[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 SERIES OVERVIEW



--1--

I wanted to start this off by talking about how Faiz is a hard series to love. Like its protagonist, it's prickly, sullen. It has to be cajoled into doing the most basic Kamen Rider shit, and even then it never lets you forget how much it doesn't care about that shit. Over time, you get used to it, and it opens up more, and it leads to some really emotionally-exposed storytelling. All that taciturn ambivalence is revealed as a mask over a beating heart, and it ends happily, earnestly. You gotta meet it on its terms, but you'll be rewarded if you do.

Except, man, I don't know if that was my experience? At all?

I mean, some of it. It's definitely a show that tries to keep you at a distance. It does a lot of stuff in ways that seem contradictory, or suboptimal. It's playful, if you're feeling generous, or scatterbrained, if you aren't. It's a complex show, just on a What Story Are They Trying To Tell level.

But, if the show was Takumi, I felt like Keitaro. I loved it from the start, saw all of the ways it could get better, and thrilled as it grew into a Real Kamen Rider. And, like Keitaro, I loved it for its flaws, for its weirdness, for the way it made you fight for its affection. It made some bonkers choices over its run, and while it may not have been 100% successful in those choices, it was rarely boring.

--2--

A ton of that is in the characters and casting, though. I started with Ex-Aid, so Highly Charismatic Yet Insufferable Assholes? Uh, yes. Every cell in my body is saying yes to that. To quote the queen of being a monster that I can't stop watching, Kageyama, "I have a weak spot, after all, for troubled young boys."

Takumi is a fascinating lead, and it was an awesome journey to see him become a Kamen Rider. I rarely felt like he was rude for no reason, or standoffish without having cause. His story was one of self-acceptance, of proving to himself what his friends already saw. It took him 50 episodes, but he learned to accept himself, and allow others to accept him. It's a small thing, maybe, for a whole series. It's very internal, maybe tough to dramatize. But I loved seeing him struggle to be understood, to let people in. It never felt like work to me, getting to know him better.

Mari... Mari got asked to carry a lot of shit plots in this show. All of the Ryusei School stuff was just the weakest, thinnest material, and her storylines with Kusaka are intensely problematic. And yet! She managed to find little pockets of truth, little ways to recenter the story onto her fears, her traumas. Plus, just some outstandingly self-confident energy. Mari always knew who she was and what she wanted, basically from the jump. She was always the secret (or maybe not so secret) boss of Team Faiz, and I respect the show a lot for that choice.

Keitaro is the show's moral center. If you ever, ever think the show is too cruel or too bleak or too nihilistic or too morally bankrupt, look at Keitaro. He's a joke in the beginning, but his optimistic worldview and boundless empathy are impossible to extinguish. He has a resolve that's unmatched on this show, and it's no surprise that Takumi's eventual goal as a Rider is to make Keitaro's dream a reality. There's a lot of ways that the show needles Keitaro, or introduces characters that sneer at his dream. But it validates Keitaro's dream at the end, saying Yeah, making the whole world happy is a pretty great thing to want, and maybe we'd all be better seeing the world like Keitaro.

But it's Kusaka who seems to get all of the attention, which is maybe why Faiz as a show has the reputation it does? I recall folks being very very excited when Kaixa shows up on the show, and he's a lot of fun at first. At first. But his worldview is hollow, his heroism cobbled together from narcissistic rage and abandonment issues. The joke, if you can call it that, is that Kusaka seems to have a more Standard Hero outlook than Takumi, but Kusaka is a villain. His determination is just a lack of mercy. His protection is just possession. It's fascinating to see the layers peeled back, but the show is definitely not putting up Kusaka as a hero. He's in the shape of a hero, but only to deconstruct those signifiers.

Kaido takes a long time to come into focus. He's hilarious, for sure. Best comedic performer on the show, probably. Always finds a fun twist on a line of dialogue. Dramatically, he's not asked to do that much. But I'll be damned if it didn't make perfect sense for him to be the lone remaining hero from Team Orphnoch. His path to being a hero is long and tentative. He never seems to feel like a purposeful hero, the kind who makes a bold speech about their beliefs. His heroic journey was like erosion, slowly worn down by people like Yuuji, Takumi, Keitaro, and Teruo. It's like he turned around in episode 48 and went Holy Shit I Actually Care About These People. His heroism wasn't planned, or fought for. It sneaks up on him, like it sneaks up on the audience.

Yuka really won me over. It's a purely reactive performance, always giving back whatever emotion she's given by another character. It's hard to see the real Yuka, and that's a great type of character to spend time with in a series like this. Yuka takes so much abuse, values herself so little, that it's beautiful and excruciating to see her slowly figure that out. To see her push at the boundaries she's created for herself, to see her long for the freedom to ask for happiness. It's always a sad story with Yuka. It's hard to watch, tough to process. But it always felt like a story worth paying attention to, a perspective worth experiencing.

