[Leo Novum]

You know, the one complaint about this show I have is that the lead, Tokiwa Sougo (Okuno So), lacks presence. He lacks Sento's charming deviousness, Emu's raw idealism, Shinnosuke's cool factor or Kouta's sheer determination. Even Takeru was more memorable than him although that was for the wrong reasons.

Why do I bring this up? Because a Rider show is only as strong as its lead and Tokiwa is not strong to begin with. Although it has only been three episodes so far so some leeway can be given.

However, everything else in the series is holding up so far and this episode is the best of three yet although some might be turned off by the reduced amount of tokusatsu action. The episode took the time to establish the reason how all of this came to be and gave the rest of the villains their motivation.

So overall, not a bad episode.