[Enchilada645]

Again, I find Saber's pacing hilarious because it's like "Hello, this here is Kento... anyway here's this cool dude named Buster who had no foreshadowing in Episode 2!"

Also about pacing, this was an episode I remember stirring up a lot of contention. Because at the climax of the episode we get 2 full transformation sequences (3 if you count Rintaro and Touma's separately) alongside 3 full form change sequences. And while I do think Covid sorta factored into them basically taking screen time by using these sequences... again I hope you like toys. Bandai wants you to like toys. But yeah, like 5 full transformation/form change sequences in the span of 6 minutes? Kinda overkill.

Now that aside, let's talk about the new hotness in town, Kamen Rider Buster. So rarely do we get a Rider Series where it's like, here is a dad, he is alive, he is good, and he is a Kamen Rider. Ogami's very much a first when it comes to Dad Riders I feel (unless I'm forgetting someone?) and he's very much a welcome addition to everything.

Okay I know I threw pacing aside, but I kinda like how we just suddenly got Ogami? This part of the show is very much saying, here is Touma, he's the new guy at work and is slowly but surely meeting all of his co-workers. And that just sorta fits in with how it's paced and how literally everyone is just crawling out of the woodwork. First he reunites with Kento, who also works for the same magic book organization that Rintaro does, and also he gets to meet the coolest Rider ever like not even five minutes later? Yeah sounds like an ordinary day at work when you're the new guy.

But anyway back to Buster. There's just a good beefiness to the suit, and the way the turtle motif shines through on the upper armor is very nice. It's really hard to make me like very mute suits (I dislike suits like Build Hazard for a reason) so you have to make up for it in different ways. And I feel as though Buster manages to provide enough cool details within the suit itself and how it's designed to where it looks good even if it's grey.

But yeah, really, just a nice little introduction episodes for Buster in general. Not much to truly say here other than, yes, I love Buster.

As for the story this time, given the cover image I had a feeling I knew what you'd be writing about. That being said... the contents of the story were very gripping to me, just the way Kouhei acts and thinks about himself, the slow spiral into a sort of depressive episode and then that small sense of wonder and hope at seeing the little toy on the book only to end up going poof... well done.