#kamen rider to BL pipeline

[emotionallychargedtowel]

That post about Higuchi Kouhei and his cat got me thinking about some other tokusatsu-to-BL pipeline actors that are on current or recent BLs, so I thought I'd do a screenshot post about Kamen Rider Revice, a recent toku series that features two lead actors who star in current BLs, plus an actor in a smaller role who was part of a side couple in a BL series that recently completed a second season.

The main character of Revice is Igarashi Ikki, played by Maeda Kentaro, currently playing Ohara Yamato in I Can't Reach You. His siblings are very central to the story as well--by the end of the series, the story is centered around his whole family. Ikki's younger brother Daiji is played by Hyuga Wataru, currently playing Yamasuge Ryuiji in If It's With You.

Here they are having a bath in the opening credits for the show (the Igarashi family runs a public bath house).

I should say at the outset that I can't entirely recommend Revice, especially to folks who don't already have some tokusatsu-watching under their belts. It's a hot mess in a lot of ways. But it does have some really outstanding highlights. The best aspects of the series, in my book, were:

Kagerou (Daiji's demonic alter ego),

George Karizaki (my beloved),

Igarashi Sakura/Kamen Rider Jeanne (the most formidable female Rider I've seen in any series in the franchise), and

the relationship between Sakura and Natsuki Hana (a rare example of a convincing Sapphic ship in a franchise well known for "heated drama between men").

I'm not going to get into 2 and 3 here, as tempting as that would be, but I'll include as much of 4 as time/space permits.

It might seem weird that I'm not recommending a series with some of my favorite characters in the entire Kamen Rider franchise AND a relationship between girls that is a hair's breadth from being canonically queer. It's just too much of a trainwreck to endorse as a whole. But as I said, the highlights are really something.

One of the biggest issues I had with Revice was that Ikki, the protagonist, just isn't a very compelling character. As a result I don't think Maeda Kentaro really got to show the range of his acting abilities in this series. (This just makes me more curious to see him in ICRY. From the excerpts I've seen so far, it seems like he shows a really different side of himself.)

Maeda appreciators might still enjoy the many determined faces and creepy smiles he gets to dish out in this series. Here's a sampling.

It's possible they'll want to look away when he starts doing things like this, though.

Fans of both Maeda and Hyuga might enjoy some of their scenes fighting side by side, including doing their various henshin poses (the moves they do before they transform into their masked Rider forms).

Or when they do things like this bonkers flying kick.

Thankfully, Daiji is a more interesting character than Ikki, so Revice gave Hyuga some more challenging things to do. I thought Hyuga also just really made the most of every opportunity the show presented to him. He was seriously impressive. This is the reason I was sold on IIWY the moment I saw the announcement about it based solely on Hyuga's involvement.

Here's a sampling of Hyuga as Daiji.

In addition to playing Daiji, Hyuga also played Kagerou, Daiji's aforementioned demonic alter ego. Kagerou was formed from thoughts and emotions that Daiji repressed. The biggest of these was his resentment toward Ikki. But apparently Daiji had also been repressing a desire to be a somewhat gender non-conforming goth, because that's Kagerou's other raison d'etre.

In some ways, it's hard to imagine a character more different from Ryuji. If they have anything in common, it's the fact that they both place a high value on honesty.

One other thing that's worth noting about Hyuga's work on Revice is that he was only 17 when the show premiered. He showed major dramatic range in this part, not only playing two very different characters but doing everything from low-key nuanced scenes to bombastic high drama. Not to mention the stunts! Doing all of this at 17 is seriously remarkable.

Now for our bonus dude! There's a secret evil-fighting organization called Weekend that secretly keeps tabs on the Igarashi family for years before coming out of hiding to join the big central battle of the series. One of the Weekend operatives is Ushijima Hikaru.

Look familiar? Maybe not, he didn't make faces like this on his BL series.

How about now? Yep, it's Oku Tomoya, who plays Hanabusa Asuka on both seasons of Minato Shouji Coin Laundry.

