#it was just a part of a liveblog from a general conference that was especially rough on me and i saw the queerstake tag

[mormonforgetmenot]

I love being queer and I love being a mormon, but there are times when I'm just so tired.

[thebibliomancer]

Tides of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 21

Tides of the Dark Crystal because Tavra is revealing her spidery fate to Tae!

Last times on book: Amri and co are on a quest to unite all the Gelfling against the Skeksis. They've managed with the Sifa and with the Dousan. They thought they managed with the Vapra since All-Maudra Mayrin was part of the big Gelfling conference call Aughra hosted but they've just received word that Mayrin has died. The group has come, finally, to Ha'rar to find the streets stalked by sinister Skeksis. They also find Tae of the Sifa and have gone off to regroup with her.

Chapter 21

Tae and the group catch each other up, then Amri tries to catch a sea monster.

At the far end of Ha'rar, the cliffs dropped away into the ocean. A narrow, carved stairway cut down the steep mountainside and deposited them at the wharf, a stretch of ice shelf held against the Ha'rar cliffside with stone pillars. Metal poles -- used for docking ships, Amri imagined -- stuck out of the ice and water like spines. But all were empty. What had probably once been a bustling marketplace and landing for the Sifa and other seafarers was now barren and silent.

There was only one ship in the harbor, a familiar Sifa craft with red, blue, and purple sails. Amri felt safer as soon as they were inside, cabin doors locked and the cushions and quilts surrounding them with the scent of Onica's herbs and Sifa fernsage.

Huh! Welcome back to Onica's ship everyone. Once they went to the desert, I didn't suspect they'd be back to it.

Tae explains that she accompanied Ethri to the maudra meeting and since they didn't know what to expect, they borrowed Onica's ship instead of bringing the Omerya. But she wants to hear their explanation first. She called dibs on hearing exposition.

So they recap how Tavra got taken over by Krychk the spider and used to infiltrate Team Naia, how Kylan dream-stitched Tavra’s soul to the spider when her body died, and how they sent the flower petal warning to the world. For good measure, they recap the part of the book after they left Cera-Na.

Tae is curious about the spider thing and asks what its like to do the crystal-singer thing.

“It’s sort of like dreamfasting,” Amri answered for them both. “You know how in a dreamfast, you feel like you’re someone else, just for that dream? It was like that. I felt like I was her.”

“And I was you,” Tavra finished in agreement. “Yes, it was like dreamfasting. I was able to see through Amri’s eyes. When we flew to save Onica from the Crystal Skimmers, it was as if for a moment...”

As if for a moment I was Gelfling again, she had been about to say. Amri frowned. He wondered how it must have felt, if even for a moment. To fly once more, only to have to go back to being a spider again.

=(

Poor Tavra.

Tae asks why she didn’t reveal herself back at Cera-Na.

“What was there to say?” Tavra asked with a spider-size shrug. “My own sisters do not know I am still alive. If this state could be called living.”

=( =( =(

Are there Gelfling therapists?

Onica interrupts this sad line of thought by asking Tae to take her turn to explain whats been going on. She especially wants confirmation that the Skeksis killed the All-Maudra.

THIS is news to Tae but not a surprise and she has to shake off the anger with a sigh of frustration.

So Tae explained that Seladon sent out windsifters with pieces of the crown and a message that Mayrin had passed. No further information.

As was tradition, the maudra gathered in Ha’rar to crown Seladon and that’s when things got weird. Once the maudra were gathered, Seladon announced that Mayrin was a traitor and would not be given burial honors. Then she declared that the Vapra were loyal to the Castle and called for the maudra to bless her ascent to All-Maudra with the insinuation that to not support her was the same as declaring war against the Skeksis.

Ethri didn’t know what to do given this subtle ultimatum and with the Ritual Master and General in the city so wound up supporting Seladon for All-Maudra, figuring that the resistance could still be built in secret under cover of maudra unity.

So that’s the explanation for why Ethri supported Seladon in the All-Maudra election despite having come around to resistance in this book. Cool, cool.

However, Momdra Laesid withheld her support. Amri guessing that she wouldn’t support an All-Maudra swearing loyalty to the Skeksis when the Skeksis have named two of her children as traitors.

