[DreamSword]

Speaking of toys, where are the SO-DO?

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

Speaking of toys, where are the SO-DO?

I've built the Zein SO-DO several times, but it keeps getting shredded!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 2 - “PROPHECY OF DESTRUCTION AND DESAST’S AWAKENING”



RIDE PLAYER NICO!!! Five-star episode, no notes, A+++.

If we don’t factor Nico in, though: Nonsense. Glorious, wonderful nonsense.

I genuinely don’t even understand the sides in this story, and I can’t tell if that’s brilliantly staying on-theme or just this show’s regularly haphazard approach to narrative. Horobi and Nico are on one side (for Zein?), while Ark is on a different side (against Zein?), and Foundation X is on one of those sides – but I can’t tell which one. Also, there’s everyone from Episode 0, who I think are on the Anti-Zein side, but maybe not. It’s all just a mish-mash of psychopaths and zealots, and I’m enjoying it probably twice as much as I’m understanding it.

Like, you’ve pretty much already got me sitting forward in my chair when I get to say the words Kamen Rider Desast, you know? Love that! Love everything about that! The road to get there is a little less polished and thoughtful than his arc with Ren on Saber – not sure we needed Ren’s Kagerou; this episode sort of misunderstands the reason Ren fought Desast to the death originally – but there’s still plenty to like about a story that wants to talk about Next Chapters, and does it with Saber guys.

Desast gets brought back to a life he never liked, outside of dueling with Ren, so he just goes right back to doing that. Meanwhile, Ren trained to prevent an apocalypse, prevented an apocalypse, and just kept training. It’s pathetic, for both of them, and they sort of realize that. Getting to watch two of the most historically non-introspective Saber characters try and sort out their lack of ambition, and reframe it to be a way of pushing each other forward… I like that. I like that this frequently dumb, regularly impenetrable show about All Of The Toys wanted to do a follow-up story that’s about how hard it is for us to consider new starts in our lives. It helps when we embrace that change and create a new version of ourselves, just like Desast learned.

Beyond that compelling and brisk story, it’s a lot more of the weirdly amorphous apocalypse-prevention stuff that I can’t really get a handle on. (Zein wants worlds to combine? Or not combine? But they’ve already combined? Or could combine worse somehow in the future?) Except I pretty much could not care less about the plot, because NICO IS BACK, and that’s all that matters. I’m sure I’d heard about it a year ago, but I’d thankfully forgotten, so I got to shout HOLY SHIT NICO IS BACK at my monitor as soon as she stepped in front of Horobi. (Also, Horobi’s back, but that’s just okay.) My favorite Ex-Aid character, back after FIVE YEARS – broke my heart that Nico Snipe couldn’t show up for Girls Remix – buys a whole lot of goodwill from me.

NICO! BACK! I can’t wait for Episode 3!!!

[Enchilada645]

Probably my favorite one of these, you give me more Desast, you give him a really cool Rider design, you bring back the Desast Walks of all things in celebration? Yeah no this episode clears all of the other Outsider episodes before and after if I'm being honest.

Also I'll be real I recall Foundation X complaining vaguely about Horobi, and Horobi's siding with Zein because he wants to eliminate malice and that aligns their goals. So I think Foundation X is Anti-Zein.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enchilada645

Probably my favorite one of these, you give me more Desast, you give him a really cool Rider design, you bring back the Desast Walks of all things in celebration? Yeah no this episode clears all of the other Outsider episodes before and after if I'm being honest.

Hard to go wrong with resurrecting one of the best Saber characters, making them a Kamen Rider, and then giving them a new mission!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enchilada645

Also I'll be real I recall Foundation X complaining vaguely about Horobi, and Horobi's siding with Zein because he wants to eliminate malice and that aligns their goals. So I think Foundation X is Anti-Zein.

Thanks! That sounds right, but there's so much random motivation (and subterfuge) thrown around that it was pretty difficult for me to discern what each side was fighting for, and who was where.

[Androzani84]

Remember how I said most of these Outsiders episodes didn’t have toys? Well, this episode was the exception… until the newest one.

(Despite being the Saber guy in terms of merch, I don’t have this… yet)

And somehow, Zein managed to convince at least two people it was good, despite ordering Horobi to attack a good monster on the basis he was created to do evil. And Horobi somehow took him at his word, despite coming from a similar background.

And continuing the trend from Zero-One and Saber proper of people coming up with their own interpretations without actually understanding Japanese or waiting for someone who does to watch it, a few fans came to the conclusion from the final scene that Nico was working for Foundation X and was responsible for Kamen Rider MetsubouJinrai going berserk… despite nothing in the staging, the dialogue or the actors’ performances indicating that.

Next time: F*cking Banno.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Remember how I said most of these Outsiders episodes didn?t have toys? Well, this episode was the exception? until the newest one.

It's crazy to me that we get a new entire DX toy for Kamen Rider Desast... but no Figuart for either of his forms. What is this fascinating and disgusting smell?!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

And somehow, Zein managed to convince at least two people it was good, despite ordering Horobi to attack a good monster on the basis he was created to do evil. And Horobi somehow took him at his word, despite coming from a similar background.

Horobi's participation here is incredibly weird, because it hinges on a) Horobi trusting another malevolent AI* enough to kill on its behalf when he should for sure know better, and b) his motivation now being that he's a Rider who was once bad and became good, so now he has to kill any Rider that's even slightly morally complicated. This is a bizarre new motivation for a dude whose previous thing was just safeguarding the future of his species and culture!

