Characters / Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (Kuroto Dan)

Main Character Index | Protagonists (Emu Hojo/Kamen Rider Ex-Aid) | Bugsters | Others (Kuroto Dan/Kamen Rider Genm) | Movie-Exclusive Characters

This is a partial character sheet for Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. Visit here for the main character index. Subjective trope and audience reactions should go on the YMMV page.

Because of the nature of this character on this page, it is impossible to discuss him in detail without spoiling major elements of the story. Unmarked spoilers below.

Kuroto Dan/Kamen Rider Genm

Portrayed by: Tetsuya Iwanaga (live), Satoshi Fujita (Level 1 suit), Yuya Nawata (Level 2 suit)

CEO of Genm Corp.

"I am the Game Master, and I am God!"

The CEO of Genm Corporation. 5 years ago, his company worked on a new brand of video games. However, the games were corrupted in such a way that they gave birth to the Bugsters. After the monsters went on a rampage, he created both CR and the Kamen Rider systems in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in order to correct his mistake. However, all this was a lie. His true intention is to create the ultimate game, Kamen Rider Chronicle, using the real world as its stage.

Kuroto first discovered the Bugster Virus while working as a game designer in the year 2000, and soon after would be contacted by a young Emu with ideas for a new game. Incensed by the discovery that Emu's talents as a game designer matched his own, he sent back a disk containing an prototype Mighty Action game which was laced with the new virus, using Emu as an incubator for ten years until having the mature virus harvested by Michihiko Zaizen in 2010. In 2011 Kuroto would use the matured virus to enact Zero Day, framing his own father for the event and taking control over Genm Corp. After seemingly killed by Parado, he returns as the Bugster of Proto Mighty Action X Origin, comically renaming himself "Shin (Neo) Kuroto Dan" to celebrate his return. And again as "Kuroto Dan Shin (God)" in the finale.

For tropes related to his appearance in Kamen Rider Zi-O, please see his entries on the character pages here and here. And for his return in Kamen Rider Outsiders, go here.

Read him in his own voice here.

