[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I think it's more that he sees Eiji's virtue as a thing he can leverage to get what he wants. Ankh needs Eiji's immediate participation, so he tells the empathetic, slightly-reckless hero that Hey, You Gotta Defeat This Monster. Like, it's a thing Ankh would find weak, but it's also a button he can push in Eiji to get what he wants. And the Greeed are all about manipulating the desires of others to get they want!

That just exactly describes how virtue is deemed as a weakness that left one open to exploitation, manipulation.... people think being kind just allows people to use you and if you change to be unkind then you won't be used anymore, when any human desire or traits can be manipulated, not limited to one being kind (which people often equate with naivety, also a weakness). About Greeed manipulating the desires of others to get what they want.... obviously, they're evil monsters, including Ankh at this point. Evil-doers often think virtue is weakness as a reason to embrace being evil.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 2 - “DESIRE, ICE CREAM, AND A PRESENT”

That’s what makes OOO such a perfect series to me, the way it never feels precious with its narrative. Storytelling in OOO is like Cell Medals: The actions of the characters are always creating more to be harvested, so don’t worry about gorging yourself right now. A subplot where one female character lives in blissful-if-infuriating ignorance while The Boys go off and have Kamen Rider adventures might be the sort of thing another show would lean on for a dozen episodes – Gavv; I love Gavv, but I hate how the show uses Sachika – but OOO dispatches it with barely a breath of separation, and in the funniest way possible. It’s nothing but delicious cake, all the way through.

I don't know if miscommunication which is also a tool used to add drama would be similar to this, in general about hiding/refraining something and making the situation more contrived, which you loved for Faiz, of which it's not only about Sachika, Gavv also has similar thing as Takumi and Yuuji not knowing each other's identities or secrets, in how Shoma and Hanto hides each other's secrets too while fighting as Gavv and Valen respectively. Cake is also... Gavv's mid-season upgrade, and was what Shoma motivated himself for as a promise to Sachika, eating it together.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

(I honestly... I just sort of didn’t remember Eiji being this cool? I sort of have in my head a picture of him being sort of dopey, or easily misled, but he’s an outstanding scene partner in this episode. Eiji’s harried, and slightly baffled, but he never feels completely overmatched or dimwitted. It’s just the right amount of buy-in to keep the exposition scenes moving without forgetting how bizarre this is all meant to be. The actor nails that tricky balance, and I can’t believe I forgot that.)

Probably the fanbase in general never remember the goody-two-shoes lead as cool tbh, they'd dismiss their feats as just plot armor and ofc, looking down on them as being dopey, dimwitted, or easily misled, which they attribute to kindness making one dumb and naive, thinking (with how smart people in fiction are often cold jerks). Only the cold jerk protagonists got acknowledged as cool like Tendou with their feats being acknowledged as actual badass, or that they constantly talk about how cooler the secondaries or the villains than them. I do wish that the cool parts of the goody-two-shoes leads who are more likely to be dismissed as boring, flat, or lame to be acknowledged more, if it's there, which'd be why I want the analyses to be more widespread. Maybe there's much more than only Eiji who has this aspect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Not a completely perfect episode, though? I completely didn’t care about the Yummy in this; CGI nonsense, boring objective. The finale is cool for showing off the new toys – Gotou is a very menacing child, despite all the gifts – but it doesn’t have much juice to the conflict. The heart of this one’s resolution is all in Eiji asserting his need to protect people over Ankh’s laissez-faire view of monster fattening, which is great, but the Yummy is a generic monster to serve as an obstacle. (Even the human genesis of it is just one of the crooks from last time, comedically repurposed by Uva.) Quickly dispatched, and not terribly clever in its implementation.

This is like the previous Kobayashi show too, Den-O, where the main lead forces their monster companion, who was still evil at that time but needed said protagonist, to abide by their morality and actually help their good cause, where Momo apologized after Ryotaro was beaten up in Plat Form (which was also repeated in Revice ep. 2), while Ankh finally promised when Eiji was about to fall to his death. Eiji has no leverage to Ankh when he broke the promise though. This also explains Kougami where he gives birthday presents to new births, including OOO here in the toys Goto gave to him. The Medajalibur finisher gives cool visual of cutting the reality but it's undone so it's just as if only the monster target is slashed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

But everything else! Everything else was delightful, and I didn’t even really talk about the goofy interlude where Hina gets a job at Cous Coussier. (Another insane boss on this show!) Loved seeing this episode talk about the ways that desire is both a useful tool for human civilization, while also being easily weaponized into something harmful. I like Kamen Rider stories where the heroes and villains are using essentially the same resource, but view it in diametrically-opposed ways. Smart episode, brilliantly paced.

Continuing Kobayashi's tradition, Chiyoko is the lovechild of Den-O's Owner and... Ryuki's Sanako/Auntie. About the desire talk, TV-Nihon initiially used the word "greed" (which has negative connotations) before changing it to "desire". Though "desire" is more neutral, as you said here that it can be weaponized or evolving, seems it's still negative enough for KR fanbase, given those who hate Geats for advocating 'selfish desires', and that Eiji is a hero who is about having no desire, which is something negative for him, but some people may still use that to explain how heroic Eiji is, no desires that would tempt/corrupt him and that he'd only cater to other's needs.