[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

A QUESTION

Gatack! Let’s talk about our slick new Rider. I mostly like the suit, especially how it’s way more drawn from Kabuto’s suit than the other Riders. Making it another kind of beetle is the easiest way to do that, with everything being a slight variation on Kabuto’s aesthetic. The chestpiece in particular is, like, Kabuto But Blue Now. It’s not a great look that we get this time, with the first Gatack fight being underground in the dark, but I did like most of what I saw. (Not crazy about the shoulder swords, but they’ll probably grow on me.) What do you think of the Gatack costume?

Sasword is still my favorite ZECT Rider suit but I like Gatack, he looks very cool and intimidating which is appropriate for the currently strongest Rider in the show.

He's also a blue Secondary Rider whose name is Kagami, which will later be repeated with Kagami Hiiro, who also had a joke father.

There's something else unique about the Gatack Zecter but I'll talk about that later when it becomes more relevant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Couple extra random things about this episode that I thought up while eating dinner.

The main one is that Kagami's arc in this one really feeds into the theme of Humility, and I didn't see it at first. He's a guy that wants to be exceptional, wants be helpful, and he just doesn't measure up to the Riders. He keeps failing because he's not them. His success comes from accepting his limitations, and owning his flaws. He's never going to be Tendou, but he can still be a great Kagami. In fact, being a great Kagami might even be just as good as being Tendou. (Not really, but let's let him have this one.)

The other thing is that, with Kagami as a Rider, it really spotlights how the show split the traditional Primary Rider character in two. Tendou is all the skill, all the coolness; Kagami is all of the empathy, all of the kindness. It's like someone took Kuuga's thing of Protecting Smiles, and gave Protecting to Tendou, and Smiles to Kagami. Tendou is someone who will fight to keep you safe, while Kagami is someone who'll fight to make you happy. Interesting to me how the show managed that.

I think that's a good compromize. I've heard a lot of people call Kagami the true protagonist but I don't think that's entirely fair on Tendo. It's just that the former expresses heroism though feelings and the latter expresses it through actions. Tendo feels as well but he doesn't need to express them, since he doesn't need to prove his heroism to people by talking like a hero, he knows he's a hero and he doesn't really care if anyone else understands him. If someone looks at the sun and says "are you the sun?", the sun doesn't need to answer, it doesn't need to prove itself. It's the sun and Tendo is a hero, whether people accept that or not.

Tendo could be considered a personification of destiny, manipulating people towards a desirable outcome. But this destiny is soft determinism and Kagami is an anomaly in his world who refuses to bend to his will. On a chessboard, it's easy to underestimate the pawns, they're the weakest. But when a pawn promotes to a queen, the paradigm changes. That's Kagami. I think the idea of someone so infallible finding a rival in someone so flawed is intriguing and the reason why this story is just as much about Tendo as it is about Kagami. Now Kagami can express his heroism through both feelings and actions as Kamen Rider Gatack, a hero who stays true to his principles even when it gets difficult which is a quality so far unique to both him and Tendo as every other Rider in the show is either a poser or just doesn't have any noble principles.