And Maudra Fara also withheld her support, I guess having changed her mind from Song of the Dark Crystal she didn’t want to rock the boat.

Maudra Argot didn’t attend the meeting, having important cave business but sent back her piece of the crown.

Maudra Seethi and Maudra Mera blessed Seladon and Tae isn’t sure whether its because they support the Skeksis or fear them.

So that’s a majority vote for Seladon for All-Maudra. One that bodes of a split among the Gelfling. Right when they need unity. Even if Seethi and Argo flip for the resistance, its not looking good.

After the vote, Maudra Ethri returned to Cera-Na to update the Sifa but Tae stayed behind.

Tavra tells her it was foolish to stay and analogizes the current situation to a storm.

“I know that. But the last time I faced a storm near Ha’rar, I could do nothing to stop it. You had to save me. This time, I will do everything I can to do the saving.”

Naia and Kylan glanced at each other and Amri remembered he was the only one who had seen Tavra’s memories and heard from Onica about her Far-Dream of the storm. Naia and Kylan had no idea what Tavra and Tae were talking about.

Hah.

Onica cuts the tension by saying there’s no point arguing about it when its already happened. Tae is here with Onica’s ship so they might as well accept it.

So Amri questions what Maudra Fara will do after denying Seladon as All-Maudra.

“The Stonewood are loyal and Maudra Fara is a fierce maudra for her people,” Kylan said. “I learned that much when she forced us to leave instead of offering us sanctuary. If she’s decided to stand with Rian, and knows that the Skeksis will come for her people first...”

“She may go to war with them,” Tae finished. “She said as much when she challenged Seladon. And Naia, you mother, Maudra Laesid. What do you think she’ll do?”

“Fight,” Naia replied without hesitation. “She didn’t lose her leg running away from battles... But this is wrong! Now isn’t the time that any of them should be fighting among themselves. We need to unite, not break apart!”

Tavra decides that this is why Mayrin was killed, because the Skeksis found out she was going to join the resistance and Seladon would be easier to manipulate.

Seladon has also gone dark since the crown ceremony and there’s rumors that she left Ha’rar or that the Skeksis killed her too. And the Vapra are loyal to a fault, like the Stonewood. They’ll follow their maudra but if their maudra isn’t given a voice, the Vapra will remain docile.

Everyone feels pretty down now with the situation being pretty dire and Tae announces that Tavra should be All-Maudra instead of Seladon.

“This isn’t fair, Tavra! It should be you leading the Vapra -- your voice that should be heard. It should be you standing against the Skeksis for the Vapra, not Seladon! Everyone has always known it should be you!”

Man. I cannot imagine that helped Seladon’s inferiority complex. Never able to live up to her mom’s standards and everyone thought her younger sister was a better All-Maudra prospect than her. Geez.

Despite Tavra shooting down her argument by saying that Seladon is the rightful successor due to being the first-born and that even if she had a body, its not given that she’d beat Seladon in a challenge since her lack of fortitude is what got her into this spidery predicament to begin with.

“And yet you fight on, like a true leader --”

“Because there is nothing else I can do!”

Aw geez.

“Of course I wish I could displace Seladon. Lead my people. But I can’t! The Vapra cannot see me. Ha’rar cannot hear my voice. I cannot wield a sword against the ones that killed my mother. I cannot even hold the one I love. So let it go, Tae. Let me go and find another hero to put your faith in.”

Aw geez again.

There’s only so much a stoic demeanor can hold when someone is piling on and making you feel how helpless you really feel.

Tavra does the thing she’s been doing when she’s done with a conversation and physically leaving the room. Its about the only thing she has control over so I get it. She just squeezes between the table planks and disappears into the room.

Onica changes the topic because she’s been really good at that. But she brings up that they need to try to unite the Vapra but that the Skeksis in the city makes that hard.

Tae tells her that the Skeksis requested that the Vapra gather on the steps of the citadel tomorrow night. Some believe that Seladon will finally make an appearance but others believe that the Skeksis will announce her death.

Either way, that gathering is their best shot to reach the Vapra but at the same time, having the Skeksis present makes it dangerous. Even if they get the Vapra to light the fire of resistance, the Skeksis will be there to see it and so much for uniting the Gelfling in secret, its instead an open declaration of war and one that the Gelfling might not be able to win. Especially with not all of the clans united.

