Give a Primary Rider a different Secondary Rider for a story
 

It's a little weird, not to be watching any Kamen Rider right this minute. (Unless the third season of The Crown counts as a Rider show? Most of the main characters do form change heading into the new season. They've got upgraded power levels, which is cool, but I'm a little ambivalent about how many lines they've added to the previously-clean designs. I'll see how it goes!) But, while I'm not watching Kamen Rider, I am thinking about Kamen Rider.

I was thinking, specifically, about primary and secondary Riders. I really enjoy it when the secondary Riders reflect and comment on the main Rider, the ways they feel like a conversation about the themes of the main Rider. Like, Ex-Aid. Emu is an empathetic man who tries to incorporate his competitive skills to be a better doctor. So, every other Rider character in the show has to comment on that. Brave has the better medical skills, but lacks the empathy. Snipe has the skills and the innate empathy, but lacks the support to harness them. Para-DX is all of the competitive skill with none of the empathy. And so on. When everything can work together, stretching out from the core like spokes in a wheel, the show can be something truly special.

So, of course, my instinct is to screw around with that.

Can we do a little thought experiment? Is that cool?

What if we took a primary Rider, a Wizard or OOO or Build, and paired them with a different secondary Rider for a story? What would be a fun combo? What story could you tell with them working together?

For the purposes of this experiment, nothing's off the table. Any title-character Rider, paired with any secondary Rider. I'll even allow any secondary Rider-ish character to be an option, i.e. But Who Gets Stuck With Ankh.

I'm super curious what weird combos people can come up with, and what funny/poignant/awesome stories might come from those combos. Thanks for thinking about this with me!

Fourze and Kaixa simply put these two as charcters together are like oil and water.

Gentaro is a optimistic, stubborn man who believes in friendship. But he can also see if people are being genuine. His attitude is why he made so many friends it led to him being friends with everyone.

Kusaka is the complete opposite he's a scheming, manipultive sociopath who would murder puppies if it would benfit him. In the show he would attempt to physcially and mentally harm Takumi, muder a child, is a racist and attempt some less than acceptiple things towards Mari. And in a later crossover attempt make a depressed Takumi to just give up since ,"he someone who has nothing to live for"

So Gentaro and Kusaka can't get along which leads to two types of story either Gentaro actually able to reform the guy by seeing past his nice persona and see just how messed up a person and geninuinly trying to help him. Or Kusaka ends up how he did in his own show with nothing Gentaro does changing him because if time travel can't change Kusaka what will? Giving us a bleak outlook that sometimes even with your best effort some people simply don't want help or your help can't change anything.

What a fantastic idea. I'm a sucker for thematic matches, so the following come to mind:

Drive and Accel. Granted, they kind of did this themselves already in "Kamen Rider Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Chaser", but it's too good of a combo to not feature in a dedicated story. I'm imagining Roidmudes getting their hands on Gaia Memories forcing both jurisdictions to work together, which of course isn't going as smoothly as one would hope. We already kind of have an understanding of how these characters would interact because of the official crossover so I don't really need to explain it further.

Ex-Aid and Birth. Mostly because Ex-Aid had all kind of doctors, but none of them are like Akira Date: A doctor who works in crisis hotspots and tries to make the world a better place in the direst of places. Seeing him work off of the cast and interact with Emu, Hiiro and Taiga would be interesting. Honestly I don’t have a particularly good idea how it would happen, knowing Date he might just pass through town when a particularly nasty Bugster infection takes place and he offers his help. For cash money, of course.

Kiva and Specter. Ghost is icky and I don't like it, but giving Kiva another "supernatural" Rider to work with could be fun. And I prefer this combination over something from Wizard simply because the characters wouldn’t mix as well. Wataru on the other hand would clash so well with Makoto. Wataru is soft, undecided and often lost in the world, Makoto sternly moves forward with a single goal in mind. They would annoy each other to no end and I'm there for it. Plus, it would all be worth it once the vampire and the ghost kick some Fangire-butt together. As an enemy I imagine a special Nightmarish Fangire who can travel between worlds and has knowledge of the Gamma plane of existence.

And now for something completely random which I came up with just because:

Build and Baron. Simply because Sento's ideals of "Love and peace" and Kaito's "Power through transcending compassion" would make them bitter enemies. It's not much of a team-up but rather a confrontation so their story would actually be more about convincing the other than anything else. Also, Banana & Knight Fullbottles for more crazy combos.

Drive with Zolda.