Oku has some big scenes and interesting moments in Revice. He does some romantic pining, goes through big-time loss, does quite a bit of martial-arts sparring, gets seriously injured, and more. He even gets to henshin a few times. Here he is getting ready to do just that with Sakura and Hana. Those Weekend uniforms are pretty hardcore in a 70s flight attendant sort of way, but I feel like Oku really sells it here.

While we're on the subject of Sakura and Hana, I feel like I can't mention their relationship without including some moments where their story came particularly close to tipping into full-on yuri.

If you're going to do an enemies-to-lovers story, why not make them full-on superhero nemeses?

The word "date" might not technically get used by the characters, but there's no mistaking that the amusement park hangout Sakura invites Hana on--while she is still a fully-functioning bad guy, I might add--is definitely a date.

Most of the time when a Rider beats their nemesis for the final time they don't hold each other tenderly in the sunset.

By the end of the series, they're in a big tub together at the Igarashi's bath house.

There are tons more examples but you get the idea. If this isn't borderline-yuri I don't know what is.

[asknarashikari]

https://x.com/_captain_duck/status/1848360575711281384?s=46&t=r5cQ-fyChNi-Dn-w3MjHHg

The toku-BL pipeline goes both ways

[narashikari]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 押田 岳 Gaku Oshida (@oshidagaku)

What do you mean "Sou Okuno and Gaku Oshida were in a BL together but not as each others' love interests"

We could've had a SouGeiz AU if they were lmaoooo

[mefilas]

the main character of this kamen rider series I just started is the same guy who played the main love interest of the gay drama I just finished. huh

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Another actor has emerged from the tokusatsu to BL pipeline!

Takahashi Kensuke (on the left in the promo image) was most recently on Kamen Rider Revice in a small role as a younger version of George’s father seen in flashbacks.

But his main tokusatsu role was as Daichi on Ultraman X. Daichi was the main character of X and Ultraman X’s human “host.”

I’m not a big fan of Ultraman X as a series but I thought Takahashi did well in the role. He has a particular kind of charm that I could see working well in a BL context.

It’s interesting to see a lead actor from an Ultraman series in a lead BL role. It seems like one more indicator of how the number of actors going down the pipeline is increasing as BL production in Japan is increasing. I’d guess the appeal of these roles is on the rise as well given the popularity of some series.

In the past, it was not uncommon to see a Kamen Rider actor appear on a BL, Super Sentai alums appeared in them occasionally, and Ultraman actors were rare and when they did appear, were seldom in lead roles/playing LGBTQ+ characters. When Kamen Rider or Super Sentai actors did BLs, they were usually actors who had played secondary KR/SS characters. It’s only more recently that actors who played the primary/title Rider character on a KR show or actors who played the leader of a Sentai have starred in BLs as leads. Our Dining Table even had two former lead/title Riders in the two main roles.

The first actor I recognized from an Ultraman series who played a lead role in a BL was Kusakawa Takuya from Minato’s Laundromat. Kusakawa was in Ultraman Ginga and Ultraman Ginga S in a supporting role. The next former Ultraman actor to be announced as a BL lead was Kaneko Shunya, who’ll be in a BL called Perfect Propose being released next year. His character wasn’t the lead but he was a major supporting character. (He did a wonderful job in that role—his character was my favorite on the show—so I’m really psyched to see him do a BL.) But Takahashi doing a BL after being the main character in an Ultraman series is unprecedented as far as I know.

All this being said, this is all just off the top of my head. I’m mostly just aware of JBL series put out in the past few years and even there my knowledge isn’t perfect.

I’d given up hope. Yay gaga!

I love the “surprise new JBL”

Isn’t that always the case?

[asanjou]

It's so funny to me the lead actor in Kamen Rider Black sun also starred in a gay drama like damn get you a man who can do both

anon are you aware of the toku to bl pipeline. my man is following in a grand tradition

[the-artist-from-hell]

Today my partner brought up an interesting connection- the pipeline of kamen rider actors ending up in BL: (gay/“boy love”) tv dramas down the line.

