As someone a bit older (62) who actually worked as an actor/art director in Manhattan in the 80s - 90s I have to stick up a bit for Inoue. Most shows are written/filmed longer than the 23 min. or whatever & then hacked shorted for all kinds of reasons long after the writer has surrendered their...

Should I feel pity for Jirou? Cuz the show is telling not to care... I've had an ongoing issue with how the writing handles characterization These attempts to pull my heartstrings or make me laugh don't work if I feel like that type of response is unearned. I've never felt like they bonded as a tea...

why isn't one of the boxes Geats colored? Oh hey, Tycoon colored boxes are new aren't they? Those boxes were probably provided by Keiwa's sponsor. The expectation was that Keiwa would save the people and clear the secret mission. Ace simply noticed this pattern and took advantage of this by clearin...

On paper, being a character focused episode sounds good. In practice, the writing didn't focus on any particular character. Having 9+ characters in the same room interacting was interesting, but I didn't find it engaging. The episode had a clip show kind of vibe because there was a lot of "tell...

Next time, Isuzu Daichi returns!! I hope this means both Daichi and Sae will be appearing in the future after this arc is over. I just want an explanation about why Daichi lied about Keiwa. It doesn't make any sense. If you aren't the Dezastar, stirring up trouble creates cover for the real Dezaste...

While I wasn't surprised at how messy everything turned out in terms of storytelling, I'm still a little disappointed that this expectation held true. Inoue, this was your chance to prove me wrong. The plot hole with Rumi is surprising because the show tried to respect continuity, making frequent re...

It's funny, growing up in the 90s, I used to think the lgbtq politics in Japan was so progressive compared to America. You'd see shows like Utena, queer characters would just appear casually. I think there were even a couple trans characters in Banana Yoshimoto's novels that I read Unfortunately, y...

I saw on youtube recently a video about a Japanese reality show from around 1999. It was more like kidnapping and serial torture. The KR reality show seems a lot more tame. I believe you are talking about the infamous reality TV show Susunu! Denpa Shonen. The guy that participated in that horrible ...

By requiring a unanimous vote to eliminate a Rider, it is actually better for the Desaster to keep the other Riders around as long as possible. If the Desaster is not the target of a vote, they can spoil things by not voting with the majority. If the Desaster is the target, they only need to convinc...

Rumi can't be a complete figment of Jirou's imagination because we had a scene of her going home on a bus after nursing Jirou back to health in episode 37. She thinks to herself that she is exhausted from his high strung personality. There is no point to giving her an internal monologue if she doesn...

This all feels like an "employee of the month" award to keep high performers happy without paying them more.

I really want Sparrow's pony tail to be cut off at some point since it's so dumb looking. It annoys me because you can tell that it is fake. From the front, he looks like he doesn't even have one. It is jarring when the camera angle changes and you can suddenly see it. The format is now more like a...

I kept my expectations low, but the resolution of the plagiarism felt so pointless. There is no lesson or personal growth involved. It all feels like one extended joke that didn't land the punchline. It was so weird having Tsubasa showing up at the cafe to draw the picture. It was such an artificial...

I was worried that the episode would get weighed down by too much angst, but it does a great job at creating tension without dragging it out to resolve in the next episode. While the reveal wasn't completely unexpected, it was still quite satisfying in its execution. The design of the numerous camer...

That was a needlessly complicated scheme. They could have reported him to the police. Haruka's aunt is a police detective. I guess their vigilante heroics as the DonBrothers has warped their minds into believing that only they can solve this problem. They are lucky the guy didn't hurt any innocent b...