>>23532041
Correct me if I'm wrong, but iirc Den-O was conceptualized
>Shirakura wanted to make a Kamen Rider with a train motif because trains are popular with kids
>Told Plex to make the suits have the cool Kamen Rider feel but Plex struggled on how to make trains look cool
>Shirakura said a saying of Momotaro to motivate them
>Plex thought he meant the saying literally which led to Den-O's motif being trains + fables
>When trying to come ip with the cross of fire concept, he decided for a parasite relationship to make use of the fable motif and hire famous voice actors to expand Kamen Rider's audience reach
>Hired Kobayashi to make the season have a drama feel
>Shirakura struggled to come up with a destination for the trains to complete the world-building
>The pilot director really wanted to use an old set, so Shirakura agreed and tried to come up with a setting that would allow to use a building that's stuck 10 years in the past
>The options were a Spirit World or Time Travel, Shirakura lost the majority vote and time travel won, apparently he hates time travel due to making stories unnecessarily complex
>He struggled to come up with a way to not make the setting confusing for kids while also coming up with a good setting excuse so that they can only time travel 10 years in the past due to budget limitation
>This led to what Shirakura calls "the 7 days from hell" where hardly anyone from the staff slept for multiple days trying to come up with the setting
>The ultimate conclusion was to give the impression that the show is written by idiots, so the first half has a higher emphasis on comedy than any previous rider while not having a proper plot structure, then once Zeronos gets introduced the true story and drama elements starts
>Kobayashi then came up with Ryotaro being an extremely unlucky person since it would be fun
I'm just surprised with how much of Den-O was seemingly incidental, I know that's common for Toei Toku but Den-O feels more incidental