Proof: https://twitter.com/_captain_duck/status/1543600429455769600?s=42&t=xVc80jjsoDZvlGPwEbmKpA

I don’t know much about kamen rider but I saw this and I was like “yea makes sense-“

((supposedly this is a cannon design for one of the many kamen riders))

he even has the triangle on his chest- the more I look the more I notice.

For those confused about the triangle thing: “A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBT community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity.”

Sure the triangle isn’t pink but the rainbow proves the point 🏳️‍🌈

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Since you're familiar with tokusatsu actors and their journeys into BL, what kinds of careers historically have tokusatsu actors had as they start to get more credits and mature?

Thank you for the ask! This is a great question. It’s something I’ve been curious about for a while, as you know.

I never get tired of this gif of Seto Toshiki (a Kamen Rider alum with two BLs under his belt) eating cake. (It's from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, which he starred in with Iijima Hiroki of Our Dining Table fame.)

Oh, I should probably say at the outset that I'm talking about the suit transformation type of tokusatsu shows here. Technically the category is broader and also includes kaiju movies, but I'm focusing here on the kind of tokusatsu series in which human characters (or human-like ones) transform into masked heroes. I think that's what you had in mind, Ben, and it's the type of tokusatsu that tends to overlap with the BL world.

Another thing you'll notice is that I'm mostly going to talk about men here. Tokusatsu has been making some progress as a genre when it comes to gender equity, but it still has a long way to go. And since most of the progress that has happened, like the increase in female Riders, has been in the last few years, the actors who played those characters haven't had much of a subsequent career yet.

Now, to your question.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to really look at this systematically. So, definitely take my conclusions with a grain of salt. (If anyone reading this knows more about this or has thoughts about how to get more/better info, I'd love to hear them.) The main source of information I have--aside from just soaking stuff up from watching tokusatsu shows and reading toku fans' tumblrs, of course--is looking at toku actors’ entries on MDL and seeing how many roles they’ve gotten, if they’re “guest,” “support,” or “main” roles, and trying to find out about the type of shows and movies they’re in.

One of the biggest weaknesses to this approach as an American viewer is that it's usually hard for me to tell what constitutes a popular or prestigious series or film even if I go to the listings for specific shows/films. I should also note that one thing that biases my “data” (to use the term loosely) is the fact that I’m more likely to look up this information about actors I like. Well, occasionally I’ll also look at info on some sample of actors out of curiosity, like a bunch of lead Ultraman actors’ subsequent careers or something like that. But it's usually more random.

A little background. As you're aware, tokusatsu roles often go to younger actors who don't have much previous experience. They tend to function both as a way of getting a foothold in the industry (building a resume, starting a fanbase, etc.) and as a way of learning on the job. Part of the reason they work so well in this regard is that they have long seasons. Ultraman seasons are typically around 25 episodes long, which is pretty long compared to many shows in Japan, but Kamen Rider and Super Sentai seasons are usually around 50 episodes long. This means two things: a toku part gets you a lot more of the aforementioned work experience than you'd get in other genres, and it provides a solid year of consistent work with additional work to follow (particularly hard to come by in Japan's entertainment industry, from what I understand). The additional work is substantial, too. There are typically post-series TV movies and touring live shows and there are often guest spots on other series in your franchise.

When it comes to landing other roles, as in other types of media, it makes a big difference what type of role you had. This is stating the obvious, I know, but there are some specific ways this works with tokusatsu series, and it relates to who ends up in BLs and in what capacity. So, all of the big three tokusatsu franchises are pretty ensemble-based but they still have distinct leads and some degree of a hierarchy of roles. Ultraman has the strongest leads, Kamen Rider has lead/title Riders and secondary (and often tertiary) Riders, and Super Sentai shows are especially ensemble-y (the word sentai basically means "squad," after all) but they always have some kind of group leader.

When I look up subsequent work by tokusatsu actors who had sizable roles in their toku series--lead roles, or other parts that are what MDL would call "main" roles--what I see most often is a lot of supporting and guest roles in a variety of TV shows and some films. You can usually find a smattering of lead roles as well, but if you look closely they may turn out to be smaller productions (but not always). When it comes to the number/frequency of credits, there's a lot of variation but an average case would be 2-3 such credits per year. Like I mentioned above, it's hard for me to tell how desirable/prestigious/well-paying those guest and supporting roles are. But they don't usually seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel or anything. So, yeah. Lots of these actors have different paths, but this is what I see most frequently.

