[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Yet previously you defended Yukimi from people who criticized her like this...

I feel like I've taken pains to note the differences between her earlier objections (Sakura wasn't a Kamen Rider, so it was fair for her mother to be concerned about her safety in a way she wasn't for Daiji or Ikki) and now? This is a shifting story, there's no sense in being overly rigid.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE: THE MYSTERY EPISODE 1



KAIDO

Oh, man, this dude. This dude! Probably my favorite Kamen Rider actor, full stop. I don’t think I’d’ve cared about the Kento storyline in Saber half as much if his dad hadn’t been played by Kaido. He’s just always fun to watch, to see how he imbues even the smallest role with weird affectations and compelling strangeness. I like any story he’s in more than I probably should.

…Which is maybe another way of saying that this initial episode of The Mystery is sort of dull? It’s heavy on setup, to the detriment of a tangible hook. The mystery is just There Are Monsters, and that’s not– it’s not exactly a million miles away from your standard Kamen Rider premise. The twists here are threefold: first, we’ve in a locked-room mystery, where the suspects are trapped for a duration of time, while the killer (or killers) whittles down the cast; second, there are both a Deadman and a Roidmude, as well as possibly an Orphnoch or Imagin; finally, we are in Special Guest Star Project territory, with all the ways that mandate warps the narrative.

Still, Otta! Kaido! Terui! The shitty boss from Kiva as the groundskeeper! It’s a mess of familiar faces in the first episode alone, with at least Terui and Otta requiring whole scenes dedicated to their arrival. They’re, frankly, the only reasons to be excited about a fairly innocuous bit of tie-in content, so it’s hard to say the episode made the wrong decision in stretching out their intros. (Nice to see that Terui still takes meetings at the one cafe from his Zi-O appearance, I think!) The whole point of this thing is Look Who Came Back, so why not give them room to breathe?

The rest of it is, again, a lot of setup. None of the lodge’s guests make much of an impression, and one of them is bumped off a few minutes after we meet him. Ikki and Hiromi are both smitten with the innkeeper, which is… a choice. (I like that Ikki is canonically the horniest modern-day Rider; I dislike Hiromi getting easily distracted by a damsel in distress.) There’s some fun in providing a mystery for Ikki and Vice, since Ikki tends to be unobservant, and Vice is quick to notice things but bad at processing which details are important. They’re not exactly Philip and Shotaro, you know? It’s a nice change of pace to put these two at the helm of a murder mystery, mostly for how badly they’re equipped for it.

Didn’t think this first episode was much to talk about, beyond citing the Special Guest Stars, but that’s not nothing. Really hoping that the story picks up in Episode 2!

[Androzani84]

Alright, I had something prepared for this, but it was in the event that you’d watched all 5 episodes. So I’m just gonna do the cast trivia.



Suzu-san is Rina Aizawa, better known as Saki Rouyama/Go-On Yellow from Engine Sentai Go-Onger.

The gardener is Takuma Sugawara, better known as Tappei Mikami/Sazer Gans from Chouseishin Gransazer.

And as you can guess from the picture, the guy who exists solely to die is Another Ex-Aid from Zi-O.

Anyway, like I said, I’ve got some opinions and material for this, but they’re all very spoiler-y, so I’ll see you in episode 5.

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER REVICE: THE MYSTERY EPISODE 1

Which is maybe another way of saying that this initial episode of The Mystery is sort of dull? It?s heavy on setup, to the detriment of a tangible hook. The mystery is just There Are Monsters, and that?s not? it?s not exactly a million miles away from your standard Kamen Rider premise. The twists here are threefold: first, we?ve in a locked-room mystery, where the suspects are trapped for a duration of time, while the killer (or killers) whittles down the cast; second, there are both a Deadman and a Roidmude, as well as possibly an Orphnoch or Imagin; finally, we are in Special Guest Star Project territory, with all the ways that mandate warps the narrative.

Cliche, perhaps a little, but I don't think I could call a murder mystery dull. The Mystery is actually my favorite piece of Revice content! I was surprised to find out it was written by Uchida, whose comedy involving Ikki and Vice in this special has improved significantly since the fart jokes from Saber's post-finale crossover episode.

So, as this is a murder mystery, I have to ask, who do you currently think murdered Gondawara? You seem to have suspected an Imagin or Orphenoch, due to the mysterious sand-like substance in the room.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Still, Otta! Kaido! Terui! The shitty boss from Kiva as the groundskeeper! It?s a mess of familiar faces in the first episode alone, with at least Terui and Otta requiring whole scenes dedicated to their arrival. They?re, frankly, the only reasons to be excited about a fairly innocuous bit of tie-in content, so it?s hard to say the episode made the wrong decision in stretching out their intros. (Nice to see that Terui still takes meetings at the one cafe from his Zi-O appearance, I think!) The whole point of this thing is Look Who Came Back, so why not give them room to breathe?

