Surprise news! Team Kamen Rider announced that there will be a special YouTube broadcast of the Gaim summer movie on December 18th, taking place on the Toei Tokusatsu World Official channel. For those who missed it, this YouTube channel was opened earlier in 2020, and has been uploading several Toei tokusatsu shows from the 60s to the 90s, many of which are specifically available for viewing in the US. That being said, just about all of the US viewable shows only have subtitles for episodes 1 and 2.
Team Kamen Rider has also done a similar event back in the summer, streaming Kamen Rider Zi-O’s Heisei Generations FOREVER. That stream also included a giveaway with a DX BeyonDriver signed by the actor for Kamen Rider Woz, so I wonder if the giveaway associated with this Gaim stream will be similar...
Gonna link another episode of the podcast I’m in, because we talk about SO-DO’s Ryugen and Zangetsu figures, but not before a lengthy look at an unlikely figure from Zero-One and the uncertain situation we find ourselves in with Saber’s forms.
Throwback Thursday? Here’s Tomomitsu Yamaguchi (DJ Sagara from Gaim) singing about moving to a new place and beginning life anew. Not Gaim-related exactly, just good vibes.
Have not yet updated the Lockseed pages, just gathered more resources from the Zukan. I learned that they actually do not have open versions of any of these, so that’s a minor setback. I’ll probably mix in toy photos.
An interesting new discovery from seeing these props up close is the realization that the Showa Rider Lockseeds from Kamen Rider Taisen were never meant to be viewed this closely; They don’t have unique molded covers, instead the faces are just artwork that’s been hastily cut out and pasted onto the Lockseed. Hoo boy. I wanna know what caused some of them to get this treatment.
Premium Bandai announced their latest Gaim S.H. Figuarts release, the S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Gridon Lychee Arms from the Gaim Gaiden: Kamen Rider Gridon vs. Kamen Rider Bravo spin-off.
Another thing to keep an eye on, Gridon’s Lychee Arms form in S.H. Figuarts!
Premium Bandai announced the newest releases in the Complete Selection Modification series, the Complete Selection Modification Sengoku Driver, Sengoku Driver Project Ark Edition, and the Lock Seed Charmant set from Kamen Rider Gaim.
Another content update thanks to the many wonderful resources from the Zukan site! All of the weapons on the Lockseed pages have been updated. Before I was using a combination of concept art, scans from the photobooks, even magazine reveals, simply because they were the BEST available option. Now it’s all high quality and consistent. So good.
The Zukan is also interesting for having something like Baron’s Suika Arms weapon that’s basically the shot of it from the show without the background. They did not have a specific name for the weapon, nor Knuckle’s boxing glove holograms.
What they did have were a couple names I missed before. Duke’s Lemon Arms weapon (Lemon Rapier), and Knuckle’s Jinba Maron Arms weapon (Maron Bomber), were given names I didn’t even know about, since it was easy to assume Gaim was on its way out at the time and didn’t bother to give names.
Even though new content is yet to be added, I did add Zangetsu’s Kachidoki Arms weapon to the page about the DJ Gun so that I didn’t have to later.
Next, probably the Lockseed images. I just found out that not only does the Zukan have all the Lockseeds from fiction, they also have all the Legend Rider ones in Kamen Rider Taisen that I completely forgot were on screen at some point.
A nice photo of Bravo and Gridon’s King Durian and Lychee forms, as well as a new Rider that’s being called Kamen Rider Sylphy.
The word “Sylph” is believed to be derived from the Latin “Sylvestris” (Of the woods) and “Nympha” (Nymph). Being that the Rider is made to look like a Helheim fruit, that’s probably the intent.
For those keeping track of suit reuse, it’s Kamuro, which became Jam, which became Idunn, and now Sylphy. Same suit, helmet and armor. Also Kurokage’s spear.
The Gaim news was craaazy yesterday, and since I was busy that night, I couldn't cover it in a lot of detail. Let's do a rundown of what happened. The Tokusatsu Network will do its own more detailed and refined articles, so I'll to em when they happen. This is a quick and dirty rundown.
Oh, side note, my Ask box is open again. Forgot to do that before.
First and most important... Gaim Gaiden was revealed! It's called Kamen Rider Gridon VS Kamen Rider Bravo, featuring a form for both characters. This is a two-part story released on the Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club, an exclusive thing for Japanese fans.
