[Enchilada645]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It's almost impossible to believe that Gai is running the Metal Cluster Hopper Strategy again, after Aruto took the last cursed power-up and repaved a street with Thouser's face. The last time wasn't even some minor variable that Gai hadn't accounted for; Aruto won by being the exact same person he always was!

There's some humor - and a little bit of character work - to Gai's absolute blindspot on how much shit he can make people eat, but as a storytelling choice? Not the best!

Yeah, it's still my belief that the writing team only made Gai be the one to give Aruto Metal Cluster purely because they wanted to push him as "The Next Kaixa", which uh... I'll be real in hindsight, he's honestly more laughable and hilarious than threatening or scummy.

Cause see, my reasoning comes from this. The Thousand Jacker, at least for Zero-One, usually stabbed the Driver's scan point. Likewise, what does Metal Cluster completely cover up with the clamp that really doesn't need to be there if it's just meant for Aruto to go berserk. It covers up the scan point. Now you could argue "Oh it's to make it harder to get off" but like, both times it's done it doesn't seem that hard to get off.

Especially with just the whole "Secret Material: Hiden Metal" part of the jingle. It really feels like Metal Cluster was meant to be a direct counter to Thouser made by Hiden instead of what we got. It might've even entirely circumvented the Metal Cluster Arc, which while having a great ending with the Progrise Hopper Blade, was completely unnecessary.

But this leads into what I wanted to say about the Arc in general and... I feel like they tried to make Gai too "in control" when it came to everything. Okay so he made the Ark go crazy and basically caused all the problems because of his own grievances with how Hiden was heading, that's fine. That's a good setup for him as a villain and him wanting to take back Hiden, absolutely fine.

The issue is aside from Aruto and Fuwa, he sorta just takes away from everything else when it could make for interesting content. Yua's just sorta static and doesn't get much until Episode 29. Horobi was admittedly fine, dude needed a vacation if I'm being honest. Oh, Zaia's Keys were stolen? By seemingly the mysterious fourth member of Metsubojinrai? That seems like an interesting plot-oh it was Gai just controlling Naki inside Fuwa the entire time and distributing the Raid Riser was his entire idea and it wasn't this unknown element that could shake Gai up a bit, no he had to be perfectly under control of the situation at all times.

Like the only thing he's seemingly not in control of is Jin, but Jin enters so late and doesn't do much that it doesn't really matter in the end.

Add in the monotony of having the same Jacking sequences over and over again as well as a similar pattern, and this arc nearly made me burn out if I'm being quite frank. Sure the stories were nice, but there's a tedium that really shows in how they implement the pattern (where even the crew admitted that they were struggling on how to put in fights) and you can implement the pattern in a good way, and despite little change ups here and there, it was not implemented in a good way.

But overall it was at least a strong finish and we're into new and frankly more interesting territory what with Aruto basically on his own for this new Arc and Gai in this seeming position of unstoppable power now that he's gotten what he believes will grant him victory.