(*: In fairness, we're only told at this point that Foundation X rebuilt Horobi, not that he's working for/with Zein, so it may just be that he's putting his trust in humanity now. It's a little weird, but it also shows some personal growth?)

[Androzani84]

We did get a So-Do set with improved versions of Kenzan and Desast, along with the new Rider form

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 3 - “REVIVAL OF THE BATTLE FIGHT AND ZEIN’S BIRTH”



You know things are going great in your direct-to-streaming tokusatsu series when you have to start your third episode with a recap sequence to try and disentangle the ludicrous amount of plot threads in your convoluted and random narrative. Super good sign!

Merited digs aside, I actually sort of warmed to this episode’s focus on its plot/”plot”. I think the moment where everything really clicked for me was… oh, I’ll just show you:



When looked at through the lens of wanting a coherent strategy or a plausible narrative or basic causality or just not feeling like you have a fever when you’re watching it, Outsiders sort of fails. It’s bafflingly incoherent, with a genuine feeling that we are getting 15 minutes of improv from whichever actors were in the building that day. BUT! When looked at through the lens of Foundation X, it honestly all works perfectly... while still feeling we are getting 15 minutes of improv from whichever actors were in the building that day, only on purpose.

Foundation X is one of my least-favorite Kamen Rider concepts, because they have no conviction. I can crab about a lot of season-long masterminds (I don’t want to say Swartz, but: Swartz), but at least they’re dedicated to their machiavellian plotting or millennia-long vendettas. They aren’t half-assing it, or playing the field; these guys and gals are all in on their genocidal nonsense. Foundation X isn’t that, though. They’re specifically about backing every play, hoping some moonshot pays off. They aren’t a shadowy cabal or a den of vipers – they’re a hedge fund. They don’t actually care about what they’re funding, so it doesn’t matter if it fails. They’ll just move on to Plan Q or Plan R or whatever. (Never Plan X, though; it’s too dangerous!)

So a series where Foundation X just spins up another two random dopes each episode – this time it’s Brain, in a non-speaking role, and the hilariously copper-colored Gord Drive – is kind of exactly their flavor of pathetic disinterest. Why Gord Drive and Brain? I don’t know: AI or something, sure, whatever. The strategy is just I Don’t Know How About That, and I’m honestly really enjoying that vibe now. It’s improv comedy rules – Kamen Rider Yes And. It makes me care less about the ridiculousness of the storytelling, because comedies should be ridiculous. This is a comedy show.

Within that framework, I enjoyed this outing with the most inexplicable cast of characters, and cameos where characters would normally be. (Like, George is here for about 20 seconds – I ain’t delving into his arc.) Beyond some half-hearted attempts to give this story some explicable background, the plot is just Nico taking a suitcase to the lab from the Live & Evil & Demons V-Cin, within which sits the operating theater or whatever that we’ve been seeing for close to a decade. It’s a lot of portentous promotion for Zein’s grand debut, and that’s the scope of this thing. Fun to see Nico, and she’s very good with the little amount of space she gets to act, but this is a Zein story, even when he’s not on screen.

Zein’s appearance – and absolutely walloping of Gord Drive – is appropriately epic. I like the suit quite a bit. There’s a lot of that old IXA cleanliness, where it says Order in a way that’s both good and bad. There’s no wisecracking or imperious dialogue – just silence, and then power. It’s a debut that doesn’t even need the Foundation X guy practically weeping in amazement. Zein pulls out Ex-Aid’s game-breaking Muteki power, and then follows it up with Xross Saber’s overpowered magnificence. We get that this is too much power! It looks incredibly cool!

And, like, that’s sort of the way Foundation X works in a story: here’s a bunch of random-ass stuff, and it’ll probably look cool in the end, but they’ll just be back next time because they’ve got a million names on Kamen Rider Whiteboard that they can keep lining through. Yuuto uses Saber’s final form to blow up Gord Drive? Sure! Go with that! Keep calling out names from the audience!

[Androzani84]

Banno probably wasn’t a lot of people’s choice for Drive rep in the Outsiders, but given how the only movie Rider suit that still exists in a non-cannibalised state (probably) is Sangou, and having Heart come back as part of the bad guys would kind of be pushing it, they weren’t exactly spoilt for choice. And fighting Horobi allows him to get back some of the menace he lost when Rinna smeared the Drive weapons in an anti-teleportation paste or something.

And Takahashi’s back in the writer’s chair… as a supervisor, since Geats was still ongoing at the time of production. Instead, our writer this time is a new kid named Kengo Nagahama, whose only other credit I could find was the next episode.

And for some facts about Zein’s belt from Gotchard’s TV-Asahi page, it’s made from the same fictional metal as the Vail, Demons and Chimera Drivers, the cards it uses are modified Rouse Cards that function similarly to Ridewatches, in that they contain the actual powers rather than a copy (ie, the Hyper Muteki Gashat, the Haouken Xross Saber and so on). The reason the cards are one-use only is a security measure agreed upon between George and the 40 Primaries* to prevent the cards from being stolen by someone who’d misuse them and ensure the data is securely stored in one server.

* Given it’s implied every protagonist from Hongou through Ace (except maybe Eiji, but the dialogue hints they got OOO’s power from someone) gave their strongest powers away to Zein, that means Gai, the Ark, Foundation X, Asakura, Ren, Desast and Banno were more cautious and properly paranoid than the heroes who’ve laid down their lives to prevent potentially world conquering maniacs