Thanks to that, I just realized both Breaking Mammoth and the Mammoth Magia both put the animal's face on the chest instead of the head. Neat bit of consistency there.

All it needs is to have a t-rex head, one foot a triceratops the other a saber-toothed tiger, and a pterodactyl ornament on the back of the neck and ... :lolol

Can't believe I just realised this, but the Amazon Riders don't have an actual transformation pose. That's awesome.

Well I feel pretty stupid as this was literally in plain sight, but the Gorangers have a certain amount of stripes on their chests that coresspond to their number (for example, AoRanger has 2 stripes on his chest because he is the teams #2 ranger).
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...ubVZ7W2XJNkjET

Does Jin's raw egg consumption count? :lolol

Same goes for Gaoranger's gold sash, except in reverse (Red has 5, yellow has 4, etc)

So you know how Kuuga has been designated Unidentified Lifeform no.2 and no.4? Well, let's ignore the no.2 part and focus on the no.4 part. Could it be that the no.4 is an UNINTENTIONAL NOD to the fact that while Kuuga is the first Heisei-Era rider show, it is technically the FOURTH HEISEI-ERA RIDER PRODUCTION starting with Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue followed by ZO and J.

I always took it as a reference to how we only had numbered riders for 1, 2 and (V)3. Riderman was never number 4, and so...

I'm pretty sure Riderman was refered to as Kamen Rider 4 at least once

I always figured he was UI No. 4 due to the whole "4 is death" thing Japan likes to do

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ryuki and Knight Survive are the only final forms that rode their bikes while in said final forms.

Agito also did in the final episode

... man, that's a good point. That's a little depressing, actually.

Even Kuuga, who couldn't get off his bike for 2 seconds didn't do it in Ultimate Form. Though... Ultimate is a very unconventional final form with little screentime to begin with, which was kind of the point.

Would absolutely have loved to have seen, say, Fourze Cosmic on his bike, though. Or maybe Grand Zi-O could let the Ride Striker see more than 2 minutes of use the entire series

The final form comes out long after the bike has left the merchandise cycle, especially in modern series where the bike is lucky to still be around by episode ten.

Yeah, it sucks :/

Ah, many thanks

I do wish bikes would get a lot of screentime even if they aren't used for action scenes. Just scenes of Riders arriving through the scene with their bikes. Double and Build did it best.

Yeah, I mean for Zero-One it could have been a running gag where Aruto rides his bike to where the action is and Izu runs at the same pace like it is nothing and Aruto would be all dumbfounded every time thinking, "Amazing how she does this.". :lolol

That would have been a really hilarious running gag.

I am surprised for the first Rider of Reiwa Zero-One pretty much treated his bike as nonexistent. I thought that ever since Fourze the bikes have been dual sport is so that they are easier to ride and do stunts should they require it.

Although when you think about it, Ex-Aid and Zi-O are the series that ditched their bikes the most. W - Drive still used their bikes (car in Drive's case) a lot. Ghost forgot his but at least Specter rode his bike occassionally especially thanks to Houdini Damaashii.

I also feel like Zi-O should've had the Ride Striker as the control for Time Mazin so that at least it has a presence. Damn, Time Mazine's has more screentime than the bikes!

Haha, a "running" gag! (*insert Aruto joke pose*)

Seriously though, one thing I really loved about Drive was how the vehicle theme made the "Rider" part seem relevant again... even if the main Rider was a Driver. I mean, it still had some episodes and arcs that didn't have much vehicle action, but at least they didn't forget that the Tridoron existed, and Drive had an actual reason for never driving it in his final form!

And on the other end, there's Gaim, who I'm pretty sure appeared more often on a horse than on his bike! Which is weird because his bike can be conveniently summoned from a lockseed and was the only way he could travel to and from Hellheim without finding an existing crack, so you'd think it would come in handy more often, but no.

I've also noticed that as soon as a Rider without a bike joins the good guys' team, or even is just introduced, the amount of bike action tends to drop dramatically if it hasn't already. Probably because if the main Rider kept riding everywhere, the others couldn't keep up (except when there are other vehicles, like the AIMS van, then it's just unexplained). It would be funny if a show actually addressed that, with the second/third/etc. Rider being late to a fight and when asked why, they complain about not having a bike.

I still think the Time Mazine Vehicle Mode actually are hoverbike. Time Mazine Vehicle Mode even has motorcycle handlebars and motorcycle seat.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20200127175159

I just noticed this after reading it a couple of times. :lolol

Anybody noticed that ever since Kamen Rider 1 movie, Ichigo himself never appears again (not even Chou Super Hero Taisen, not that it matters), thus painting a mystery whether his Power Up form is a permanent upgrade or not.

