[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

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 mean true people can have preferences, but it's different yeah between praising him while putting others down or explaining while acknowledging it as subjective like being your preferences. Like how it's difference to express that you don't enjoy something; between "I wasn’t a fan of <something> due to weird pacing, inconsistency...." and "<something> is terrible and people shouldn’t enjoy that, it contains everything people should hate....". Also I wasn't refering to you for the Kusaka one, but it's also another excuse for some people to defend terrible characters (Kusaka's mostly known as terrible and people meme that).

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

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.

I didn't refer to myself or such of being mocked, not talking about appease everybody. What I want for being transformative fan is to influence the developers or such from fan's suggestions to make it better or such (me and others). Another example of this is about how most of game's adaptations like movies are done by companies with no passion regarding the media, making them a terrible adaptation, while fans will probably handle it better due to their passion, but don't have the publicity or occupation for that. I mean you did bring up Emu submitting game ideas to Kuroto, but for real life one, my point isn't about , but about the fans being unreachable to the companies so any of their contribution cannot be known by the companies.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

SWITCHBLADE: I've been here from day one. I was really active in the older Rider Kick thread on TFW2005, so when Tokunation was spun off I followed over. I spent some time at Henshin Justice Unlimited, but never felt like I really fit in there.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Well, as someone very very late to the game, let me thank you for making this collection of threads into a home. It's a nice site, with nice people. Good folks, the lot of 'em.
Where do you find yourself spending most of your TokuNation time, thread-wise? Any particular favorites?

W̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶k̶s̶,̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶m̶a̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶l̶i̶c̶t̶?̶

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: It's a great way to utilize the Ozawa character, because it sort of dissects and interrogates the paternalistic qualities of our heroes. Yashiro is desperate to protect Shouichi/Hikawa in the same way that Shouichi/Hikawa is desperate to protect Yashiro in the same way Onodera is desperate to protect Yashiro, and it's all so unsustainable and destructive. I like that it's a story about how overbearing it can be to put someone up on a pedestal like that, to presume they can't take care of themselves. Ozawa was always a character that couldn't do nothing about Hikawa's tendency to self-sabotage - dude couldn't miss a bus without cheerfully giving up on himself - but she also needed to let him do the work on his own shortcomings.

Though both have the same family name in Yashiro, their given names are actually different which obviously explains that they're not the same, the Kuuga world's given name is Ai, and the Agito world's given name is Tohko. Also no, Yashiro's actress Hiroko Sato have the same height as Ozawa's acrress Tōko Fujita. The one that is actually really tall but wasn't addressed before was Yuri Aso's actress Yu Takahashi. Oh speaking of that, I wonder if Yashirozawa's given name is based on Ozawa's actress is purposely made as reference? For Yashiro being angry at the early G3-X operator, I won't condone that like you asking if ti's justificable (though Yashiro takes significantly softer stance to Onodera). Of course it's practically a defense force, and that everyone must be subjected to trials and challenges, but still giving overboard burden to them is still a wrong approach, if right from the start someone's subjected into the very toughest's training programme, it'd end up breaking their body apart, if not killing them, because that sort of training programme is too tough at first; put them in a less intense programme, and let them hone their body and work their way gradually up to the more intense training regimen.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Yeah, that was a thing that threw me for the first few Shouichi scenes: he's totally not Shouichi for the entirety of this story. He's Ryou's isolation from humanity with Hikawa's self-sabotaging earnestness. But Shouichi? I'm just not seeing any of that character in this one, besides an eventual form change.

I guess it's in the name at the first place for him being 80% Hikawa. Like you said it's AsHIKAWA and the family name is combination of Gills' and G3's, but other briliance.. English way is that if you spell out the full name while separating the Hikawa part, it'd be "Shouchi as Hikawa". From Faiz's one before, I think this is the reverse scenario of Faiz's revisit, where Ogami wasn't a jerk, but this Shouchi was a jerk, example is him roughly keeps others away like Tsukasa's assistance to him. He's the combination of every Agito's primary three Riders, but even with Shouichi's namesake, like you said, I do feel that ironically the actual Shouichi part is the least dominant of this composite character (and with him being a jerk, I think inherently he's mostly Ryou), which I dunno what'll Agito fans who wants Shouichi adaptation think regarding this. But my problem is that, him being Agito at the end is just kind of shoehorned at the end to prove that he is Shouichi for me (probably like you said too of him not being known much pre-mutant), it just suddenly appears and Tsukasa declares that it's his real power, without any set up or such. Otherwise, you'd be ok if a revisit did adapt something even if it's only a few part, not all of them (if you think Faiz adapted none of the series except the surface)?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: He's a bit of a cipher in this one, getting through the narrative largely off of Yashirozawa's concern and the Exceed Gills suit.
Which, man, Exceed Gills: not my favorite suit from Agito!