Tropes that apply to him in general

• Above Good and Evil: Emu observes in the climax of Mighty Novel X that Kuroto's actions defy any standard definition of morality, and exist purely in service of his desire to continually create games.
• A God Am I: Being a genius creator of most games in his company, as well as the Rider System and its Gashats, Kuroto boastfully claimed that he's a god to the point of seeing others as nothing but a bunch of lowly sinners and he still carry this habit after his Hazy-Feel Turn, then evolves into a Dark Messiah in Another Ending.
• Admiring the Abomination: He's insanely pleased with himself when Gamedeus finally emerges in sharp contrast to his ambivalence towards all the other Bugsters he created who aren't Poppy.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Happens twice. The first one Parado coldly (but still understandably) injecting enough of the virus to give him an agonizing Game Over? Ouch. Emu seems to think so, while the others were at least stunned from seeing it right in front of them. Kuroto does return later. The second has Kuroto dying from his last life, but seeing his Character Development in the series makes it a Tear Jerker.
• Ambiguous Situation: His "death" at the conclusion of the Another Ending Trilogy is deliberately vague as he simply vanishes without the GAME OVER title card when he ultimately runs out of lives and Kiriya is haunted by a vision of him when he visits the place he supposedly died.
• Ambition Is Evil: All the things he did come from his desire to create better games and smother all possible competition. It's eventually subverted to a degree in that his ambition is a little more humane than it first appears: to revive his mother.
• Arch-Enemy: To the doctors, and specifically Emu. The latter states in Mighty Novel X that he and Kuroto will likely continue in the endless cycle of games until one of them is truly dead, and given Kuroto's effectively immortal, that's not happening any time soon. He's also one to Kiriya, being the one who killed him early in the series.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Talking about anything to do with his mother prompts him to deflect immediately to talking about his own genius in an obviously forced manner.
• Asshole Victim: Kuroto had it coming since the day he turned Emu into Patient Zero. Kiriya must be laughing his ass off in the afterlife for that. And if he wasn't, he got to kill him himself the second time in the Gorider miniseries.
• Ate His Gun: To prevent Parado and Poppy from taking it away from him, Kuroto aims the Bugvisor II holding Another Parado's data into his mouth and fires the information directly into his body during the ending of Kamen Rider Para-DX with Poppy.
• Ax-Crazy: Even as a 14 year old he was willing to infect a child with the Bugster virus out of spite. His repeated setbacks in acquiring the final three Gashats he needs eventually set further over the edge than he was before, to the point of wantonly spraying people with the Bugster virus.
• Back from the Dead: Many, many times. If deaths that only last a few seconds are counted, Kuroto's total resurrection count is in the two-digit range. Even just counting main deaths, he had three separate contingency plans to revive himself at various points in the show and side material.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He's always impeccably dressed in a suit.
• Bathos: He manages to be both an over-the-top parody of anime / tokusatsu villain with a raving god complex and a threatening and multi-layered villain at the same time.
• Beneath the Mask: A calm and polite exterior hides the raving megalomaniac within.
• Berserk Button: A few. The easiest is to create a Gashat, as he does not consider imitation to be flattering and stops at nothing to take away the "bootleg" Gashats he learns of. Parado eventually earns a particularly personal dose of hatred as well for his backstabbing.
• Big Bad: While others eventually usurp the role, Kuroto remains the origin of most of the main cast's woes, as nearly everything bad about their lives stems from his actions and the Bugster virus as we know it wouldn't exist had he not turned Emu into Patient Zero in an act of petty spite. He later resumes the main antagonist role for real in Another Ending, but not without any good intentions as he actually changed during his time with CR.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He initially presents himself as his father's penitent successor, eager to atone for Masamune accidentally instigating Zero Day. It goes without saying that he's anything but sorry, let alone innocent.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • He doesn't consider instigating Zero Day to have been something worth apologizing for, as everyone who dies from Game Disease just gets digitized and stored in the Proto Gashats. Nevermind that aside from all the destruction and grief caused by Bugster attacks, he's basically keeping all those people prisoner (including his mother) while making it so that the only way to free them is to complete Kamen Rider Chronicle, a video game that is nigh-unbeatable. Notably, Kuroto made sure that this process wouldn't apply to him if he ever succumbed to the virus, as his data would be stored in a private Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat.
  • This trope also emphasizes Kuroto being the third party who is on neither side of Foundation X or Zein in Kamen Rider Outsiders. Then again, this man is one of the, if not, most (in)famous examples of A God Am I in the entire Kamen Rider franchise lore who exists solely to use his intellect to feed his ever-growing ego, and believes himself to be Above Good and Evil, even viewing a tyrannical AI proclaiming itself as a Dark Messiah planning to rule the world with an iron fist, and the other being a Digital Abomination made of pure, unadulterated malice all beneath him.
• Boxed Crook: Essentially his position after his resurrection as a Bugster. While the Doctor Riders need him due to Level 0's power, they're fully aware he's as evil as ever and Poppy has him on a short leash thanks to being able to trap him in her Buggle Driver II any time she pleases.
• Breakout Character: Kuroto's immense popularity with the fans led to him being the center of the Another Ending trilogy of post-series specials. Not to mentioned that he is one of the characters who received a S.H.Figuarts toy release based on his human identity twice, and was the highest ranking Ex-Aid Rider in the 2021 NHK poll, well ahead of Emu. He was even brought back for an appearance in Zi-O purely because of his popularity (which is why he appears in the OOO two-parter instead of the Ex-Aid one). His return in Kamen Rider Zero-One's special, Kamen Rider Zero-One: Kamen Rider Genms -The Presidents- also makes him the first Legend Rider in a Reiwa installment. ^note Discounting the annual team-up between Zero-One and Zi-O.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a raving maniac with a god complex, but he is a legitimately skilled programmer and seems to be a good CEO as well, given how he was able to repair Genm Corp's reputation following Zero Day.
• Came Back Strong: While after his resurrection he loses several of the advantages he once had as a villain, the revival does come with Bugster teleportation powers and the useful debug functions of the Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat.
• Came Back Wrong: One interpretation of Kuroto's Sanity Slippage is that it's tied to his frequent deaths and revivals with the power of Dangerous Zombie, which often happens multiple times in one fight. That said, Kuroto had scenes suggesting he was out of his mind well before he created that Gashat, and all that happens is he becomes progressively more comfortable with abandoning the mask of sanity he once wore.
• Catchphrase: After his revival, he adopts an Ironic Echo of Emu's as his own: "I'll clear this, even with Continues."
• The Chessmaster: Best demonstrated in his manipulation of Graphite into stealing a Proto Gashat, making him enough of a threat that the Riders would have to team up and use Drago Knight Hunter Z together to beat him.
• Chewing the Scenery: After his true colors shine through, Kuroto starts devouring the scenery wholesale. This even proves a weakness as his insane hamminess leads to him explaining Hyper Muteki for so long his invincibility wears off and Masamune steals it.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Ryoma Sengoku/Kamen Rider Duke. Both are being an insane genius with narcissistic personalities, great skill at manipulating others, aspirations to godhood, a powerful Rider form connected to the hero's own, and both came Back from the Dead in some occasions. However, Ryoma remained a monstrous villain throughout his run while Kuroto performed a Hazy-Feel Turn and became a Token Evil Teammate to the heroes.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: Played with. He takes his Kamen Rider name from his own company and was originally the villainous CEO of said company. But even after his Hazy-Feel Turn, he still keeps the name even when he's fighting against his old company.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Having stolen Genm Corporation from his own father, he was one even before he started creating Bugsters, although it might not have gone over so well if Masamune hadn't wanted it to happen.
• Crazy-Prepared: Arguably one of his biggest strengths. The entire plot of the Kamen Sentai Gorider miniseries is a contingency plan he put in place to resurrect himself in the event of his death. Bonus points for creating this plan when he was presently immortal. Then in the series proper it's revealed he had a contingency plan for his contingency plan. In addition, when Masamune uses his Reset ability to erase Hyper Muteki from existence, it turns out that Kuroto has a contingency plan for it. Not only he successfully recreated Hyper Muteki (at the cost of twelve of his lives due to exhaustion and immense stress), but he also created an Energy Item to prevent Reset's effect from happening to them again.
