Gaim isn't ending this month. Drive is only starting in October, so Gaim will have September too.
Right, right. That preview got me there for a minute.
Still...!
As NeonZ said, it looks like Gaim's going to get about 47 episodes. It's always around episode 40/41 that Rider suddenly kicks the plot into high gear. A lot of Rider shows seem to suffer a bit for this timing - some (like Kabuto) have to pull a last second extra enemy out to stretch to their required length, while some (like Faiz) have too much left to do and have to rush through it all at such a breakneck speed that you feel like half the planned events were truncated or dropped altogether. Gaim's got a lot to do in seven episodes - defeat Rosyuo, Redyue, Micchi and Ryoma, see Sagara play his game, have Kouta and Kaito become Over Lords, and hopefully bring that orange-haired girl into it somehow. Hopefully it gets the pacing right and pulls it all off.
Referring to this, there is still a TON they have left to cover. Hopefully they can, but I'm getting a bit worried - barring a few cases that felt like two or three episodes stuffed into one, one of the things I've loved about this show is its pacing. Really hoping this can hold true to the end for the most part.
It's not just a random monster suit though. It's the monster that Yuuya became back in the first episode, to complete the role reversal of Yuuya appearing as Gaim. The same suit was used with a different head to protray Hase's monster form, so it's essentially the form of a converted human and probably the monster form that's caused Kouta the most mental anguish throughout the series. I think Redyue's idea was that if Kouta could strike down Yuuya and accept being that particular monster, it would completely sever his emotional attachment to humanity. But he pushed it too far and Yuuya just reminded Kouta of what he was fighting for.
Fair enough.
Also, isn't Redue a girl?
If I had a complaint it's that Kouta was the guy who gave that big speech about how he'd remake the world into one where sacrifices were no longer required, and yet now he seems quite accepting that he is a sacrifice himself.
As another user pointed out, I think it's more that he doesn't view himself as a sacrifice at all - it's his choice.
Ryoma's actor is far too good to do a gremlin :laugh:
Well, I mean more "underling steals the thing at the end and becomes the final boss" the same way Gremlin had. :laugh: I suppose it could be Redue who does it too, though.
It's probably truer to say that Kouta's hallucination is how he imagines it was for Hase and Yuya. We can see that they'd basically lost their minds (it might've been a slower process for Hase, but it still happened), but it wouldn't surprise me if Kouta had twisted it in his head so that they were just bewildered, distressed, and unable to communicate, and he was a bloodthirsty monster who didn't try hard enough to communicate with them.
Well, as you point out, Hase actually
did go through something like this before he fully transformed.
As for Yuuya, who's to say? Let's get crazy - he might have been trying to communicate with Kouta but then Kouta turns into this crazy samurai thing and starts attacking him. What else is he supposed to do at that point? Defend himself!
That all said, I'm pretty sure the whole thing was something Redue make up and showed Kouta to try to convince him to change sides rather than Kouta's imagination. Hence the "hypnosis" they kept referring to.
