Kamen Rider Gaim

"Don't say no! Just live More!"

The 2013-2014 entry in the Kamen Rider franchise, and the fifteenth Heisei Era Rider overall.

In a city called Zawame City, run by a powerful organization known as Yggdrasil (named after the world tree of the same name in Norse Mythology), a group of youths known as the Beat Riders form a dancing competition where they dance to bring excitement and happiness throughout the city. However, a popular game known as the Inves Game came about to overshadow the dancing.

As the game grows more popular however, strange events began to happen to our heroes, the monsters summoned by the game became to come to life and attack people. A young man named Kouta Kazuraba picks up a Sengoku Driver meant for his former team leader, Yuya, after finding about his disappearance. Believing it to be the key to his maturity into an adult, Kouta uses the power of this belt to deal with the events going on in the city.

Using this power, he becomes the powerful warrior, Armored Rider Gaim.

Written by none other than Gen Urobuchi, otherwise known as the "Urobutcher".

Beware of Any Potential Spoilers Below.

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Tropes used in Kamen Rider Gaim include:

• Adorkable: Kouta fits this to a T.
• Badass Army: All four of the main riders (Gaim, Baron, Zangetsu and Ryugen) have one of their own in the opening of the first episode…which serves to foreshadow the end game with Kouta and Kaito with their Inves armies going at it.
• Crap Saccharine World: Zawame City in a nutshell. On the outside, it seems to be a standard Neo Heisei City with its dancing teams, monster battle games, high tech, and quirky characters. But dig deep into its depths and you'd realize that it is a terrible place to live. The civilians are in constant danger of being attacked by endless hordes of monsters, the only heroes in the series that can help them are a group of teenage dancers being framed for the release of said monsters, Yggdrasil controls the place like a totalitarian police state, an unknown infection is spread throughout the city with nobody being able to stop it (with hints that people actually die from those diseases), and all of the villains there are hyper-competent killers and sociopaths that avoid the typical Villain Ball cliche. To further twist the knife, it turns out that the entire reason the city was built was so it can be used as a Inves harvesting ground.
• Dance Battler: Played with, all the Armored Riders (except Bravo and Zangetsu, the latter even then gets to dance in human form in one commercial) are dancers, but the way they fight are much more realistic and straight forward than one would think.
• Deconstruction: It's written by Urobutchi, so be more surprised if it doesn't have this. The series takes several classics and tropes in the franchise and spells out the flaws and realties behind them, almost as though they take place in the real world.
  • The earliest has to be Kouta exploiting his newfound Rider powers to gain easy money and reputation the moment he gains them, he shows his money to his sister. She was less than impress of the fact Kouta is choosing an irresponsible path to gaining something he wants, and talks him out of it.
  • In episode 4, Zangetsu approaches and beats Gaim to a pulp, utterly crushing and humiliating him throughout their fight. While most heroes in Kouta's shoes (especially shonen heroes protagonists, who he seems to be partially based of) would brush this off and vow to defeat Zangetsu the next time they cross blades, Kouta is actually traumatized by the experience and doesn't even want to touch his Driver, knowing that would mean he has to risk his life constantly and knows that what he's into isn't a game.
  • The series also deconstructs Serious Business manners that are not so uncommon in everyday things or anime you've seen, in the form of the Beat Rider rankings and Inves Games. Most shows would go out of their way to advertise their merchandise and the audience is expected to play along for the sake of it. But then things get more serious as the heroes dig into the truth of Zawame City, including people dying, both offscreen and onscreen. Since then, it became apparent to the main characters and the audience that whatever they're doing is a waste of time, to which Kouta and Kaito abandoned their respective teams to deal with the more important problems.
  • The series also deconstructs the low number of body counts that exists from the past series, if not outright subvert it. Usually, the Neo Heisei Riders (particularly Wizard and Fourze, despite the former's Dark And Edgy atmosphere before Gaim came about) are able to save the Victim Of The Week is some way, shape, or form possible, as a way to avoid making them too dark for comfort. Here, people die in a realistic rate. People are constantly attacked by endless hordes of monsters and despite everything that resides in the heroes power, there is only so much a group of teens (many of which are amoral mind you) can do to protect an entire city from an unpredictable force of nature that just pops up out of nowhere.
  • Kaito, aka Kamen Rider Baron, is very likely a deconstruction of the Second Rider/The Rival cliche that started ever since from Riderman to Meteor. At first he seems to a run-of-the-mill rival character: He's a Social Darwinist who believes the strong have a right in the world over the weak, he's quite the Jerkass, and he's Kouta anthesis in every way, down to their Rider motif. From episode 8 and up, there were signs of Kaito apparently turning good and learn from his mistakes to make up with the cast, only for him to actually become even worse and go right back to his old ways when his desire for power was fueled by the antagonists of the first half of the series by telling him something in Helheim (eventually revealed to be the Forbidden Fruit) would give him ultimate power. He continues to aid the heroes later on, but remains mostly a morally ambiguous character. In the final arc, he flat out states he was just using the other Riders to get rid of competition with the other villains, and sets his sights on world domination with the power of the Forbidden Fruit, under the feeling that the strong will always oppress the weak no matter what happens, and people losing compassion as they grow in power.
