[Switchblade]

Episode 6 kind of broke my heart. I was never a big fan of combining two tributes into one two-parter (not the show's most controversial move for me, but we'll get there), but when you can't get any of the cast from a show, what else can you do (we'll come back to that, too)? Besides, I figured that some sacrifices in screen time for Takumi and Kusaka would still be worth it when we got to see them pull out their Gear and get into the action alongside Sougo/Zi-O and Geiz/Also Geiz. I've never hid my love of the Kaixa suit, so getting to see that in action again was going to be a huge thrill for me.

And then it never happened. Takumi never got to even touch the Faiz Ridewatch, much less use it to get his powers back. Kusaka didn't even get a vanity watch like Banjou's that did nothing but disappear forever after one scene. They just leave, pausing only to swing by the .5 episode on their way out. The idea that the show was going to do something like this, bring back old characters but not letting them get in on the action, really bummed me out. It may be shallow, but even by this point there was one main draw for me with this show and it wasn't the new characters. This episode, along with the whole "Riders were erased from history, but we're cool with that" nature of the Ridewatches are big factors in why I started getting such a negative view of Zi-O from pretty early on.