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Faiz Episode 25
The Kaixa suit on the female body looks a bit odd. I guess it's because it's more slender looking, especially in the neck area. Though I will admit, I think Saeko being Kaixa is quite the nice fit.

Well of course they're interested in the belts. They made them and as the president said, are going to use them for the Orphenoch King. Not to mention that they're attempting to take them away from you on a weekly basis. So yes Takumi, Smart Brain is in fact interested in the belts.

Kusaka you woke up in the best way possible; at the dinner table with dinner already cooked and ready for consumption. You lucky bastard

I thought it was Ryuseijiji School? Did the translators just change it or something? I won't complain to much though, Ryusei is easily to say.

A fork Kusaka? Really?

Something tells me Keitaro has OCD.

How exactly do you even open the elevator doors anyways? Is it like a sensor system? You know like how some public bathrooms have the paper towel dispensers where you just wave your hand under it to get them. Maybe it's something like that, but that's honestly the only idea I have as to how they entered it.

Also I guess they're no longer any significance since the president pretty much just put a hit out on them.

Where the deuce did Kusaka get a flashlight from?

That is a very good question Takumi.

This episode is brought to you by the color purple.

Holy shit it's a mirror monster! Wait, never mind, it's just an Orphenoch. I guess they still had some use for the mirror monster sound effect. Actually that whole speech right there felt like it was lifted right out of Ryuki.

Okay I've been not really caring about this whole time it takes them to get to places thing. But how the hell did Kusaka go from being underneath Smart Brain's building, to being in a stadium? This is a serious what the fuck moment.

I like Kaixa's rider kick more then Faiz's. Mostly because the Kaixa one doesn't have that ridiculous flip transition into the actually kick. Faiz's just doesn't look all that natural too me. How do you go from a front flip into the rider kick position in one single jump? It's just weird to me.

Well episode 25 has gone by after opening my eyes for it. And I will say that this episode while odd as hell, is actually pretty good.

The story this episode was actually really nice, and helped propel the main overarching story forward. It introduced the new belts which are apparently failed results and end up turning the user to ashes. I'm quite anxious to hear about them more, especially since Takumi put one on Takuma. Along with that, I think the discovering of the school under Smart Brain, along with some of the things with the president helped move it all forward. Of course this can be subjective, and is only the way I perceive it. As for the other story with Naoya, it was pretty cool as well.

Speaking of Naoya's story, we see him get more character development in a more clearer form. Going off his words at the end, it does appear as if he's quite happy to give into his monstrous side, but also accepts that he won't be able to throw his humanity. He's a good combination of Yuji and Yuka in my opinion, with just a bit more menace to him. Outside of Naoya, I really don't think much character development was present.

In the action department, we got the usual nice fair. The Yuji VS kid fight while one sided was fairly nice to me. The fight in the school was pretty much the standout though. It was just a straight up brawl all the way around and made for some lovely entertainment. That said though, I think the speed up in it was a bit distracting and at times made everything seem blurry. This could just be me though, so I won't say it's a serious flaw or anything of that sort.

At the end of the episode and with the preview playing, I found 25 to be another good episode. It definitely continued the trend of episodes being consistently good starting with 20, so it's nice to once again be getting good episode after good episode. The story was great, the character development was good though lacking a bit, and the action was fairly nice. 25 was not as good as 24 was, which if you read my review of it know that I claim to be near perfect. 25 is another good episode, nothing too spectacular, but nothing bad. I liked it.

And thus I come to the halfway point of the show. Funny since early in my watching I didn't think I'd stay with the show. It started off as a mixed bag that even though I watched up to 3 episodes daily, I couldn't really get into it. Now I look forward to watching Faiz. The show really seems to have picked up and is delivering on the entertainment front like crazy. Critical wise there are flaws and things that don't quite work. However they are not overwhelming enough to make the show bad. It's as a said, a mixed bag. It was and the beginning and still is.

So 25 in with 25 to go, I do think I'll stick with Faiz here. I have things I don't like, and things aren't all that great in it as a show. But I am consistantly entertained and find enough pros to not rage at it's shortcomings. So yeah, I'm liking Faiz. It isn't the best Rider show I've seen, but it certainly isn't the worst.

P.S. I enjoy Kuuga quite a bit.