[Daikaijuman54]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I guess the answer is really "no", if we're talking strictly about the actual plot mechanics going on here, which I distinctly remember feeling ~pretty~ messy, but I absolutely like the Time Jackers way more than I think most people do -- completely unironically -- and a lot of that started coming together for me in this final stretch of the series. Heisei Kamen Rider shows love their focus on found families, and Zi-O is maybe less subtle about that than usual. So I actually really ended up loving the contrast between the main heroes and villains. You have this protagonist in Sougo, who becomes best buds with his own executioner, living under the same roof with all his other time friends and his supportive and caring uncle; and then on the other side of all this, you've got Swartz: this colossally s***ty authority figure dragging these two surly kids around in this cold, affectionless dynamic where they basically all hate each other's guts and constantly treat one another like complete garbage, because that's all they've ever known and they don't know how to quit.

Huh. That's an interesting angle to look at. Not sure if it makes me feel any different towards the Time Jackers, but it's definitely an interesting take.

Nice to know there are folks out there who can see them in a better light than what they're ultimately presented as.

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I don't know, it's hard to make a big case for them right now, going entirely off of memory, and I suspect it'd be another fun thing to pay more attention to on a rewatch, but while they aren't utterly amazing antagonists or anything, I don't doubt their presence is adding something worthwhile to the series. Really, the thing that bugs me most about these three is just that I can never remember how to spell their names.

I'm going off memory as well, so maybe I'm remembering them somehow worse than I'm making them out to be. I may know their Katakana spellings, but English is a whole different beast. Is it Weure? Wooelu? Aura? Uehra? Swartz at least is easy, so he's got that going for him.