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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I have been waiting for this day since Girls Remix was announced.

My favorite thing in any Kamen Rider series tends to be the stories they tell about women, because they?re so rare. Stories about sons, fathers, brothers, male friendships? that shit?s as common to the franchise as amnesia is in Revice. You can?t turn on a random Heisei episode without seeing a father trying to reconcile things with a son he neglected, or seeing two skinny boys who probably won modeling awards battling over a shattered friendship. It?s the meat of this franchise, for better or worse.

But women? God, the number of the stories that center a female perspective, or value a woman?s story? Minuscule in comparison, and that?s counting the ones that are so misguided as to make me shout an Ikki-esque I?M BOILING OVER at whatever stupidly patronizing resolution is put forward. This franchise has carved out some great female characters, and memorable arcs for them, but they exist in such weird, siloed isolation. Pathos and passion, floating in a sea of testosterone.

So to learn that there?d be a TTFC series that starred Akiko from W, Poppy from Ex-Aid, guest-starred Rinko from Wizard, and co-starred a bunch of new women I was sure to love ? spoiler, I absolutely did ? was an incredibly exciting development. Yeah, it?s a TTFC thing, instead of an actual TV series; and yeah, it was bound to disappoint my fevered imaginings of high production values and insightful commentary about how a woman?s narrative has to conform to a man?s perspective; but just the fact that it existed was enough to have me waiting for the day I?d get to experience it. And we did it, gang. We got to the point where I?d get to watch Girls Remix.

It?s okay.

I was really excited for this one, too, for fairly similar reasons. I've probably mentioned by now that Sakura and Hana were my favorite characters on Revice and getting something that focused on them, plus several returning female Riders on top of that, was very much up my alley. I think that the miniseries is pretty good by the standards of web miniseries, which is to say that it is both fun and pretty unessential.

I definitely agree that the high point is having this mix of characters interacting with each other. Is it weird seeing Sabela hanging out with other Kamen Riders when she was usually more of an anti-hero in Saber? Kinda. Does it stretch credibility that Akiko could organize... anything, really? Yes. Does it still work anyway? Absolutely. If nothing else, we get Poppy and Izu in the same room with each other and it never, ever fails to be brilliant.

We also get the ending theme, Riot in Bloom, which is a stone cold banger.

I have one real gripe about the series, but we'll get to that in a couple days.

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[A] half-dozen of my all-time favorite characters, and also Akiko from W.

The first episode of this aired around the same time that the uncomfortably horny Kamen Rider W cartoon started airing and I remember feeling that it was really surreal going from animated Akiko to 12-years-older real life Akiko. Fun, though. My stance on Akiko mellowed a lot over the years and I'm actually really fond of her now (this is thanks in no small part to Kamen Rider having introduced several comic relief characters that were far more intolerable).