#we've still got five reveals left and possibly more guys in the future after the game starts

[egophiliac]

new ride kamens dropped, rui, who is definitely a horobi homage; another cool choice, but at the same time, kinda wish it was someone else 'cuz now we got two zero-one homages with hayate's jin, when the trend had been one rider for each season until him, and people started claiming that takahashi must be playing favorites

aw, I was actually pretty jazzed to see it was Horobi! I think it opens up some interesting possibilities if it isn't only one-per after all, and I'm excited to see if there's gonna be something with him and Hayate or not. plus I just really like his design

(also, not to be all cynical, but. this exists because of a corporate trend-hop with a franchise that is already sorta notorious for executive meddling. I would be...let's say very surprised if Takahashi had that level of control over what riders were included, versus being handed a list to work off of that the execs had already determined would appeal to their target demographic. c'mon.)

#art #ride kamens #like idk maybe he could make suggestions or pick out of a larger pool or something #but absolutely zero chance he had any kind of final say without needing a billion exec approvals and revisions and finalizations #that is simply not how this kind of sausage gets made #(i still have the conspiracy theory that taiten was supposed to be zangetsu instead of woz) (he basically IS takatora come on) #ah well i am very curious about what this means for the rest of these dudes! #we've still got five reveals left and possibly more guys in the future after the game starts #i am looking forward to tomorrow because it will bring us both hat-boy and wolf/fox/somekindofanimal-boy #extremely pleased that these have been combined into one character #it's the little things that make me happy