Kamen Rider Decade Episodes 08-09

Kamen Rider Decade title card

KAMEN RIDER DECADE

Blade's World

Episode 08: Welcome to the Blade Restaurant

Original airdate: March 15th, 2009

Episode 09: Blade Blade

Original airdate: March 22nd, 2009

Written by: Yonemura Shouji

So... many... Riders! Tsukasa and Co. find themselves in a strange world, where Riders are the top employees of a company called BOARD, which takes government contracts to protect the world from monsters called Undead - just like the Paradoxa Undead the team encountered in Ryuki's World. BOARD ranks its members like playing cards, with the 'Aces' at the top and 'twos' at the bottom; they are paid and treated accordingly, and must constantly struggle to maintain or improve their level.

Kamen Rider Chalice (2) - one of the best designs so far!

When Kazuma - aka. Blade (2) - risks losing a mission in order to protect a lower-level worker, he is heavily-demoted - and both Tsukasa and the other worker are promoted above him, with the other worker becoming Kamen Rider Leangle (2). This causes a few problems, with Kazuma becoming a sooky jerk and not accepting his place, and Leangle also becoming a jerk and suddenly treating his former very caring superior very, very cruelly.

Kamen Rider Todoriki (1), with his guitar-sword of awesome

And then Kamen Rider Chalice (2) appears and puts everyone in their place, scared off only when a Rider from the original Hibiki's world appears - Kamen Rider Todoriki (1)! He fights off all the Riders, and we see a figure watching him in the distance. However, Chalice later returns and defeats the Riders, taking their henshin devices, and forming an alliance with Paradoxa Undead. It falls to Tsukasa and Blade (2) to team-up, with Blade (2) learning a few lessons from Tsukasa... even if Tsukasa wasn't teachiing him intentionally...

... and that's the great thing about these two episodes. We have two instances of Tuusuke / Kuuga (2) getting all excited about lessons Tsukasa is supposedly teaching Blade (2), only to have Tsukasa look really awkward and then play along, like it had been his plan from the start. Given how poorly-executed the main plots of the episodes are, this is one of few great things to take away from the episodes.

Kamen Rider Blade (2)'s very obvious Final Form Ride, the Blade Blade

It also has the figure who presumably summoned  Todoriki (and who wasn't Narutaki!) asking Tsukasa if he has yet eaten sea cucumbers, which is the start of a very long-running mystery within the series. Best of all, it has the most obvious Final Form Ride ever - the Blade Blade!

But it also has something terrible. Mid-way through episode eight,, Natsumi stumbles across Narutaki and Kivaala having a cryptic conversation. She challenges them, accusing them of being in cahoots,  but she never says anything to anyone else about it. That's just bizarre, and wholly out-of-character, and never explained.