[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I guess Shouichi being an Agito would go against Hikawa's traits. The whole point of Hikawa is how he thinks he's useless as just a regular human in a show full of Agitos. So having a version of him who is a dormant Agito and apparently excelled at being G3-X rather than doing merely an average job would mean he wouldn't have any reason to feel like such a constant failure, right?. I mean, I agree with you that he doesn't really have that personality, but maybe it's just hard to integrate that personality to an Agito, instead of a regular human who lacks self-confidence? It sucks though, since I could relate a lot to Hikawa and this composite Shouichi character is missing a lot of that.

The main problem with putting more of Hikawa's cheerful self-loathing into AR Shouichi is that it would probably come off too comedic, as Hikawa often could in Agito. (I mean, I really started to enjoy Hikawa once the show let him get weird and pathetic.) That's fine for a longer run, and for a slightly less central hero, but I don't think it would work for this two-part story about regret and sacrifice that desperately needs Shouichi to be a furnace of resentment at a world that robbed him of happiness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daikaijuman54

Agito was definitely played really well here, especially how AR Agito is all three Riders introduced in his show. I may not know much about Kuuga and Agito's shows, but here, it culminates rather well, and it was one of the more interesting arcs in the season.

I really love that we got almost a week from me posting about the Agito episodes before I went Wait There Were FOUR Riders On Agito. No love for Another Agito from the makers of Decade, I guess!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daikaijuman54

The arc is definitely more of a comedic one, also setting up the new Den-O movie (Which I liked), but it was definitely a ton of fun. This was probably my favorite Final Form Ride, since it's just straight up Momotaros, and the presentation was hilarious (though the finisher with Kuuga is still just "what?"). And that scene with Kuuga attacking Momotaros killed me, just a great introduction to Den-O, and Tsukasa actually somehow made this even more fun.

It always feels a bit like a dick move to criticize Den-O for bad series arcs or confusing reveals or drawn-out character explanations, since the only metric for success on that show is Was It Fun. If it was Fun, it forgives nearly everything else, and makes any complaints seem like nitpicking. That's pretty much how these last two Decade episodes rolled out, sacrificing some of the things I like about Decade (reinterpretations, mostly) to make room for character returns and funny gags. Was it a great story? No. Was it fun? It really was, yeah.