If you haven't heard of it before, it's where we got Ex-Aid's Brave spin-off, Zi-O's Shinobi spin-off, aaand Drive's Brain spin-off. It's a place for short low-budget content. Part 1 is out now, so I guess keep an eye out for fansubs! I'll link em when I see em.
Oh, and Figuarts of these two new forms were teased. Neat.
I linked to the SO-DO Pop podcast I do, so you know that the SO-DO Chronicle line is doing two waves of Gaim figures. Today they also revealed a Premium Bandai set, featuring Duke, Malika and Sigurd. Ignore Zangetsu-Shin here, he’s from the second wave.
With how much original tooling is involved with these 3, it’s invitable they’d get Premium Bandai treatment. It means they get to exist and have a good budget behind them. Now I fret as I wonder if this will be my first Premium Bandai purchase...
Arguably bigger news than that, the Complete Selection Modification release of the Sengoku Driver is up for pre-order! If you haven't looked into CSM, they specialize in doing expensive high-end versions of the Rider belts, making them more accurate while also pumping them full of new audio.
There's various little improvements, notably the Lockseeds have new molding to make them more show-accurate. The regular Sengoku Driver set comes with the Gaim faceplate, Orange Lockseed, Kachidoki Lockseed, and Kiwami Lockseed.
There's also the Project Ark Edition of the Sengoku Driver, which comes with a blank faceplate (apparently representing Jonouchi as a Kurokage Trooper) and no Lockseeds - it's much cheaper, but still expensive.
A main feature of them has been adding snippets of background music, as well as character dialogue. Gaim apparently is making use of this with the faceplates, and...
... It seems they have a lot of cast members doing dialogue for this one. Well, I have my theories on how they might be getting some of it since Duke's actor is famously... no longer acting because he's problematic. Could be reused dialogue from the Lemon Lockseed, in my opinion.
Even so, there's a lot here that they wouldn't have recorded toy dialogue for, like Bujin Gaim and Kurokage, and heck they even have Kamen Rider Maja from the stage show! It's wild.
Speaking of wild, they've also put up the Lockseed Charmont Set, which includes faceplates for Gridon and Bravo, the Donguri and Durian Lockseeds, as well as the Lockseeds for their new Gaim Gaiden forms! They are, as the transformation lines say...
"Lychee Arms! You're The Hero!"
"King Durian Arms! Mr. Violence!"
So those are the new forms. They're slightly remolded from their original armors. Eh. Could be worse. Like that other Rider that apparently is appearing, reusing parts of Idunn.
In addition to these, they teased a Lockseed Team Baron Set with an image of Baron and Knuckle, as well as a Lockseed Kureshima Set with an image of Ryugen and Zangetsu. One could wonder if these are just their main Lockseeds or a full set, but I'm about to share which one that could be.
Now this is crazy.
https://toy.bandai.co.jp/special/gaimfes/helheim/
The Gaim Festival site put up a little interactive thing where you navigate through the Helheim Forest and can find Lockseeds. This shows you some of the things they have planned for release.
Let me just share what's all listed...
Sengoku Driver:
Orange Lockseed
Kachidoki Lockseed
Kiwami Lockseed
Lockseed Charmont Set:
Durian Lockseed
King Durian Lockseed
Donguri Lockseed
Lychee Lockseed
Lockseed Team Baron Set:
Banana Lockseed
Mango Lockseed
Kurumi Lockseed
Lockseed Kureshima Set:
Budoh Lockseed
Kiwi Lockseed
Yomotsuheguri Lockseed
Melon Lockseed
Watermelon Lockseed
Shin Kachidoki Lockseed
Really painting a picture here about how many Lockseeds we're getting. And it doesn't stop there!
