Don't worry. I didn't spoil much :lol

As far as older Rider shows go, the DVD fifth anniversary rips by TVN are fantastic.

I'm not touching Faiz till I watch Blade...which I'll watch when I finish Kuuga...eventually.

From the four or so episodes of Faiz I watched in the past, I liked it a lot better. It doesn't feel nearly as cheap as Blade.

Was 555 even shot in an HD format? Or are they upres-ing an SD source to an HD frame size?

If they're doing an upres, the DVD quality probably isn't that much lower than the Blu-Ray.

Hmm... If only someone had the first season ripped, we could see.

W 38.

So what was the point of that Hopper chick? She came out of nowhere, was seemingly important, but then immediately died. Honestly so much happened in this episode, I feared I may have passed out and actually watched several episodes.

Plus man that Hopper suit looks shit, is it possible that Faiz could have had a bigger budget than this show, despite its age? Because the Orpenoch's definitely look better than the Dopants. Even good Dopant designs are profoundly tacky and cheap looking.

Also, don't get me wrong. Trial is cool as hell, love that classic rider hand flick thing he does before he starts fighting. And as the form was introduced just as the show is starting to run out of track, I'm happy for them to squeeze as much out of it as they can. You gotta question the logistics of him chucking away his sword and Accel Memory every time he transforms though, let's hope he ain't near any drains!

And Hopper VS Trial was one match I was happy to follow every round. Was totally not expecting Mick to kill her. Even if it's kinda crap that the power scale has caught up to Trial after only one episode.

Okay with that out of the way, time for the real plot of the episode. So much happened in last five minutes. Holy shit Phillip is Ryubei's son? It's the Mortal Instruments all over again, ah! Was really awesome to have Clay Doll transform right in public like she did though, even if I'm not happy after everything she just turned evil out of nowhere.

Really glad to see Fang get another Ride, I dunno, this feels like a truer upgrade for W than Xtreme is. I'd be happy if they never had Xtreme and just bumped up the power of Fang, maybe having the Maximum Drive having them go berserk for ten seconds like a sort of power version of Trial's Maximum Drive.

They aren't upscaled, as they aren't HD releases. They are just DVD releases, but especially on older shows, the quality jump between TV rips and DVD rips is exponential.

She's an assassin from Foundation X/Museum. She was sent to kill that scientist guy running about the whole episode.

That's good to know. Maybe 555 will be my next stop after Ryuki.

But I guess I should have been clearer. I was referring to the Japanese Blu-Ray release. I can't imagine 555 was shot in HD (it was Japan in 2003 after all), so I can't imagine there's much of a difference in pix quality between the Blu-Ray and DVD.

I gathered as much, but it was just such a bizarrely pointless arc. The scientist only existed for a single reveal, so I dunno why he lasted two episodes. And the assassin came from nowhere and was dead by the next one.

I was thinking something similar. Going back and watching some of the Heisei shows, it often seems like they had higher quality monster costumes than the Neo-Heisei stuff. A lot of them had (limited, granted) functional features like eyes and mouths and they seem to have had fewer details that were simply painted on. It's almost as if as the Riders got more complex, the monsters of the week got less so. To be fair, I'm basing this on my the few series I've completed so far.

As for my watching, I just finished Agito 39 and I still think it's a pretty entertaining series. It does tend to drag things out a bit from time to time, but it's well worth a watch. Also, Ozawa continues to grow in my affections. She's crazy awesome.

Edit: I forgot to add that Hojo is still a total tool.