Tae asks Onica to do the Far-Dreaming thing she does and ask for Thra for answers. Though Onica tries, no answer comes from Thra. “It does not always, and we must find peace within that.”

Darnit, Thra.

Although I wonder if this is one of the things like with the Dousan, where Thra isn’t going to answer because the answer is already there.

Onica tells them to get some sleep and immediately gets up and goes to bed.

There’s nothing really that everyone can do but follow her lead.

Amri is still awake as all his friends drift off, the poor protagonist nocturnal boy. And he thinks that what the Vapra need is something or someone to remind them that they’re not alone.

But he’s still stuck on Tavra being that something and he can’t wrap his head around a workaround to the whole she’s a spider thing.

He hears a CLUNK in the night. He thinks its the boat bumping against the wharf but it keeps CLUNKing followed by splashes so now he starts wondering about that story he heard about a water spirit that lures little Gelflings into the sea.

Gelfling or humans. If you live where theres a sea, you’re gonna worry that there’s something in it that will drag you in.

He tries to wake up Naia but she’s fast asleep. So Amri goes out onto the deck alone, in the middle of the night.

Oh, Amri. Never become a horror movie character.

You’re probably okay here because the book doesn’t switch POVs.

On the deck, he becomes distracted by the light of the Waystar up on the cliffs.

Amri walked out, staring up at it. It had guided ships into the wharf, had brought travelers north as they came to meet with the All-Maudra. To see the beautiful Ha’rar, a place whose name was known as far and wide as the Gelfling race had traveled. A place now as vulnerable as Domrak. As silenced as a Silverling in the body of a spider.

There’s still splashing and clunking against the boat, so like a smart person, he leans over the side to look into the water.

He sees a long shape with a long tail swimming and bumping into the ship. Amri calls for Naia or Tavra but neither his voice nor the collisions seem to wake them up.

So like a smart person, Amri grabs a coil of rope, ties a slipknot, throws the loop at the sea creature just as it breaches, snagging it. Giving him rope burn because this thing can pull.

“Naia!” he shouted. She didn’t answer. She didn’t come.

A loop of the rope came racing up behind him. Before he knew what was happening, it caught him around the ankle. He lost his footing as the line shot over the side of the rail, tangling around his legs. Then he was falling over the rail, crashing into the frigid ocean water below.

Well, Amri. You only have yourself to blame for this.

You Ahab’d yourself.

[sailor-cresselia]

The Great Ex-Aid Rewatch: Ex-Aid & Ghost, Part One

:grabs the popcorn:

This is gonna be hard, because I wanted to try and do this without in-movie spoilers. I mean, I’ve seen the entire show at this point, and if you’re reading my liveblogs, I’m basically assuming that so have you, so not touching on plot points is a little impossible, especially with my overbearing love for going into meta and theories.

Also, it’s going to be in multiple parts. This first post covers about twenty minutes of run-time over the course of several hours of real-time, and nine pages.

Whoops.

(links to the other parts will go here)

–––

Okay, so. In the first two minutes, we have Dr. Pac-man’s three assistants start shooting up the GenmCorp lobby, and I’m pretty sure that the muscle guy broke a guards neck. And then they go after Kuroto, with a very… glitchy Dr. Pac-Man alongside.

We’re talking ‘pre-bugvisor Graphite’ visual glitching, here. As though he doesn’t quite have enough… I dunno, cohesion to stay intact on his own.

Thing is, Kuroto seems genuinely… if not scared, then at least shocked to see him. The dude’s supposed to be very dead, after all.

And seriously, why do people keep jamming proto-gashats into their bodies?! No! Don’t do that! Stop it! I don’t care if you’re a bugster or not, it doesn’t actually help you at all, it’s just going to make you physically unstable!

–––

And here we have Tougo, victim of the day. I have to say, I’ve never liked him much. He’s… annoying. Also, I’m aware that the choice of color for his school uniform is most likely ‘because Pac-Man’, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s it’s ugly. The girls jacket is a nice dark tan, but the boys have this gaim-awful mustard.

And then the Pac-Viruses attack.

–––

Emu’s such a good guy, helping one of his young patients out in both work and as a sort of mentor-friend. Pity we’re still very early in Ex-Aid, and he’s still a horrible klutz. There’s no time to be tripping over your feet, Emu! We’ve got people to save!