Given how challenging it is to make a career out of acting in Japan, this is nothing to sneeze at. Despite its relative influence, the Japanese entertainment industry is still comparatively small, and there are only so many opportunities. In that context, regularly getting guest and supporting gigs constitutes a pretty uncommon level of success.

Could these folks support themselves on this amount of work? I often see just a few credits per year, so maybe not. But when I like one of these actors enough to follow them on socials, it usually seems like they are supplementing those parts with other stuff like stage plays, toku fan appearances, modeling gigs, or other types of performance including music. Even with these different sources of income, some probably still can't live on their entertainment industry pay alone. But it appears that some can.

So that's the most common thing. One less common outcome is leaning really hard into being a tokusatsu actor for life. It's not typical to get significant roles in multiple toku shows, but it does happen. And some actors manage to play the same character in a lot of post-series movies, miniseries, etc. stretching out for years after their actual series. For example, Tsuruno Takeshi, who played Ultraman Dyna's human host Shin Asuka, has been in ten different Ultraman things including his main series, a short series, a lot of TV movies, and a special. Dyna aired in 1997, and his last appearance as Asuka was fairly recent, in 2016. That's almost a 20-year span. Yet Tsuruno has never had a non-Ultraman main character part. (Though this is partly because he seems to have focused more on his music career and related variety show type things post-Dyna.) There are even some actors who are tokusatsu superfans whose whole career plan is centered on the genre from the get-go.

For those who are looking to branch out, there are a lot of trajectories. So I'll try to talk about some of them through a few examples.

Takeda Kouhei

You probably knew I was going to bring him up. On Kamen Rider Kiva, Takeda's character was important but not the lead (he played the main character's father in the 1980s, in a timeline that ran parallel to the present day one). That was in 2008, when he was 22. Nine years later, in 2017, he was in Kamen Rider Build, in which he was the "tertiary" Rider. This character was a potato farmer-turned-antihero. As tertiary Riders go, he was pretty popular. But Takeda seemed to be mostly hovering at a certain level at that point. Then Old Fashion Cupcake happened. It's significant that he went from playing supporting characters (albeit important ones) to a lead character in OFC. It's also helpful that OFC came out at a point when the prestige of BLs was on the rise. It seems like Takeda has had more consistent and larger parts since then. The difference isn't night and day or anything, but it's observable.

If you look at Takeda's Build costars, Inukai Atsuhiro and Akaso Eiji, here’s what you'll find. Akaso has a similar trajectory to Takeda's only somewhat steeper. His role on Build (the secondary Rider) was a bit bigger, he seemed to get slightly bigger roles overall after Build, and Cherry Magic gave him a significant boost from there. Inukai had a bigger upswing early on followed by slower growth that still had him outstripping both Akaso and Takeda. From what I can tell, his “data” more closely resembles that of Yamada Yuki, who I’ll talk about in a second, though they have different niches.

Suda Masaki

Suda Masaki was only 16 when he played the main rider in Kamen Rider W in 2009, which is unusually young. (W has a unique premise where two different people inhabit the same Rider, so Suda played a lead rider but so did his costar Kiriyama Renn.) From what I can tell, he seems to have had a pretty organic path to larger and larger roles while varying genres and styles quite a bit. At this point he's definitely a very respected actor. (One interesting bit of trivia: Hagiwara Riku has said Suda is his biggest acting role model.) He's won two Japan Academy Film Prizes and been nominated three more times. I don't know of a more successful ex-tokusatsu lead. Actually, I looked him up for this post to fill in some details and found out for the first time that he also has a pretty successful career as a jpop musician. It's almost annoying that he's that talented in yet another area.