• Create Your Own Hero: Emu could only become Ex-Aid in the first place because Kuroto made him into Patient Zero.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: His second major death comes from being infected by a massive amount of Bugster Virus by Parado, writhing and screaming in pain all the while until his body disappears completely.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Because he's Unskilled, but Strong, almost every fight Kuroto is in is a curbstomp on either the giving or receiving end depending on the level gap between himself and his opponents.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: He's got plenty of money from all his ideas already, but there have been a few times where his ego seems to get in the way of taking an opportunity to help his company, such as using Taiga's bribe money to turn the world into his personal battlefield instead of aiding with development, or instead of using a young Emu's game ideas, buying the rights, and crediting him for some good PR, deciding to give the kid the Bugster Virus. Then again, he probably knows that his ultimate goal isn't exactly something that he could achieve with enough money or through legitimate business.
• Dark Messiah: He evolves this in the Another Ending trilogy. For all his ramblings of his godly talents, he set up the entirety of the plot of all three films and coming at full circle in Genm vs. Lazer, where he allowed himself to be beaten by Kiriya so that the people that were sealed in the Proto Gashats can return to the surface. With it, he eventually drops the "God" title on his name, and instead chooses to be called Kuroto Dan before seemingly dying for good.
• Death by Irony: His second and third deaths are packed with it:
  • His second death comes from the same weapon he used to infect hundreds of victims, loaded with the Gashat whose power to cheat death he abused countless times and whose toxic effect on the living he used to poison Kiriya to make him easy prey. The death was delivered by the Bugster that Kuroto created himself to infect Emu, and in so doing Kuroto became the Disc-One Final Boss of Parado's schemes much as Kuroto used Parado's friend Graphite to play a similar role.
  • His third death in the Gorider miniseries has him meet his end at the hands of the little boy he infected with the Bugster Virus years ago all grown up, his own murder victim, three other Riders he dragged into his resurrection plot to torment and torture, and the man whose identity he stole.
• Death Is Cheap: As one might expect from a zombie, Kuroto dies many times throughout the show, including three separate "real" deaths. Several episodes have him die multiple times in a row, reviving through the abilities of one of his Gashats.
  • After losing his immortality power as Dangerous Zombie, he comes back with a stockpile of 99 lives. He starts going through them pretty fast with how far he's fallen behind, but it's largely Played for Laughs, with Kuroto often suffering Game Overs for the sake of comedy. Which underscores Emu's point that Kuroto's invention cheapens life.
• Defiant to the End: Such is Kuroto's determination to cling to life that no death sees him go gentle:
  • During his second death, even when he loses the ability to use Gashats he still doesn't acknowledge that he has lost to the Riders. Then, when he's about to disappear thanks to Parado infecting him with a massive amount of Bugster Virus, he still has the gall to claim that he is god and that his work will live on forever, completely unrepentant to the end.
  • When he's dying for the third time in Gorider, he makes one last attempt at Taking You with Me, while struggling until his demise against four other Kamen Riders pushing him back at the same time, after taking a ton of punishment.
• Deader than Dead: Returns as a Virtual Ghost in the Gorider miniseries, and gets killed again by being dragged into his own black hole, while fighting four other Riders, while the Game World is being deleted. Subverted in that even after this he still managed to return back to life.
• Devour the Dragon: At the end of Another Ending: Para-DX with Poppy, he absorbs Another Parado's debris into a Bugvisor and then injects the data into himself so he can have the same Bugster virus power as Emu and create God Maximum Mighty X with it. He even injects it into himself through the mouth, literally devouring it.
• Did Not Think This Through: His Fatal Flaw. He really doesn't think of the long term consequences of his actions nor exact details of his plans. It eventually bites him in the ass every time in more or less spectacular ways:
  • In the Gorider miniseries, he got Kenzaki roped into his scheme among other Riders and copied his Undead powers and form to deceive the others into giving him the despair from the crushed hope of being revived. Once he's been revealed, he discards the powers, thinking them to be useless now. Unfortunately, the Battle Royale's rules said that should the last Undead left be the Joker, the world would end. In the real world, this isn't a problem, since Chalice is still unsealed, but since in the Game World, the only Undead left is Kenzaki, the entire world collapses.
  • He manages to pull another resurrection by using the Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat and Poppy's human memories to get her to revive him, but this came at the cost of turning him into a Bugster, allowing him to be sealed in the Buggle Driver II.
  • When he uses Hyper Muteki to become immune to Cronus' time stopping ability, he boasts about how he's invincible… and apparently forgets about the 10-second time limit that promptly ends, allowing Cronus to just pause time again and steal the Gashat while he's at it.
• Dirty Coward: Without his Resurrective Immortality, he's just an unbelievably petty bastard with delusional fantasies of being "God". When Parado shows up to kill him, all he can say is "I don't want to die!". There are times that he's willing to show some guts, at one point using twenty-four of his continues to hold the line against Masamune at a critical moment, but he remains willing to cut and run where other Riders would stand and fight. He's just being cautious over "player advantages", not because he's cowardly at this point.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Is the driving force and main villain for the first half of the series, but is defeated by Emu and killed by Parado at around the halfway point. Fitting, given the video game theme.
• Driven by Envy: His fury at there being someone else out there who was as good at designing games as himself was what led him to use Emu as an incubator for the Bugster Virus.
• Emergency Transformation: His first contingency plan in the event of his death in Gorider would have brought him back as himself, but when that failed, his remaining scheme involved being resurrected as a Bugster which has its own set of unique drawbacks.
• Enemy Mine:
  • After his resurrection, he teams up with the Doctor Riders to get revenge on Parado for backstabbing him, something that's made him hate Parado even more so than he hates the doctors. That, and Poppy has him on a short leash. He later stays with them after Masamune makes himself known to get revenge on him for manipulating him and stealing his Evil Plan.
  • Deconstructed ultimately: the fact Kuroto isn't really invested in the heroes' overall goal of stopping "Kamen Rider Chronicle" and instead just wants to get revenge on various people means he never helps as much as he could, only as much as he needs to for his current goals. The stand out example is him revealing he could've made a Cheat Code to get them to the final stage of "Kamen Rider Chronicle" in, by his own admission, five minutes if he'd felt like it, but never said a word about it until it was in his best interests to do so.
  • Once Parado makes a Heel–Face Turn thanks to Emu and joins their team, even being at CR, Kuroto does nothing to him in spite of his original reason for switching sides is to exact revenge on the Bugster. It helps that episodes prior, he and the cast learn that Parado is vital to Emu's ability to transform, so, as much as he wants to, he can't do anything to Parado lest they lose their lone advantage against Cronus.
  • Further deconstructed come Another Ending: since his reasons for siding with the heroes were ultimately self serving, and once he's the last villain standing, nothing is really stopping him from being the "last boss" of his new game as he hasn't changed much if at all.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: So much so that he intentionally infected his terminally ill mother with Game Disease so he could convert her being into data and store her in a Proto Gashat as a way of keeping her alive, if only just.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: This extends to his relationship with Poppy, the Bugster that spawned from his mother. After she sacrifices herself to dispel the Gamedeus virus pandemic across the city, he sheds tears over her demise, even as he masks it with his ego.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As horrible of a human being as he is, even he considers his father a terrible parent and knows his actions are anything but fatherly. Granted, that's because he was the one being mistreated, but given Poppy became his Morality Pet in part by seeing him as her father, it seems to be at least partially genuine disgust on his part.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the Gorider special, he simply can't comprehend why the dead Riders would kill him again despite it meaning they go back to the afterlife as well. Makes sense, given how terrified of death Genm himself was.
• Eviler than Thou: While the Bugsters, Parado included, have villainous aims, even they find themselves repulsed by Kuroto's vile behavior. It's eventually flipped around, as Parado reveals his darker aims while Kuroto is cast in a more favorable light following his resurrection.
• Evil Genius: He a genius programmer created the Gashats and the other gear the Riders in the series use to transform, and who laid the groundwork for Kamen Rider Chronicle.
