[Sh Ranger]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Yeah, Takumi's introversion is probably always going to make things difficult with Mari's bullheadedness (which worked great on Kaido) and Keitaro's clinginess (which worked great on Yuka). The fact that these three are still friends after eighteen episodes is maybe the most heroic thing of all!

Especially with Kusaka trying his best to make everybody hate Takumi. You're right that Mari's and Keitarou's methods have proven effective before, but only with people who are receptive to those methods. Square peg, round hole.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Also, "dilemmata"? Nice work! That is definitely a new word I learned today. Thought it was a typo at first, but, nope, plural of dilemma. Kudos!

Thanks! I like words. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a list of ata suffix plurals:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categ...ending_in_"-a"

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It's really growing on me. I mean, I liked it to start, but now I'm really liking it. Except, since Switchblade and Akiba Silver got me thinking more about Gaim, I can't get Just Live More out of my head.

Damn, I don't even like Just Live More and yet the chorus gets stuck in my head if I think about Gaim too much. When that happens, I usually just recall Be The One (Be The One! Alright!) until that song gets stuck instead.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

So, not sure if you mean him becoming an Orphnoch, or him turning into an Orphnoch for the first time, so I'll take a run at both.

For him becoming an Orphnoch, there's a gap in time between when Merderman attacks Morishita's car, and when Yuuji, Takumi, and Keitaro find him. I assume that Morishita's heart was burned up just before Yuuji found him.

For him turning into an Orphnoch, it's the same emotional stress that triggered Yuuji and Yuka's transformations.

Yeah, it's implied that Yoshimasa's heart was destroyed/mutated which makes him the same type as Kaido. This type is more common than Original and likely applies to most MOTWs, although not Flyingfish.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--4--

The return of Fungus The Clown makes a little less sense, if I’m being honest. It’s a part of this story that never really connects, thematically or plot-wise. He’s just a monster clown who scares a little girl, but he’s not really relevant to the story.

For Keiko, it's not like this monster is some nemesis who's responsible for her mom's accident or anything. Her problems aren't even Orphnoch adjacent! (I mean, there's almost definitely some Smart Brain stuff at play, but it's incidental at this point in her story.) She's a girl who's had a tough go of it, and it's all about reaching her emotionally. Having an Orphnoch show up moves the spotlight off of Keiko, the character who this whole story centers on.

The Orphnoch ends up being a thing that makes Keitaro scared, and Keitaro then has to overcome that fear to protect Keiko. But, like, this story isn’t about Keitaro being scared, it’s about Keitaro trying to help a little girl feel better about her tragic existence, as well as maybe trying to fix that tragic existence. Like, Keiko wasn’t mad at him because an Orphnoch attacked and he didn’t fight it, she’s mad because he blew up at her and told her to go away. Him fighting an Orphnoch is a) not smart, and b) not what she was upset about.

Even for Keitaro’s arc, again, he wasn’t beating himself up about being a coward for the first part of this story, so having him physically protect Keiko doesn’t really solve his story. His story resolution is about reaffirming his desire to improve Keiko’s life, and he does that by being Keitaro, which is to say by doing a ton of laundry. Having that clown keep showing up, it feels perfunctory, irrelevant, a distraction. There’s a story they’re telling about someone protecting people’s smiles, and then a random monster shows up randomly. It’s my least favorite way of using a monster in a Kamen Rider story, and it’s structurally the only real problem this episode has.

I think this is a good arc for Keitarou, even if his hesitance to fight is secondary to Keiko's story. This guy was originally planning to fight the Orphenochs as Faiz before he found out he couldn't so it makes sense that he would want to overcome this challenge and be more heroic as a human. Keitarou seldom gets as much focus as the other characters and that's why I like that this arc gives him as much focus as possible and while it's not immediately important, that development is going to stick with him as the show progresses. The part where Keitarou snaps at Keiko is also important. He feels bad about it but it shows that while Keitarou can be a pushover, even he has a limit.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--555--

The fight against Fungus The Clown isn’t even the memorable fight from the episode! Faiz’s fight against Horsepower was pretty great (with Horsepower going to Four-Legged Drive mode), but the final Faiz Fight against Mr. J had one of the coolest finishes this show has had yet.

Mr. J shows up after Fungus has been destroyed, and it goes back and forth for a minute. Faiz goes for his kick finisher, but Mr. J blocks it. But then Faiz boosts off of Mr. J’s block, puts on his duster in mid-air, and then brings it down with an Exceed Charge to finish off Mr. J.

Holy shit. It was so impressive, and it’s the kind of thing I love to see a show do. It’s fairly typically for a tough enemy to be finished off with the hero just, like, trying harder, and that’s fine. Or maybe an ally helps out, and that’s usually neat. But when the hero has to fight smarter, when they have to combine the tools they’ve already got to beat someone that’s previously had their number (I mean, both of Mr. J’s other defeats are at Kaixa’s hands), it’s my favorite thing to see in a Kamen Rider fight.

So, yeah, great fight for a surprisingly sweet episode!

I remember you saying that Faiz Shot was boring compared to Faiz Pointer and usually I'd agree, but yeah, the Faiz Pointer Shot Combo Smash Impact Finisher is a very memorable Faiz moment. It's like Pointer is the main course and Shot is the dessert and it wouldn't have been right to finish a tank like Mr. J with anything less. I love how adaptable Rider Gears are, how all it takes to jump from one finisher to the next is to move the Mission Memory to another device and press a button.

It's a shame Mr. J had to die since his interaction with Keiko showed he still had some good in him, which confirms what Takumi was thinking about Orphenochs in the previous arc. He just wanted to provide a good life for Chaco and he was forced in to his position by Murakami's threats. At least his death was honorable and Chaco got a new home. It's the worst part of being a Kamen Rider that Takumi understands now, having to kill potentially good people to stop them from killing other people.