New details on Kamen Rider Drive have emerged. On the heels of the reveals of his rival, Machine Chaser, as well as the first images of Kamen Rider Drive Speed Form, we have images of the character who becomes Drive! Are you ready to see the face of our newest Rider? Hit the jump for more!
Our new rider is named Tomari Shinnosuke (played by Takeuchi Ryouma), and he’s a cop in a special unit who’s obsessed with cars! His name is also some sort of pun on the word “Stop” in Japanese – tomaru.
The Drive Driver DX version will come with the belt, the brace and two cars – Drive Type Speed and Shift Max Flare. It’s possible to henshin by using the Drive Cars in the brace (assuming the same kind of RFID wireless ability that the Wizardriver and OOO drivers had), but it’s also possible to “Tire Exchange” by using the Shift Cars. Turning the key allows you to select attacks and finishers, and it also controls the faces on the driver.
Yes, faces.
The Drive Driver makes different faces and Tomari actually refers to it as Belt-san (Mr. Belt)! The DX Trideron comes with Shift Midnight Shadow and the DX Shift Car Holder comes with Shift Funky Spike. There’s also a look at some of the vinyl figures and the show’s TK figure line that will be released.
The Trideron, Drive’s super-car, is connected to someone named Kurim (Klim? Clim?) Steinbelt.
A tiny look at what is probably Tomari’s special unit.
A decent explanation for how Drive functions is to consider Fourze’s State Changes vs. Modules (all switches) against Drive’s Drive Cars and Shift Cars (all cars!), as they perform different functions. The only TYPE we’ve gotten a look at so far is SPEED, which is very fast, with the ability to lay on a lot of kicks and punches. The basic finishers are Speed Rope(?): full throttle! speed! (rider kick) and Turbo Smash (rider punch).
The red car is the Drive Type Speed car, and the other three are all Shift Cars. Orange is Max Flare, which has fire-type attacks and a finisher of Flare Stream, Purple is Midnight Shadow, which allows Drive to become “stealthy like a ninja”, with a finisher of Shadow Shuriken, and Green is Funky Spike with a finisher of Spike Tornado.
The symbol on the Driver also changes with the shifts.
The enemies this time around are the Roimyuudo, a group of 108 monsters woken by the phenomenon called the “Jyuukasoku (huge acceleration)”, who use the Viral Cores to become frightening monsters. The three on the side are Cobra, Spider, and Bat, and the one on the left is the Iron Roimyuudo, #029.
The pics are just a little blurry, but once we get decent scans, hopefully we’ll be able to share a few more details, especially about the other characters.
Will this Driver have as much personality as Kivat? How do you feel about tire-swapping? Share your thoughts on our new rider in the comments below.
August 27, 2014 @ 10:30 am
Hopefully his character has a tougher personality, not one like ehji from OOOs. When the theme is more light hearted I’d prefer for the character to be tougher. Evens things out.
August 28, 2014 @ 9:46 am
happy to see a cop rider again!
August 29, 2014 @ 12:39 pm
The costume budget must have been really slashed after KR Gaim:
Changing a tyre wrapped around the chest to change forms? That’s really lame.
September 1, 2014 @ 12:08 pm
You do know those aren’t the form changes, right?
September 6, 2014 @ 6:29 pm
You’re splitting semantic hairs. The shift cars appear to be analogous to the Memory Drivers from W: New shift car/Memory Driver == new attack modes. But unlike W, the base red of the KR Drive costume doesn’t look like it changes, hence my comment about costume lameness.
Who knows, maybe we’ll see new forms later on?
I’m also not in favor of these electronic swiping toys. I prefer modules that become part of the belt, like Memory Drivers in W, Cards in Decade, Lock Seeds in Gaim