[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I just like that there's a purely Good Imagin in the cast? Momo is all over the place, but Ura veered a little far into Unlikeable territory, so I like Kintaros being a decent monster to rebalance things.

Oh well, I'm also thrilled over a purely good member among grey to black cast, but it's not always the case for some audiences and sometimes the oddball (decent one) can be criticized among that type of cast. And for you, that I feel that you won't care about rebalance before, that to you there won't be any limits for insufferable but charismatic assholes (and at least in-universe, Urataros is that, with him charming any girls he met).

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 11 - “MADNESS, DELUSION, KASUMI FLOWERS”

They really are pretty hopeless in this one. It ain’t exactly a Final Boss-level adversary they’re up against, but thanks to our cast firing on absolutely no cylinders, the team is doing pretty awful. Between Kintaros barging in every time he overhears something that even rhymes with the word Cry and Kasumi trying to grow up way too fast, we’ve got a Den-O episode that’s largely about getting in your own way.

And I’m good with that! For a series that’s mostly about how we balance the various parts of ourselves in order to be the best versions of ourselves, characters like Kintaros need to be out of whack. We need to see the heroes as barely functional in the early going, if their journey to Can Exist In Society is to mean anything. I’m definitely okay with them having an adventure that is built around them screwing it up for themselves, especially when the stakes are so low-rent.

If it's a final boss-level adversary, they'd screw up even harder against those, probably outright exterminated. The consequence of the team doing awful still depends on how strong the adversary is. And probably you're only good with this, about the team doing awful, where probably I want for credit for non-dysfunctional ones too (and my point is more about how the morality of the cast is provided by a show; like giving those that are morally ambiguous to morally bankrupt, that'll result in dysfunctional work, while giving those who are more upright will result in the more controlled collaboration. I don't want for any member of the cast to be made worse in moral especially existing one just for the sake of dysfunctional stuff). Kintaros being made out of whack is better than making Kintaros as morally ambiguous as the other Taros, yeah, don't want that to happen for the sake of not being functional. Between those Rider series you mentioned, Ryuki has almost entirely no teamwork, except for the morally grey to black Riders (the rest of the Riders except Shinji and Ren) in 13 Riders, or the occassional main cast and Kagawa's group. Blade actually has the most cooperative relationship of the primary and secondary Riders between Kenzaki and Tachibana. Ghost is the one that has one of the most heart in the cast. Ex-Aid is dysfunctional yeah.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Even the stuff with her dad… there’s just not much to go on? Saving all of the parts of Kasumi’s story that explain her as a person for the second part, it just makes her so uncompelling of a guest star. She’s not sweet enough to be charming, and she’s not mean enough to be funny. She’s just this bland girl who is crying on the inside, and there’s not enough specificity to her performance (or the writing or direction) to make that pop. It’s fine, as far as setting a story in motion, but it’s nothing to really dig into.

There's a counterpoint here from Switchblade regarding Kasumi, I'd like to see how this goes, the opposing views. And talking about bland, probably those 2 aren't guarantees, that unfortunately to me, being too sweet is a recipe for being bland to some people (and I think this is a double standard view for character alignments), and there are those who for being mean, is someone like Kabuto's school principal, also there's a common view in series that jerks are subjectively viewed as worse than villains just because they irritate more.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

THE BAGGAGE CAR

-Still, it is practically criminal that an episode about the world of modeling didn’t once comment on how absolutely gorgeous Hana is. How was that not a way into this narrative? Why are we telling this story through Ryotaro’s incredibly terrible bodyguarding (like, why keep him on staff after he gets trampled by preteen girls?!) when Hana is there, looking that good? Bonkers.

There are already some parts in the franchise where character's good looks is remarked in-universe, but yeah, no mention of Hana's looks in this part about modeling?!