Shinnosuke's had to deal with a lot of heck from the more corrupt areas of the police department during his run, along with a bunch of other external threats. But what about going up against someone using the law itself? The concept of an idealistic, heroic policeman going up against a corrupt self-serving lawyer - both of them in silly superhero suits fighting monsters - sells itself.

Hell, a LOT of the Ryuki riders could be interesting for Shinnosuke to deal with. Scissors is a corrupt policeman; Ouja is a literal convicted serial killer; Gai is a rich kid who gets away with whatever he wants; Knight himself could be interesting from an investigative angle -- who's this mysterious standoffish dude with a ton of money and a rider belt?
Besides, I'm sure Shinji would appreciate having one nice person around who doesn't die.


Going back to Zolda for a hot second, actually; wouldn't such a lawyer with a terminal illness also be someone interesting for the main Ex-Aid riders to contend with; even if just for a one-off episode sort of thing?



... for someone who didn't find Ryuki that good, I sure do find a lot of potential in its characters; huh?

I haven't done Ryuki or Faiz yet (soon!), so I can't comment on those except to say how awesome they sound. But Ex-Aid and OOO? Hell YES.

I had not even considered that Akira Date, one of the best secondary Riders of all time and not just because he wore a Bears t-shirt once, he's a doctor just like the Ex-Aid cast. Perfect! And he's (partially) in it for the money, completely different from the other four Riders' motivations. I love it!

I can see him working as a Medical Mercenary, helping out some rich guy who's come down with a Bugster infection, putting him at slight cross purposes with the CR team. It'd be a fun way, through a children's superhero action program, to explore the difficulty of balancing the altruism inherent in the Hippocratic oath (Emu) with the financial realities of life in a capitalistic society (Akira).

Kusaka and Date + anyone. Because really, no one would be able to bear them and seeing them die various alternate ways would be great.

Or heck, pair them with eachother. They'd make great friends, I'm sure. (slight hyperbole on that but still, hate 'em both).

For a for real answer, Hikawa from Agito and Goto from OOO trading place would be rather interesting, considering they share alot of similar motifs, yet had to deal with rather different situations.

I'm gonna pair my boy Ryotaro with the ultimate musclehead, Banjo Ryuga. Why, you may ask? Well, Ryotaro is similar to Sento, but on a far more chilled, and far less lucky level. He fights for love and peace, sure, but with none of the genius, and far more quiet empathy. And, compared to any of the other Riders except maybe Shinji, he's not much of a fighter, effectively retiring at the end of the series (until, ya know, the abomination that is Climax Deka). Banjo meanwhile, also means well, but is much more of a fighter, far more brash and with his empathy buried just under the surface. Plus, he's very different from Yuuto, in that he isn't outwardly antagonistic, he's just very boisterous. Both Rders fight for Love and Peace, but in such different ways, idk, I just think it would be interesting (Plus no-one had done Den-O yet)

Also, let's face it; Banjou butting heads with Momotaros is too good an idea to pass up

I'd do Drive with Vulcan. Because if you look at it, Fuwa has a lot in common with Shinnosuke: Both of them were traumatized by an event that marked the start of a robot attack, and now both of them mercilessly destroy those robots, with no intention of helping them live in peace with humanity (unlike Aruto). But their attitudes towards it are completely different. Shinnosuke has no hatred of Roidmudes and only regretfully fights them because he's left with no choice. Fuwa, on the other hand, hates Humagears and doesn't believe they could ever live in peace with humans. In many ways, I think Fuwa is what Shinnosuke would've become if he'd let the Global Freeze consume him with rage and hate, and it's cool to have characters who come from similar backstories but grew from them in very different ways.

On a less serious note, Fourze and Cross-Z. Just to see Gentaro and Banjou being hot-blooded bros together.

If you kept their ages from their respective series (instead of aging Banjou down to a high schooler to fit in Fourze's story), it could even be neat to see Cross-Z taking a kind of big brotherly mentor role to Fourze. I don't know if there's been a KR season where the second rider was a mentor to the main rider before.

Tachibana (Garren) and Date (Birth) come the closest. Hell, Tachibana's backstory is exactly that; though it doesn't quite continue in the series itself.

Oh, man, no one took this one! Cool. Cool cool cool.

I thought about this for a minute, and I'm still not sure who I'd pick to reward/punish with Ankh's "assistance". I haven't watched nearly enough shows (so many of these responses are way over my head, but good on y'all for coming up with what sound like awesome pairings), so I don't have a lot of Primary Riders from which to choose. I circled around a few choices. I thought about Double, for the fun of having Two Dads try and wrangle Ankh, the cool and collected one getting just as nowhere as the half-boiled one. I thought about Ex-Aid, switching out Parado's puppy-like Let's Have Fun for Ankh's cat-like aloofness and general prickishness. Tough decision, for real.