Yuuji... I mean, Yuuji. At one point, my favorite character on the show. (This is before Houjou showed up, and before I fully understood the glory of Kageyama.) Watching him navigate a world he never felt comfortable in, building a morality for others to follow that he eventually lost faith in, it's a tough arc. The last four episodes, the choices the show makes with him in 47-49, it... I mean, it nearly ruined the character for me. For where he was at in 45-46, the Murakami Junior stuff didn't feel like a reaction to that, it felt like a shock-for-shock's-sake substitution, an idea that maybe worked in pitch form (what if Yuuji took over Smart Brain) but fumbled on the page and died on the screen. But, goddamn, give Old Yuuji a few seconds of space to sell his despair and it all just locks into place, feeling like the natural extension of a man who won't allow himself to be betrayed any further, who'd rather be a villain than a victim. While the specifics of it all never lined up for me, the broad strokes of Yuuji's story came through by the end.

--3--

It's the themes that really sold me on this series. Seeing some of the character choices and metaphors establish themselves got me really excited to see where this story went.

I liked that it was a story about survival, but this time about emotional survival. It's about how different groups find ways to first tolerate, then interrogate, then embrace each other. The Team Faiz side of the story is how an in-group processes a world with an out-group, how it looks at its own behavior, how it overcomes prejudice and resentment; and the Team Orphnoch side is about how the out-group vocalizes its objections, agitates for its rights, finds a way to live in harmony with an in-group.

It's, as stated, a hell of a series to watch during Pride Month. There's so much in this series that speaks to LGBTQ issues. Yuka's (to my mind) closeting, her inability to be honest with her desires and identity. Kaido's freedom of his new identity, that's tempered with the ways it doesn't really change who he is inside. Yuuji's activism, and the ways he becomes militarized after feeling the weight of a culture that he fears will never accept him. Mari trying to find a way to accept a friend and failing, badly. Takumi's... just everything with Takumi hiding his Orphnoch identity. His self-loathing, his fears of being shunned, the way he doesn't get to control coming out to his friends. All of Takumi's story. Even the end of Takumi and Yuuji's story, it can be read as Takumi valuing acceptance versus Yuuji raging against oppression.

It just felt way smarter to me than it needed to be. Nothing against some incredibly smart Kamen Rider series, but the stuff that Faiz was trying to get at, themes of acceptance and coexistence and identity and communication, it just felt so much more mature than I'd've ever expected. It's doing so much, right under the surface, and it made this show a joy to watch and think about.

--4--

And then there's the plot, which... didn't.

I get it, how that maybe is a dealbreaker for some fans. It's not a great plot. The Orphnoch King gets brought up all season, and he's lame. There's way too much time digging into the Ryusei School and its alumni ("Go Meteors!"), and it rarely feels worth the effort. A lot of plot stuff just drops out of the sky in the final four episodes. A few characters that feel like they should be a big deal (Minami, Orphan Daddy) end up not really mattering. Beyond Takumi being an Orphnoch, it's hard to think of a really cool twist that improved the plot.

I can't blame anyone who wants a Kamen Rider show that's both thematically rich and expertly plotted. (To which I'd say, Build.) For me, what this show managed through its emphasis on character-driven decision-making and thematic heft more than made up for the missteps that occurred when you could feel the push of plot-driven developments.

Like, the Murakami Junior stuff. It's just not a good idea. It loses Yuuji, and only serves to replace Murakami. There's no storytelling gain there, you just lost the most compelling character on the show. It makes three-quarters of the final story a slog to get through. It doesn't feel like something Yuuji would do, which was a mistake Faiz spent 90% of its run not making.

When the characters lead the story, this show was powerful and smart. When it let the plot lead the story, it was poorly-justified and insincere. I guess for me, the character-driven parts outweighed the plot-driven parts. I get that not everyone will make the same allowance.

--5--

Folks always seemed pretty skeptical about Faiz, before I started. Its reputation definitely preceded it. And it's not without cause! It's unusual in ways that can frustrate, and bold in ways that might be ill-considered. But, man, I really appreciated what it said over the course of the show, and forgive it its (relatively) minor missteps. It's not for everyone, but it was definitely for me.

Real talk for a second though, since I don't remember anyone bringing it up and it is a plothole that has been driving me crazy. Did Kusaka just quit college to hang out at the dry cleaners and wash his bike? That dude was in a million clubs and then we never ever see him go back there once. I know he wants to protect Mari, but he can probably do that and take some classes, right?

So weird that that never came up on the show or (if memory serves) in this thread. I'm changing my appraisal! Faiz bad! FAIZ BAD!