–––

…oh no… It never quite clicked before, but I think Takeru had to repeat a year! He was clearly planning on going to university, if only because he and Akari are/were in the same year of school, and she’d never let him live it down if he didn’t. And here? His teacher, who’s practically mocking him for being six months behind, is asking whether he’s serious about his entry exams or not.

So. Since it’s December now, and it was early April when he came back, Takeru missed the entire last half of what was supposed to be his senior year of high school. So here, he’s probably about three months into what he missed before.

Akari, Onari, please don’t disrupt the class like this, they probably all think Takeru’s weird enough as is without him getting called out for superhero business.

–––

You know, Akari reminding Takeru to be careful, because he’s got a regular body now, implies that he hasn’t been careful. Maybe not as Ghost, but… you know, in regular exertion stuff. (And as Ghost, because there’s probably a number of times he’s had to help Alain with. Like. Less-than-satisfied court members or something over in the Ganma world.)

So, both teams are here at the outbreak site. Team Ghost, consisting of Takeru, Akari, and Onari, and team Ex-Aid, consisting of Emu and Asuna. Both of the lads put on their drivers, and simultaneously notice the other one there.

They didn’t meet outside of the suits in Ghost’s final episode, which was an epilogue to his story and a Bonus Sneak Preview Of The New Challenger, so it makes sense that the drivers – both of which are very distinct – would be how they recognize each other.

–––

Of course, that gets us into the slight issue of ‘when does Ghost ep 50 take place.’

See, it’s implied in-show that it’s not long after Takeru comes back to life, which puts it in early to mid-April. He has a line about ‘are we really going to celebrate my birthday twice from now on?’, to which the answer was a definitive yes, so it makes logical sense for it to not be on his original birthday in October.

Except for how Emu couldn’t show up for his Big Damn Heroes moment if it were in April, because he didn’t put on the Gamer Driver until October.

So, when Emu comes to try and get the Shakariki Sports gashat from Ayumu, it isn’t quite chronologically possible… unless you take into account who Ayumu is.

He’s Takeru’s son. From the future. Meaning he time-traveled to get there.

It’s not even unprecedented for the season – Takeru’s father opened the portals that brought Takeru and Shinnosuke back and forth from 2005 in the Ghost & Drive movie, after all. So, it stands to reason that the portal ability, which Ayumu also shows, is a familial power.

What I’m positing is that Emu traveled back in time, and probably didn’t even know it.

He goes to the game worlds and battle stages fairly often, and since suddenly being in a different location isn’t exactly new to him… it would only makes sense for him to not realize that he’s in a different month, too. Especially when one of the stages looks just like the forest behind Daitenkuu Temple, and he has all sorts of flashy light effects going on all the time. An eye-shaped portal could totally just be another one of the standard special effects.

Yup, nothing unusual here.

–––

Okay, that aside, nobody actually gets to transform just yet, because the whole group is swarmed by Pac-Viruses before either of them can activate their drivers, with the viruses quickly singling Takeru out and chewing into him.

He doesn’t get hit with the literal fever that everyone else they’ve done this to are suffering from. No, in Takeru’s case… the Ghost Driver disappears. He pulls out his eyecon to try again… and it clicks uselessly.

Onari suspects it might be because he ‘hasn’t transformed lately’, adding more credence to his and Emu’s encounter being more than two months ago.

Since nobody else here can… time for Ex-Aid to make an appearance.

In level one.

Cue Opening Credits.

–––

So, Emu can’t so much as dent the Pac-Viruses, and then two of Zaizen’s lackeys show up. The man, apparently named Kazushige Ryuzaki, uses the Drago Knight Hunter Z proto-gashat to turn into… (quick search of the wiki) the Doral Bugster. Since I don’t feel like typing out his name, and it’s never said in show anyway, I’m just gonna be calling him Doral from here on. Similarly with the woman, Ageha Takeda, who uses Giri Giri Chambara to become the Giril Bugster.

So, you know, of course the one with a sword is the one Takeru faces off against. Why not? Not like he’s probably got some incredibly justified trauma relating to them. Not like it’s not actually incredibly ironic that his first heroic Eyecon arms him with a sword. Why not re-open some old less-than-metaphorical wounds right off the bat?

