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Henshin Inspection presents Rider Tears!

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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.

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Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.

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Prepare yourself for some biting Kamen Rider analysis.

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My grandmother said this,

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You have to be kind to be strong.

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Now, let's go Writer Chat!

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So, Kamen Rider GOV, episode 9, sure was a thing that happened.

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And I'm reeling from it because I don't really know what to say, where to go.

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I thought this was a fun episode.

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I noticed that Sachika's involvement in it was very limited.

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This is a part of the weird trend for Tokusatsu to have Halloween episodes.

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I remember Gokaijer, I think I remember Gokaijer had one.

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I don't think Forze, which ran kind of concurrently with Gokaijer,

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I don't think Forze had a Halloween episode at all.

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Wait, maybe, I can't remember.

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They all dressed up at some point as the classic Seven Riders,

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but that might have been for other reasons,

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they might have been doing a play or something.

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So it could have been a play done at Halloween time, I don't know.

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I don't think it was Halloween.

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But anyway, other than it being kind of funny that this was a Halloween episode,

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I thought it was interesting, I thought it kind of broke with what we've seen so far,

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or what we've come to understand so far of the lore,

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that this lollipop, unless it's something they tell you about his mom

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that he doesn't say explicitly in this episode, maybe it'll come out in the next episode,

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shouldn't be something that triggers his memory farm

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and shouldn't make the little Gochizo for it,

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unless we don't fully understand the mechanism behind the Gochizo production.

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And I guess for that matter, we don't really understand the mechanism for the minion

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or agent production from the stomach family or the stomach ink people,

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where those agents come from.

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We assume they come from their belts, I think we've seen them come from their belts,

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but we don't know what they're eating to produce those guys.

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Are they eating fellow Granutes? Are they eating humans?

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Are they eating whatever Granute food exists? I don't really know.

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It sounded like Shoman and his mother wouldn't eat the standard Granute food,

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they eat grass and things like that instead, and that's pretty weird.

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You know, most people don't eat grass, it's not the greatest thing to eat.

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And anyway, so it's really curious.

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I want to say it's kind of like a plot hole,

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but it's also something that we just don't know enough about currently

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for me to be able to say definitively, oh yeah, this is a problem,

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or this is an inaccuracy in the show.

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And I don't think it is an inaccuracy, I think it's just something I'm not aware of 100%.

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So that was kind of something I was not happy with.

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I also kind of wasn't happy with the fact that it seems like Sheetah and Jeeb

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were going to be completely cut off from the family,

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and now they've been given the second chance,

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and I know that's how it can go with family sometimes, with the family business.

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But it's a little disappointing because I was hoping they would be cut off from the family,

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and then we'd get to see them operating on their own,

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or having to develop some story on their own,

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or I don't know, I guess they could just go get other jobs somewhere in the granite world.

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They wouldn't have to necessarily become more plot relevant.

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They could just kind of disappear from the story, and that would be okay.

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And I also kind of wonder if they can manifest these agents from their stomachs,

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their belts, their bodies, whatever, their gobs, I guess.

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That would imply that they have a certain level of power too in them,

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and you would think that they'd be able to fight, and they'd be able to transform and fight,

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and that isn't happening, and it's kind of funny that it isn't, and we don't quite know why.

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So I don't quite get that, and I wonder exactly why they're not doing that.

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I wonder if that's something that we'll see as they're fully fired

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and not able to be part of the company anymore.

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Is that something that they'll do in desperation?

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Is that going to open us up to new storytelling possibilities?

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Is that going to open us up to new dimensions of their characters to see?

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Or will they just fall off and become irrelevant? It's hard to know.

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I suppose you could say they're just part of a business, and they're just doing, I mean, not just.

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Their business is killing people and turning them into food, which it seems like is illegal in their world.

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They're running some sort of shady illegal business, but they could just run off and do something else.

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But then again, if they're these craven desperate criminals, they probably wouldn't want to do that,

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because they're probably profiting off of this illegal business and don't want to go work.

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It's probably not a lot of jobs out there unless you want to work 40 hours a week,

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so that could be a problem for them.

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See, that was a little weird. I like Honto investigating.

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It was a little creepy. It was funny that the little girls pulled the little siren and ran from him,

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because they thought he was a kidnapper or something.

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He did kind of give off weird vibes.

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Then as time went on, he's just hanging out with this little girl.

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That was a little weird to me.