In some ways Gaim did used their bikes quite occassionally, especially when they have other vehicles to utilize as well. As for Drive, I feel like that's what a Rider show needs to be: have the bike onscreen even if they are not using it for stunts. IDK maybe they want to save gas :lolol

All the more reason to make Ride Striker it's control!

Drive also had the bikes owned by its non-main Riders appear an awful lot. I can scarcely remember an episode where Chaser didn't show up on his bike; which is funny because I always found that ironic when it was very clearly designed for Mashin Chaser...

Regardless, I think what really helps Drive's case is that even if the car doesn't appear and doesn't get used quite that much, it's still integrated into the theme of the show. Drive is 100% based on cars in every single one of his forms; his tires are all shot out from the Tridoron; and his final form is literally him wearing the Tridoron. Even when it's not there (and, really, I could have done with a few more of those signature kicks...) its presence is always felt and it's always embedded into the show in a way no other Rider Machine since Kuuga's is. It's actually important and relevant to the show and the rider rather than just being a prerequisite somehow crammed into the gimmick toy.

What they ought to do one of these days is have the the bike be a sentient character and be the main character's most trusted partner. Granted Ex-Aid kinda did that but then they killed him off, which was uh, oh well.

A bit more on-topic for the thread, but it's taken me so long to figure out that Grease's signature pose is meant to be a direct opposite to Build's. They're both doing the L-shape with their thumb and index finger; but while Build holds his out to his side with his palm showing, Grease holds his in his opponent's direction with his knuckles showing. Oh, and he does it before his henshin while Build does his after!

https://i.imgur.com/YEE2pYh.png

Black and Black RX tried to pull that out of nowhere, and uh, it didn't quite work.

Anyway, on the topic of the bikes, correct me if I'm wrong here, as I've only seen two Neo-Heisei shows so far, but I also think that part of the problem(which I guess you could say is an extension of the merchandise cycle thing), is that bikes don't get upgrades anymore.

Like, the reason the bikes are part of the finishers for Ryuki and Wing Knight are because Survive Mode explicitly upgrades them, and while Kuuga never rode his bike in Ultimate Form, not only was it another way for Kuuga to be unique at the time, but he did still ride it when TryChaser got upgraded into BeatChaser when he was in almost all his other forms beforehand.

It helped, but it was hardly like Agito, Blade or Den-O eventually abandoned their bikes just because they didn't get cool new toys. It's really just to do with modern rider having a LOT of cool new toys to sell at any one time, and who cares about the stuff in Wave 1

Given how much more money the Tridoron likely cost compared to a bike it makes a lot of sense that it got so much screen time.

Makes me wonder where Tridoron (the actual car) is today...

Sometimes I wonder if the Taisen movies exist just so they could keep the engines on the Rider Machines running and not go out of commission :lol

I'm rewatching Agito and there's something I noticed: Agito's forms are based on elementals, ground, storm and flame. But no water. Well turns out there is a water form for Agito all along: it's Gills!

Care to explain please? I don't really see that.

Gills. As in what fish have.

Nope, not convinced. Sure Ryo was a swimmer before he became a rider and named after the respiratory organs of a fish, but that is the extent of it. And longhorn beetles, which Gills is based off of, primarily live in the woods so there is that too.

Gills is an aquatic based Rider, and he is considered as an incomplete Agito (this is further supported in Decade even if it is non canon) or an alternate Agito, since his Exceed form is obtained by having the Seed of Agito passed onto him.

Thus in those ways, Gills is water-based Agito, completing the four elementals.

Considering the seed, him having growth spurts like a plant(short horns to long horns to exceed), and his motif being a wood-dwelling insect, wouldn't plant be more appropriate if we had to force him in the whole elemental positioning game? I see no correlation to water at all, it doesn't add up. It's like saying Swamp Thing is a water element-themed hero cause he mostly lives in a swamp.

Hmmm that could be. Maybe Gills is a plant-based Rider after all. You won. I lost.

Naw, there is no win or lose to this. And hey, it's what this thread is for, trying to dismantle and make sense of all this heroic nonsense we call tokusatsu. :lolol
This is the same genre that has the audacity to sell us a transforming toy motorcycle that is on standby as a beverage vending machine, or a smartphone can somehow defy the laws of science and turn into a dirtbike.

Twice!

Twice? I know of Build's Phone Bike but what's the other one?