[Daikaijuman54]

This arc is certainly a clever one.

To be honest, some of these early episodes kind of escape me at the moment, but they're not bad at all. The Armor Times are pretty great, including some of the sounds from their respective Riders, but also the armors doing their signature poses before becoming a part of our Time Riders, and it's neat how Zi-O's is Katakana, whilst Geiz is Hiragana, it's such an interesting way of defining the two.

It also really warms me to see Gentarou's students and teacher again, but strangely funny how Gentarou is just expecting Sougo and lets him have his powers, which after the Wizard X Fourze movie, kind of fits, and yet doesn't fit at all, so I don't know quite how I feel about this exactly. Funnier still, Fourze took place in a high school, and Decade's Faiz also took place in a high school.

I also find how they slightly tweak the monster-of-the-week formula pretty cool, since usually they save something like this for later, but it's a little refreshing to see Rider changing its formula to avoid becoming cut-and-paste of the same weekly conflict until the endgame. But nothing against that formula, since there are shows where it doesn't feel like it's dragged on for too long, or they're constantly entertaining that I don't mind the usual formula, but it's still something I've noticed from later Rider seasons.

And of course, while I'm not familiar with Faiz, we get our favorite laundryman and local scuzzball to make up for the lack of Fourze appearances (at least we got the handshake).