[Locke]

Faiz 07. It's amazing they were still using the same locations all this time ago!

In many ways Faiz feels ahead of its time, if you watched Blade or Kuuga (the series after and before this respectively) the action is clunky, and profoundly cheap looking. And although Faiz still has aspects of that clunky realism stuff Heisei Rider seemed to love so much, as Faiz starts dabbling in his array of tech based attacks, weapons and powers there's this epicness, and visual quality, to it all that really makes this feel more like a Neo-Heisei Rider. Honestly, and this maybe more down to personal tastes as I love tech based stuff in tokusatsu, some of Faiz's powers are actually much more visually interesting. Also wow this weeks Orphenoch had such a cool design.

Sadly though, I'm much less impressed with this on a narrative level. Initially the opening provided an interesting dynamic, seeing Yuji run in to save the Orphenoch, shouting about 'nakamas' and all that made Faiz almost look like a bad guy. And as this is more classic Rider stuff, there is nothing to say he couldn't be.

But then as the episode progressed, I was just left with this uncomfortable lingering 'why'. Why is Yuji immediately obsessed with this guy? In a show where we don't really have a single, properly identifiable villain are we already doing the whole monster who is actually a nice person trope already? Especially from a guy who has already murdered several people, a thing the show itself hasn't forgotten, so I dunno what the game is.

The biggest blight though is that Dry Cleaning guy. Why must Rider always have a useless side character as a part of the main cast, who is goofy and only seems to exist to drain all the drama out of every scene? As this is older Rider, I hope he gets murdered soon, brutally. He is a fucking nuisance.

I think we're supposed to find Takumi antagonistic, and although yeah - he's a bit rude - all he is basically is saying 'remember last night when I was fighting FUCKING MONSTERS? Yeah, well that happened, I have a reason to be here, I contribute to the show, what do you do dry cleaning man? Waffle on about your dreams? Well that is nice. Know what is even nicer? If I edited you out of every scene, NOTHING else would need to be changed as you're entirely purposeless. So how about you stop waffling and CONTRIBUTE!'. So damn right I'm on Takumi's side.