[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: So, while I can't say it's easy to like Tsukasa and/or even worth it (especially in these episodes!!!), I will push back on some of that.
Tsukasa's someone who never seems to take these worlds seriously. It's a bit Isekai, where Tsukasa thinks of this as A World Based On The TV Series "Kamen Rider Ryuki", so all of the peril is illusory, and all of the people are fake. He's not, like, invested in the narrative. Natsumi being held prisoner and tried by a dozen battling Kamen Riders isn't, like, The Night Of. Tsukasa can't pretend she's really going to get executed, because this world isn't real to him. He thinks it's funny for Natsumi to get charged with murder, and it sort of is? She clearly didn't do it, and this story is dumb, so why not tease her about it while also working to secure her freedom?

DREAMSWORD: Because someone he supposedly cares about's life is on the line, and unless I missed something, there's nothing to indicate that it's not?

Also I don't find "the plot is dumb" to really be defense here. And while yes, I agree that the plot IS stupid, when it comes to serious matters, you might maybe wanna show at least a little concern, maybe?

I also get that Tsukasa at the end outright admits that he's a sociopath, but not only does that do nothing to endear me to him, it also just highlights how inconsistent I feel the overall writing of this show is. For example, in the very first episode he outright agrees to take on the mission to kill the Kamen Riders, but come episode 2 he's all "Huh, what am I supposed to do in these different worlds!?"

No joke, my current interpretation of Tsukasa is that he has really bad short term memory loss, because even when he blatantly delivers the Moral of the Two Parter at the end of all of these, he seems to retain all of none of that information. That or maybe he's just saying things to try and look cool next to these other Riders? (Or maybe the writers are desperate to make more specifically Decade look cool?) It's not something my tastes in characters and their stories can really work with, ya know?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Yeah, it's... Tsukasa gleefully telling people that Natsumi is a murderer tells you so much about their relationship. She is constantly berating him for his (obvious, dangerous, troubling) personality defects, holding herself up as a model of decorum and empathy. So her getting thrown in jail? For murder? This is his moment! This is when he can get up on her high horse and act all shocked and disappointed in her moral shortcomings! He is going to make a meal out of her predicament!

I know that this part of the talk begins with Dickeido being recognized as unpleasant, but the next part of the talk kinda seems like minimizing Dickeido's behavior due to DreamSword calling him out on it (which is deserved), and actually these kind of people can face even greater scorn like being accused as not understanding the show/character properly (deemed as slow-witted or such for that), or just irrational hater (you can like while acknowledging their behavior as bad, albeit DreamSword admitted that they don't like the characters), etc. I'd approve with what DreamSword said there (...as well as directly criticizing irl stuff... like praying you to not become lawyer, dunno if all of that are also meant for joke, but no offense but you'd have no right defending Tsukasa if you'd use "what would I do" excuse, though I admit your reply to Enchilada645 softened this somewhat), and I hope that these moves won't be ridiculed due to it being a (sociopathic) comedy, particularly from the part of "landed in the world of a TV show" talk there. This'd make me kind of question about previously, you insisting to not create an unhelpful or inconsiderate joke in Den-O thread. Other than that, DreamSword seems to defend Onodera here, but he'd be the one that commonly gets disliked by people more AFAIK with nicknames like Yuuseless (another reverse view he has?). Though I also don't know about what makes the Natsumki complaint here of "sitting around" makes it a sarcasm for "true companions". For DreamSword talking about Tsukasa having memory loss, for consistency talk, like before probably I'd think of Tsukasa's a douchebag who has limits of that, when the world is on, but he'd not care further more from that, just about the people/world being saved, not about other problems (as he said, he can't feel the pain of others).

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

DREAMSWORD: Oh man, I feel like this is gonna be hard for me to convey properly, given what everyone else in the thread has said about the show so far.

Of the three two-parters that have happened so far, this was the one where I feel like I almost gave it a pass? But in the end, I still feel as though it fell short.

Like yeah, a big part of Ryuki was everyone's own sense of justice and how that forms their personal goals and beliefs, and how even the mere attempt at getting to know others can open up new worlds for you and expand your own viewpoints. Teamwork was infact a thing, yeah(just like almost every Toku ever), and how in the end you can never truly know someone's intentions.