I don't see any indication that Suda has ever played a queer character, though he has definitely done some pretty bromantic stuff. He did kiss a man once in a drama series, but it was for plot reasons and was 100% played for laughs in a gross way. He also played a gender nonconforming character in the 2014 live action version of Princess Jellyfish. (Another bit of trivia: when another live action adaptation of Princess Jellyfish was released in 2018, the same character was played by another former lead Rider, Seto Koji from Kiva.) I wouldn't put it past Suda to play a queer character, if it was for a highbrow movie or something analogous to what Nishijima Hidetoshi has done in What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but I'm also not holding my breath.

Yamada Yuki

A less extreme case. Yamada was on Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. He was the blue member of the team, a soldier-turned-pirate. It may have helped Yamada along later on that Gokaiger is an especially popular Sentai series. Post-Gokaiger, Yamada didn't have any sort of big breakout role that I can find. It just seems like fairly soon after Gokaiger, he started having significant roles in TV dramas and has pretty much continued from there, with some upward momentum but no huge changes. When he was in a drama with Akaso Eiji recently, his part was first billed and a smidge bigger. Yamada's trend line seemed to have a biggish upward swing early and then just a slight slope from there. But I just saw him in something different: he plays the younger member of the minesweeper crew in Godzilla Minus One. I wonder if that will mark any sort of shift for him.

Yamada hasn't played any queer characters as far as I can tell. His Sentai role was shippy as hell, though. It's a tradition among Sentai shows that subtext-level queer ships happen between the red and blue team members, and that's exactly what happened in Gokaiger. Sometimes the subtext pretty much became text. If magazine images from that time are any indication, their relationship seems to have been a promotional angle for the show. There's even one where they seem to be in some kind of high school AU that looks like it's straight out of a BL.

what about women?

I tried looking up a few women I know from tokusatsu roles while I was looking up these and other dudes. Some of them were still in the business, at least. Some were getting the same trickle of guest and supporting parts a lot of men do after a tokusatsu show. A few had a slightly bigger trickle. But many of them seemed to have disappeared from the public eye entirely. Not only are women underrepresented in tokusatsu, and not only are their roles often relatively small and two-dimensional, but it doesn't seem like they get even a slight career boost after these roles.

It's possible this will change for some of the actors who got bigger, more interesting toku roles in recent years. Here's hoping!

The changing relationship between tokusatsu and BL

The relationship between tokusatsu and BL has been changing as BL gains more prestige, like I alluded to when I talked about Takeda Kouhei. There was a time when they seemed to be pretty analogous in terms of how hard it was to get a role and how effective they were as rungs on a career ladder. If you went from being a tokusatsu side character to a BL lead (like Takeda), that was a step up, but only because you were shifting from a supporting spot to a lead one. Tokusatsu leads usually didn't usually do BL or, when they did, only played straight supporting roles. I think it was seen as a lateral move. But now, BL is becoming a very established next step after tokusatsu. It's like BL has moved up in status so that the consensus is that it's above tokusatsu on the ladder, but just by a little bit. It's also kind of an organic transition since we're seeing more queer ships in tokusatsu that, while they mostly happen on a subtext level, are close to being canon (and in some cases, arguably already are). It occurred to me while I was writing this that there's also another type of role that is in a similar zone of accessibility and prestige to both tokusatsu and BL. It's a franchise, not a genre, but with so many movies and such huge casts it almost functions like a genre for the purpose of this discussion. I'm talking about the High&Low movies. If you're a fan of tokusatsu or BL, you'll see actors you know in every High&Low movie and if you're a fan of both, you'll see tons.

Case in point: Here's our ol’ pal Yamada Yuki. He's in quite a few High&Low installments. If only he’d do a BL and complete the trifecta! The only person I know of offhand who’s done a tokusatsu show, a BL, and a High&Low role is Takeda. I bet there are others, though.

the new (?) prestige tokusatsu

There's another piece to this I should probably point out as well. In recent years there have been some more high-budget, prestigious takes on existing tokusatsu properties. First, Anno Hideaki, who's best known for the Evangelion anime series/films, put out three live action features that are new, well-financed takes on three big tokusatsu properties: Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider.