It's definitely George's favorite part as well. I enjoyed how he and Terui were staring at each other seriously and then George just got all excited and asked (Don't ask me questions!) for his autograph. Another thing I've noticed about Uchida's style is that he loves to play up this lovable side of George and I should also credit the actor Hamao Noritaka for the energy he brings to the character in these scenes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The rest of it is, again, a lot of setup. None of the lodge?s guests make much of an impression, and one of them is bumped off a few minutes after we meet him. Ikki and Hiromi are both smitten with the innkeeper, which is? a choice. (I like that Ikki is canonically the horniest modern-day Rider; I dislike Hiromi getting easily distracted by a damsel in distress.) There?s some fun in providing a mystery for Ikki and Vice, since Ikki tends to be unobservant, and Vice is quick to notice things but bad at processing which details are important. They?re not exactly Philip and Shotaro, you know? It?s a nice change of pace to put these two at the helm of a murder mystery, mostly for how badly they?re equipped for it.

While Ikki and Vice are, individually, half-boiled morons, they can be super competent when they put their heads together. Ikki almost drank poison once due to ignoring Vice, but he was also the one who made the plan to expose Kudo's and the judge's crimes. From those two episodes, putting the eponymous Revice team in a murder mystery makes sense and encourages them to work together to compensate for each other's flaws. For this reason, I think it was smart to limit the cast to them, Hiromi, George and the guest characters. The Ikki/Suzu/Hiromi love triangle is entertaining as well, since it allows Ikki and Hiromi to be more comedic.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Alright, I had something prepared for this, but it was in the event that you?d watched all 5 episodes. So I?m just gonna do the cast trivia.

Sorry! I don't mind doing a two-episode project as a single post, but I'd like to let anything longer get treated as individual episodes. Thanks for the trivia!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Cliche, perhaps a little, but I don't think I could call a murder mystery dull.

I mean, murder mysteries are great! They have fun setups that make the characters behave in different ways, with fewer options for problem-solving. This first episode was a little dull, though, for how it's just establishing the genre and introducing the cast. The story proper doesn't really kick off until the end of the episode.

(The death of Hiromi in the beginning doesn't count, because it's a big fake-out.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

So, as this is a murder mystery, I have to ask, who do you currently think murdered Gondawara? You seem to have suspected an Imagin or Orphenoch, due to the mysterious sand-like substance in the room.

No suspects for me, for two reasons:

1) We really don't know much about the dynamics of the characters yet. The two guys have checkered pasts, but what about the staff at the lodge? Where did they come from? Do they have any connections to the other characters? What does any of it have to do with Vistamps?

2) Kamen Rider mysteries in spinoffs have a frustrating tendency to pull solutions out of their ass. What if one of them is secretly a robot from a world of robots? What if it's Terui, but he's Kenzaki from Blade in disguise? And so on, and so forth. Kamen Rider mysteries tend not to play completely fair with their audience -- in movies and side-content -- so I'm going to wait at least a few episodes and see what curveballs I get thrown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

While Ikki and Vice are, individually, half-boiled morons, they can be super competent when they put their heads together.

Oh, for sure. I've no doubt that it'll be the two of them that eventually puts the clues together and solves the mystery. It's just going to be a bumpy, funny, stupid road to get there. In a good way!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

No suspects for me, for two reasons:

1) We really don't know much about the dynamics of the characters yet. The two guys have checkered pasts, but what about the staff at the lodge? Where did they come from? Do they have any connections to the other characters? What does any of it have to do with Vistamps?

2) Kamen Rider mysteries in spinoffs have a frustrating tendency to pull solutions out of their ass. What if one of them is secretly a robot from a world of robots? What if it's Terui, but he's Kenzaki from Blade in disguise? And so on, and so forth. Kamen Rider mysteries tend not to play completely fair with their audience -- in movies and side-content -- so I'm going to wait at least a few episodes and see what curveballs I get thrown.

Good points. The first suspicions are virtually always wrong in this genre, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a mystery, so it's wise to keep an open mind until more details come to light. Decade VS Zi-O was enjoyable for its crazy unpredictability, but that did ruin the mystery part for those who were actually invested.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE: THE MYSTERY EPISODE 2



It’s got to be Suzu, right?

She’s clearly playing Hiromi, Kaido, and Ikki. As soon as one of them sees her with another man, she starts flirting with the new one. It’s classic noir damsel behavior, where she’s trying to inflame those protective feelings in the men that should be suspicious of her, to get them to disqualify her as a suspect.