So I THINK I get the general idea of this, which was to make all of that extremely literal. A literal justice system which is determined not by facts or the general populace's understandings of how things work, but rather placing lives literally in the hands of other people, where might makes right and the idea that the Rider who comes out on top MUST be correct because hey, "the truth always wins out in the end." I get all that, I really think I do.

But to me, Ryuki, and almost every show I watch in general, is about way more than just plot elements? The core of any story to me is its characters, and unfortunately, with the way the staff of Decade decided to handle the general "story" of the show, we don't get any of that here. So to me, my response to this entire thing was "This isn't Ryuki." Which I know someone is gonna immediately think "Well it's supposed to be different." And YES, I understand that, but I still think this could've all been handle alot better, though I feel if I do on for much longer this'll just spiral into a rant aimed at the show itself rather than these episodes specifically.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Weirdly, while I agree with you about it missing the feeling of Ryuki's aesthetics and performances, despite a dozen suits, I think the themes as portrayed through Tsukasa and Onodera were a solid, if abbreviated, take on Ryuki's messages. The idea of Tsukasa learning to trust in Onodera despite super not liking him or even understanding his worldview... that's pretty much Shinji and Ren? That's two guys who are not even slightly friends, who are also willing to go along with the other out of respect. It's separating out Friendship from Teamwork, and I thought that was something Ryuki was pretty unique at in toku.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

But, hey, let's talk about the Riders in this two-parter. As much as I wish we'd gotten personalities for everyone, I kind of liked the idea of becoming a Kamen Rider in this world as being like jury duty. It's not some huge part of your life, it's just something you get drafted into and have to care about for maybe a day or two. That's such a bizarre idea, and the show does almost nothing with it. (It's a little relevant to Abyss'ssss alibi, and Shinji's erroneous belief in Ren's guilt, but that's about it.) Do you feel like the show could've spent a little less time on dumb echoes of past storylines, and a little more time on their actually-clever world-building?

I thought that the law being judged by a Rider War to determine who gives the verdict, is a parodic take (probably even the reason it's not explored much) of a Rider War, as I'd think the system would obviously not work (there's only a newspaper claiming criticism for this system). Of course being a lawyer is something that is unrelated to power and fighting skills, and this determines a lawyer via unrelated things in those 2 by a Rider War. This is a blatant might-makes-right view. Though I do agree that I also want for this theme to be explored more, but if I want too, I'd want for the theme to be used to show how wrong and dangerous the might-makes-right mindset is... Otherwise, for a setting that revolves around law, this part somehow doesn't really feature a Ryuki rider who was an actual lawyer, Zolda (as probably it won't be the original Kitaoka like Ryuki and Knight here), other than as one of the fighters.

For the Ryuki-ness of teamwork (even if Ryuki doesn't have the Riders eventually team up at the end actually...) and understanding, dunno if I got that too even in main characters, as I'd think the understanding is the main part of Shinji (Kido) getting the dilemma in the series for his plan to stop the war, as he'd get to know about other Riders' motives and that he can't please everyone in his actions, causing hesitation. Shinji and Ren were common primary-secondary Rider dynamic (albeit Ryuki probably kickstarted that like you said as unique), so that'd be probably not Ryuki-centric thing, but almost all of the Rider series (the outlier is when they're more cooperative Blade except at first, Hibiki, OOO for Date, and iirc Wizard).

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

DREAMSWORD: Yeah I have no idea what any of these characters end up seeing in Tsukasa, really.

But from an acting perspective, yeah, whoever is directing this show clearly loves to portray things via facial expressions. One thing I noticed no one pointed out about the previous two episodes(unless I missed that post, sorry!) was at the end how Tsukasa seems to be taking all the accusations of being "the Devil" to heart... even if he does nothing to improve that situation, mind you.

Still, good on the actors for being able to pull that sort of thing off effectively.