Last year there was also a Kamen Rider series geared toward adults that had higher-than-usual production values called Kamen Rider Black Sun. It did that “you can tell our show is for adults because it's all gritty and grimdark" thing, which I'm not a fan of. But it definitely had its points.

Really distinguished actors starred in both the Shin movies and Black Sun, including Nishijima Hidetoshi, who's about as distinguished as it gets. Nishijima was in both Shin Ultraman (in an important supporting role) and Black Sun (as a co-protagonist--and he's the biggest highlight of the series). So these are examples of toku media that are too prestigious to be a springboard into the industry for most actors.

This seems to be a new phenomenon, though I could be wrong about that. I don’t expect the trend will continue at this pace (after all, so much of it is attributable to Anno alone and I don't think he'll continue down this path indefinitely), but I bet some other shows/movies in this vein will come out sooner or later.

Here’s Nishijima doing a henshin sequence. He does these moves with such commitment. Is there anything he can't do?

before tokusatsu

As I was writing this, it got me thinking about what actors do before their tokusatsu roles as well as after. It's not uncommon for toku roles to be someone's debut, but that's not really the norm. Even when it is, most of those actors were doing something in the realm of performing or modeling beforehand. I don't usually look at this sort of information as much as I do later roles when I'm investigating toku actors I like. So I looked up some people to try to get a sense of where the actors tend to have done before their toku parts.

There's one starting point that a whole bunch of tokusatsu leads share: winning the Junon Super Boy Contest. When I first saw references to it, I thought, OK, this is some kind of national talent contest. I guess there are probably lots of them. But when I looked for others, I didn't see anything come up. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places or using the right search terms. But I think maybe this contest might be pretty unique in Japan.

It's run by a magazine called Junon and, well, if I describe how it works it's going to sound really familiar to you and anyone else who's seen Utsukushii Kare, because it's pretty much exactly the contest Kiyoi participates in. Like, if it's not what Nagira Yuu was thinking of when she wrote that part of the UK novel, I'll eat my shoe.

A ton of tokusatsu leads won, placed in, or made it to the finals of that contest. The Tokupedia fan wiki even has its own page dedicated to the contest with links to various winners' toku characters. The majority of Junon Super Boy contestants who ended up in a toku series went to Kamen Rider, but there are some Sentai dudes as well and at least one Ultraman lead.

So I guess if Kiyoi had won that contest, he probably would have ended up on Kamen Rider or something. Weird.

Inukai Atsuhiro and Iijima Hiroki both won that contest. Those are the only two Junon Boys (that's what people call the contest winners) who became tokusatsu actors and were on a BL that I know of right off the top of my head. But it seems likely that there are other toku-and-BL or just BL actors who won, placed, or made it to the finals of this contest.

Other dudes who ended up on tokusatsu shows started out in other ways. Some were simply signed to agencies as actors. There's a fair number of them who were in idol groups. (Though when an idol/ex-idol is looking for a gig as a transition into acting, BLs seem to be a more popular choice.) Some mostly did modeling prior to their toku series. Some already had quite a few acting credits, though usually not very big ones. Although he's a Junon Super Boy winner, Inukai had eight other acting credits before Kamen Rider. Takeda had the same number, and he started young--his first credit is for a TV show that came out when he was 10 (though it took another six years to get a second).

I also looked up some women who've had prominent roles in tokusatsu shows, including more recent ones. The most frequent things I found when I looked for information on their pre-toku careers were that they had been models or idols (or both). It's also not uncommon for women in toku roles to be former or present gravure models--basically models who pose in bikinis or comparably revealing outfits.

The coolest thing I found was that Imoto Ayaka, who played Igarashi Sakura/Kamen Rider Jeanne, was an award-winning ballet dancer. Which is not only incredibly cool but makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation for a tokusatsu hero role.

I mean, just check out this henshin.

Well, this has gotten ridiculously long. Sorry about that. I may have gotten a little carried away. But thanks again for the question.

And now, I have something to write for @wen-kexing-apologist...

[i-am-randomtrash00]

Here's what I did. Or at least the ones I know so far.