SWITCHBLADE: So the suit thing.
The show used Exceed because the original Gills suit fell apart in storage.
It was water damage and/or mold.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Interesting! I had no idea. That explains things!
That's what they get for flinging Gills into the river so many times.

But it's a lucky stuff for Shouichi! Because of the weaker suit being damaged, he had the stronger one to fend off unwanted threats! Design isn't important, what's important is the power it holds as it's a survival!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

SWITCHBLADE: Tsukasa is a really frustrating character sometimes.
I think that part of it is that he feels like a guy who watched Kabuto and decided that Tendou was what a Kamen Rider is like, but had no handle on any of his nuances.
But a lot of it is just that his goals and motivations tend to lack much consistency from episode to episode.

KAMEN RIDER DIE: Him getting closer to Onodera, despite ignoring him for the last month's worth of episodes, reads a bit like a reaction to Diend's introduction. It feels like the production noticed how similar Decade and Diend came off in the Faiz episodes - they are each more or less solo acts, and happier for it - so this story has a plotline where Tsukasa is a more team-oriented guy, a friendlier hero.
It's not completely unwarranted, as character growth goes. We'd already had a couple stories about working with people, and about believing in other viewpoints. I get Tsukasa respecting Onodera, and maybe feeling a little abandoned by Onodera's imminent departure. But Tsukasa's whole Of Course I Care About Onodera thing just feels like something entirely different happened in the last two episodes, instead of Onodera staying home and sometimes getting knocked out.

I think the others questioning Tsukasa about him being suddenly altruistic here kinda confirms your view at the talk in the beginning of the episode where Tsukasa wants to save the world, but only because he lives there. You also claim that saving multiple Earths means he is very heroic, but other's suspicion of Tsukasa kinda confirms about my reply there where people who succeed doing that aren't necessarily more heroic than others, just that they have much more power to do that (and anniversary Riders tend to be OP, and Tsukasa's certainly OP in human form too like the tennis match against 3 Orphnochs). But true like Switchblade said, I see this including the suspicion for Tsukasa as more of an inconsistency, like how DreamSword discussing about Tsukasa forgetting lessons before. Like the end of the 2 parters have Tsukasa seemingly learning his lesson like making speeches that favors humans (not only here) or helping/encouraging kid Wataru. Though if I have to sum up, like you said before, Tsukasa wants to save multiple Earths, Tsukasa's someone who mostly focuses in only the saving people/the world part, but is apathetic to life problems other than living or dying (and probably only so that he'd survive). You said that there's character growth and this is unwarranted, but this is honestly a bad take and misinterpretation of it when they pile up changes on characters each moment which can lead into inconsistency.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I wonder if maybe it'd've been better to introduce Diend after this development, rather than before? He certainly doesn't have much to contribute to this one.

SWITCHBLADE: Kaitou is so weird in these episodes.

Probably Kaitou is here for the usual entertainment for what morally grey characters can do where you don't really know what they will do in a situation (though I'm personally not swayed by that, I know that someone selfish can help out if they got mutual benefit). Or even then, I wonder that you don't see him as an entertaining shit-stirrer like usual dick-ish characters, such as you mentioning him as Hojo before (or he's somehow fits, not as bad, but similar to the likes of Kotaro in Den-O movie...)? I think Yashiro assumed something significantly worse (justified though) regarding Kaitou that she'd better destroy the MacGuffin rather than letting him use it like for evil purposes in Yashiro's assumption.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DIE: I think it did a decent job of landing some big Agito themes by the end. Using the Unknown to take out the Grongi, but framing it as Protection vs Keeping People From Achieving Their Full Potential, and then having the Shouichi/Yashirozawa/Onodera story run alongside that... it's muddled at points, but I think it gets at the messiness of what Inoue was after with that series. Agito was about change being unpredictable but necessary, and these two episodes honored those themes, I thought.

SWITCHBLADE: What I always come back to with Agito's theming is that so much of the show is about evolution and these episodes really nailed that for me.
It's a big part of why I love how they handled the three Riders: Shouichi starts as G3, goes into Gills as a sort of pupal state, then emerges as Agito.
Onodera definitely wants to go back to the relationship he had with his Yashiro but realizes he can't and decides to do what he can to help her get what she wants instead.
Tsukasa is... also there.
It's a good literal and metaphorical take on the concept.

No offense, but personally this story also had some unnecessary difficulty for me, with, yeah, many complaints about Onodera not using Kuuga's power. I'd probably tolerate it better when there are reasons of Onodera not being able to henshin into Kuuga, but here, it's just unnecessary difficulty for the story to have him undergo probably unnecessary set up for G3-X to fight off monsters like Grongi or Unknowns. With no reason, I think Onodera should've been able to easily prove himself by turning into Kuuga, either for him going back into impressing Yashiro (probably also getting him accepted into work at the G3 team), or him fightiing for others here.