• Evil Is Hammy: Once he reveals his true colors, Kuroto's level of scenery chewing steadily escalates to truly outstanding heights.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Parado gets pissed when he reveals he was just using the Bugsters and proceeds to beat the crap out of him in response. When he's finally lost the ability to fight the Riders on even ground, Parado kills him to show that he really had little control over him to begin with.
• Evil Is Petty: When they're not to further his plans, Kuroto's actions are to satisfy his ego, and his ego is very easily bruised:
  • The reason he killed Burgermon was because Burgermon did not emerge from a game he created, since in his mind, only he's allowed to create Gashats.
  • He reveals Emu's Patient Zero status, which he believes will cause Emu to disappear from the stress, purely to punish Parado for defying him.
  • He chose Emu to be patient zero in the first place, under the guise of sending him a game demo, because Emu sent him fanmail with fanmade characters and ideas as a kid and Kuroto was outraged that they were just as good as his ideas.
• Evil Knock Off: His scheme in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Trilogy: Another Ending essentially boils down to spoofing Emu's biology so he can replicate the powers typically unique to him.
• Evil Laugh: At times, as expected from a mad programmer.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: After using Hyper Muteki for the first time, he does this to boast to Cronus about his invincibility. It backfires, since Hyper Muteki has a 10-second time limit, so he ended up wasting his invincibility talking and letting Cronus steal the Gashat when time's up.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Slicks back his hair at the end of #22, and maintains it during his final stand in the following episode. He reverts back to his usual style afterward.
• Faux Affably Evil: Quite capable of flipping from jovial and dignified to raving lunatic in the blink of an eye.
• Freudian Excuse: Yes, he's a narcissistic Evil Is Petty Jerkass. Yes, he's a sociopathic Insufferable Genius. Yes, he's a sadistic Killer Game Master. But his villainy comes from the motivation of saving his sick mother. He might have also just inherited it from his father.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Even after he joins the heroes, Genm is barely tolerated by the other Riders except Poppy and even kind-hearted Emu isn't willing to forgive him easily but they all are willing to work with him.
• Genius Bruiser: Is as powerful as any Rider, but also a genuine genius who can program more or less anything into existence if given the time.
• Goroawase Number: Similar to game developer Suda51, Kuroto has a fondness for using the numbers 9-6-10 (ku-ro-to) as a visual shorthand for his first name. This quirk leads to his undoing in Gorider, when Emu uses the abbreviation to leave himself a clue as to who the mastermind behind the events of the mini-series is.
• Half-Human Hybrid: As the Mighty Action X Origin Bugster, he retains a copy of his human DNA and thus can use the Gamer Driver just like Parado can.
• Harmful Healing: After discovering Game Disease, he sought a way to use its unique interactions with living organisms to turn the biological into the digital to "save" his terminally-ill mother and potentially himself so that he would no longer have to fear death. After he got the science down on how to turn humans into beings made out of data, he used this procedure to cause all sorts of bedlam to help construct Kamen Rider Chronicle with no thoughts spared for potential casualties since anyone "killed" by the disease or the Bugsters would just wind up stored in the Proto Gashats.
• Hated by All: After he reveals himself to the Riders, it's gradually revealed that this guy was really good at covering up his utterly despicable actions, from when he infected a young Emu with Game Disease out of his ego being bruised to when he caused Zero Day, and the deaths of thousands of people in the process. Even before the aforementioned deeds were revealed, he continued to go nuts abusing his power to satisfy a petty ego, from murdering Burgermon to infecting his creator so he could rub it in his face. Despite his revival from his death at the hands of Parado and having a (slightly) more sympathetic bent, he still having hate poured on his character as his actions cannot be forgiven by most of the main characters.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Following his second resurrection, Kuroto joins the doctors as their new Sixth Ranger, and while still a narcissist, he takes on a more heroic bent in his actions. A Hero with an F in Good, sure, but that's how three-quarters of the main cast started out. It's still hard to tell if he's genuinely more heroic but won't admit it to himself, or the same old egomaniac whose interests happen to align with the doctors' for the moment. After everything is taken care of, he's back to his old tricks again, this time as the game master of the "last game". Although it's less him going back to being a villain and more him taking an entirely warped approach to heroism.
• He Knows Too Much: His reason for killing Kiriya.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose:
  • His Thanatos Gambit in #11 basically falls under this. Either he kills the young patient and gets his data on death, or he dies and gets the data on death anyway. Either way, he gets to keep on living thanks to the Dangerous Zombie Gashat. He also needed all 10 games to be cleared and Ex-Aid's attack on him did just that by clearing the last game, Shakariki Sports.
  • His overall plan falls into this. Should the Bugster he unleashes defeat the Riders, then he has one less thing to worry about and collects their Gashats back. Should they defeat the Bugster instead, he just collects its data. Either way, Kamen Rider Chronicle gets one step closer to completion.
  • Ultimately inverted, as he never could have won. Poppy already existed, and Graphite could've been revived at any time, so no Bugsters from DoReMiFa Beat or Drago Knight Hunter Z would spawn no matter how many people he infected. His efforts were doomed to failure before they even began.
• The Heavy: Ex-Aid owes its entire plot to him. He infected Emu with the first Bugster virus strain and set up Zero Day to bring the Bugsters to life, in the name of completing Kamen Rider Chronicle. He's not the only mastermind behind the game, but he's the one most pivotal to the story.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: At different points in the saga of Ex-Aid he's a narcissistic megalomaniac bent on forcing everyone into an endless game to suit his own ego, an aloof but critical ally to the CR Riders in their efforts to stop the Riders, and a (still megalomaniacal) Well-Intentioned Extremist bent on saving everyone who perished due to Game Disease (including the ones who died as a result of his actions).
• Hero with an F in Good: After he's forced to ally with the protagonists in the second half of the show. Demonstrated to full effect in Another Ending. He's not turned complete villain so much as he is approaching being the hero in am aboslutely terrible way. He's set up a game where clones of Zombie Gamer run rampant. They're at least as powerful as Level 10 but if you can defeat them it will revive someone who died due to the Bugster outbreak (but as a Bugster themselves). He's personally convinced this is the absolute best way to save the people who were lost while demonstrating his continued Godhood. He seems to genuinely believe he's doing the right thing (and rages at his father for not even attempting to revive his mother). So when he can't find anyone taking up arms against the Zombie Gamers, he assumes that people are just so beneath him they can't comprehend the opportunity he's offering them. It never hits him that the weakest Bugster virus is much stronger than a normal human...and minimum his clones are 10 levels higher than that. There are exactly 8 people, including himself and Cronos, that could actually beat one in a fight...and they're not exactly set up to wipe out a zombie apocalypse.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: As Shin Kuroto Dan. He's still a megalomaniacal madman with delusions of godhood and the show milks that for a lot of humor.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Bits and pieces of Kuroto's end goal are gradually teased out over the first twenty episodes: to create the ultimate Survival Sandbox game, Kamen Rider Chronicle, as his twisted idea of entertaining people by making them fight against Bugsters for his amusement… except that's not the whole story. The main reason why Kuroto wanted to create Kamen Rider Chronicle in the first place is because of his dying mother, so his endgame, while vile in nature, is well-meaning.
• Hijacked by Ganon: He turns out to be the real mastermind behind the events of the Gorider special, having devised it as a means to revive himself. And he hijacks the plot again in the "Another Ending" trilogy, being the one pulling the strings behind both Lovelica and Saiko Yaotome.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Creating the Gashat Gear Duals. The first allows Parado to defy him and even beat the tar out of him with no practical way for Kuroto to punish him for his disobedience, since Parado is Level 50 while Kuroto is stuck at Level 10. The Gear Dual Beta, on the other hand, was created for Kuroto's own use but soon falls into Hiiro and Taiga's hands, allowing them to start reclaiming the Gashats that Kuroto had just spent the past few weeks stealing away from them. Eventually it comes out that Kuroto in fact knew exactly what he was doing, and allowed himself to be killed repeatedly by stronger opponents in order to complete Dangerous Zombie's ascension to Level X. In a Double Subversion, he made two mistakes after all: the first was recruiting Emu as a Rider, as Emu was able to create the Maximum Mighty X Gashat that led to his downfall. The second was trusting Parado. Going even further back: Emu would never have been able to become Ex-Aid and defeat him at all if he'd not infected him with the Bugster Virus in a fit of rage when he was a kid.