Doral basically corners Emu into the parking garage that Takeru and the others tried to bring Tougo through. Oh, yeah, they were trying to get that guy out of the area when he collapsed. I didn’t mention it because he’s not a good character, and exists primarily to guilt-trip Emu. So, yeah. Doral and Giril knock both our heroes down, breaking Emu’s level two transformation in the process, and here comes Dr. Pac-Man, being all ominous and glitchy, saying that he’s doing this for ‘revenge on humanity’.

Suuuure, that’s how you wanna spin it. Humanity in general. It’s totally not against a few very specific humans, one of whom you’ve recently had held at machine-gun point, and the other who has no idea what’s going on.

–––

They use the scene of bringing Tougo into CR for a brief exposition dump – which is fair, both in-universe and out. Takeru’s team wouldn’t know what’s going on, and it helps just in case the parents in the audience haven’t been following what their kids have been watching. It just gives us that little bit of elaboration on the bugster virus, enough so that people aren’t completely lost.

Tougo’s – oh, wow, his ‘infection ratio’ is already at 63%. Usually when they get someone in here, they’re only in the 30% range. But, of course, there isn’t any data to define what’s going on, because this isn’t one of the normal bugsters. There’d be no reason for Pac-Man to be programmed into a Genm Corp system.

(Which actually raises the question of how they were able to see an icon for Burgermon in episode 17, since he wasn’t supposed to be a Bugster, either. Then again, he is from a game Genm Corp was developing. But I digress.)

Anyway, Emu’s justifiably confused as to why Takeru doesn’t seem to be having any of the usual symptoms of an infection. Oh, sweetie, if you only knew- :ahem: sorry, distracted.

Takeru says that no, he’s not feeling any sort of fever, he’s doing fine.

Onari reminds him that ‘he’ll only get hurt if he pushes himself’, and Akari feels his forehead to make sure he’s telling the truth.

Once again, we’re getting the implication that Takeru has developed a habit of going too far.

–––

upstairs, we’ve got a conference call with Secretary Hinata, the Official CR team, and the Ghost team. Onari bursts out laughing at Poppy’s last name – and freaks out when she hops out of the arcade cabinet.

Both of these are understandable reactions, but maybe don’t immediately declare this a supernatural phenomenon? You know, since a government official was the one to first address her.

I will always be frustrated at the reverb effect they gave Poppy’s voice in this movie. There was no reason for Toei to do that, it’s just excessive, and it’s not like they did it in any of the promo materials or shorts, to say nothing of the show itself. Actually…

–––

I wonder if some parts of this movie draw from early planning stages of Ex-Aid? Like, there’s no explaining the voice thing otherwise, and Emu was pretty close to freezing up for a long time in here… despite the setting for it being explicitly between episodes 10 and 11, at which point they’ve already faced an approaching pandemic, with what Graphite pulled in episodes 9 and 10. So, either the team just didn’t think of that, or there were aspects that got… left over.

I mean, it’s not nearly as inexplicably different as the entirety of the OOO section of OOO & W, but it’s not exactly fitting with where Emu would be even just in the first few episodes.

And yes, I’m aware that OOO & W was made when they had one whole episode of OOO to go off of, but that’s why I think there might be artifact plot elements in here.

–––

Okay, back to the film itself. Again. Emu – Genius Gamer M – uses his genre savvy to realize why he couldn’t damage the Pac-Viruses. If, like some of the other bugsters, they’re operating on the logic of their game, then the only weakness they would have would be ghosts. AKA, instead of infecting Takeru, they burned out his ability to transform into Ghost, thus removing their biggest threat.

I mean, only some bugsters use their games that heavily. Motors, for one, the bugster from Bakusou Bike, is ‘prone’ to racing, and technically speaking, Emu and Kiriya cleared the game before destroying him, by beating him in a race. And the Doremifa Beat Collabos bugster was using music just like it would have been in the game itself – if you miss the notes, you get punished. In game, that’d just be a bad score. In the real world… painful explosions. Poppy, the actual bugster from Doremifa Beat, can’t sing without a backing track. And then there’s Burgermon, who was cleared in the same method as beating a level in his game – making a burger for him.

So, yeah, the Pac-Viruses might be in that class of bugster.

