[Kamen Rider Die]

Forgot to check in on a notification and missed an entire day of thread chatter! WHOOPS!

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Originally Posted by Daikaijuman54

Of course, maybe giving the Blade Movie Riders might have just been because someone in production liked them enough to give them a whole world to themselves, then throw Kaito in for good measure.

Kamen Rider stories have been built over flimsier premises, so maybe! Like, those Missing Ace suits are pretty cool, and that's halfway to making a good story.

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

The second part fell a bit flat for me, though. I liked the emotional resolution of the Super Kaito Bros. conflict in theory, but it didn't feel especially earned in practice. Junichi being a willing bad guy fits with Glaive's role in Missing Ace, but didn't really fit with the way he was shown on screen looking and acting like the Japanese version of a Stepford Wife.

This is such an Inoue thing, where I really enjoy the point he's trying to make about free will being worthwhile even if people act badly because of it, but Junichi's actions make almost zero sense. It's a plot point that fails as narrative while somehow succeeding thematically. You can't really resolve Kaitou's story without it, but it's a twist that almost nothing in the preceding forty minutes (including a flashback!) actually supports. Not my favorite moment!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

That being said, I kind of actively loathed what Inoue did with Newsuke here? He used to be a Cool Guy in-training who set off on this adventure with everyone to honor Yashiro's wish for him to protect people's smiles, but now apparently he's just looking for a world where everyone is already smiling to settle down in? It's like Inoue asked for a description of the character, and whoever he was talking to got as far as "Well, he can be rather naïve, and gets into his share of embarassing situations, but—" before Inoue said he got the gist of it, and, man, I mean he might have actually not known this guy was supposed to be Kuuga?

INOUE: "Alright, time to start these Decade scripts. Lemme look at the notes here... oh, one of the characters is named Yuusuke! Like Kuuga! Oh, that's a fun reference. I'll have him be ecstatic about this world of smiles. People'll love the Kuuga reference. God, I wonder what this show did for the Kuuga tribute episodes? I should ask later."

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's that whole New Game + analogy that I still feel perfectly sums up how Tsukasa helps people out. He's great at knowing what motivates people and where their stories are going, but I feel like he often acts on that in this slightly detached way that suggests to me he genuinely can't really feel that stuff on an empathetic level the way your average Rider protagonist can. Again, as though this is just some quest in a video game to him that he's trying to speed along to its conclusion. Which gets you moments like him telling Kaitou at the end that since he's found The Treasure Of Self-Confidence or whatever in this world, he won't need to steal stuff anymore, only for Kaitou to immediately inform him he's off to go steal more things. I don't know. Tsukasa's most of the way there, but I feel like he stumbles in these weirdly specific areas, and it's a fun thing about his character.

Yeah, I think it's the sort of thing where Tsukasa looks at someone like Kaitou and says Just Feel A Different Way, and he can't figure why Kaitou won't do it already. Tsukasa is getting better at a lot of things about being a Kamen Rider, but he'll never have that easy empathy, that deep connection. He cares about people, and he loves their capacity for change in a way that I'm really charmed by, but he mostly treats them like characters in a game/show. He's invested, but as an observer.

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Originally Posted by TheRaizin

He's one of the few writers we got who absolutely wants to do something that goes absolutely out of the 'safe' radar, and that's a blast to watch when the execution is great. Faiz still being one of my favorites out of him. I unironically feel we need more of him.

You won't get an argument out of me! These four Decade episodes are, narratively, some of the least successful episodes in the series so far. But, man, I've been thinking about them more than the objectively good episodes, which is always how it is with me and Inoue. Even the not-great ones are sort of fascinating in their specific failures.