  • His contingency plan to resurrect himself in the event of his death would've went off perfectly...if he hadn't chosen Kenzaki's form to be his avatar, which drew the real Kenzaki into the game, which results in Kenzaki, a Joker Undead, being the last Undead present in the Game World, destroying it and foiling Dan's entire plan.
  • Creating Cronus becomes a really big one for him. Designed by Kuroto as someone who can fight and defeat Gamedeus, he made it ridiculously overpowered but ridiculously difficult to acquire, demanding a truly dedicated Ride Player willing to spend over a decade playing Kamen Rider Chronicle just to have a chance at unlocking it. Kuroto definitely didn't expect that his own father would managed to acquire the immunity needed to be able to tranform into Cronus and hijack it's power to further his own plans.
• Hope Crusher: One of Kuroto's M.O.'s in order to increase the stress from his Bugster infectees, and a means of fueling his revival attempt in Gorider. He later drops this following his resurrection and subsequent Revenge on Parado.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The Bugsters are no saints, but they at least have understandable motives for their actions. Kuroto's just an egomaniac, and will go out of his way to make people suffer. Eventually it comes out that Kuroto had his own Freudian Excuse, but this doesn't temper his narcissism at all.
• Humiliation Conga: #23 is one long string of Kuroto's advantages and schemes unraveling one after another.
• Hypocrite:
  • Kuroto claims to want the JuJu Burger Gashat destroyed, even using this as justification for killing Burgermon. However, once he has it, he claims that the idea for JuJu Burger was his in the first place, so the Gashat belongs to him now and thus he doesn't delete it.
  • He is enraged whenever somebody other than himself creates a gashat, referring to them as bootleg games and insisting on deleting them. One such example is Emu's Maximum Mighty X gashat. In Another Ending, Kuroto creates a God Maximum Mighty X gashat for himself that is essentially a ripoff of Emu's.
  • Related to all the above, Kuroto despises games and Gashats that anyone else created, calling them as bootlegs. Emu, the target for this hate, created Gashacon Key Slasher and Maximum Mighty X, but Kuroto would later on incorporate these two ideas to his own, not to mention heavily relying on Emu's idea to create the "Save" Energy Item and then claiming it as "his own" idea. This is not limited to Ex-Aid as a series, since the Genms duology shows him using Ark's data to create Genm Musou Gashats and even using Thouser's Thousand Jacker as a weapon to boot.
• I Have Your Wife: The Zero Day epidemic was basically a mass-kidnapping scheme. All the people who died of Game Disease that day (and those that perished of it afterwards) were to be used as incentives to get people to play Kamen Rider Chronicle after it was completed in hopes of rescuing their loved ones.
• I Lied: At the end of Para-DX with Poppy, he confirms that his allying with the heroes was just because they had a common enemy and not a Heel–Face Turn on his part, as well as coldly shunning his Dragon, Saiko Yaotome, to whom he made a promise that he would resurrect her father.
• Immortals Fear Death: Makes it quite clear from his reaction to being stripped of his immortality that he's decidedly afraid of death. He was also so paranoid of dying that even after becoming immortal, he still made two contingency plans to resurrect him in the event he died. That said, it's not just his own death that he's afraid of.
• Insistent Terminology: He prefers that the other Riders address him with the prefix shin^notenew or true before his name after he was revived as a Bugster. He's not Kuroto Dan, he's Shin Kuroto Dan! It doubles as a pun^note"shindan" meaning "diagnosis".
  • And after completing Doctor Mighty XX, he insists on shin being affixed to his name as a suffix. This essentially changes his name to Dan Kuroto-shin, or Dan Kuroto God.
• Insufferable Genius: A certifiably brilliant inventor who ally and enemy alike can barely stand due to his massive ego.
• Invincible Villain: He's a genius programmer who can create new power-ups on the fly, including ones which allow him to bend space and time itself, and his status as a Bugster and amount of extra lives make it extremely hard to actually kill him.
• Irony: He used to store the defeated Bugsters' data into his Gashacon Bugvisor. When Poppy resurrected him, because he's now a Bugster, he now can be stored inside Poppy's Gashacon Bugvisor II anytime she wants.
• It's All About Me: The only things he cares about are his own desires and goals. His rant in #18 sums it up in a way that shows just how goddamn unhinged he is.
  Kuroto: Do not talk back to the game master! Both Emu Hojo and Tsukuru Koboshi made a new Gashat without my permission. How dare they create their own Gashats! Gashats are a product of my mind! It should be something only I can make! The same goes for you Bugsters. You're nothing but pawns, useful tools to make my plans a reality. I designed game characters from scratch. Designed their thought processes, controlling them as I will. I am the game master! I am God!
  • #22 takes it even further by showing that his Start of Darkness was caused by him receiving fanmail from Emu detailing a few game ideas and characters that he realized were just as good as his own. In response, he engineered the events that would cause Emu to become the Bugster Virus' Patient Zero. That said, he did have one person he actually cared about: his mother, and because she was Poppy's host, he has at least some compassion for her by extension.
  • During Kamen Sentai Gorider he was willing to completely destroy the barrier between the human and Game World (which would have caused a horde of mindless Bugsters to flood the Earth) just to bring himself back to life.
• It's Personal: Part of Kuroto's alliance with the doctors, as he's royally pissed off at Parado's treachery by the time they met again.
• Joker Immunity: He's far too popular to be killed off, which is why he always finds a way to survive and reappear whenever there's any Ex-Aid-related media.
• Karmic Death:
  • Is defeated by Emu using his murder victim's Gamer Driver. Kuroto is then killed off by Parado with his own Buggle Driver and Gashat he used to kill Kiriya.
  • His death in the Gorider special comes at the hands of the Riders he abused and tormented to resurrect himself, including Kiriya who he killed the first time.
  • After he comes back with 99 lives, the vast majority of those lives are killed off by Kiriya as well. Including his last one.
• Kick the Dog: While he's got a plan he's fairly good at sticking to, there are more than a few times where he'll just be an asshole to other people because he feels like it.
• Killer Game Master: Although he proclaimed to be the Game Master, he is prone on killing any obstacles in his sights. It makes the creation of any Gashats that he didn't design a major Berserk Button.
• Knight of Cerebus: Ex-Aid may have started off a goofy show about video games, but his murder of Kiriya near the end of the first arc raises the stakes significantly.
• Joker Immunity: He's been killed off multiple times both in the main series and supplementary material. Thanks to his immense popularity and in-universe connection with the Bugster Virus, it never sticks.
• Lack of Empathy: If he cares for anyone who's not him, he certainly doesn't show it... well, except for Poppy.
• Large Ham: As a villain, Kuroto is prone to chewing the scenery in grandiose speeches usually centered around his godly abilities. As an Anti-Hero, he becomes the almost exclusive source of hamminess and comic relief in the series.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • He sent Emu, who was a little kid at the time, a Bugster virus infected game in a fit of narcissistic rage over Emu being as good at game design as him. Emu growing up to become a gigantic thorn in his side and ultimately handing him his final defeat is basically very long overdo karma for that horrible act coming back to bite him.
  • Also fittingly enough, he is the second rider to die after Kiriya. They both overpowered by their opponents in term of level and brutality and killed when they are powerless.
  • He also caused a conflict between Ghost and Ex-Aid just because they look similar. How fitting he loses one of his lives over a mistaken identity by Build.
• The Last Dance: The Another Ending trilogy is Kuroto's, with him ultimately realising that the only way to bring about the return of all the people he imprisoned in the Proto Gashats is to perform a Heroic Sacrifice. Which he ultimately does... after arranging events so that he'd be able to beat on all the heroes and villains who got in his way during the events of the show before making his exit.
• Laughably Evil: For someone who has a massive God complex, Kuroto is, and has always been, the source of humor once his hysterical and over-the-top gestures come at full display.
• Licked by the Dog: By Poppy. Notably, she's the only Bugster he's created who doesn't completely hate his guts.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: While both Kuroto and his dad are psychos, the former is a Crazy-Prepared Insufferable Genius and a borderline Well-Intentioned Extremist who used Kamen Rider Chronicle as a means to preserve data of those who are "killed" by him or succumbed to the Game Disease and is understandably pissed off over someone else hijacking his original plan, while the latter is an out-and-out psychopath who wants to Take Over the World with the aforementioned game and is not above using underhanded methods for unbelievably selfish reasons.
• Limit Break: Parodied in Heisei Generations FINAL where after his transformation shorts out near the end of a fight, he's forced to use the Kamen Rider Build Gashat with the Gashacon Breaker to finish off the last Nebula Bugster in the area and does so by inelegantly whacking it over a dozen times in a cartoony fashion.