So I went with Drive, which is the best/worst of both worlds, saddling the Chaotic Neutral Ankh with a Lawful Good dude like Shinnosuke. Drive's out there trying to save the city, constantly having to split his focus to monitor for whatever weird probably-illegal thing Ankh is up to. Meanwhile, Ankh is trying to get his medals back, thwarted constantly by Drive's weird insistence on "obeying" "rules" (those words definitely sound made up). Both of them frustrated by the other's worldview, but just maybe, they'd learn to see the value of each other's point of NAH COME ON they would never stop annoying one another Japan is doomed.

Honestly all those options sound like a lot of fun! Ankh is a really interesting character because he's not evil, but he is thoroughly and apologetically selfish. And that makes him a perfect foil to Eiji in particular, but I feel like he could work well with any main Rider (at least in phase 2 Heisei, I don't know about phase 1 since I haven't actually seen anything from Kuuga to Decade) since main Riders all tend to be very selfless.

I’d put Faiz with Baron. Tow emotionally withdrawn loners with differing views on the world. They’d probably have zero chemistry, which would add some hilarity to the whole thing

That's entirely correct, now I want to see it just to watch them get into a loop of calling eachother "stupid".

(Plus, you could have Gun Form and Cross-Z dragon match-up, as well as Kintaros and him training, even if it is different types of martial arts. It all works, I tell you!)

Man, everyone is coming up with all these great ideas with rich dramatic potential, and all I can think of is that you could pair Beast up with literally anyone and probably make a good comedy duo.

Is it okay if I ask another question instead? Because since Die just finished the only Heisei show without any secondary Riders, I feel like "who would you pair with Kuuga?" is a specific variation on the topic worth talking about.

I'd go with Beast. :p

Godai: "We need to keep the people smiling, so the Gurongi do not reduce us all to-"
Nitoh, squirting mayonnaise on a pizza then eating it: "Don't say it!"

The real comedy potential is Kabuto with Genm (He counts, right?). Imagine those god complexes crashing.

If I gotta pick anyone to go with Ankh, it has to be our lord and saviour DCD; Tsukasa Kadoya.

Most main riders would play out similarily to Eiji, if not getting sick of him a little quicker. But Tsukasa is just so... Tsukasa that it’d be a joy to watch

That sounds rather fun actually.

Honestly I would just give Agito's powers to Ichijo to see how that plays out.

It is totally okay! I was actually thinking about this, as well.

My simple answer is Accel, since he's basically "what if Ichijou was a Rider". And there's certainly funny ones like Beast, for all the reasons noted.

But I'm going to go with Lazer, and it's not just because Kiriya is maybe the best character in the Kamen Rider franchise. (Maybe it's from rewatching the Ex-Aid movies and Another Endings recently, but he kills in those. He's so great!) It's mostly that he's everything you'd need to help tell a story with Godai as the Primary Rider. He's got the investigative prowess of Ichijou, the scientific and analytical skills of Sakurako, and the medical expertise of Tsubaki, all wrapped up in one snarky package. Plus, he turns into a goddamn bike, so he can even replace BeatChaser2000 and Gouram!

His Secondary Rider credentials are unimpeachable, serving as a stellar foil to empathetic neophytes like Ex-Aid, walled-off assholes like Brave, grumpy martyrs like Snipe, and megalomaniacal lunatics like Genm. He's got sidekick chemistry with everybody.

For the kind of story you could tell with Lazer and Kuuga? I mean, I guess you've got a few. Kuuga as the veteran who acts like a rookie, Lazer as a young guy who sees all the angles. Kuuga teaching Lazer to trust in teammates while Lazer teaches Kuuga the value of keeping a few things close to the vest. Kuuga and Lazer, reminiscing about the times they got killed to become more powerful. A lot of storytelling possibilities with those two characters!

A second, smaller Kuuga.


Nah but for reals, basically any Rider that's part of the police force would work. G3, Accel, Birth, etc. Them or some weird alternate, Grongi version of Ankh.

I haven't seen Kuuga (I want to, just haven't yet), but from what I've heard about it, I think it could be interesting to have Baron as the second rider. With Kaito's ambition and belief that only the strongest survive, I see him being a human who somehow enters the Gurongi's game, only instead of attacking humans he aims to win by eliminating all the other contestants. This gives him a shared enemy with Yusuke but a completely different motivation, so they would fight together but have conflict between them.

