[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

The media res opening doesn't bother me, honestly. Like Die said, you get a lot of the basics pretty quickly and I never really felt lost and confused.

About the concept, at least.

So there's this thing about Blade that made my first watch-through kind of difficult (and I've read it was an issue for some others, too). 2004 must have been a year where there was a really popular hairstyle in Japan, because it took me a few episodes to get the facial features down enough to clearly tell Kenzaki and Kotaro apart (and Hajime, to a lesser extent). Hair is one of the main characteristics I use to distinguish people and it took me a good 2-3 episodes to really get everyone down. It really threw off some of the scenes in the premiere.

For me, it was Hajime and Kenzaki. There's that moment when Hajime walks in on Kotaro's conversation with his family where I was like Wait Isn't This The Kamen Rider That Kotaro Was Just Talking About, but honestly a lot of it was that I was not prepared to have another new character get introduced. I caught up to him being a new dude pretty quick.

(Also, special thanks to Switchblade, Fish Sandwich, and Zatyme for not immediately correcting me on the new great character's name being KOtaro, not KEItaro. I swear I wasn't doing a bit, I sincerely thought his name was also Keitaro.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Now, watching the premiere again I know who everyone is, but there's another issue that really stood out to me and it's something else that Die mentioned: man, this episode is overstuffed. Coming off of Faiz, in particular, there is so much stuff going on here. Faiz really eased us into the show - episode 1 is all about Yuuji and Mari, 2 brings Takumi more to the front, 3 and 4 are focused around Keitaro and Yuka, etc. Blade throws Kenzaki, Tachibana, Kotaro, Kotaro's sister and bratty niece, the sister's border, BOARD, BOARD's chief, and Hirose. That's a ton of characters and concepts for 23 minutes. That would be hard to follow even with proper enunciation.

It's also kind of ironic, given Blade has a reputation for its slow start. Not a universal opinion, but Blade is one of those shows that picks up a lot in terms of action and story as it goes on. It's always been one of my favorites.

It's just trying to cram in so much, and that's not even counting the weird backstory stuff that'll be relevant later. That's what makes it such a tough episode to get a grip on: it's like you've arrived at the climax of an arc, and they're also setting up a whole other dynamic. And, y'know, it doesn't leave a lot of room to make a case for what show you're going to be watching! Or why!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

And finally, a couple points of cast trivia: you probably recognize Tachibana as Principal Hayame from Fourze, but Kotaro's niece, Amane, was on the show, too. She appeared in several episodes as Ritsuko Usaka, the head of the school's witch cult.

I definitely knew the Tachibana thing. It's one of three things* I already knew about Blade before I watched it. (OF COURSE HE BETRAYED YOU, BLADE, HE'S A ZODIART.) Didn't know that about Amane, though! Thanks!

*: Blade's merch sales (or ratings?) were so poor that Hibiki was conceived as Not A Kamen Rider at first; and the helmet has started changing color over the years, so it's a different form's helmet in the later movies.**

**: I might be remembering both of these wrong. I'm certain about the Principal thing, though!