[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

More like Ren is focused on winning the war so (as you said before, still an asshole), one Rider dying without Ren getting too attached to him and thus struggling to kill him is a blessing (and did you forget Eri isn't a Rider, while Tezuka is, Ren is multiple times the asshole to Riders!). Why do you think that Ren feels guilt over Eri? Shiro victimizes Eri (coma) AND Ren by forcing Ren to fight in Rider War as the only way to bring her back while he's powerless to doing anything on Shiro, and Ren is self-destructive towards her because, it's his character (as opposite to Kitaoka in previous episode), he will do anything to what he loves. Well, even Ren also got a form of a grief by looking at the Survive card (burning Raia's Evildiver card in this episode's preview), the card that Tezuka gave to him and may have saved him when he didn't, with the proof of how easily a Survive upgrade beat Ouja earlier.

I mean, Eri may not be a Rider, but she's still a human being like Tezuka, which means Ren's still being a hypocrite for telling them to quit it with the grief when that dude spent almost two dozen episodes nearly killing himself to cure Eri.

And, yeah, I assume there's at least some small amount of guilt driving the guy who has to use the contract monster that nearly killed his girlfriend to try and save her.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Like I said before, Tezuka is a drive for Shinji's characterization and inspires him (with the additional cliche of "inspirational characters die"), so Shinji tries to implement Tezuka's method, continuing his work. Tezuka influences Shinji the most, instead of Ren. So why this comes to you as a surprise that Shinji does what Tezuka does?

My confusion is from Shinji explicitly saying he's not doing things the way Tezuka did. He says that Tezuka tried to change their fates as Riders, he's going to change them as people. I'm just not clear how that's any different in practice, and there's no time in this episode for Shinji to articulate that. (They mostly use the minute where Shinji could to, instead, have him and Ren argue about how Shinji definitely can't read people well enough to accomplish Tezuka's goal anyway, which I liked a lot.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

And you think Asakura needs to be more developed or he becomes a punchline? I think Asakura is the single most loved character in the fandom and he doesn't have any of that.

If he's only going to be around for a storyline, he can be as Pure Evil as the show wants. That's a pretty fun character, for a show that's mostly populated with a variety of justifications. One dude who is pure violence, pure chaos, that's great. But you can't keep doing that story over and over. If we're four storylines later, with deep and nuanced characters talking about the value of principles in a world of survival, and here's ol' Asakura, swinging a metal pipe and demanding people fight him, it's basically an eyeroll and a Here We Go Again. He'd be a joke. There'd be no danger to him (he'd been beat a number of times by then), and nothing you could do with him besides danger. Gotta add some layers if he's going to hang around.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Before the fight, can we also talk a funny ironic moment where Shinji... tells Ren to go away? Even Ren points out it's usually the other way around (but he would immediately do that). I think one of the redeeming moments of Ren is that he will try to save innocents (though he may not particularly care about their fate) if he can like before fighting the monster. And Darkraider (Darkwing's Survive form)'s bike form is based on Honda Shadow. The Final Vent has their role reversed, where before it was Rider being the battering ram with Sword Vent and the monster wrapping him forming a drill, but in Survive it's the monster as a bike being the main battering ram, the Rider being the one enhances it by wrapping the monster with his cape, forming... a missile this time (if the light blue trail is any indication)?

I didn't notice that, about his Final Vent. Neat! Thanks for pointing that out!

The Shinji and Ren moment was great. Honestly, the use of Ren in this whole episode was great. It's nice to see Ren trying (and occasionally failing) to be the friend that Yui and Shinji need right now. I think he reaches out to them as much as he's capable, and he's got that early show thing of him sort-of realizing in the moment how much his approach is caustic, or unhelpful. This little smile of Hey Man I Want To Help But I'm Definitely Going To Say Something Insulting Just FYI. I like that he never seems frustrated by Shinji in this episode, he's never punishing him. He's just doing his Ren thing of not sugar-coating, and expecting people to challenge him enough to get their heads on straight. It's a real Ren episode, this one, and only a little because of Knight Survive.