[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

I’m in the camp that prefers the new Hana to the old one.

Same here. Matsumoto is sometimes compared unfavorably to Shiratori, but not as egregiously as the comparison between Mizoguchi and Sato. Kohana is still pretty popular on her own merit even though the actress is unfortunately retired last I heard. Honestly, I couldn't imagine Den-O without Kohana, considering how she appeared in a lot of the post-series content. Matsumoto is also the youngest actress to play the female lead. Unlike the actors of Kato Yakumo and Jin Masato who have identical kanji in their surnames, the second kanji in her surname is 元 which is different. Yay for different kanji readings!

Something else that is good about Kohana, as Die already mentioned, is her relevance to the dragging Zeronos memory subplot, which makes it just a little less boring to watch by actually showing a tangible and interesting consequence that isn't just Airi conveniently losing her memory due to weird time travel logic. Sakurai/Airi is an already established ship, but Yuto/Airi isn't, which makes it hard to get invested in the subplot, so throwing another character in to that in such a surprise plot twist is a good way to reroute the train on to a different more scenic rail, figuratively speaking.