And to the surprise of probably... EVERYONE, including Road to Gokkan mods, the Kamen Rider Zeztz tertiary rider - Kamen Rider Dawn / Sieg is revealed to be actor 天野 浩成 Amano Kousei! Another King-Ohger alumni who played Glodi Leucodum!
The role also has Amano share a suit actor with King-Ohger’s Spider Kumonos in 高田 将司 Takada Masashi! Out of suit, Takada has also been seen on King-Ohger as a recurring, unnamed Shugodom soldier.
For Amano, this would be his ✨fourth✨ role in Tokusatsu, third in Rider installments! There is certainly an outpour of positivity and support for this reveal, though many are drawing reference from his other Rider roles. However, a few have connections to his time in King-Ohger, so we want to highlight those specific ones.
1. Following the reveal, Amano's wife - Hinagata Akiko, who played former Tofu Lord Iroki in King-Ohger, hilariously retweeted the announcement with...
"Pajama..."
And then Amano then retweeted his wife with:
"Pajama no ojisan" (Pajama [old] man)
😂🤣
2. The Sound Director of Zeztz also welcomed Amano back with the following message:
Welcome back again (You didn't come back from Hakabaka, right...? ) Kamen Rider Dawn / Sieg role
This is fun to consider on multiple levels, because Sieg is introduced as "懲役1000年の男" (The man sentenced to 1000 years in prison), which suggests a long lifespan, possibly immortality, and Glodi was an immortal character. And Glodi's end in King-Ohger was him being trapped in Hakabaka eternally.
Additionally, the Sound Director was directly responsible for giving us the Rita's Sword Thrust sound effect in Zeztz Case 19 to reference and honour Yuzuki's role in King-Ohger in her Zeztz character debut story.
In that same episode, we were presented with this animation and effects:
This seems to be a Kamen Rider Blade reference to the rider's finisher move, in which Amano's first and most well-known Tokusatsu role is Kamen Rider Garren / Tachibana Sakuya from Blade!
Purely as a joke, but it is funny how Kamen Rider Zeztz has the recurring purple butterfly motif, and then we ended up with Hirakawa Yuzuki, actress of Rita Kaniska, starring in the show.
And then after the Kamen Rider Blade reference, shown in Yuzuki's debut story in Zeztz, we now have Amano in the show, a fellow King-Ohger alumnus!
This is doubly hilarious when you consider the stacked coincidences, where Yuzuki had initially been rumoured wrongly to be cast as Zeztz's tertiary rider. Only for it to be revealed that the tertiary rider IS played by a different King-Ohger alumni anyway. lol
The mods have paused on watching Zeztz, preferring to binge-watch at a later time, and instead have been busy working on several King-Ohger projects! ;)
We'll post more if there is any Zeztz x King-Ohger reference worth mentioning! Amano's presence has the potential of starting a series of fun behind-the-scenes shenanigans among the cast, especially if Yuzuki is in the mix, and we look forward to that!