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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I’m using the OZC-Live subs instead of TV-Nihon, but I can switch if that’s a mistake.

It's definitely not a mistake if you want to understand what's happening. Den-O is possible TV-Nihon's most infamous project. It's one where they left some things un-translated not just because there's no one-for-one equivalent (Airi's refers to her drinks as "coffee friends," which I always interpreted as referring to the collective coffee beans, maybe - TV-N leaves that as "coffee-tachi," which is basically "coffee and the others") but also because they thought the Japanese sounded cooler. The TV-N subs are full of "Ore Sanjou" and "hissatsu-waza" variants, which are the catchphrases you already get several times in the first episode (literally "I have arrived" and "final/ultimate/killer attack").

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I’m even more excited to maybe find out what the hell “Den-O” even means. Like, Kamen Rider Blade? Easy! Build? Figured it out! Den-O? Nothing, no clue, no ideas, just dumb jokes. Getting to solve that weird riddle is my fondest hope for Episode 1 of Kamen Rider Den-O. Will it be granted? Let’s find out together!

Literally "Train King." Never explained in the show, you kinda just have to know Japanese. Kind of pays off later on in a joke that TV-Nihon assumed everyone would get without translation notes.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Absolutely fantastic first episode of Kamen Rider Den-O. I am fully on board.

There are maybe two first episodes of Kamen Rider that I think are basically perfect. The first is Kamen Rider Black's, which immediately throws the viewer into a media res high tension scene of the main character fleeing through the streets of Tokyo at night, being chased by strange ghostly figures. Masterpiece. The second is Den-O's.

I love this episode. It does such a fantastic job of establishing the show's main character, his life, and the world that he lives in. We really do get a strong sense of who Ryotaro is and he is basically the anti-Tendou. It's such a great swerve how we spent a year with the charismatic swagger and arrogance of Tendou and then go immediately into this weenie stuck in a tree (Ryotaro is great, but he absolutely comes off as a weenie; I like that you're picking up on some of the motivations behind that).

There are some really great moments in this episode, but there are two that I want to specifically highlight. It's short, but I absolutely adore the bizarre surrealism of the scene where Ryotaro tries to walk into a police station, only to end up in a rainbow-skied desert where a train pulls up and Rina Akiyama gives him a cup of coffee. That is such a beautifully weird, dreamlike moment.

The other moment I really enjoy is the first fight transformation into Den-O (which is called "Plat Form" because train jokes). In so many of these shows we see the hero transform for the first time and seemingly have immediate knowledge of exactly how to use all of these new powers (looking at you, Tak-kun!). Ryotaro is completely clueless: he nervously shouts out "henshin," needs Hana to fasten the belt for him, and triggers the actual change by accident. And once he's transformed he immediately starts running for cover and throwing random things at the monster. Such a great scene, absolutely love it.

There's some stuff I definitely want to talk about with how this show is the model for the Neo Heisei (aka Phase 2) era, but I'm going to wait a few days for that because I think it will be a better point to make once we're a few episodes in. The last thing I'll say for now is that Ryotaro is played by Takeru Satoh. Like Kabuto's Hiro Mizushima, Satoh went on to be a pretty big star in Japan. He is probably my favorite lead actor in any of these shows and a huge part of it is how well he handles the physical challenge of playing multiple characters in one body. He makes the change from Ryotaro to his monster party is immediately obvious in the way he carries himself and it is absolutely believable that this is a completely different character.