphenoch! plotline needed to work.

A. There can't be any legitimate reason to be scared of Takumi, because that would inevitably justify his self-loathing, and undermine the entire point of the story being told.

B. There has to be a bigger thing to drive a wedge between Takumi and his friends, or else the plot risks either losing the heightened, melodramatic tension that characterizes the series, or, even worse, making the characters look completely heartless in an attempt to get the tone there anyway.

Now, the solution Inoue arrived at was naturally to give the characters a legitimate reason to be scared of Takumi, but make it a lie. There's no denying how heavy-handed this is, and if you're arguing from the perspective there was no need for any of this to begin with, fair enough. Inoue seems to enjoy writing himself into and out of corners so much his business card probably reads "Writer/Escape Artist". It's not a great habit, and there probably was a way to avoid getting into this scenario.

I still feel there's some worthwhile material in it though. It becomes less about how the audience perceives the information (I'd be shocked to find a child watching who wasn't just waiting for Takkun to be Faiz again), and more about how the characters themselves react. Showing Takumi being this willing to believe he murdered people, especially, is exploring his character in an interesting way, I think. The whole incident, it serves to flare up tensions that don't magically go away when the matter is resolved. Again, going back to Takumi, he still hasn't accepted himself even by the end of this episode, because this entire experience has driven him that much deeper into his belief he's destined to end up hurting people.

Is it forced and shaky? Definitely at least a little! But the worst possible thing happening at the worst possible time is Faiz's kind of storytelling, and I think at least much worked about this plotline as it didn't. I agree on the whole the Ryuusei School stuff is by far the least interesting material in the series, but good things come out of it sometimes, and this is one of them, in my opinion.

No, bad Die! Don't you dare go dissing Mari for this! Moments like these are why she's my favorite Rider heroine ever. The fact that she specifically tries using the Faiz Gear twice here knowing it won't work even before the first attempt is pure, reckless, irrational heroism, and I love it. How active she is. Yeah, there's no way that was going to end well, but there's also no way that'd stop her from trying.

Ah fairs, my brain just always parses them as "Infinity" for Wizard and "Mugen" for Ghost. It might mean the same, but there's probably reasons I could speculate on as to *why* the language difference is there. I think Over-Time used Infinite? The most recently I'll have seen that is probably one of the Heisei Generations films, and I wasn't watching those to pay attention to the transformation belts.

(Ghost Mugen... I'm not the biggest fan, but it's grown on me, design-wise.)

When talking about morals and acts like this, I sincerely hope to throw away all the subjectivity and look without any biases.

And I wish for any in-character reason like this to get acknowledged in discussions, without always labelling anything as plot armor to protagonists. Also talking about Mari surviving? She wasn't in the fight at all and just got into the scene after Kitazaki goes away. You meant Takumi? And for Murakami it's the good ol' other Riders arriving to fight him off, and please tell me that Murakami wasn't in trouble and just got away (I know Riders use double finishers, but finishers have been blocked before).

I agree about your questions here, about why Mari didn't remember (the memories returning can be excusable, but her forgetting), why Kusaka lied (he's a manipulator, but dunno what would he gain from this), every kid forgot. So far for those I can't explain anything here to correct. So it's not that the mystery genre is a bad one to you that it's the execution here? Or what... dunno I seem want to know about this, as previously you only tolerate if a mystery part is like this (ex: all questions having same answer and only in 1-2 episodes) which still kind of denying the genre. BTW at least for Takumi it's clear here, that is in the flashback there was more than 1 Orphnochs, there are the one killed by Takumi, Takumi himself, and Kitazaki. Takumi isn't OOC at all and tried to use his Orphnoch power to fight them off, but him being Orphnoch makes him feared by others and mistakenly assumed to be one of them.

Hey! Potential of Takumi living there and seeing more!

Which unfortunately got an infamy like in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDMquGK91M
But yeah, this moment is just to show another proof of unfairness with females unable to henshin. But for this series, non-Orphnoch can't henshin. Like Keitaro too for Faiz. So it's not about gender but it's about which species you are. Though dunno what's wrong with Rina that she has worse showings as Delta than even Mihara (in previous episode, compared to Takumi). For Mari part it's nothing more than determination.

This franchise is pretty amazing!

It's just, I don't think they needed to invent a reason to be afraid of Takumi as an Orphnoch, because everything was right there. You've got a character like Sawada, who undermined the possibility that Orphnochs are universally looking for redemption. You've got a series worth of mostly viewing Orphnochs as monsters. You've got the easy, visceral, cruel reactions of Keitaro and Mari, stung by the way they found out and scared of what else they might not know about Takumi. You've got Takumi, ready to have the worst thought about him. You've got Kusaka in the wings, ready to fan the flames of suspicion and resentment. Like, it's all there. All of the melodrama was basically already generated!

It was already compelling, because all of the prejudices and assumptions have been baked into the show and now they're bearing fruit; and heightened, because the star of the show just turned into a wolfman. Having a murder mystery on top of that... I don't know that it increased the tension so much as it diffused the focus.

The way you equate "constantly injuring yourself" with "heroism" makes me suspect that you, too, are a graduate/survivor of the Ryusei School. It's all clear to me now, Fish.

She wasn't in the fight, but she was there at the cliffhanger. I never assumed that Kitazaki wouldn't take a shot at her afterwards. He's unpredictable!

It's definitely the execution here, for me. I think season-long mysteries are one of the toughest things to land in Kamen Rider, but it can be done. I think Build did a pretty good job with their season-long stuff, probably another series I can't remember right this second. It's hard, though. Real easy to have it become frustrating or just not feel worth the effort.

The Rina part is what bothered me. (The Mari part was pretty charming for its indefatigable heroism. Don't tell Fish Sandwich!) Every other Ryusei kid got to kick ass with the Delta Gear, and she got beat immediately. The show couldn't let her get in one good punch?!