[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

You just described my beef with some (actually a lot) of the Rider finishers. Like the Unified Burst Fire Style here, the attack seems no different from the usual attack outside saying "Unified Burst Fire Style". Like said in this post (and some of my idea here), to me finishers should have something that differentiates it from ordinary attack, either in attack or effect, though it depends on what powerset you have.

It's weird, because in some ways I actually like how the show approached Unified Burst Fire Style? They just did a whole two-parter about Hibiki training and trying out new techniques (including a very long segment of him actually drumming!), so the idea of him having a new move he wants to try out is both firmly established in-show, and also thematically appropriate because he achieved it by training hard. That's Hibiki's thing, being well-trained!

It's just, beyond the flaming drum sticks, the move itself is a little underwhelming. If they hadn't bothered to to call out how this move was some highly-anticipated tactic, I'd've just assumed it was the same finish as always.

I got complicated feelings about Unified Burst Fire Style!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

If Akira interacts with Asumu, it'd seem betraying her (overboard) ideals established in previous episode. Focus on the job, without involving anyone that is no help. Unless somehow they can be on break. Hibiki and Ibuki just work in separation like before.

Which is how they could've done it. I don't want to write the show for them, but there's any number of ways Akira and Asumu could've crossed paths in an episode. They're the same age, living in the same area, going to (soon) the same school, and they both frequent Team Hibiki Bar and Grill. (I can't call it Tachibana's, I spent two months typing that name, I need a goddamn break.) They have a half-dozen ways to meet up in a story.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

And for this one, Asumu just found a shoplifter, and he tries to stop them, where he only helped stopped the girl (and got a nasty smack on the face for it). It's likely just basic human decency, though I want to ask why you didn't accept this as much as when someone like title Rider is doing this?

I definitely don't think Asumu meant to stop her! It seems like she ran into him, since he was pretty much a deer in the headlights at that point, and then she tripped over him. He was an obstacle to her escaping, but he didn't really try to stop her. If he did, he might not've felt so bad for the rest of the episode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

If there’s one issue I sometimes have with Hibiki - and Daimajin Kanon is really guilty of this, too - it’s that it has a tendency to go with a “more is more” approach to establishing how downtrodden the main character is. I’ve never liked the shoplifters arc because it doesn’t tell us anything new about Asumu - he lacks self-confidence and has trouble standing up for himself. We know that already. This is just another example of character traits that he’s already demonstrated several times by this point. The show is built around him growing up and maturing, but it also has a bad tendency to go for “one step forward, one step back.” The imaginary sheep was nice, though.

If there'd been even a little explanation about what the sheep meant, it would've been one of the screencaps for the episode. But then the bookstore employee reminded us all about how financially imperiled your local bookstore is, and then I wasn't going to use anything else.

But, yeah, Asumu. I don't mind the idea of them going back to the well of Asumu Lacks Self-Confidence, since that's his defining trait. (That image of Hibiki saying he's well-trained, but it's Asumu doing the salute and saying "I find it difficult to believe in myself!") Doing stories about that... there's really no way around it? But stories like this where it lacks perspective, where it feels like there's no awareness in-character or metatextually that we've hit some of these beats before, it can make it hard to feel as invested in a character as we'd like. If, again, we'd maybe gotten a moment where Asumu says that he knows he froze, and that he's beating himself up about it, I think some of the criticisms about this plot being repetitive fall away. Keeping it all in Asumu's head, all we can look at are the results of his actions, and they can be a little underwhelming!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Anyway, I definitely see what you're saying about the way the episodes are structured. From what I understand, Rider screenplays actually are written as wholes, which would maybe explain the disconnect here? It's probably pretty easy for the production team to forget that back half is going to take the viewer a week to see when all they have to do is turn the page?

It might also be another quirk of Takatera in particular, since Kuuga was often pretty brazen about this kind of thing too.

Yeah, some shows balance it better than others. I think one trick is to make the first part (where there will be no resolution) a little bit more fun, a little less plot-heavy. That's what's made some of the other Hibiki stories work when they've got the same structure as this one. If either the Ibuki or Hibiki plot had carved out some space for jokes or prep or something that didn't feel so plot-driven, I might not have felt as bored with them.