I kinda didn't go super deep in this, enough to fully confirm things like Shin Kachidoki in the above list, buuut if you go to the URL for the Lockseed images... you can find the rest of them. I ran into a few of these following ones, which simply said they were gonna be getting a release, didn't say how or when. But you'll be impressed by the results:
Ichigo Lockseed
Pine Lockseed
Suika Lockseed
Lemon Lockseed
Black Orange Lockseed
Matsubokkuri Lockseed
Forbidden Ringo Lockseed
Helheim Lockseed (Related to Gridon VS Bravo, image used above)
Blood Orange Lockseed
Black Ringo Lockseed
Maja Lockseed
Fifteen Lockseed
Himawari Lockseed
Golden Ringo Lockseed
Silver Ringo Lockseed
That is... (checks own blog) just about every Lockseed accounted for! None of the Energy Lockseeds were in there, and I suspect that's probably because they were having fun and being accurate with the Helheim stuff. Energy Lockseeds don't come from Helheim, after all.
There's a few things missing. Of note, I guess the Sid Lockseed, the numberless Banana Lockseed used by Black Baron, Fresh Orange, and anything that didn't have any sort of fiction attached to it. Oh, and Legend Rider Lockseeds. Out of all of these, I feel like the numberless Banana Lockseed has the best chance of a release since it’s gotta have a faceplate with it, but the others are potentially easy to skip.
And, hoo boy, that’s all FOR NOW, but of course we could always get more reveals.
Oh hey, one last thing today: I do a podcast now. Some time juuust after I shut the blog down, I and two lovely folks from RRR The Streets started a podcast because of our shared love for the candy toy figure line, SO-DO, and other similar toylines.
Episode 75, covers SO-DO’s Gaim and Baron figures, and the most recent episode 76 covers the reveal of SO-DO Gaim’s second wave. Now that I’ve talked about these, I can share the next episode(s) when we talk about Ryugen and Zangetsu. Only gonna share the Gaim-relevant episodes, of course.
Toei and Bandai have begun celebrating Kamen Rider Gaim with the unveiling of a commemorative site, a teaser for future CSM content, and an associated campaign.
The first bit of news to share for Gaim, the recent announcement for ongoing Gaim news! I’ve made an appropriate tag.
Just in case you missed it yesterday, yeah, we back. You can check the previous post for more.
I wanted to do a series of updates to this blog, and my other ones, periodically. The first was one of the simpler ones, though time-consuming in its own way: Character profiles. Not much changed in the text, mainly the pictures.
Read more to see some of the wonderful photos I have to work with.
If you haven’t been following what Toei has been doing, since 2018 with Kamen Rider Zi-O, they have been running a site called the Kamen Rider Zukan (Photobook). Essentially, it is an official “wiki” style site, listing every Rider, form, character, item, monster, LOTS of information that they are STILL adding to with occasional series-wide updates. Like the recent addition of all things Gaim.
With it comes photos, lots of large photos. One of my personal gripes with my own blog was that when it came to Rider forms, anything TV-Asahi provided was super tiny, so eventually I would upgrade to something else eventually. Thanks to the Zukan, I can update those, aaaand all the profiles.
Granted, when it comes to the profiles in particular, I am cropping them to a square, but wanted to get in as much of the image as possible.
A lot of the photos are equivalents to what I was using for the profiles, coincidentally. But there’s some where the Zukan doesn’t have a good standalone photo of a character in a particular outfit, such as Mitchy who’s only in his Team Gaim clothes while in group shots.
Used this one photo of Mitchy from the final episode - Gaim’s nearly a decade old so it’s fine to use some recent photos in some cases. I just used to prefer the Canonical depiction of that character, outfit and all.
Coming back to Gaim now, my opinions on Rider status have shifted a bit. If you read this article I wrote about it, I think there’s debates to be had on whether a form change, drastic enough, can count as a separate Rider. I’ve started to default more to what the Zukan site says, as it is intended to be a definitive list of what does/doesn’t count as a Rider, or a what does/doesn’t count as a form change.
With that in mind, Gaim-Yami and Ryugen-Yomi are no longer separate entries in my blog, as they are treated officially as form changes for Gaim and Ryugen respectively. That being said, you would think the logic might apply to Zangetsu-Shin as well, but he is indeed counted as a separate Rider.
I handled this on the profiles in a simple way: Gaim-Yami and Ryugen-Yomi ARE notable enough to be mentioned, but as a footnote to the original counterparts. In the case of the stage show’s Maja, who transforms into Gaim-Yami, the character list now says he is one of the people who transforms into Gaim but is Gaim-Yami only.