• Love Redeems: Familial love. After Poppy admits that she sees Kuroto as her father, he begins to form a sense of empathy. Since Poppy's existence has something to do with Kuroto's mother, it makes sense. Ultimately subverted come Another Ending, where he makes it clear that he doesn't care about any of them and was using all of them for his own goals.
• Manipulative Bastard: Generally a very good judge of character, and uses it extensively to manipulate the other Riders and even some of the Bugsters. #15 presents a prime example, in which he admits to Kiriya's discovery of the incident six years ago, and even describes the event to Taiga. When Taiga calls Kuroto out on explaining something that he killed Kiriya to cover up, Kuroto claims that his reason for killing Kiriya was the latter's desire to destroy the Bugsters, something that Taiga isn't particularly concerned with. This explanation not only caused Taiga and Hiiro to become more concerned in removing the Game Disease inside Emu, but it also covered up the much more important thing that Kiriya discovered, which was about Kuroto and Emu's first meeting sixteen years ago.
• The Many Deaths of You: Being revived as a Bugster with 100 lives and the show's video game themes, Kuroto serves as an allegory for players finding amusement in many ways to die in a video game. Kuroto constantly gets beaten within an inch of his life many times over and die only to respawn from a purple claypipe. Then, there's the part where he overworked himself to death...
• Mask of Sanity: Normally either a Reasonable Authority Figure, Affably Evil, or The Stoic, at times Kuroto's mask slips to expose the mania worthy of a slasher villain underneath. The mask slips more and more frequently once he's outed as the villain.
• Meaningful Name:
  • One meaning of Kuroto is "expert" or "professional", which certainly fits him, what with being a CEO and expert game designer. Somewhat comically, one meaning of Dan is "stage", so when said as it would be in Japanese (last name first), his name can literally mean "expert stage".
  • The name Kuroto is a corruption of Puroto, the Japanese pronunciation for "proto-", referring to the Proto Gashat he initially uses.
• Momma's Boy: Even Poppy lampshades it a few times.
• Morality Pet: His mother seems to be the only person on the planet he genuinely loved that's not himself. Due to her having been Poppy's host, this carries on to her to some degree.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: His end goal for Kamen Rider Chronicle. He wants to create a game where everyone becomes a Kamen Rider and is put into an endless fight for survival.
• Mr. Fanservice: #22 gives us a scene of him shirtless and in the post-credits scene of Para-DX feat. Poppy, he's completely naked (with his bare ass showing too).
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: He needed "death" data to complete Dangerous Zombie. It didn't necessarily have to come from someone else.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Subverted. He winds up regretting the creation of Kamen Rider Chronicle and wanting it off of the shelves, not because of the immorality of the system, but because his father has steered it away from his intended scenario.
• Narcissist: Has all the symptoms of a malignant narcissist. He has a complete Lack of Empathy for anyone that's not him, to the point even getting his own father thrown in jail as part of a hostile take over, but is quite capable of pretending he does; has an extremely over inflated opinion of himself to the point of seeing himself as a god; and views the Riders as all being disposable 'play testers' for his schemes he's entitled to manipulate however he pleases. Most tellingly, however, is he's prone to particularly violent narcissistic rages whenever something is introduced to 'his game' that he himself is not responsible for making, such as the Mighty Brothers XX Gashat and Burgermon, both of which are from games he didn't personally create. He's also not only willing to murder people for minute slights, he's shown to take a level of sadistic joy from it.
  Kuroto: As if! What's terrifying is my own talent!
• Necromancer: A very mild example, but he brought back Poppy by cultivating what's left of her virus in his body. Yeah…
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Having managed to steal every Gashat but the ones in Emu's possession, Kuroto gets greedy by creating the Gashat Gear Dual Beta, which when stolen from him allows Hiiro and Taiga to regain the ability to fight and to start taking back the other lost Gashats.
  • Also, getting Emu involved eventually led to the creation of Maximum Mighty X, which was followed by his downfall and death at the hands of Parado.
  • Repeatedly killing Emu in his Game World in the Gorider miniseries (including revealing his identity in a moment of cockiness because he knows Emu won't remember it) allows Emu to leave messages to himself he uses to ultimately piece together what's happening.
  • Choosing Kenzaki as his disguise in the above special ultimately ended up drawing the real Kenzaki into the game world, as being a Joker Undead, Kenzaki could sense his artificial Undead based powers. As Kenzaki is a Joker Undead, him entering the game world automatically made him the only Undead present and thus the technical winner of the Battle Fight… which Kenzaki points out results in The End of the World as We Know It. In this case, Kuroto's game world, resulting in his resurrection plan going up in flames.
  • Remember that Emu had an operation as a kid (one headed by Kyotaro) that inspired him to become a doctor and gained interest in video games due to an accident. The cause of that accident? It was due to the game disease from the Mighty Action C demo that Kuroto gave to him taking its effect, making him feel sick while crossing the street on a rainy day and thus a car ran over him.
  • Invoked and Played With in the epilogue novel. Creating Hyper Muteki eventually becomes this, so Kuroto had to get Maximum Mighty X from his Driver, preventing him to transform to Muteki Gamer. This forces Emu to use Mighty Novel X that was created from God Maximum Mighty X and is apparently superior to Muteki.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Despite being betrayed by Parado and played largely as a joke in the second half, Kuroto repeatedly proves himself to be one of the most dangerous characters in the setting. While Parado may have been reduced to a Big Bad Wannabe once Cronus shows up, Kuroto continues plotting in secret until he puts his plan into motion during the "Another Ending" trilogy and surpasses everyone.
• Omniscient Morality License: A villainous example. Kuroto justifies all of the murders and near fatal injuries of civilians because anyone who dies will be saved as data and can be restored.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: After his revival, Kuroto's extra lives essentially function as his hit points, as he becomes incredibly fragile. At one point he outright dies of stress, twelve times in a row, in one night.
• Out-Gambitted: Kuroto never could have finished Kamen Rider Chronicle even if he'd wanted to. Parado had the last two Bugsters with him the whole time.
• Out of Continues: Emu uses Maximum Gamer to strip him of his immortality, meaning next time he dies will stick. Kuroto does not take that well, and Parado soon takes care of his "last life". But of course, he had ninety-nine extra continues just in case.
  • By True Ending, he's down to just one life left.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Throwing himself in front of Poppy to protect her from an attack by Parado, at the cost of his second continue, serves as a major sign that Kuroto is not beyond redemption.
  • After Kiriya spends the better part of the episode infecting Kuroto with the Gamedeus virus and repeatedly killing him until he's down to four lives, Kuroto repays the favor by using his newly developed Gamedeus antibodies to heal Kiriya of the same virus, even though he could've easily gotten revenge by leaving Kiriya for dead and just finished programming the ultimate antibody into the Doctor Mighty XX gashat on his own.
  • In the finale he brings back both Poppy and Parado after their apparent deaths.
• Power Degeneration: Parado reveals that Kuroto's usage of the Proto Mighty Action X Gashat makes him incredibly powerful, but is damaging his body with every use. He later circumvents the issue by getting himself killed and reviving using Dangerous Zombie, at which point he stops using Mighty Action X in favor of his shiny new Level 10 form.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Infected himself with Game Disease to give him the ability to transform using the Game Driver.
• Practically Joker: Checks a number of boxes: right from his general insanity, trademark Evil Laugh, theatrics, his Rider form is primarily purple, a knack for returning back to the surface after supposedly dying, and even started out as one of the heroes' most personal nemeses. Even going back and forth from becoming villain to hero, Kuroto has his own, if not questionable, moral compass in contrast to the Clown Prince of Crime himself.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's gradually revealed to be one of these, but it becomes more evident once he winds up under Poppy's maternal thumb from #30 onwards. It's Played for Laughs in later episodes.
• Rasputinian Death: In the Gorider special, he takes the brunt of the Gorider Tower attack, then hit dead center by the Gorider Bazooka with Ex-Aid Level 99's power added into it. All this only succeeded in destroying his powered up armor and badly wounding him, at which point the four dead Riders finally kill him for good by grabbing him and pushing him into his own black hole-like warp he was attempting to use in a Taking You with Me while the world was fading into nothing, which would've finished him if that didn't.
• Redemption Demotion: After joining our heroes at CR, he's become less menacing and strong in battle. Although his Crazy-Prepared intellect shouldn't be taken lightly. Just ask Masamune.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Takes care to cultivate the image of one during the first 10 episodes, acting as a caring friend to the Riders right up until the moment they discover his identity.
