Henshin! Kamen Rider on Dreamwidth

Title: Stephen King's 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi
Universe: 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Kamen Rider Zi-o, Akumaizer 3
Character(s): Ohara Asako, Iwadate Mosuke, Hanako, MJ-kun, Tokiwa Junichiro (Takeda Rinichi), Munakata Masaki, Chibibara, Yuko
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: To the children, the town was their whole world. Ohara Asako, once the daughter of a local neighbourhood barber, now a member of the Alchemys Union's Investigation Department is chasing the trail of counterfeit Chemy cards, yet as she uncovers a plot that overshadows her future she is forced more and more to confront the secrets of her past. "Stephen King's 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi will overwhelm you... Characters so real you feel you are reading about yourself... scenes to be read in a well-lit room only." - Los Angeles Times. "A great book... a landmark in American literature." - Chicago Sun-Times. "The Moby-Dick of horror novels." - Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Length: 1209, 1099, & 865 words
Author's Notes: Like doubling down on a joke you've told yourself that no one else finds funny. also: external links 1, 2, 3



( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi )

( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Kamen Rider Zi-o )

( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Akumaizer 3 )

I promise these are the last two little fics I will post about this for now. As an indication of how on it I am right now, I've literally put in the dates for every big skating competition in my calendar and I very excited about the ISU Junior World Championships this week, and I have been quietly listening to the streams with one ear throughout these past two days. Again, I don't know anything about figure skating really, but I looked through the roster and realised that Hong Kong and Japan are both sending athletes to this competition and I started thinking... one day these kids might actually be at the Olympics, and wouldn't it be really great to be able to look back at that and think "Oh, I remember when they competed in 2026." So far, from the men's short programme, my favourite has been Nikita Sheiko of Israel, and from the women's programme, I thought New Zealand's Renee Tsai should have ranked higher, but I was obviously supporting Hong Kong's Ariel Guo. I felt like I was suddenly seeing behind the curtain seeing the lady who makes the flower crowns for athletes at almost every one of these big events, and learning that Thailand's Phattaratida Kaneshiga now trained in Niigata, and Japan's Oka Mayuko came from the same clique as Chiba Mone. It's kind of scary for me to reflect on how young some of these kids are, it's kind of crazy seeing Italain pair skaters gliding across the ice to Ghibli music also. I feel like I'm learning a lot about how pop culture bakes into people's lives lately; the people who chose these pieces for the free skates, I'm sitting here watching and listening and trying to understand how these songs informed those choices, what they mean to them, what they're trying to tell me.

Everyone has been very kind to me whilst I'm going through this and beating myself up for no reason about simply liking something that my friends like. I feel very self-conscious in "sports circles," having been a deeply unatheletic child, but I really fell in love here and it was only when a wiser, kinder friend phrased their own enjoyment of sports as being about narratives, as being about the hope that "your guy can win against the other guy"—I'm paraphrasing here—that I began to forgive myself a little for being here. The clarity of that statement just really resonated with me, it made sense to me. Through dance and movement, I felt like I understood the stories that skaters during the Olympics were trying to tell and that really hit me heard. I love storytelling, guys, I love exploring different ways of telling stories and... well, the Olympics felt like a masterclass in telling stories for me. I also love the fact that the pairs skating has moves with names like "death spiral" because instantly that makes me feel right at home. I do, however, promise to post something else soon, I again have a bunch of things that I've just stockpiled, and I recently watched all of 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, a Toei tokusatsu show from 1976, and I really, really liked it, it stayed in my head for a long longer than I thought it would, becoming a quiet favourite of late.

On Monday, I stumbled across the collaboration between KATE Tokyo's lipstick brand, Lip Monster, and Kamen Rider for an advert featuring Amane Tensho as Mikazuki Nayuta, previously from the Girls Remix specials, and I was really blown away by it. It felt like Kamen Rider and I felt it did not compromise on the idea of Nayuta being both feminine and really, really mad with her lot in life. I feel these brief ten minutes recontextualised the character and ignored certain aspects of Girls Remix in order to allow her to stand on her own, and I'm really okay with this. I think everyone knows that I didn't enjoy the Girls Remix specials and I'm really, really over director Sakamoto Koichi's "quirks," so... yeah, I'm good with this, there's a specific moment in which I feel Amane Tensho's real life family connexions influence how you are supposed to interpret her character and I'm absolutely fine with that too. I never thought Kamen Rider would try and sell me lipstick, but here we are.

STU48's brand new single is released to-day! What do you mean you didn't realise STU48 were still releasing singles? As established, I have spent a lot of money this week, but I still ordered both copies of Sukisugite Naku because last year's single, Kizutsuku Koto ga Seishun da really made an impact on me. The centre of this new single is not, however, Takao Sayaka, but rather the third draft's Nakamura Mai.



Arriving in 2017 alongside NMB48's Abe Wakana and AKB48's Omori Maho, the third draft went into effect in 2018 and MaiQ made her first appearance with the relatively new group. She is there in the senbatsu for STU's second single, the delightful Kaze wo Matsu, and since that moment, despite not even being in the group's first generation, she has been a regular feature in every release since, acting as one of three centres in 2022 for Hana wa Dare no Mono? alongside Takino Yumiko and Ishida Chiho; outside of B sides and stage performances, however, this is MaiQ's first time as the centre of a new single, and whenever this happens in one of the smaller 48 groups, the provincial 48 groups, I immediately look to see if it is a consolation prize for that particular member's graduation. Good news, everyone! It doesn't look like that's the case here!

For the longest time, it has felt like MaiQ's apotheosis to centre has been on the cards. From as early as 2018, with the release of AKB48's NO WAY MAN, she appeared with other members of the sister groups aged under 19—including former NGT darlings Kato Minami and Takakura Moeka—on B side Ohayo Kara Hajimaru Sekai, a song which to, my mind, has more heart than the A side it accompanies, offering more of a glimpse of the flavour of what the provincial groups might become.

Despite being in the draft pool together, MaiQ and Oki Yuka did not become friends until they both joined STU, a missed opportunity that they soon made up for, the two of them often referred to as OkiMai by fans, both of them setting the tone for what STU would be as Okada Nana returned to her main activities and the group was left to stand on its own. Against all odds, the girl who inherited her nickname from school due to her lips, making her apparently like the titular Obake no Q-Taro, has become one of the most familiar faces in the group, and this centre position for the new single feels long, long overdue. Congratulations, MaiQ! 🎉💖