If this series is of any indication. Why, you might ask? Well, because it seems the writer of the new Kamen Rider season is a huge fanboy of the best tokusatsu writer of all times Toshiki Inoue, of which the second half of this series tries to be a continous, heartfelt homage spanning from the very beginning of the maestro's own career (the piano scene taken from one of the episodes of Choushinsei Flashman) passing though Changerion and all the Kamen Riders of the Maestro and including some scenes that look like they were taken straight out of Inoue's own animes. Homage that doesn't turn into a 100% clone or ripoff because Yuya Takahashi in this one gave his own personal spin (there is no love triangle to speak of here) but, interestingly enough, the moments where it hits harder are the ones more close to the poetic sensibilities of the Maestro. I genuinely find funny that a Dragon Ball animator (whose Dragon Ball output I don't care, not for him but because I don't care of neither Super nor Daima) who was at his debut as the main writer here and who also put some slight nods at DBZ at the end of the series not only did not turn a tokusatsu into a shitty Dragon Ball spinoff the way the terrible Kamen Rider OOO by the presumed tokusatsu veteran Yasuzo Kobayashi and the most recent No. 1 Sentai Gozyuger episodes did but also he did a better job at mimicking Inoue than what the people under the direction of his own daughter Akiko is doing in said episodes, which is totally absurd. This series also had already some elements reminescent of Paprika by Satoshi Kon (the inspiration for Zezt, if you haven't gotten the memo) and some KM Black throwbacks, which is also a nice touch. This makes me hopeful for the upcoming series, I must say.