Anyway, enter Dan Kuroto and Hanaya Taiga.

Taiga’s all “No, I’m totally not here to help you guys, I’m just not letting these freaks run loose.”

Kuroto tells the ensemble that they stole the ‘heavily guarded’ proto gashats.

If by ‘heavily guarded’ you mean you were clearly reading their data out in the open, in your office. Again. And by ‘stole’ you mean “They had two machine guns pointed at me, and a sword, and I’m not immortal just yet! What was I supposed to do?! Just not hand them over?!”

…Yeah, he may be an evil bastard, but he didn’t exactly have a choice even if he wasn’t trying to keep up his ‘benevolent CEO’ facade.

Taiga’s comment of ‘those gashats are very dangerous’ is not only an understatement, but also… it’s foreshadowing. We know that Kuroto’s been using Proto Mighty Action X, and that it’s slowly wearing him down – Parad told us as much in episode 8 or 9. We know that Drago Knight was actually hurting Graphite, and he’s from there.

And, although we haven’t seen it yet, Taiga also has experience using them. Proto Bang Bang Shooting is what he originally used as Snipe, back in 2011. But we don’t know that even outside of the show just yet.

This movie came out in theaters in December 2016. We found out that the proto-gashats were involved during the Snipe Episode ZERO specials… the first of which wasn’t released until April 2017.

So… here, have some foreshadowing, I guess!

Emu asks if Kuroto has any idea who the culprits could be… and Kuroto pauses before saying he doesn’t. There’s a… not a scare chord, but a ‘you should be really, really suspicious right now’ sound effect when he says that.

I can’t tell if Emu looks disappointed or suspicious.

…Disappointed. He didn’t believe Kuroto could be evil until he revealed himself, so… yeah.

–––

At the totally not sketchy base, Dr. Pac-Man and his lackies are planning something. They’re waiting for Tougo’s symptoms to break out – he was the one they were targeting, after all. I think the Pac-Viruses went after Takeru on their own. They’re also working on something called the ‘genome graph’.

Complete with a diagram of a human gene… that starts off normal, and then becomes blocky… pixellated, almost.

So that’s not sketchy at all.

–––

…oh what the heck. The next scene is the next day. How can I tell? Everyone is in different outfits. It’s not just how Takeru is noticeably no longer in his school uniform, and back to his normal wardrobe. Akari and Onari are in different outfits, too, and Emu was wearing his yellow binary shirt, but now he’s on one of his dark blue ones.

How long does this movie take place over?

(No wonder Haruto was able to show up out of the blue! It’s been at least a day, so he’s had time to find out about this!)

Anyway, Tougo (finally) wakes up, and Emu and Takeru both start questioning him as to why the people in white were after him. Well, Emu’s telling him to go lay back down, because he can barely stand for more than a few seconds without wobbling, and Takeru’s asking questions.

Tougo cares not for your platitudes and worrying about his health, he’s got school and game development to do! Both Emu and Takeru take incredibly personal offense to this attitude.

Casual reminder, both of them were 18, the same age as Tougo, when things went wrong. Well, went wrong a second time in Emu’s case, when he went and decided that he needed to focus on his studies after… well, as we find out later, doing almost exactly what Tougo’s doing. Neglecting his own well being in order to do what he loves – games.

…ohhh no Emu is same hatting really hard with this guy.

(Listen, Tougo, as long as you don’t start identifying with the primary game designer in this show, we’re set. Just accept the fanmail gracefully, and everything will go much smoother.)

But, as Hiiro points out, they technically can’t force treatment on him. But also… well. There are some pretty nasty folks after Tougo.

–––

On the roof, Takeru and Emu have a little chat. They’re both basically going ‘how on earth are you handling the Rider thing?’ to each other’s situations.

Pulling out the Ex-Aid Eyecon, Takeru says that he couldn’t have imagined that the rider that gave it to him is a doctor. He was just so incredibly neon. But the fact that ‘Doctor Emu’ is saving lives as both a doctor and as a Kamen Rider… that really impresses him.

(Please note that Takeru consistently uses “Emu-sensei” to refer to Emu both here, and in HeiGen Final. No, there’s no hero worship going on here, what are you talking about? That’s silly!)

