TOJIMA WANTS TO BE A KAMEN RIDER SPOILERS BELOW:
tojima tanzaburo and his all-or-nothing nature, always all in, and if the result isn't the best it's automatically his worst. his glorification of power, both in himself and others, even Shocker monsters, to the point where he shows no horror when people who were once human (and we know they still are, they can still be un-brainwashed) are dissolved into nothingness in the dozens. "40 years of mediocrity"... did he see himself as lesser than others in childhood as well? is he only powerful with the kamen rider mask on, is there a sense that tojima the human is an inferior being? when he sold all his merchandise, when he told the bear that either one might not make it out of the confrontation alive... how much does tojima tanzaburo think about death? is it that all-or-nothing-ness again, that sense that if he loses (or if he's a "loser") that might mean the end of it all for him?
yuriko okada and her thin glaze of normalcy, her quips to ground the increasingly inhuman situations she finds herself and her peers in, and then joining in and wanting to be the best of all of them the second that mask cracks. her love of tackle, her wish to be tackle version two, a version who beats all the kamen riders and monsters alike (not just to be one of them, but to be better, maybe she can't envision herself being a part of that something), a version who survives. so does survival mean being the best to her?
ichiyo shimamura, who is so aloof and obsessive, who finds a kindred spirit in tojima and vice versa. but he too is not content with just having an equal, no, he must beat them, but is he that unhappy to be beaten? does he take joy in others entering his world, playing by his rules? is that, perhaps, the only way he can relate to others, and so is that why he is so black-and-white, so authoritative, prescriptive? why does he not take public transport, or own a phone, and live 3 hours away from the city? can he not engage with such things because they mean he must enter another collective world?
yukarisu (oh man, she breaks my heart if i think about her too hard), why are you a shocker combatant at such a young age? we know shocker combatants can be formed through death, and we know that love in some form is the antidote to the brainwashing. was she so unloved, parentally, platonically, by everyone around her, that she could be vulnerable to shocker-ification? did she (nearly) die too, in some gruesome way? her possessiveness of mitsuba... what does she think will happen if she loses him? her behaviour can be read as hypersexual, certainly she behaves in a sexualized manner towards yuriko (her teacher), mitsuba, and tojima to weaponize it.
mitsuba shimamura, oh to have a brother like ichiyo could not have been easy, we know that from futaba. was he too similarly ostracized? he is so good-natured, seemingly quite cheerful and optimistic, and yet he can say such things as telling yukarisu that she probably wouldn't like him anymore once he started infodumping about riderman, and the objectively traumatic childhood encounters he and ichiyo had with shocker monsters, with a smile on his face. what taught him that? and, though he is happy to clash with his brother, and obviously holds quite the grudge from their childhood/teenage years, why is he still fairly deferential towards ichiyo even when they are both adults? even towards yukarisu, he cannot help but be swayed by her displays of affection, but could he ever really go against her or anyone (and actually win) when he is not riderman but mitsuba?
hachiro nakao, our antagonist who quickly becomes... not the biggest problem for the main cast. a failure of a yakuza member, but of course as per tropes he has to be a bit of an asshole to his three underlings. not that much of an asshole though, considering he protects them and clearly somewhat enjoys being around them. even goes to an idol concert because they seemed enthusiastic... so is the grumpiness a defence mechanism of sorts? like the defence mechanism of idolizing shocker, so that he would never be hurt again? does he have a tendency to hurt himself in situations where he feels powerless, like when he was a child and wanted to be the only shocker member against a whole group of his peers who were riders? an impossible fight, of course he'd lose, of course he'd be hurt, was the physical pain a way to express the emotional? and later in the manga he trains himself to unconsciousness multiple times, it's that tendency again isn't it?
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