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I almost thought the other kid that gave the main girl that he was talking to, the main dance girl who's not so great,

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I kind of thought the girl who gave her the mandolin was her friend that pulled the cord, actually,

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and thought he was the kidnapper and that she was going to say something.

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Whether or not it was her, it kind of had made sense for her to say,

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who's this adult man you're talking to over here? It's kind of weird.

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But yeah, that's kind of strange.

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The stomachache joke with her dance teacher was weird.

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I did notice that belly band was super conspicuous,

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and I can understand why he went after him and why it was a red herring.

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I don't really see why the mandolin shop was such a key site.

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I'm not sure. I mean, mandolins are good. They're one of my favorite cookies,

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but I don't know how that's connected necessarily to the people going into the tunnel and getting taken.

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Is it just that the shop is by the tunnel so people are distracted eating it and they feel that adrenaline or dopamine rush

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of getting sugar in their bodies, sugar and fat together in a tasty little package?

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Is that all it is?

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Because that seems like kind of a flimsy thing to be hitching your horse to and saying,

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oh yeah, this is a guaranteed surefire way to get people.

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I know. I just thought that was kind of odd.

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I sound like I'm complaining. I'm pointing out some flaws or some issues that I'm seeing in the episode.

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However, I thought it was a lot of fun, and I thought it was very interesting.

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I liked kind of, I don't know, the little girl who wants to be the idol,

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her saying she's cutting back on sweets because she wants to be an idol, so she doesn't want to be fat,

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and then has to struggle with keeping herself in good shape to be ogled by people and whatnot.

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Sorry. That's kind of what idols do, right?

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Or that's what people do with idols, I guess you could say.

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And then her accepting the Madeleine and going in and eating it and saying, oh, I've worked hard. I deserve this.

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I thought it was kind of interesting because you shouldn't just eat stuff randomly.

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Yaki is the kind of guy, which, where did he go? Where did he go? He hasn't come back.

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He was saying, like, yeah, you should have special foods as like a treat,

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and it's not like an everyday thing, and you can't run off with that. You need like good, solid nutrition.

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And it almost felt kind of like they were saying something similar with the little idol girl,

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but then maybe not at the same time. I don't know. It felt kind of weird. I was a little conflicted about it.

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But I definitely liked that they ceded that Honto has this relationship with her or whatever,

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and he had promised to go see her at the park the next day,

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and it sure seems like this granute is going to attack her at the park where he was going to,

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which I don't know how he knew to find her at the park.

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That park in particular. I don't know if that's something I missed,

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if that's something that was not covered in the episode and that we'll see in the next episode,

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episode 10 or what, but that is kind of a strange thing.

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I don't really know about that, but that's OK. Anyway, I thought it was a good episode overall.

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I like Valen getting trounced a little bit, but I like him making it out of the fight.

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And well, I guess the other guy ran, but it's because he pulled a good tactic.

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He was able to get the upper hand, and that was good.

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And I like seeing him like he's a more competent fighter now, but he's still struggling.

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And I think it's very good. I think it's very important for him to have that steeper learning curve than Shoma had.

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And this wild tank of a form is really interesting with this... it's like Goukan? Gunkan? Gunkan?

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I can't remember what it's called, but this hard peppermint candy lollipop thing form is really interesting.

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And it's a lot of fun. It's zany. It's crazy.

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And I can basically accept it and roll with it, but it's just like, I'm sure it's going to go away,

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and it's not going to be important later on, even though it's such a tank now.

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And it feels kind of silly to introduce such a powerful thing now,

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especially because it probably won't be that big of a deal in the future.

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That's kind of one of the things that bothers me about the modern Kamen Rider shows,

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is that they have to have these toys and they have to have these things in here.

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And it's just, they're so throwaway and disposable, and they're kind of like junk food.

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But people go for junk food, so it makes sense that they would do it.

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They, Toei Bandai, wants that money, and they're going to get it, no matter how, or any way they can.

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Anyway, let me know what you thought about the episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts and your feelings on it,

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because I felt like it was a good, solid episode, but it wasn't amaze- I mean, there were amazing things in it,

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but it wasn't like, the greatest thing, like a lot of the episodes.

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Like, the first eight episodes have been really fantastic. This one was pretty good.

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And hopefully the next one's even better.

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I hope you enjoyed that. Please, remember to like, share, and subscribe.

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I invite you to comment, ask questions, and share your thoughts with me.

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It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation.

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Until next time, be well, and do good things.

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Visit MJMunoz.com for more of my work, and help me build up the fortress fiction.