[Kiwami]

I'm 5 episodes in with Blade now. Damn this show isn't wasting any time, huh? The script is literally racing like it wants to go back to the future, you can almost smell the burning trail as the plot flies by. Not that that's necessarily bad though, I enjoy what I see so far. I like how they keep explaining stuff as it pops up which makes no sense for the world they are trying to build but for me, as the viewer, it works.

Love the Rider and the Undead suits so far, and the Rouze Cards are a delightful gimmick. They feel more like a TCG this time since unlike Ruyki cards they are all individuals and have very different powers which can be combined, whereas every Ryuki Rider had a basic set of summoning his weapons, Mirror Monster and final attack and then some extra which only a certain Rider had.

With Blade, every monster becomes a unique card (as far as I can tell by now) and they all have unique effects, that's neat. Also, I like how they incorporated the card holders into the weapons and how they fan out like a hand of playing cards, clever.

It's funny though how they can still put the MOTW in there every time, almost reminds me of Gaim a bit, with how the plot took front stage but they still had time to hunt down a monster or two. But hey, gotta show off the toys somehow, right?

Character-wise I'm still a bit lost as the fast pace didn't give me much time to know what's going on (it was so bad early on that I couldn't tell certain characters apart, for real) but now that I get to know them... Kenzaki seems like your typical good guy but they immediately gave him depth and inner conflict which I think is great. Tachibana is still a rather blank page for me but I assume that's intentional, for now everything he does is seal Undead to fight his demise. Then there's I-can't-remember his name, the Chalice-guy. Interesting setup to say the least, but I feel like it'll get much better soon as another character I don't know yet appeared in the distance and called him out for being an Undead who acts as a human.

So yeah, so far this is a full-speed rollercoaster ride but I want to continue riding it. Seems like a tyical well-done Heisei Rider show so far. And thank god because I needed that after Faiz. Seriously, five episodes of Blade and I already feel like I've seen more than during the entirety of Faiz.