[Den-O]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tokumonkey

Leaving aside the enormous outlier that is Ex-Aid, our next Rider has compound eyes and heavily-abstracted antennae.

Nearly every modern Rider design starts with Ichigou as a base, then riffs wildly. Fourze was a rocket... with compound eyes and little antennae. Wizard replaced the compound eyes with gems, and abstracted the antennae down to part of the "setting" shapes. Gaim re-imagined compound eyes as the meat of an orange.

They're not often blatantly bug references anymore - a person would have to have a certain level of familiarity to catch them - but they're nearly all remotely based on bugs. (Probably not Ex-Aid and maybe not Hibiki.)

Implying I don't have familiarity with a franchise I've spent over a decade working on fan sites with, and have been a fan of for much longer

The vague hints toward the bug motif were lost around Den-O. They're superficial most of the time now, eyes and a few callbacks here and there. My point in making that point originally was that these figures don't have to look like bugs to be Kamen Rider inspired because Kamen Rider simply doesn't look like that anymore in the first place. When your themes become magic, cars, fruit, video games, trains, etc, the notion of a single motif is no longer valid. The bug theme isn't there anymore and that's perfectly fine, but compound eyes don't just re-validate the notion that it is either. Kamen Rider is simultaneously everything, it's unifying theme is heroism and justice now. It doesn't need to be bug related, nor is it any longer. You can grasp for it all you want, but the superficial design elements like compound eyes and belts to transform are about the only lingering elements left anymore.