[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

I usually love Tendou when he's being a troll, but this episode just went overboard in a way that I found more annoying than amusing.

I have some thoughts on this! Just keep scrolling!

(But, yeah, he's way more controlling and manipulative in this story, which is not what you usually do with a heroic character. Tendou's got that Sherlock Holmes thing, where he's brilliant and reliable, but you wish he didn't have to be such a dick about it.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Anyway, the reason this episode is arguably important in later Rider media? While Not!Goro or as I know him, NotYet!Bando, only turns into TheBee in this episode, the RiderWiki considers him to have been in the suit in every later appearance of the suit after Kabuto, even though all of them are in situations where it could be ANYONE for different reasons

Oh, Wikis. Always trying to be definitive, when often flexibility is the right choice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Definitely plenty to talk about this time! I feel like I learned so much this episode.

I cannot thank you enough for those thoughts. 16 was one I felt like I didn't really get ahold of in the writing phase (had thoughts, didn't communicate them super great, sometimes we're all a little bit Hiyori), and your post was both funny and insightful, which reassured me that folks following this thread would be looked out for by someone. That bit about Goro metaphorically dunking on Kageyama... *chef's kiss*

Anyway, it was so good of a post that it reminded me of two things I wanted to talk about, and sort of forgot to when I was writing.

The first was something I was thinking about way back in the first Kabuto episode Inoue wrote. There's a scene where Misaki is asking Tendou to join ZECT, and all I could think was Oh God Misaki No You Do Not Want That. I thought, at the time, that if Tendou joined ZECT, he'd be running that place in a week. Well, he was running Shadow within a day, so maybe that timeline was too long? It's such a Tendou thing, the way all systems bend themselves to his will. It totally tracks that Tendou would be a high-ranking ZECT member basically midway through his initial interview.

The other thing was that all of that stuff with Kageyama getting humiliated... it's all a Tendou plan? And it might actually be two Tendou plans?

Any time Tendou does anything weird in a Kabuto plot, or anything that looks sloppy or like someone's getting over on him, I think of it like a heist movie. There's a giant plan, and the plan calls for these weird things or apparent failures to happen. So Kageyama's scheme, that's not an accident. It's something, I think, that Tendou designed.

He's going out of his way to tease and provoke Kageyama, and I think he knows that Kageyama will eventually try to get Daisuke to bump him off. (Kageyama's a schemer, and he hates getting his hands dirty. Better for his two rivals to take each other out.) So he maneuvers Kageyama into action by humiliating him, and then neutralizes it by acting ashamed and accommodating. (Inoue could not have hung a bigger flashing than having Tendou apologize to Daisuke!) But why provoke Kageyama? Why allow Daisuke to even briefly think Tendou was out to get him?

So, the short-term reason was revenge for Kagami. Forcing Kageyama to do Kagami's work, making Kageyama's punishment happen right in front of Kagami, that's not by accident! This is a gift from Tendou, to Kagami.

The longer-term reason is that it refocuses Daisuke's animosity away from the reasonable, accommodating Tendou, and onto the duplicitous, untrustworthy ZECT. (Which works great, considering how tight the Kabuto/ShootHopper teamwork is at the end of the episode.) I mean, that's why Tendou left, Daisuke! Those guys couldn't be trusted! Tendou's not your enemy!

So, yeah, real fan of how much of a puppet-master Tendou is in this one.