  • Micchy, aka Kamen Rider Ryugen, can be considered a deconstruction of Kid Appeal Character type characters or the friendly Second Rider half of the Second Rider trope, either way is accurate. He's first introduced to be sweet, kind, thoughtful, and always wanting his friends to be happy and safe. However, as his character reaches closer to the apex of his path, we start seeing how there is a darker shade of his personality beneath his benevolent exterior and began using questionable to downright morally black actions for his own benefits. These actions include implied threats, stealing, attempted murders, identity theft, siding with world-class criminals and psychopaths, near patricide, emotional and psychological manipulation, and semi-genocide. All of these show how just because a character acts nice doesn't mean they are outright good. By the Overlord and Forbidden Fruit Sagas, he ditches the nice guy act completely in favor of his petty hatred over Kouta for simply unwittingly disobeying him and getting the attention of the girl he loves more than anyone. He does become a better person in the end, but only because of him losing everything and realizing where he went wrong, no longer relying a mask to get his way.
  • Takatora, aka Kamen Rider Zangetsu, can be seen as the deconstruction of the Big Bad. When appears on screen, he's been inflicting Curb Stomp Battle one after another as showing of his power and skill, he has a hidden agenda, he works for a multi-dollar company, and has a rider power similar yet superior to the heroes and built up as the ultimate threat, with the characters acting accordingly. However, as episodes pass by, we learn that underneath his cold exterior, he's more like Kouta, he wants to save humanity as much as he can, but he's so cynical that he thinks what he's doing is necessary. Much of his early characterization is because of his teammates keeping critical information from him to benefit themselves, all the while pretending to be benevolent co-workers to him. The moment Kouta opens his eyes with a better way to safe everyone, he changes his ways and actively supports Kouta. His teammates eventually found no longer use of him and dispose of him the moment he gets a single lead of their true agenda.
  • The series also deconstructs the Kamen Rider tradition of the title character having to fight his battles alone, carrying the burdens on his shoulders alone. As the series passes, Kouta actively tries to get help or support from the others but most of them are too amoral, don't give a shit, too into what they are doing, or too powerless to do anything about it. The series goes out of its way to show how this eats away at Kouta, how it takes both an emotional and physical toll on him. When Mai finally finds out about this, rather than making it worse, she does whatever she can to help carry the burden Kouta is facing and remains by his side till the end.
  • The series also goes out of its way to deconstruct What Measure Is a Non-Human? standards that existed in the franchise since the first season.^[1] Throughout the series, the heroes have been slaughtering Inves' left to right without a care in the world just like any other Rider, but the later episodes put a disturbing twist on this by having a human turned into a monster and killed off with sadistic glee by a villainous Rider, who claims he was just doing what Riders always do; protect civilians from monsters. Also, the Inves aren't just Exclusively Evil monsters out for dominating the Earth like the characters initially thought, but rather just poor civilians and humans having turned into Inves and forced to loose their sentients, and the first monster, who used to be Kouta's friend, was one of them. Kouta was not happy when he found out about this.
  • The series also deconstructs the use of Next Tier Power-Up or a Dangerous Forbidden Technique by the main character. Throughout the series, Kouta has been progressively gaining new power ups as the series goes on and gets stronger by the season. This has no real cost beyond just making him a bigger priority for the villains to take down, then it reaches to its apex when he achieves Kiwami Arms as it turns him into an Inves Overlord, and don't think like OOO he's going to turn into one by the near end, as this transformation happens relatively quickly. Redyue then takes sweet pleasure to deconstruct this further by telling our hero to how even if he uses his power to save humanity, he would have no where to turn to as humanity will shun him for having greater power than anyone could ever achieve, and that such power will grant fear and hate towards him.
  • True Companions is also deconstructed among the characters. In most shonen style series, the hero and his group of friends fight and stay by each other for the most dire of times and establish an unyielding bond between them. In the Yggdrasil Saga, Micchy desperately wants to keep his friends safe and happy as much as possible, which include lying and keeping them in the dark as much as possible. However, he becomes frustrated as Kouta unintentionally defies him at every turn in order to fight both Yggdrasil and Helheim at the same time, causing him to lose faith in him and begin to see him as gullible fool. In #17, he had real intention to put Kouta's sister, Akira, at risk to blackmail him to give up his Sengoku Driver as a way to make sure Kouta doesn't fight again and to prove his loyalty to Yggdrasil. He ends up choosing and claiming that he will remain by Kouta's side, only to spit at his own words when his anger towards Kouta reaches to the breaking point when Mai slaps him not being sympathetic with Kouta's experiences with the burden he's been placed and try to kill out of blind jealousy and hate. During the Forbidden Fruit Saga, Kouta was actually convinced that Kaito would use the Golden Fruit's power to save mankind, if only to an extent, and it looked like Kaito was going to lighten up to him, but then surprises everyone by betraying them and planning to rule the world, claiming Kouta's views to be foolish.
    • All of this is reconstructed in #43 with Kouta's forgiveness towards Micchy, despite knowing full well the latter now hates everything about him. Micchy is touched deeply to how someone is capable of forgiving him for all he's done and pulls a long drawn out Heel Face Turn.
• Kid Hero: Deconstructed, which is actually a plot point in the series. The reason Yggdrasil entrusts the Beat Riders with the Sengoku Drivers was so they can use them for the sake of gathering data from their fights and manipulating them to do what they want without any of them noticing. One of their core members in fact gave them out in the first knowing how irresponsible children like them tend to agree whatever power is given to them without question, whereas a more responsible, experienced adult would be cautious to what they are given.

1. ↑ Wizard is particularly guilty of this trope among the Neo Heisei riders, as he claims he refuses to accept the wishes of a Phantom, despite wanting to achieve his hope as much as a human does, just because he's not human.