There’s also a couple very minor additions, one of the more notable ones being that I previously skipped this one monster from Kamen Rider Taisen. It’s a redesign of an old ZX monster, so it was technically skippable, but I wanted to be complete since I had a good photo for it.
Even the Beat Rider team pages were updated, somewhat, mostly to update the photos of the characters with their own profiles, but a few group shots from the Zukan were tossed in.
Like this Raid Wild group shot! I don’t even think I’ve SEEN this photo before. Exciting stuff.
Definitely give the Zukan a look if you’ve never heard of it before. It has some cool stuff.
Oh, here’s a photo of Zangetsu’s Shin Kachidoki Arms form from the stage play. It’s also from the Zukan, but it does highlight one of the site’s faults...
The Zukan covers the shows, the movies, and surprisingly even covers the Hyper Battle Videos. But it doesn’t... EXACTLY cover the stage shows, or Zangetsu’s stage play. Ex-Aid’s own Nico transforms into Kamen Rider Nico Snipe in the Ex-Aid stage show, and they do make mention of that on her profile, but don’t link to an article.
What makes it puzzling is... through word searches, you can also find that the Zukan has information about the stage shows. You can straight up find a text blurb about Maja from that stage show, for example. But it doesn’t have proper articles for them. Zangetsu probably got in on the basis that his suit appears in the Zi-O summer movie.
Anyway, that’s the character profiles updated. Once everything’s been tidied up, then I can add new content.
Heyyy, been a while. My last post was a bit grim, but I think things have changed.
To reiterate somewhat, my opinion of Tumblr had been soured due to a policy change that essentially kicked off a sizable chunk of its community who happen to dabble in adult-themed art - some of which included friends of mine.
Even though this policy change had no impact on what I was doing here, I felt that I couldn’t support that kind of move. The site had been quite welcoming of that community, even having a built-in way to filter the content so that the site could be viewed safely for those it mattered to - then they changed their mind. I dunno, it had a weird vibe.
Since then, Verizon’s decision to do this to Tumblr... quite literally caused their own stock to go down, and they sold it off to the folks at Wordpress for a fraction of the price they paid for it when they first got ahold of it.
Anyway, the folks who would’ve been responsible for all that are no longer a factor for the site as far as I’m aware, so I guess things are copacetic - as much as they can be in 2020.
I’m writing this post up for Fruit Rider News for a reason; Recently, Bandai and Toei have decided to start the Gaim Festival, which is an ongoing news event in celebration of a new Gaim production + a Complete Selection Modification release - or, releases.
With this, they also provided a lot of very good reference material for all the Riders, forms and characters, which feels like something I would really love to add to this blog, since Gaim in particular had a particularly terrible site when it came to suit references.
I wanna catch up, bring this blog up to date since it hasn’t been updated in a couple years. The first step is to update the existing material. This should be fun...!
So, even if you might not follow any people this applies to, you’ve probably been made aware of the drama going on with Tumblr’s policy update.
To make it short: As of December 17th, Tumblr has decided to remove any and all content it deems to be explicit. The site was designed to allow for adult content, but the higher-ups have decided they wanted to reinvent Tumblr to make it “family-friendly”. This means many people - good people, too - have basically been kicked from their digital home because the site decided it didn’t like naughty art or photography anymore.
It’s a decision that is bound to have repercussions for this site, and has already been seen as a bridge-burner for a lot of its users - myself included. Even though I don’t post content that would put me under the radar, I can’t allow for Tumblr’s decision to be seen as acceptable after seeing the impact of friends and artists I admire. My trust has been broken.
Reviews - on my own blog and on these Rider news blogs - have been on hold since then, as I look for a new place to blog. I’m already considering options, and will have settled on something by January.
Where does that leave my blogs, @fruitridernews @gameridernews and @buildridernews ? As of now, I’ve decided what the fate of the blogs will be.
There’s unfinished content, sure - I like to provide a wiki-style format for these blogs - but I can’t see myself finishing it with the other things I’ve got going on. Maybe one day, but not for the foreseeable future.
Consider these blogs tentatively closed. They’ll still be made available to the public to read, because these blogs mean something to me. A year ago, they got me a job with the Tokusatsu Network, and I’ll be continuing to do toku news coverage there.
If you’re interested in keeping up with me and my reviews, I’m on Twitter. Thank you for your support over the years.