I feel like that Tsukasa is also a hypercompetent protagonist (except at photography), like Tendou before, so other characters would rely on him, whenever they like it or not, to solve problems? He was the one who figured out Gegeru at Kuuga two-parter before, albeit it can seem to others that he played a New Game+.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Kamen Rider Abyss! I think!

DREAMSWORD: Yeah I wasn't fond of that suit. If it turns out that it was designed by the same dude who made the original Ryuki suits then like, wow, did they miss the mark.
Granted, given the twist of who exactly Abyss is at the end of it, maybe that was part of the point? Hard to tell with Decade.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, I don't... I don't get him. I don't understand why he's doing what he's doing. This is the second monster plot in a row where the villain's motivations are mostly opaque to me. Why is Abyss here? Why did he kill Momoi? Why frame Natsumi? Why did he need to be an Undead? I think the reason he killed Momoi was because she suspected him of being a monster, but why is this all so convoluted? And why in the world would you have a reveal like the end of this story, when it's a monster type that doesn't mean anything to the heroes? Help me with this, DreamSword.

For the first phrase, dunno if that's a joke or not, but as I've seen that phrase "heroes needs villains" used seriously to demean heroes and glamorize villains, just a reminder about how world without monsters like real world is already full of people who need healing, care, love, compassion and help, and you also did talk about appealing part of Kamen Riders being about helping people psychologically. Other than that, the powers can be used to solve daily problems easier (if you can control) or rescuing someone from accident or disasters. For Abyss, there's an outlier for him compared to the other Ryuki Riders, that his Final Vent is summoning a stronger Contract Monster, combining Abysslasher and Abysshammer into Abyssodon. But... dunno about it being Final Vent worthy tbh, Dragreder can go toe to toe with it no problem! For Ryuki stuff, Abyss isn't even free from ironic death, but it's later talk as he'd be involved in Blade story too.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I didn't care for it, really. I think it starts with Not Shinji and Not Ren, who I thought were both badly written (Shinji's willing to believe Ren is a murderer because Ren quit his job a couple years ago?) and super bland actors. I spent the entire story not really caring if these two former besties (a billion percent Not Ryuki, the two of them having a deep and soulful friendship) could get over their completely inexplicable conflict. Thoughts on our two-episode setting?

DREAMSWORD: Yeah I totally agree. I feel like I pretty much already elaborated on this earlier with my stint on my attachment to characters, and AR Ryuki most certainly did not deliver on that front. My boy Raia didn't even show up!

Also what the heck was with the first third of the first part having so much focus on Scissors? Was he a meme in Japan at the time or something?

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Scissors is stupidly popular. Always has been, always will be. Also, if you want to chump out a Rider to show how serious a character is, you definitely want to chump out Scissors. That's his thing! Demonstrating stakes! It's the third thing he loves, besides treachery and onions!

DREAMSWORD: From these episodes specifically? They totally screwed up how Time Vent works, and all for something totally unnecessary too. (Abyss eating himself.)

The Mirror World is also kinda just there? There's like a one-off line about how Riders don't die when defeated there but like, that most certainly doesn't seem to be the case given the various scenes with Scissors?

Well.... for Raia not showing up... be careful what you wish for (but continuing this would be spoiler). For Scissors, it's probably a show about how weak him as Rider is, he employs sneaky tactics to gain upper hand. His meme was caused by how short his death was iirc, and how joke character he is among Riders. Other than Scissors, I also wonder if the Rider War here kills every single Rider involved (faithful thing to have finishers one shot and destroy any Rider.. including Decade's here), is that a one-time thing or continuously done? How would the Decks appear again to determine who to judge, unless that the Deck isn't destroyed after the Rider loses somehow. I don't know what's Odin deal here either, as he as usual abuses his teleportation powers to clown on other Riders, but when Knight uses Final Vent, he just stands there doing nothing? For Shinji and Ren (yes they're... but different surnames with Tatsumi and Haguro), probably not as severe as Onodera, but I got similar feeling for Shinji (Tatsumi) here too, he'd be more willing into give in into his darkness compared to Kido. And a play of ORE Journal, as already said above, is that here, it's named Atashi Journal, which is a feminine word for "I" in Japan (ore is masculine but also rough word for "I").