• Restraining Bolt: After his revival as a Bugster, Poppy can imprison him in her Buggle Driver II if he does something dangerous.
• Resurrect the Villain: CR eventually resorts to reviving him in order to get his help in shutting down Kamen Rider Chronicle.
• Rival Final Boss: Played With. While he does become the final boss post-series, the person who faces him isn't Emu, but rather Kiriya, though throughout the show, he has had a rivalry with him. Though in the epilogue novel, Emu does face Kuroto one last time.
• Sad Clown: Under his clownish theatrics and overwhelming God complex hides the scars from the loss of his mother and the emotional abuse Masamune put him through.
• Sadist: He just loves giving people a bad day.
• Sanity Slippage: After his reveal as the Big Bad, Kuroto becomes increasingly hammy, manic, and prone to fits of rage with each passing episode. By #23, he completely loses it, doing everything he can to try and hurt whatever is in his way, and eventually being reduced to a screaming mess who can barely think straight, if at all. He regains at least some of his sanity by the time of his resurrection as a Bugster, but remains a gigantic ham.
• Science Hero: As the creator of the Game Drivers and Gashats, he becomes one of these (though the "hero" part is very questionable) after he decided to join forces with the Doctor Riders stop Kamen Rider Chronicle.
• Shoe Phone: Plugged into a regular GENM Corp console, his Gashats function like typical video games (and they look exactly like the regular cartridges he sells on the market) with their transformative properties only activating when slotted into a Game Driver.
• Sincerest Form of Flattery: Averted. He views the Mighty Brothers XX Gashat as an illegal bootleg, and plots to steal it and delete its data. This is also the reason why he kills Burgermon. On a larger scale, Emu sending him a fan letter with game ideas of his own was Kuroto's Start of Darkness.
• Sixth Ranger: By #31, he's become the sixth active Rider on the CR team.
• Slasher Smile: Capable of quite the manic grin, with #5 and #11 having the early standouts. By the late teens he makes several in nearly every episode. They become a bit more rare after his resurrection, but he's still capable of delivering them now and again, such as when showing off his new Gashat to the Riders.
• The Smart Guy: For CR once he joins them as a reluctant ally, given his Gashat-creating skills and the fact that he's the most knowledgeable person on Kamen Rider Chronicle and the Bugster virus.
• The Social Darwinist: He intends to enforce the entire world to fight to survive in his ultimate game.
  Genm: (After having lifted Emu up to choke him) Only the strong survive.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Always maintains a polite tone, even when taunting his opponents. At least until he loses his shit and starts yelling at his enemies when he realizes his position is compromised.
• Soul Jar: The true purpose of the Proto Gashats outside of play-testing.
• Suicide by Cop: One interpretation of his actions in #11, albeit not for the usual reasons.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: His treatment of Parado, considering that Genm's highest level is 10 while Parado is Level 50. #18 sees him get hit with some well deserved Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal in the form of Extreme Mêlée Revenge.
  • Later on he takes on a Level 99 foe at Level 0, which counts right up until Kuroto reveals Level 0's Level Drain skill.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: With the Game Disease code he pilfered from the Millennium Bug, there's very little that Kuroto can't do with his advanced programming skills. Absurdly Sharp Blade? He can make one. Explosive rapid-fire munitions? Easily manifested. High-speed vehicles? He can make you into one. Time-Manipulation? Near-Unbeatable Monsters? A cartridge that can summon forth and imprison the souls of the dead to use their despair to bring someone back to life? Flawless mimicry of magical powers of divine origin? IMMORTALITY? All within his means. In fact, his only real limitations lie in how he needs a lot of data and time to craft his Gashats, but sufficiently motivated and equipped, he can complete them much, much faster. Case in point, he created the Hyper Muteki Gashat, a device that grants complete invincibility (depending on the user) in just a few days. And then when Masamune used Reset to remove it from existence, he was able to remake it from scratch from pure memory in hours, taking from the beginning of sunset to the sunrise of the next day at the cost of a few lives.
• Taking You with Me: When defeated in the Gorider special, he attempted to take Emu and Kenzaki down with him using a blackhole like attack. The four dead Riders instead grab him and push him into it, resulting in him only killing himself… again.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: 186cm tall and played by a fashion model.
• Teens Are Monsters: He was around the age of fourteen when he got Emu infected with the Bugster Virus.
• Teen Genius: At the age of fourteen Kuroto was already a successful game developer with many well-regarded titles under his belt
• Thanatos Gambit: Many times over. His first death allowed him to craft Dangerous Zombie, while his repeated deaths in battle served to awaken its full potential.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: After his resurrection as a Bugster he begins to refer to himself as Shin Kuroto Dan, and insists others do as well.
• They Killed Kenny Again: After he returns with a stockpile of 99 lives, he proceeds to burn through a lot of them in scenarios that are mostly Played for Laughs.
• Token Evil Teammate: After being brought back from the dead by Poppy, Kuroto has joined up with the CR Riders to complete Kamen Rider Chronicle, albeit not without getting some payback against Parado.
• Took a Level in Badass: After being resurrected as a Bugster and taking back his Dangerous Zombie Gashat from Parado, Kuroto can transform into Genm Level X-0 without the need of a Buggle Driver.
• Tritagonist: While his actions drove the majority of the first half of the plot, he is quickly overshadowed by the other major villains of the story (Parado and Masamune) and even spends a sizeable stretch of episodes without making an appearance in-series. After his resurrection, the story's focus switches to building on Emu and Parado's relationship, and Kuroto is mostly relegated to the role of Comic Relief. That said, Genm does start off as Ex-Aid's Evil Counterpart, and when he and Emu both first fight as team, Poppy refers to them as "The Two Mighties".
• Troll: Even in his most ridiculous moments, most of Kuroto's antics are always, if not entirely, at the expense of others, friend or foe alike to get a reaction out of them.
• Uncertain Doom: He's seemingly killed in the "Another Ending" trilogy, but the appearance of his apparition at the end calls that into doubt.
• Unknown Rival: To Emu back when they were children, to the point that he has to spell it out that he's been trying to destroy his life for more than a decade.
• Unwinnable by Design: He made Kamen Rider Chronicle nearly impossible to finish so that it would stand as an eternal testament to his genius.
• Villainous Breakdown: #23 sees him go through a rather extensive one, even by his standards. His continued frustration at not yet having the Gashats he needs to complete Kamen Rider Chronicle leads to him going up to a crowd of people and mass-infecting them with the Bugster virus in order to draw out the Bugsters he needs. When he's finally defeated by Emu and finished off by Parado, he spends his final moments maniacally raving about being a god.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Claims to Kiriya in #8 that he's curious about how Emu is able to use a Gamer Driver considering what's required first. Of course, he already knows, since he was involved.
• Villainous Rescue: While he bails out Emu at Poppy's request in #30, it's mainly because of his personal beef with Parado.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Manages it for the first ten episodes, except with Kiriya who doesn't matter. Eventually, his identity as Genm comes out and he's on the run from the authorities, even dubbed as "bio-terrorist".
• Virtual Ghost: His spirit returns in the Gorider miniseries, inhabiting a game world he created as a contingency plan so he could resurrect himself if he died. He ends up getting killed again, presumably for good this time, until it turns out he had a second virtual ghost in the Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat which allowed him to come back to life as a Bugster.
• Walking Spoiler: Because of his central role to the story and frequent shifts in allegiances, along with his repeated deaths and resurrections, it's virtually impossible to talk about Kuroto's actions in any significant capacity without spoiling major swathes of the story.
• What Is One Ride-Player's Life In Comparison: When Nico is infected with Gamedeus's Game Disease, Kuroto is more concerned with defeating Cronus, attempting in his own way, to comfort Nico into accepting her own death so they can focus on that, saying she could always come back as a Bugster like he and Kiriya. Nobody, least of all Kiriya, is amused.
• The Wonka: He's completely off his rocker and only gets crazier as the show goes on, but he is a legitimately good video game developer who can code entire games all on his own. Calling his programming skills "godly talent" isn't as excessive as one might think.
• Would Hurt a Child: He'd murder a child to get the data on Death he needs.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Says outright in #18 that "Those who have served their purpose are disposed of." This applies equally to Riders and Bugsters.
  • Ironically, it also applies to him. By #23, Parado doesn't need him anymore as Kamen Rider Chronicle is nearly completed.

