[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I mean, first of all, Fish Sandwich finished his Kuuga rewatch, and holy shit. If you’ve suddenly got some free time because of the Zero-One hiatus, or, uh, the world, I would queue up the recently re-subbed Kuuga on TokuSHOUTsu and use Fish’s thread as a guide to one of the most celebrated Kamen Rider series.

Fish thread is very elaborate, that's no given, but I don't know if I can use his yet to give people proper infos about Kuuga, like I did with AkinoAme's for Ryuki and OOO in Dreamwidth. The only current "flaws" IMO there was that no easy navigations to the episodes, and probably no each character's bios yet. and I do want to collect every "better wiki substitute" about each Rider series and collectively share them to people, this is practically one of my current goal regarding Kamen Rider.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The big lure for this episode is more Kusaka, and it’s got a nice sense of tension to it. Kusaka’s quickly winning over the rest of Team Faiz, getting invited to live with them due to Keitaro’s fan tendencies and Mari’s rarely stated but common-sense policy of Yes The Tall Handsome Athlete Who Carries Around A Photo Of Me Can Stay The Night. Takumi, however, upgrades his irrational hatred of Kusaka to very rational distrust.

Uh... for Mari's part, "Yes The Tall Handsome Athlete Who Carries Around A Photo Of Me", did you miss the part where they're childhood friends, as Keitaro pointed out to Takumi? Kusaka's naturally going to be the person Mari confides the most, if she's okay being with strangers like Takumi and Keitaro, she would be more accepting to the long lost close person. And surely for now, it seems that Kusaka is the one Mari has no single hostility towards. Though Keitaro has a fan tendencies, he seems to have a limit for it that he didn't accept Kaido becoming Faiz before, but not for Kusaka. Or that he wants Takumi to become Faiz no matter what.

His infamy truly isn't known yet here, both to audience AND the people in-universe I guess. Oh, except for Kusaka being sardonic to Takumi, but yeah Takumi's the one who started it here. Oh wel, right now you did agree more on Takumi's hostility to him that Kusaka's suspicious, which would indicate you also feel the same for him, even if he's presented like you said, as exaggeratingly alturistic and heroic. Your observation for Takumi before has come true too here, where Takumi said in the car that he can't do anything, or at least compared to Kusaka. Keitaro wanted to console him with his good traits but... ah well we didn't really get to hear it. It may help some insecure viewers too!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Although, Team Orphnoch isn’t doing so hot this week, either. Kaido’s committing himself as a lover, not a fighter, while Houjou takes aim at all disobedient Orphnochs with the deadliest weapon of them all: poetry!

I know he's played by Houjou but... his name's already mentioned in this episode! Pun intended - It's(uro) Takuma, aka Centipede Orphnoch. Also, wtf, the book Takuma uses is an effective shield, how can it tank attacks from a superhuman monsters?! And yeah Yuka did kill some humans, bad ones... but why Takuma still attacked Yuji? He also killed bad humans too. So the conclusion from Yuka is, you CAN safely be a superhero as an Orphnoch, if you stop evil humans by killing them. Yuji's next line to Yuka, I mean, Yuka's not to different from Yuji anyway, she only punishes bad people with her power and also wants to use her powers for good.

Speaking of Orphnochs, I should be more patient I think, Mr. J's revival iprocess is shown here. And Mr. J's ability (forming swords) and finishing attack is now shown in this episode. And the power Orphnochs can use in human form, are they independent to their monster forms? They can fire blue energy balls as humans, but they should probably be effective too for long ranged attacks as Orphnochs. The Kaido/Mari scene... Kaido just fell into a simple bluff, aka doing what daily drivers/riders (not Kamen Rider! but those who rides a motorcycle) do in streets, going forward when the traffic light is green. It's like teaching a new driver/rider about traffic lights!