[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

And now we have Kohana. This really shouldn't work nearly as well as it does, but replacing Shiratori with a child actually turned out surprisingly well. It helps that they got a good actress to play her, but honestly the show does a good job of justifying it as part of the time travel nonsense that forms its backbone. Kohana definitely brings a new dynamic to the show, but it feels less disruptive than it could have.

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

I’m in the camp that prefers the new Hana to the old one. A grown woman doing that stuff was so-so. A child doing it is hilarious (especially since the Den-O novel has Hana getting drunk).

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Same here. Matsumoto is sometimes compared unfavorably to Shiratori, but not as egregiously as the comparison between Mizoguchi and Sato. Kohana is still pretty popular on her own merit even though the actress is unfortunately retired last I heard. Honestly, I couldn't imagine Den-O without Kohana, considering how she appeared in a lot of the post-series content. Matsumoto is also the youngest actress to play the female lead. Unlike the actors of Kato Yakumo and Jin Masato who have identical kanji in their surnames, the second kanji in her surname is 元 which is different. Yay for different kanji readings!

Yeah, Kohana's pretty great! In much the same way Deneb has an echo of Jiiya from Kabuto, Kohana visually and dynamically feels like Kobayashi looking at the stuff Inoue got to do with Gon on Kabuto and saying Yes Yes That That. Replacing a part of the Kamen Rider formula with A Cute Kid is just a fun idea, and Kohana seems to be filling the bodyguard/muscle part of the group in a similar way to Gon's role as the brains of the group. Kohana rescuing Ryotaro from a couple of unreasonable motorists by egging them is as fantastic an introduction as anyone's gotten on this show.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Something else that is good about Kohana, as Die already mentioned, is her relevance to the dragging Zeronos memory subplot, which makes it just a little less boring to watch by actually showing a tangible and interesting consequence that isn't just Airi conveniently losing her memory due to weird time travel logic. Sakurai/Airi is an already established ship, but Yuto/Airi isn't, which makes it hard to get invested in the subplot, so throwing another character in to that in such a surprise plot twist is a good way to reroute the train on to a different more scenic rail, figuratively speaking.

The big thing the Hana/Kohana change adds to all of the Yuuto stuff is a sense of problem-solving, a switch from I Wish This Wasn't Happening to Maybe We Should Fix This. It's a positive change! The peril in all of the previous Yuuto and Hana stuff was so ill-defined as to make me think I had merely dreamt it. Hana's timeline is gone, but maybe not? And the ZeroLiner is part of that? And maybe Sakurai? And also Yuuto is wrapped up in it? Now we've got a clear dilemma with appreciable stakes occurring at a time where folks are motivated to put its investigation front and center. There's a vitality to what's going on now with Yuuto and Kohana that I really appreciate. Instead of making me sit through a bunch of handwaving about timelines and the mysteries thereof, we've got a clear problem that deserves our attention. It's way more fun to watch!