LFG, Toku & BL fans!

[asknarashikari]

i would really laugh if these two co-starred in a bl together either as lovers or otherwise https://twitter.com/_Captain_Duck/status/1642417848088952832

With any luck you'll get your wish in a year or so XD

[narashikari]

Watching Our Dining Table is so surreal like my brain can't disconnect at all like. That's Emu and Sento having a meet cute. That's Yuri texting Sento. That's Build's OP singer singing rn.

My brain is going coocoo and it's been 5 minutes

[emotionallychargedtowel]

YES!!!!!!!

BOKURA NO SHOKUTAKU (2023) — episode 8

[tsuki-sennin]

This is the episode with the sexyman vampire. Which is interesting to me, since I think it'd be really cool to see Spanner reckon with the fact that, yes, Chemies are alive and sentient, and him just having

A guy in his deck would be a little odd for him. I don't think that's gonna be the main focus, but new form woooooo!

Spoilers, I guess...

-The toku-BL pipeline strikes again, as this guy is played by Jyutaro Yamanaka, who played Kaburagi in Ameiro Paradox.

-With the power of positive assertion, Kamen Rider Valvarad peels out!

-Oh, we have a new pal already!

-Yoroshiku, Tricera~!

-Oh hey Ma, I missed you last week!

-Renge-san, look at you!

-"Waaaaaait... Oh, I get it."

-Hopper Wants to see~~!

-Spanner no-

-Oh, whew

-Where ya goin', Spanner?

-Cunt king.

-"Renge-chan, good morning~!"

-Zukyun~!

-HE'S BISEXUAL???????

-Akiko Inoue gets it. She gets it.

-Thanks for that Chad line, fansubbers.

-KAJIKI'S BISEXUAL??????

-This show is peak

-Ahhh, I see...

-"Thank you, Kyoka-san..."

-What was he cooking?

-"Yeah, that's it, seiza there in shame, you piece of shit!"

-Clotho's so desperate to punch a bunch of teenagers in the face.

-A catalyst for further destruction.

-I support this. It's about time she got some conflict of interest~!

-Ooooooh, Machwheel does a bit of form changing of his own~!

-I swear this standby theme sounds like the Kamen Rider Dragon Knight theme.

-"My mom made this for me, you bitch!"

-Killsteal unsuccessful.

-Oh she mad

-Zukyumpire marches on.

-Hot damn, he's smooth.

-Seems like Sabi's on the ball.

-Da guy.

-An incubus, I see.

-World domination~!

-"He's so anime!"

-Not every day we get to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

-"Occult Chemy, Zukyumpire~!"

-T

-THIRD FIRST LOVE???

-She dead.

-"You guys are all ragingly bisexual. Fall for me~"

-Noticed Hotaro was affected pretty hard by Rinne.

-...I hope this doesn't awaken anything in him.

-They're all dead!

-B

-Bunnyparka, really Hotaro????

-SHE'S WEARING HIM??????

-"I see how it is..."

-You're gonna have to let it go, Yua.

-"An amazonian villainess has come to my aid... my life has truly become worthwhile~!"

-Time to tear ass!

-KAMANTIS NOOOOO

-Ohhhhhhhh, she's big strong now.

-Hi Valvarad

-Angecopter Angecopteeeeeer~!

-God's Strongest Pilot

-Mixtus time!

-Don't sound so surprised, Rinne, that's what we've been doing isn't it?

-"Save you all... into my loving embrace~!"

-SECOND MAJADE FORM THIS IS NOT A DRILL

-Zukyun~!

[notoneglance]

We talk about the "Kamen rider to bl" pipeline a lot, but I think the "nonhuman rival/love interest of the main Rider to Rudolf Elisabeth das Musical" pipeline is the far funnier and more niche one

[ankhisms]

ive been screaming and crying and throwing up about my gobusters silly goofy uncle character being in danger and behind me has been explosions and screaming about the kamen rider to bl pipeline

[gotinterest]

Rei off being worried about Jin meanwhile the rest of us are having a meltdown over the Kamen Rider to BL pipeline