Kamen Rider Gaim 36 "The Brothers' Showdown! Zangetsu vs Zangetsu Shin!" Discussion
 

I hope Takatora wins.

I bet you the twist is that Takatora gets killed.

The twist is that Takatora wins, but was actually Michhy all along.

MELON BATTLE!

I want Takatora to jam his Musou Saber straight through his baby brother's sweater-wearing neck.

It will please me.

Micchy is really in the OG Zangetsu suit?

*BRAIN EXPLODES*

i hope everyone that has the sengoku driver/melon lockseed/musou saber ready for this episode to kick micchi's ass.

Oh I am totally ready.

http://www.tokunation.com/attachment...1&d=1404515445

After last week's episode preview I shipped out my Figuarts Zangetsu from HLJ, with any luck it should arrive tomorrow but more likely Monday.

I think Zangetsu could win, but Zangetsu is much more probable.

Diabolical.

My money is on Takatora. He's injured, probably exhausted, and likely malnourished. But he's fighting Micchy and Micchy is shit.

Pretty confident that Takatora will win. Here's my thinking as to why (aside from the fact he's a badass).

Takatora and Micchy have had complete polar opposite story lines.

Micchy started the series as the friend behind your best friend - note quite your right hand man but not someone you forget about. He struggled for attention, struggled to do what he wanted versus what his brother (and his family supposedly) wanted him to do. He took on his powers to protect Mai, but he was weak compared to the others. He could handle Gridon, but all the others were too much. He had to find his strength elsewhere - through deception and manipulation. After he realized that his brother was the White Armored Rider, he became more daring. He's eventually discovered and welcomed in by his brother with open arms - something he used to connect himself to the other major player - Ryouma.

Realizing that he had the power to control the others through manipulation, he decided the only wildcard was Kouta - he never did what was logical, only reacted to his emotional instincts. So his grand plan was to remove Kouta from the equation using his blind loyalty - so Micchy told him to stay away from Yggdrasill. Kouta obviously didn't listen, and the more he learned the more he wanted to defeat them. Micchy couldn't keep up.

Once he discovered that Ryouma was against his brother, he decided to weasel his way in to that piece of the pie. And when his brother was hanging on the cliff, Micchy realized that with his brother out of the way he could finally seize control of everything, and thus he let him fall.

Taking on the Zangetsu Shin suit was his outward transformation from good to evil, even though we've seen him changing the entire series. The suit change was finally the nail in the coffin - he had thrown away everything he was when he was Ryugen and taken his brother's blindness and "this is the only way" approach, and with his own dark ruthlessness inside of him, decided he would do what his brother could not - save those he deemed worthy of saving and be the ruler of humanity.

Takatora, on the other hand, started the series as a man running the operation that would kill off 6/7ths of the population of the world. This was the only way and Kouta and the others were simply distractions that needed to be removed. However, Kouta's endearing spirit was always befuddling to him - how could someone with so little knowledge have so much heart? What was his dog in the fight, so to speak?

His transformation from Zangetsu to Zangetsu Shin was his outward change of "strong protector/fighter" to "evil ruler". His characterization was totally changed to appear even more evil than before. But after witnessing the Overlords and seeing Kouta, he discovered that his plans didn't have to be the way they were planned - humanity didn't have to be sacrificed to the brink of extinction to survive. So he decided to openly join Kouta. And when he did, he was betrayed by his servants (the Energy Riders). And thus, he lost the Zangetsu Shin suit (to his brother, who had now taken his very role).

Now here we are - Takatora realizes that the Overlords must be stopped in order to save the world. He knows that he has to fight. And now he realizes his brother's immaturity and misguidance have led him down the same path he was already one - mutually assured destruction for mankind. Now, he will take on the Zangetsu suit once again, this time the "Heavenly Warrior" call-out will live up to its name, and Takatora will finally destroy the evil he once represented by destroying the Genesis Driver, eliminating Zangetsu Shin once and for all.

Has it been confirmed that Shin Zangetsu's Genesis driver is gonna get destroyed?

