[Fish Sandwich]

So, uh, this was something. Overall I liked it though.

First off, yay the opening! Now to complain about them being inconsistent! No but seriously, outside of the fact that Kamen Rider has seemingly forgotten how to have the episodes transition into it, which I always felt was a unique, defining thing about Heisei Rider intros, I'm glad to have it back.

But I guess everyone on the planet outside of the protagonists turned into a moron at some point? I guess maybe the reason they needed Poppy was to make magic mind-control ads or something because it's otherwise inexcusable for people to not find this whole Kamen Rider Chronicle situation insanely sketchy, given the existence of Kamen Riders and Bugsters is explicitly public knowledge now. And yet these idiots don't recognize Ex-Aid? Or what the actual purpose of a Kamen Rider is? For real?



Did they not read all the online articles that presumably went up after that press conference? Do they just think this guy who is obviously not a game character is just a game character? Do the KRC Gashats pump the user full of drugs that make them not question this s***? This wouldn't be the first time Ex-Aid has seemingly done something dumb only to turn out to have a good reason for it, so I'm sure I'm in the wrong here, but it'd be really nice if Ex-Aid would ever go into the details first, instead of leaving me scratching my head for weeks on end. And yes, I know new CEO guy definitely has mind-control powers, but all we've seen him be able to do is talk to a single person. Anyway, whatever. I'll stop worrying about it for now, and I'm willing to accept a sketchy premise for the sake of a good story, but man, if the series ends without even touching on the logistics of any of this, I'm going to be kind of grumpy.

THAT BEING SAID, I approve of this direction for the plot. It's interesting. It's different. Parad's way cooler than Genm could ever be (yeah I said it!), and our trio of Riders is as fun as ever. Emu still can't seem to get off the pain train though. Poor son of a gun.