[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER BLADE - HYPER BATTLE VIDEO

This time on Kamen Rider Blade: It's Blade versus Blade, as Tachibana and Mutsuki are no help! Hajime holds the key to victory! And Kotaro basically reads out this page from the Wiki!



It's cute! It's a cute little video.

I mean, boy, not that much to talk about in this one, really. It's very very about explaining how all the trading card powers work. That, and Kotaro s l o w l y r e a d i n g t h e w o r d s h e i s t y p i n g, was about 80% of this special. I don't know why they went that way with this? As a promotional tool, is it really that useful to explain the superhero rules for a series that's ending in seven episodes? Doesn't strike me as a worthwhile use of a 10-minute video.

The gags in this are funny, though. Of course Mutsuki screws up and attacks the wrong Blade, and of course Tachibana gets all Let Me Take It From Here and screws up equally bad. They're hopeless, these other Riders. It's fitting that the only one who's able to really see Kenzaki is Hajime, and is the only Rider who can tell which Blade is real and which is THE ONE OBVIOUSLY WEARING A SCARF.

(I actually think the scarf thing is hysterical. I love stories where characters can't tell which is the duplicate during incredibly obvious switcheroos. That gag always, always lands with me. Tachibana and Mutsuki being both oblivious and dangerous? Not exactly noncanonical!)

Hajime's answer for how he could pick out the real Kamen Rider Blade is that, when he shouted out "Blade", the U.N.D.E.A.D. turned to the sound a second faster than Kenzaki. It's a joke, Kenzaki Is So Slow, ha ha, sure. It's just, I don't think that's it? Hajime doesn't shout "Kenzaki", he shouts "Blade". The robot probably thinks of itself at that point as Blade, while (to paraphrase Inoue) Kenzaki is Kenzaki. I think Hajime knew that, and knew that Kenzaki would turn slower to being called Blade than he would being called Kenzaki. Hajime gets that very sweet boy!

Other than that, it's a trifle. Fun fights between Blade and Blade With New Scarf, but that's about it. A whole whole lot of explaining the cards. Weird choice, but it was still fun.