[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

SH RANGER: It's amazing how it can have both the Primary and Secondary Riders as ass*hole characters, but I think it works here, since Kusaka plays an important role in making Takumi a better person, even though Kusaka is a terrible person to learn from. But it's an interesting dynamic those two have as a duo who never get along and barely tolerate each other. Takumi learns from Kusaka that he can't be indecisive or people will get hurt. There are a lot of deep philosophies in this show which only someone like Inoue can deliver.

No offense, but while he's probably worth praising but I disagree if the praise is like this, when it's putting down anyone else with the claim of "he's the only one who can" or such. This is also what happened in medias which are considered overhyped, with its diehard fan making claim that their favorite media is the most original like the media is the only one who does <insert favorite thing here> and either don't (like if they're new to the genre or media type, like for example first anime someone watched)/won't know or outright ignore other stuff. Though of course I disagree too of the response against those overhypers being instead hating that media blindly, two wrongs don't make a right. To argue for this, I have seen other cases of someone learning to be better from a terrible person, and even it can have audiences defending those terrible person as innocent due to the learning factor others can take. For KR, there's something like that (learning from terrible people) in for example Zi-O (though yes, it being done well or not is a debate), but I can't further talk more about that.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: This was a story that I had a hard time finding a lot of Faiz themes and storytelling in ( a lot of surface elements and callbacks, but not much of the meatier stuff), but a Rider debuting as a nice guy who all of the supporting cast love, despite him having nefarious goals and an untrustworthy code? That sounds like Kusaka to me! The way that Kaitou shows up, cooks everyone breakfast, and then apologizes for Tsukasa? And then Tsukasa spends an entire episode getting into a pissing contest with Kaitou? FAIZ! VERY VERY FAIZ!

True, the real secondary Rider in Decade is Diend (and it's quite common knowledge iirc), not Onodera. There are 2 secondary Riders named Kaito, like there are 2 secondary Riders named Kagami, there are 2 secondary Riders named Makoto. But for most of all, Diend's surname can be translated as 'thief', so his nature is in the name at the first place.

Though most of the secondary Riders are assholes and morally ambiguous, it's the outwardly friendly appearence and him being presented as affable in the debut that made him specifically like Kusaka? (I already knew about Diend before, but not much about the human identity, and I admit even I also thought he's the Kusaka in the story for a second before wising up that he's Diend, but like you said, him wanting to infiltrate Lucky Clover is the most Kusaka thing about him). Diend being treasure-based and wild card, this is a crazy talk, but I've seen that kind of problem in previous Rider series Ryuki, where Imperer fights primarily for money, demands outrageous sum of money to have him perform an action, and a backstabber when it came to deals. And true (anti-)heroes that are money-based have that as deconstruction, potential problem at both side. Of Sh Ranger refering him as wild card.... why don't have him debut at Blade parter before?? Joker is named as such due to him being a wild card!

And true Tsukasa is sentimental and that sets him apart from Tendou as I watch. Kaitou teasing Tsukasa for not eating sea cucumber reminds me of Deneb trying to make Yuuto eat shiitake mushrooms, though of course as Deneb does it for the good of Yuuto, dunno what's the aim of jerks like Kaitou forcing Tsukasa to eat that. And true, the helmet isn't my taste either for Diend, but I'd like to see if others can like the helmet and defend it. The abilities though, it's a contrast to Tsukasa's too where Decade had him turning into previous Rider, while Diend had him summoning past Riders. I'd think at least at first glance Diend's one is more effective due to using both of the Rider's abilities instead of 1 + the numbers. For Narutaki pitting Ryuga against Decade (another random Rider appearence like Hopper brothers and Todoroki), Diend uses Kiva to fight him off. That seems to not tie to any theme unlike Kiva vs Kuuga. For Ryuki Kiva should fight Knight as both are bat, or probably use other dark counterpart Rider like Dark Kabuto (Dark Kiva's probably final form level and would be too strong).