It’s an interesting weakness in Kamen Riders, them not really being suspicious of folks. The empathetic nature of their role in the story – to generally see the best in people, to afford second chances, to lift up rather than drag down – means that they’re almost all terrible at sussing out lies and exposing deception. They’re terrible at solving mysteries, because they take people at their word instantly; it would be unheroic of them to think someone’s lying. It makes for a whodunit where it mostly seems impolite to accuse anyone of a crime, and that’s always fun to watch.

Also fun to watch: even more guest stars! We still have Otta here to remind us of his terrible police work (mostly yelling at people and getting into shoving matches) from Drive, where Shinnosuke was the one who solved mysteries every other week, not him; but we also get the (brief?) arrival of Gridon and Bravo, fresh from a cute Saber cameo (I feel like it’s even the same outdoor set) and in their TTFC upgrade suits. It’s a fun scene, even if it’s another in this project’s series of George Fawns Over Riders recap scenes. I like Kamen Riders having to deal with fandom? It’s such an unexplored section of meta storytelling for this franchise, where they’re usually either urban legends or hunted monsters. The integration of an excited fan like George makes these little cameos that much more delightful.

I thought this was a fairly enjoyable second episode. There’s more time spent trying to get at Suzu’s character, and how she’s exactly as pure and innocent as she needs to be to get men to fall all over themselves protecting her. All the cameos and Legend Riders were a bonus this time, rather than the main event, and that’s my preference. Things are shaping up!

[Androzani84]

So we find out that Vistamps can be used to become past monsters. That probably added to the “FENIX is Foundation X” (or in one case, FENIX is Shocker) theories that were common at the time this aired.

And I turns out, I have a filler gimmick to bide away the time until episode 5. Around the time this came out, a video of Aguilera trying on various cosplay outfits for past heroines in Kamen Rider (for a given value of “heroine”) in front of Julio in the woods. Since as far as I know, that video hasn’t surfaced on Nyaa, I’ll just post cosplay pics.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

And I turns out, I have a filler gimmick to bide away the time until episode 5. Around the time this came out, a video of Aguilera trying on various cosplay outfits for past heroines in Kamen Rider (for a given value of ?heroine?) in front of Julio in the woods. Since as far as I know, that video hasn?t surfaced on Nyaa, I?ll just post cosplay pics.

Very cute! Thanks for sharing!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE: THE MYSTERY EPISODE 3



Let’s start with the good!

I love that the Terui/George side of things is just a grumpier, more emotionally distant version of the Shotaro/Philip dynamic from W. Terui’s all DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT PEOPLE’S LIVES, while George is geeking out over all the cool new mad science he’ll get to do in violation of God’s will. It’s a conflict between facts and empathy, yet it might actually have cracked this case. Very fun homage to the original Kamen Rider detective duo.

Also, Kaido is Kaido! I’d sort of assumed he was, despite the pseudonym, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it’s actually the character from Faiz, not just another guitar-playing weirdo for the actor to elevate. Just a nice little beat. I like when characters I like get to show up again! I’m easy!

Now, the bad.

There’s basically no real mystery-solving going on at the lodge? The brainpower, when it comes to actual investigation, is all happening outside the locked-room murder mystery part of the project, and it’s an element that is the most standard Kamen Rider plot imaginable. Hunting Down A Monster is… it’s not exactly a mystery that necessitates placement in the title? That’s something that could be in not just any Revice episode, but any Kamen Rider episode. The twist for this one was supposed to be trying to catch a killer in a remote lodge, not running around the city, collecting clues in an abandoned lab. It’s disregarding the rules of an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, and it makes the story more generic for that change.

And back at the lodge, the investigation is still just shouting accusations without any proof – baseless speculation and circumstantial evidence are the only tools at our heroes’ disposal – and then discovering that they’re no closer to the truth. It’s funny and all, sure. I like seeing an innocent Kaido get wrestled to the ground by a spry Otta and an injured Hiromi; I like physical comedy. But there’s no sense that anyone at the lodge is more or less a suspect than before, which makes everything that happens on that end of the story feel superfluous. The solution is to be found, if George is to be believed, outside of the lodge entirely. It’s not playing by the rules, which is a shame.

Diverting enough installment (I can’t express how excited I was to see Kaido put on that hat!!!) but not really creating a taut and gripping mystery over here. We don’t learn anything about why the groundskeeper had the Roidmude Stamp. We don’t learn anything new about Suzu, the maid, or the other dude. The bulk of the lodge story is pointing in Kaido’s direction, but he’s such an obvious red herring that I don’t count that as forward progress. (Mostly because anyone watching this is doing it because they know Accel and Kaido and Gridon and Bravo, so there’s no tension in if Kaido is suddenly a serial killer. I mean, any more than usual for an Orphnoch.) It’s a pleasant time spent with George and Terui in actually discovering clues, but the lodge part feels like empty fan service. Not a great installment, plot-wise.