You'd think we would have seen pictures of a Zangetsu Jinba by now.

awesome :thumb:
is the waist strap on the driver? are you planning on wearing it?

that's just a rumor from what i heard, there was another saying that his lockseed will just get taken away without the driver getting destroyed.

if the first rumor is true, more likely we'll probably see scans of it at the end of july since most of the next months scans show spoilers a week before the episode starts.

:lol

The episode just finished streaming. Ahem, UUROOBUUUCCHHHIIIIIII

You leave it at that, and next week is the tie-in episode for the movie?! God. Dammit.

Damn son...this episode.

Well...that didn't go quite as I was expecting. The timing of next week's episode really couldn't be worse.

You win :lol

Zangetsu looks healthier and tastier than Zangetsu Shin. :lol


Can't wait to see this subbed. From the sounds of it, the battle was intense.

So......that happened

I think the best way to describe what this episode did is to compare it to Jurassic Park 3. We see the T-rex again and it's like "aww yeah the biggest badass around is finally showing up" and then we see the T-rex fight with the spinosaur. And then the T-rex loses..and the audience is left wondering why their essential hero of the whole movie just got killed off by some wimp nobody really likes..

Takatora is the freaking T-rex of Gaim.

I fucking told you all!

You know what's worse than the ending of this episode, having the stream freeze and crash and then start back up again right at the point the river decided to quench it's hunger.

But goddamn when was the last time we've had a rider's helmet break?

I... don't even know what to think. My heartbeat is still completely out of control, I can't even decide if I should cry or not. It was sorta disturbing though. Wow, Urobuchi did it again...

Kabuto, I think. My memory is blurry and possibly clouded by what the hell happened in this episode.

Can I just spare a moment for how I appeciate you all in that we can share in our despair? You know these tie in episodes are pretty much golf breaks and they know it.

It should be Blade when Kamen Rider Garrens helmet broke

I thought it was in Blade, when Garren's helmet broke... When did it happen in Kabuto?

You know "shit just got REAL bitch" when a Rider or Senshi's helmet breaks.

And whoo boy, did shit get real this week...

Someone PM me a link for the raw whenever it goes online, I missed the livestream and I really need to see what happened this episode...

I thought Gattack's helmet broke for some reason, so I just re-watched the final episode and I was wrong. :o

Shit didnt just get real...shit got self-aware.

Don't you people dare tell me Takatora lost. :(

Man oh man, after all the hype and build up I really didn't see Takatora getting his ass kicked coming :(

It was an enjoyable episode, if bitter sweet.

Also, the glowing scar on Kaito's arm. Ow, my riderheart.

Hmmmm...

My interest in this show has slowly been dipping. Before last week I was ready to quit, but last week was decent enough, and this week had good...

But they shouldn't have pulled the mini-apocalypse card if they weren't goign to do it right. At this point, nobody should be resting. Nobody should be standing around. The word has fallen apart, and yet life continues on like the worst problems are a bad day at school. Mai is well and truely a useless load at this point. All the secondary characters have plummetted in significance. Kaito I swear gets more and more painful just to watch. He's an actor clearly comfortable playing a certain character, and while it's not obvious what it is, it's clearly not the one he's being told to play.

The fight between Zangetsu's was going really well until that ham-fisted, bullshit flashback before Takatora's final strike. If this show is going to be so smart, it shouldn't treat us like we're that dumb. It's that pandering, juvinile method of storytelling that demands we get a flashback to events we've never seen just to remind us of the painfully obvious. We didn't need a cut to Takatora's past, we didn't even need to cut to his face. They're brothers, we get it. That alone means any pulled punches are obvious.

Seeing the helmet shatter was... odd. And crap. It wasn't a real busted helmet, just effects, which sucks. I've been chopping at the bit for unhelmeted/broken helmet scenes, and this is what we get? A brief, terribly done glimpse with Takatora doing a silly face? He should've been, like, standing on the edge of the pier, helmet half-broken for real, with a subtle expression for a moment before he falls backwards.

It feels like for a show that's pace was utterly breakneck for so long, it's fallen back to typical Kamen Rider "only one thing of real significance happens an episode" and it's given me whiplash. It's still not bad, but it's so much less than what it was.

Dissapointed. Massively let down.