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

SH RANGER: Oh yeah, this guy definitely gives me the feeling of Kusaka, with his outwardly friendly appearance but actually he's kind of an a**hole, even more than Tsukasa. Another contrast between the two could be how they view sentimentality. Tsukasa is very sentimental, since he wants to capture all the worlds he passes through, but Kaito is just thinking like, how much value can he obtain from the treasures of the world. Kaito has a very morally ambiguous agenda, much like Kusaka does, and it's very suspicious with him casually hanging with Narutaki, who seems pretty on edge about his sudden appearance. And then you have Tsukasa playing the role of Takumi here with his brief game of tennis, but actually succeeding compared to Takumi's epic fail in Episode 13 of that show.

For Tsukasa taking Takumi's role of tennis, does that show another similarity to Tendou that Tsukasa is outright superhuman in human form too (there's Tendou showing off his insane reflexes at times)? I mean this even relates me back to Kabuto's School's Ghost Story about replacing the school's students with Worms to improve the school's standings, and it did due to superhuman nature of monsters (as well as in W where Akane improves her track field due to becoming Dopant), this also has outright Orphnochs who play a sports game, where their superhuman nature is seen in the tennis balls burning from their smashes, a la animes like Captain Tsubasa, yet Tsukasa schooled all of the superhuman players at once.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: A lot of the surface parts of this story I found sort of dull. But there's a read on Diend and Decade that had me paying a lot closer attention. Admittedly, this is one of those I Am Reading Too Much Into It things, so I am definitely not saying this is all intentional by the creators. But... like, this show is about Fandom to me. It's about how we as fans internalize parts of these shows, and what it means to leave them and return to them. Tsukasa is us, basically. He's a guy experiencing Kamen Rider stories. He isn't the point of those stories, he isn't the star. He's a passing-through Rider.
But Kaitou isn't that. He dives into stories and takes what he wants. There's a thing in Faiz's story that's valuable, but Faiz and its story isn't inherently valuable to Kaitou. He's willing to break the story to get what he needs out of it.
To me, it makes Tsukasa the representation of the Passive Fan (someone who experiences the show and moves on), while Diend is the representation of the Transformative Fan (a fanfic writer, a fanzine writer, someone who latches onto a few things from the narrative and makes something new from them).
Putting those two types of fans into opposition, and then exploring the ways they overlapped... I don't know, I really enjoyed that part of the story.

SH RANGER: But if Tsukasa is us, then does that mean we're passive fans as well? I think your description of Kaito would probably fit me better, as someone who takes the morals and wisdom from watching the show and then turns that into fanfic or uses those morals IRL where they might be applicable. Of course, that only works for this specific analogy, since Kaito is more like a collector of merchandise, someone who thinks Kamen Rider looks cool (which is true) but doesn't really care too much about the scenario happening around it. Kaito is all about aesthetics, whereas Tsukasa is more about the life of the world, hence why he's so irritated when Kaito completely misses the point about there being a greater treasure than the Faiz Gear, which is the humanity that Faiz represents, regardless of whether or not Faiz is a human. But I can certainly see how you could make some apt analogies between these two Riders. I think they're definitely referencing something, but I can't quite get a read on Kaito, the way I can with Tsukasa.

