[Sh Ranger]

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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.

Sorry about that, I may have been exaggerating a little by saying Inoue's the only one who can deliver those philosophies. There are probably others writers who can do similar themes to Inoue, like Kobayashi who uses a lot of the same tropes and ideas, but generally I think that Inoue's style is just more aligned with my preferences.

I definitely wouldn't consider Kusaka to be innocent, just for being the catalyst for Takumi's character development. Kusaka is the source of conflict, which is necessary for the narrative to deliver the moral to Takumi and the viewers. This is actually something I have personal experience with, due to having confrontations with a control freak bully in middle school. I feel like people just have an easier time acting against someone bad than acting for someone good, as they become more aware of their own hypocrisies and flaws by observing them in adversaries. But that selfish motivation establishes a starting point for the concept of heroism which can be refined later. That's a lot of what both Takumi's and Tsukasa's journeys are about. In Takumi's case, he learns what being Kamen Rider Faiz means to him and how that revolves around his selfless motivation to protect dreams. Those interactions he has with friends, rivals and enemies imprint on him to make him less of a terrible person.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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.

Yeah, the major difference between the Kaitos is that Decade's Kaito is a surname, while Gaim's Kaito is a given name. The kanji is also different between the Kaitos and Kagamis. (Fukami) Makoto is spelled entirely in katakana, unlike Hikawa Makoto. Kaito Daiki, the Kagamis and Makotos are all blue Riders as well, with Kumon Kaito being the only exception as a red Rider.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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).

Decade's "a bat for a bat" against Knight sounds a lot more specific and clever than Diend's "a monster for a monster" against Ryuga. He could've Final Form Ride Ryuki instead to have "a dragon for a dragon". However, I think Tsukasa has more wit than Kaito, so it makes sense that Tsukasa would have the better quips.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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.

Yeah, just like his fluency in Unidentified Lifeform language, he also gains physical abilities to help him in his journey. He acknowledges this himself, boasting to Lucky Clover how he can do anything better than them.... Except for taking photos. But unlike Tendo, who is naturally perfect, Tsukasa has a more mysterious reason for why he's so skilled, due to his role as the alleged Destroyer of Worlds.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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?

Being mocked isn't really a problem for transformative fans, but rather a problem for those people who disapprove of their work. The worst problem would be to have all that inspiration wasted by doing nothing about it, out of fear of how others might perceive it. We can't appease everybody all the time and we're not obliged to. As long as we're doing something we enjoy and that somebody else, even just one person, might enjoy and learn from, then I think it's worth it for that. Doing it for yourself and for pride can be a powerful and constructive motivation.

Kuroto is exactly the kind of guy who would bash transformative fans, like Emu innocently submitting his game ideas being the catalyst for pretty much everything that happened in that show. Kuroto was so possessive of his IP that he became jealous of Emu's creativity, instead of taking it as flattery like friendly game developers would.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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.

For sure, Yuri cowering from Ogami as Wolf and the school setting, albeit high school in this case which is closer to Yuka's tragic backstory, is very similar to the events of Kitazaki's rampage in Ryusei School with Mari mistaking Takumi for the culprit. Honestly, if the Diend stuff was a little less dominant, I would have really enjoyed seeing them go all the way with these ideas of Faiz in a high school.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

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

Maybe Natsumi could've infiltrated as a teacher, like how Takeru and Akari did in Kamen Rider 1.