[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The show certainly bounced gracefully back from the prior two-parter.

It really did! I think the thing I was happiest with from this episode is the way it delineated Monster problems from Human problems. I usually like it better when they're all the same thing, but I appreciated this episode making it clear that Sword Form and Rod Form are useful in defeating an Imagin, but Ryotaro and Airi are useful in helping Yuumi and Tomoya. It would feel gross if the show tried to say that Kamen Rider Den-O could use a magical train to go back in time to save a relationship. Like, these two didn't get tricked by a monster! They screwed up their wedding by their own selves! It needed to be something where Airi could help Tomoya calm down enough to see where his temper gets him into trouble. It needed to be something where Ryotaro could argue for the necessity of living with your mistakes instead of wishing them away. Like... such a huge rebound of a story!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This is also maybe the first of quite a few episodes to have super slick wordplay in the title that inevitably gets lost in translation, with both the words for "sad" (哀) and "lovely" (愛) being pronounced "ai", furthering the sort of... symmetry, I guess, of the two halves of it? I'm not sure I'll be able to explain that many of these in a way that's either informative or interesting, but as I mentioned earlier, I love me some Den-O episode titles, so I might try and point out details like this as you go along. I mean, apparently I do have a thing for linguistic analysis, after all.

Very cool! Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I gush about Ishida specifically so much because I've come to have a deep admiration for the raw emphasis on mood he has. If I were telling any kind of story visually, I would absolutely be taking inspiration from that, consciously or otherwise.

This whole post could've also been me pulling out incredibly smart things he did in this episode, and no mistake. There's a lot of this episode that's about exhaling, almost, from all of last episode's screaming and shouting. Takes get a little longer, the music drops out when Tomoya slowly sips his coffee so we just focus on his face, the back-and-forth shots of Tomoya and Airi smiling at each other... this one's just as much of a feast for the eyes!

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Originally Posted by Sunred

Kintaros is based off the Japanese folktale Kintaro. Kintaro is in general a VERY strong child, almost a hybrid of Hercules and Paul Bunyan. His notable iconography is the red bib with the kanji 金 written on it. He was known to be raised by a yokai, kick oni ass, wrestle wild bears, befriend animals, and carries an axe. Axe Form's notable reference to Kintaro is his den-kamen(face mask of the Den-O forms) resembling the 金 kanji, which primarily means gold(can also mean metal or money depending on context), and an axe. Keep in mind however his imagin form is not Ryotaro's but Honjo's creation, and his name was given after he was conceptualizes by Honjo. Kintaros's color scheme is semi-gloss black and candy gold with his visor being champagne gold.

I think this is for the next set of episodes?