This is an inherent problem of anniversary series that wants to revisit/make a tribute for previous series. It has to balance between being a tribute/revisit or as its own story. So for this part, it's apparently the Decade's own story winning over against the tribute. I wish that I can get to realize something like fourth wall view you had there where Tsukasa and Kaitou are audience surrogates in different way, though true that there are many kind of fans like Sh Ranger pointed out, not everyone is the same (I very want to become transformative fan tbh, not only KR, but dunno about Japan being Japan...), but on the other hand, that can make someone look silly in a community, to be mocked as "writing manuscript for kids show" or such. So for here, Kaitou is a merch collector... so how about the intellectual who made the tools themselves like Kuroto? Them as Toei?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's a bunch of things. A lot of it is the necessary pruning of so much of what I love about Faiz to fit it all into a Decade two-parter... and then substantially more pruning to make room for all of the Diend stuff. As it is, we got The Main Character Is Hiding That He's A Monster, and the shape of Lucky Clover, and that's it. This Takumi isn't a jerk, there's no Kiba, there's no Mari, there's no other Smart Brain Riders... all of the things that make Faiz a memorable show for me got stripped out.
And what they kept... there's still some elements of Takumi's story from Faiz The Series, with this Takumi feeling like he has to hide who he is or he'll be ostracized, but the the series blew that up to a much larger story about finding social groups, and about arguing for your right to participate in society, and how self-actualization can only happen if you're willing to throw off outside judgments. Here, it's just a guy who has a crush on a girl? And the girl being okay with him as a monster makes it all good?
Like, this story 100% locked in on Takumi Is An Orphnoch to the exclusion of so many other things, and that bummed me out.

Not to subdue passion, but honestly if I would see a media piece I like getting revisited at the future newer media, I'd be skeptical if that newer piece would adapt the media well, I'd have more fear instead of excitement. I do agree with the Faiz complaints there, but I think it applies to any of the tributes so far? There are never tributes that have complete aspect of any series, like Blade lacking depth compared to the original series before partly due to it being crammed for 2 episodes. I think I just accept the fact that complete tributes won't work for cramming it for 2 episodes, albeit doesn't mean there are no room for improvements. Though still, I'd want to argue some for this; Yuri takes some part (not all) from Mari, her story about coming into terms about how Ogami is an Orphnoch is something Mari had too, ending with "Takumi is Takumi" bits y'know, so Mari was also ok with Takumi being a monster? Still, I'm actually having less feud that this is not an actual adaptation for Ogami not being a jerk part (I hate adaptations ignoring the original source), but I'd like for adaptations to not turn non-jerks into jerks either for the sake of funny or entertainment (I guess this is some of the response for Onodera, but this seems to be tolerated in something like Blade Missing Ace move...). And true it's weird the school excludes Orphnochs... but Faiz had Yuka (who was bullied but that's before she became Orphnoch). They did waste a chance to play a part of human and Orphnoch divide in the school as Ogami was apparently scared of transforming into Wolf Orphnoch, but if the theme is committed, it can explain it better (the only one who were shown affected was Yuri), or the other's reaction if they know that the idolized Lucky Clover are Orphnochs.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, and he does a pretty good job with a very weird role! He's not really playing off of anyone from Faiz The Series (Murakami? Maybe?), but he finds some entertaining notes to his Smug Prick persona, enough to make a casting director in a couple years have a ready-made answer to Who Can We Cast As The Smug Prick In This Series?

I think they did play on someone from Faiz, but only on the surface part where the Lucky Clovers have similar goal of forcing Orphnoch superiority to humans. But true that I want for series traits to not only be looked from the surface, but meme can lead into some people doing that. Oh, at least the Ogami turning into Wolf Orphnoch to fight him had some resemblance to the flashback about... well Ryuusei School in Faiz where Takumi fought Kitazaki as Wolf Orphnoch, and the source of some events like Kusaka's racism to Orphnochs, etc.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: True. So I got all of my criticisms and weird theories out. Was there anything else you wanted to cover from these episodes? We definitely didn't talk about Onodera and Natsumi, who.... I think still exist?

SH RANGER: Natsumi and Yuusuke definitely didn't have much to do this episode, since they weren't enrolled in Smart Brain High School. Even though Yuusuke didn't get a chance to henshin last arc, he still got some important moments. But here, yeah, they ain't doing a lot.
I guess I could mention that Faiz and Decade both have cameras as part of their arsenal.

I kinda wonder if there are some ideas for those 2 to contribute here (with of course other than Onodera fighting as Kuuga).