This episode. Wow. I still think its weird we arent even at 20 yet and this is happenin. I mean, most series havent even had a secondary rider yet! I cant wait for the rest!

Is anyone else thinking Gaim might end up running out of steam? All those riders introduced (and/or killed) in the first 14 episodes. 46 or so to go? Where the hell are they going to go next?

It's always a risky move to jump this quickly out of the gates. The pacing so far is brilliant, sure, but now we've had this bombshell...

I for one hope Urobuchi resists the urge to keep one uping his previous emotional death blow. That's the way series' go from sublime, to ridiculous. Of course, keep ramping up the drama by all means, but there's got to be a "calm water" period at some point ... or does there?

Anyway!

One frelling fantastic episode. Am I right?

Nay, there's plenty of mysteries to work with like who is the girl in white, just who is DJ Sagara, what is Yggdrasil's actual goal, what is Sid's "S" lockseed, what's happening to the infected people, and so on (in case I missed some). There's a lot to still work with, no to mention there's still the drama of Kouta dealing with the revelations made. There's definitely a lot to work with until mid 30's, I think.

This is precisely my worry. I know the Butcher can run off the material he has for that long, but when it comes to sorting out the rest of Gaim's run he'll probably have to throw out an even more serious blow or twist to make it. I'm not doubting his skills, but.. tis getting ropey. That's all.

Why are two people overestimating the remaining episodes Gaim has left?
It's not 46 episodes, it's more like 36 or 35(assuming it has the usual for Rider in recent years, 49). Are people just expecting Gaim to have 60 episodes for no reason? If anything, it might have a couple less, since it started later.

That's a good point. For all we know, it could be the length of Decade.

I'm not overestimating anything. This is a 49-51 episode series. I'm saying there's enough stuff to work with through the majority (if not all) of what's left. Where h got his numbers is beyond me.

You know what I do find funny, people have grown so used to toku wasting our time, that Gaim is really unsettling with them. It seems this impossible concept to them that Gaim might actually have enough plot for the WHOLE series. They seem surprised they can't just write off the first twenty episodes as the show isn't just pissing around. It's funny that people have forgotten that the show is MEANT to have plot from the first episode to the very end, and the shows aren't supposed to start in the last twenty or so episodes, like pretty much every other toku show in existence. It's disturbing we forgot that.

Agreed.

Because Gaim has already done eveyrthing we expect it to do as most shows do, they think that there's NOTHING AT ALL that could possibly happen that we don't know about now.

We've kind of become used to rider shows being "predictable" in that we know how long stuff takes. We can predict when certain events will happen in most shows, like the secondary rider showing up or the final form debuting.

If anything, the amount Gaim has gotten done now without feeling compressed or awkward gives me giddy excitement for the show's future.

It's not so much that we have forgotten as much as we don't expect it.

Anyway, the Hase thing was spoiled for me. (hi, Suzu!) I also found it a bit strange that Kouta suddenly started acting like Hase was a close friend of his, despite never really interacting with him in the series.

And yet... and yet it was handled so well. I was able to ignore that tiny little gripe and sympathize with Kouta and his plight. Those shots of him having backed Hase into a corner and seeing his human form flash before him was incredibly powerful and very creepy. I am incredibly curious to see how this series ends, and I'm especially curious what elements we'll find throughout the story that we missed initially but found after a rewatching of the completed series.

One thing that does raise some questions for me, though, is the future scene from the first episode. Kouta and Kaito were very antagonistic in that future, yet I derived from this episode that Kouta and Kaito will unite their forces to stop Yggdrasil. Zangetsu Melon Arms was also in that scene. This episode established the Sengoku Drivers as prototypes, with the Genesis Drivers being the apex of the Rider systems. Yet, in the future, we see no Energy Riders, and Takatora is using his Sengoku Driver instead of his Genesis Driver. Maybe I'm just grasping at straws, but I don't think the Energy Riders are going to stay for the duration of the series. So what will happen that would cause them to not show up in the future save for Zangetsu, who downgrades back into an Armored Rider?