ViRGE wrote:takenoko wrote:Mage pretty much looks like garbage. It looks more like an upgrade to the Ghuls than a Rider
That's really the best summary for the suit. It's clearly meant to be mass produced, easy to repair, and more durable than usual in fights - basically the hallmarks of a mook suit.
That said, I'd be a lot less down on the suit if they just changed the helmet. It looks too much like White Wizard, making this a weird WW/Ghul fusion.
That's basically the point. The Mage suit isn't a RioTrooper version of Wizard, it's a mass produced WW form.
If I might throw out some wild speculation based off the preview
where it looks like WW is giving The Offer to Yuzuru
I'd start hazarding a guess that WW is trying to build some sort of mage army for himself. The exact purpose isn't quite clear, but let's go ahead and look at how this situation would work. For this argument, I'll go ahead and assume that WW and Wiseman are the same guy, but it works with them being different people as well.
1: The Sabbath. A bunch of people are sacrificed to become Phantoms, but Fueki has the Wizard rings done up in advance to play the odds that someone would survive and gain magic. Haruto hits 777s and survives, thus becomes both aware of the Phantom menace and capable of stopping it. In one move, WW has created two things: An apprentice mage, and an enemy for him to fight against and grow stronger along the way.
2: The Phantoms. If they wanted to just go on a world domination rampage, there aren't a lot of folks who could do anything about it. If they just wanted to gang up on the few people who could fight them, they could probably zerg rush Haruto at any time once they become aware of him, or do something to set him up and get him out of the picture. None of these happen, because their orders are to focus solely on finding Gates and making more Phantoms. Sora's taken to questioning this way of doing things, because all they're doing is losing against Haruto and Nitou, and the one case of actually making someone fall into despair ended with Mayu beating it.
3: The Mages. As stated, the Mage suits are blatantly mook suits, given out to people who've managed to beat their despair and gain magic like Haruto has. The purpose of the Phantoms, to me, seems to be just to go around and play the odds until these people surface. WW immediately descends upon them and gives them The Offer to become mages, and if they accept, which they have no reason NOT to at this stage, he gains a soldier. It's a slow process, but if he builds up an army this way, it doesn't really matter how long it takes.
There's still a lot of loose ends floating around with this hypothesis, of course. Koyomi's part in everything, the whole Philosopher's Stone angle, whether or not WW and Wiseman are actually the same guy or not, but from where I'm sitting, if WW is making an army of mages, this is how to do it.