Similarly, Emu’s incredibly impressed by Takeru’s resolve to have kept fighting after dying, and speaking as a doctor, can’t even begin to imagine what that takes.

And then here comes Kuroto, asking to see Takeru’s Ghost Eyecon to analyze it, so they can make something that will effect the Pac-Viruses.

Since Takeru agrees, it means that he’s not tied to it the way he was in the series. It’s probably a different Eyecon completely – seeing as in-show, the Ore eyecon was literally him. Technically, the Takeru we saw was almost a projection – his tangibility depended heavily on his emotional state.

(There’s a reason I occasionally joke about Ghost’s Eyecons being ‘Soul Gem Two: Spooky Boogaloo.’)

(Also, Yurusen shares a VA with Madoka, and that just drove the joke home. Turns out Meduka Meguca is the cat, after all!)

–––

Hatesate Puzzle is an Android game – you can tell, because the list of files includes four different .apk files. Also, it’s up to version 7.21.

But the programming screen? Uses the same stupid block of text that all of the programming screens use in this show. Like, it’s even more egregious this time, because it’s shown very clearly, in decent lighting, unlike in Kuroto’s assorted lairs. Also, it talks about game physics such as collision detection for the ground.

This is a match three game.

Anyway, turns out Hiiro’s idea was to allow Tougo to leave the hospital, as long as he was still being observed. There’s a hundred thousand people infected right now, and the people who did it want him. So… Tougo is bait.

Needs of the many, blah blah blah you could have at least run this by someone, Hiiro. I get not telling Emu. But Asuna should have been informed, at least.

Almost immediately after Hiiro takes his leave, letting Emu take over, we hear static as Tougo staggers backward in his seat and passes out.

–––

We come to a busy office – a busy police barracks. Team Ghost waits anxiously on a visitors couch.

“I’m glad to see you’re back.”

Enter Officer Tomari Shinnosuke: Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (active duty); Kamen Rider Drive (inactive).

Takeru and co had called in a favor, and Shinnosuke was only all to willing to help cover this case. Not only is it rider business now, but they’re threatening the city. Not to mention the police squad they destroyed yesterday – handily confirming that a day has, in fact, gone by – means Shinnosuke really wants in.

Turns out the three they’ve seen the faces of were all researchers into genetic therapy with the Next Genome Institute. Doctor Pac-Man is ‘most likely’ their boss, Zaizen Michihiko. Unfortunately…

They’re all supposed to be very, very dead. They died six years ago, as a matter of fact.

Most of the institute’s data was destroyed when the facility was sealed, but there’s a bit of closed circuit footage remaining of the event. Only a few seconds, but it’s enough to show them standing over an operating table, as orange lights encase and dissolve them, squares of light patterning the floor and walls.

Squares of light eerily similar to what they just say the other day, when people were activating Gashats.

Bugster work isn’t the only sketchy thing they’ve done – there were rumors of the institute working with cloning, creating mutants… basically, as Akari says, mad scientists.

(Anyone want to place odds on them being funded by Foundation X? No? Just me? Okay then.)

–––

Emu and Asuna are with Tougo as he wakes on a bench. THey’d moved him somewhere out of the sun, and he’s… An asshole about it. He never asked for their help, and he’ll die when it’s time, anyway, so why are they bothering?

Doctor Pac-Man, still very glitchy, strolls up. “He’s right. None of you are needed here. Why not just hand him over?”

Running time!

–––

Back at the precinct, Shinnosuke promises that he’ll let team Ghost know as soon as they find where the Next Genome researchers are hiding.

Y’know, except for that part where he’s too late, and they’re already going after Tougo, and by extension, Emu.

Shinnsouke’s fired up and ready to go after them.

Y’know, except for the part where Krim locked all of the Drive tech in his depression garage the Drive Pit at the end of the season, and Shinnosuke can’t transform, which Takeru points out, saying that it’s too dangerous for Officer Tomari to go.

Of course, Onari, logically, tries to point out that Takeru’s in the same boat right now, to which Takeru hurriedly shushes him.

Takeru and his team run off to deal with the situation.

Sad music plays as Shinnosuke laments his lack of belt.

–––

And here’s where I decided I had to cut the liveblog for now! Because again, twenty-some minutes, and nine pages of text. This is going to take a while.

See you next game