Whoa, fascinating. I'd answer the "somehow" of "somehow enters the Grongi's game" with "dude sees any hierarchical structure, he is going to battle to be at the top of it". And, for me, I love the Secondary Riders who exist, like, parallel to the Primary Rider, having a shared enemy but a different goal. Birth is a fave for that reason, and I love how Team Ex-Aid is very much not a team for large stretches of that show. Plus, more Baron is always a plus. Killer concept!

I know, I know, very old thread; but I'm revisiting it because a specific combo came to mind today: I'd love to see Eiji (OOO) with an 'angrily heroic' secondary rider like Fuwa (Vulcan).

Now, mind, I don't mean someone who's just angry like Baron; or has a lot of turmoil to work through like Knight or Brave. That's just hitting the same beats as Ankh: those are flaws to those characters that's preventing their better natures from showing.

No, instead what's special about Fuwa is that especially as of late; he is straight up a hero and a protagonist in every sense. He's fighting for justice, he's doing the right thing... and he's also super, super pissed. And rightfully so. He's had his life completely messed with by a corporation; had his friends and group ripped from him; and just in general there's a lot of shit going on! He has every reason to be angry, and frankly, good for him!

So I'd LOVE to see how that would play out with someone like Eiji; someone who has a very zen-like mentality and approaches everything calmly and without judgement and trying to see the best in even the most nefarious foes. There's value in both mentalities here - Eiji's trying to see the best in everyone; and Fuwa's justified rage and a sense of when a line's been crossed - and it'd just be super interesting to see these two different ideas of justice contrasted.

I don't know Vulcan, but that's a really compelling idea.

Having a character like Eiji try and shape another Rider's journey, to focus them... I'd be real into that story. Mostly because Eiji is more adaptive (why yes I did listen to a bunch of Anything Goes while I was packing stuff up for work today) and willing to play to the situation, and that type of character trying to harness Untethered Righteous Rage is... that is a pickle! It's a real pickle.

Also, I'm really into Eiji having a secondary Rider who wants him to use the purple medals more.

I'm not even about the idea of Eiji trying to shape Fuwa here: I'm into the idea of them shaping each other. That's what makes this so interesting: there's not actually anything wrong with Fuwa here like there is with Accel or Specter or whoever else. There was to begin with, but he's past all that, he's done with his development; and his anger is still there. And it's important that his anger is still there because rather than letting it control him or hold it back, in my view, he uses it for a just cause! So this would be more about the two balancing each other out, or learning to accept each other.

Oh! Okay, so it's more about that idea of Directing Rage, of someone's anger not being a negative emotion that needs to be stamped out, but a tool that can be used in healthy/productive ways. That sounds like a really fun story!

how does he feel about ice candies though is he super into them because uh that's a pretty key attribute for eiji's secondary rider like a total disqualification if he's anti-ice candies

I don't know about ice candies specifically, but there is -definitely- confirmation that he likes food!

Also it helps that he's animal themed, and like, gets bird powers later on. He's filling some niches!

Oh Eiji and Fuwa sounds really good!

Something I always found brilliant about OOO is that it doesn't take the position that desire is bad and people should have as little of it as possible. The Greeed are manifestations of desire running rampant, but Eiji and Dr. Maki are examples of the dangers of not having any desire. So instead of desire being a bad thing to get rid of or a good thing to have as much of as you can, it's all about having a healthy amount of it and expressing it in a productive way.

And what you said about Fuwa made me realize his arc is very similar about anger: Yes, too much of it is a problem, but the solution wasn't to get rid of all of his anger, it was to focus his rage on the evil that actually deserves it instead of letting it spill out against innocents.

And on top of that, Eiji and Fuwa are approaching their dangerous-but-still-needed emotions from opposite directions: Eiji doesn't have enough desire and needs to gain enough to sustain himself, while Fuwa has too much anger and needs to get it under control.

Heck, call it hatred instead of anger and it even makes a good thematic opposite to desire.

Drive and Accel. Best buddy cop show ever. :rock:
That and probably Hibiki and Beast. Basically Bear Grylls but with toku. :lolol

Exactly!! There's a wild amount of parallels here in something that more than likely was not intentional in the slightest, and when I started thinking about it I just couldn't get it out of my mind

But does it have a happy-go-lucky oni and a mayo-obsessed outdoors enthusiast though. :lolol