Tropes exclusive to him as Kamen Rider Genm

Gashat! Let's Game! Metcha Game! Mutcha Game!^note Click and load! Let's Game! Super Game! Ultra Game! What's your name?! I'm a Kamen Rider!

Gachan^note Click and open: Level Up! Mighty Jump! Mighty Kick! Migh~ty Actio~n X!

Buggle Up/A Gacha! Danger! Danger! (Genocide!) Death the Crisis! Dangerous Zombie!

Gachan: Fumetsu! Saijoukyuu no Kami no Sainou!^note Click and open: Immortality! Ultimate Knowledge of God! Kuroto Dan! Kuroto Dan! God Maximum X!

• Ace Custom: If the Proto Game Quest Gamer and Proto Shooting Gamer are of any indication, then Genm ought to be grey and not black. Proto Mighty Action X Origin goes one step further by having several powers and much higher stats that Ex-Aid's regular Level 2 Action Gamer doesn't have.
• All Your Powers Combined: After getting a hold of their respective Gashats, Genm modifies Dangerous Zombie to allow himself access to the Gashacon Sparrow, Sword, and Magnum to use in combat. Unlike the other Riders, he can summon and use them simultaneously. He later does it to himself by using Dangerous Zombie and Proto Mighty Action X Origin at the same time, letting him combine the latter's useful debug tools with the significantly better combat performance of the former.
  • Using the Kamen Rider Battle: Ganbarizing Gashat, he can summon forth duplicates of past heroes and use it with his own belt to unleash a devastating finishing move that has the power of over a dozen Kamen Riders.
• An Adventurer Is You: Level 0 is a Status Effect Guy, Debuffer type. By making contact with enemies he can nullify their power, which amounts to a temporary Level Drain. It's especially useful against Parado since he can reduce him from Level 99 to Level 50 within a matter of seconds.
• Anime Hair: Being a Palette Swap of Ex-Aid, he also shares this aesthetic with him. He continues to have the same "hair" in Zombie Gamer form, since, going by the game label, Dangerous Zombie's hero has similar hair to Mighty.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: The guy with undead, zombie themed powers is a bad guy. Who would've guessed?
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Kuroto shows on many occasions that he's fully capable of being a skillful and highly effective fighter when he wishes to be, but after his revival, his multiple lives and resulting Suicidal Overconfidence lead him to often forgo any patience or technique in battle in favor of a style that could charitably be described as drunken flailing. Dangerous Zombie's influence seems to be a factor in this regard, as he typically regains his technique when using Proto Mighty Action X Origin on its own.
• Brought Down to Normal: Thanks to the Maximum Mighty X Gashat, he first loses his immortality as the Zombie Gamer, and then loses the ability to transform when Maximum Gamer removes his compatibility.
  • Brought Down to Badass: After his revival he's still lost his immortality, but makes up for it with a close approximation and the new powers of his Level 0 form.
• Can't Catch Up: Ping-pongs back and forth between playing the trope straight and averting it. Being the only Rider to start with a Level 3 form and having the most experience as a fighter, he greatly surpasses all of the other Riders at the start, but his advantages swiftly begin to disappear as the Level 3 Gashats enter circulation. He receives a boost when he gets his Level 10 form, which brings him back to being nigh-invulnerable, but it too proves to have its limits when faced with a Level 50, so he upgrades it to Level X. Eventually that too is outmatched, and finally he settles for being Level 0, but with the ability to drag everyone else down to his level.
  • Hilariously, Kamen Rider Cronus (his own invention) makes almost all of his new abilities gained from Proto Mighty Action X Origin nigh-useless. He's an enemy that doesn't have any levels to reduce, he's a Kamen Rider with no Bugster powers to suppress, and he can "lock" his enemies in a perpetual state of death which could "kill" Kuroto indefinitely no matter how many lives he has left. Which he later counters with God Maximum X, who's level is so high, the level free riders are eclipsed.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Dangerous Zombie becomes this after Kuroto wins it back from Parado as it is still under the effect of Emu's reprogramming, depriving him of the Gashat's advanced functions such as Resurrective Immortality and self-replication. It does become stronger due to being paired with Proto Mighty Action X Origin, though, so it's not a complete loss.
• Colony Drop: A moon to the face was undoubtably going to be a bit too much for Cronus to handle.
• Cool Bike: And unusually for Kamen Rider, it's a BMX Bike. He can still kick ass with it, though. To the point that he almost killed all the other Riders with it, mind you.
• Cool Sword: Proto Mighty Action X Origin gives him a Gashacon Breaker identical to Ex-Aid's, which he also uses when combining it with Dangerous Zombie. He seems to prefer it in sword mode.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Practically the only thing he does for the first few episodes is show up to deliver these and leave. He later ends up on the receiving end of a few, but continues to dole them out on occasion. Just ask Kiriya and Burgmon.
• Collective Identity: Briefly used as a distraction in #7, though Parado never actually wore the suit.
• Darker and Edgier: Dangerous Zombie is the first Gashat introduced that doesn't come with a cute support robot "gamer" to add its load out atop the Rider that summoned it.
• Deadly Upgrade: Inverted: his original powers were killing him, while Dangerous Zombie not only prevented his death but seems to have undone any health issues caused by Proto Mighty Action X.
• Death Is Cheap: Through Dangerous Zombie and Proto Mighty Action X Origin. The former gave him infinite resurrections, the latter grants 99 extra lives.
• Debug Room: Proto Mighty Action X Origin, the basis for Genm's Action Gamer Level 0 and Zombie Action Gamer Level X-0 forms. In addition to granting all the same abilities as Proto Mighty Action X, it grants a host of useful debug features such as the ability to nullify certain Bugster powers or make Dangerous Zombie compatible with the Gamer Driver.
• Dynamic Entry: He can control the trajectory of his respawns, allowing for offensive and defensive ambush attacks.
• Finishing Move:
  • Mighty Critical Strike: Has three variations.
    • Genm performs a series of kicks at the enemy.
    • Genm charges his foot with purple and blue energy before delivering two spinning roundhouse kicks to the enemy, followed by a side kick.
    • Genm performs a flying dropkick covered in purple, blue, and magenta energy.
  • Mighty Critical Finish
  • Shakariki Critical Strike: Charging power into the wheels, Genm jumps the Shakariki bike into the air and spins like a helicopter, hitting everything around him. In Level 3 form, Genm removes the right wheel from his armor and after charging it, hurls it at his target(s).
  • #8 showcases a variant using both the right wheel as well as the Bugvisor's chainsaw to perform a double slash.
  • Critical End: A Rider Kick exclusive to Zombie Gamer form, Genm first press the A button of the Buggle Driver twice. Charging energy in the form of black mists into his body, he then leap into the air and perform multiple spinning kick against his target.
  • Critical Dead: Genm creates multiple shadow zombies which closes in on the enemy. After they get close enough, they all explode simultaneously, causing a massive explosion. Upon achieving Level X, he can use it to make copies of himself instead, and rather than explode they can corrode a Rider's Gamer Driver into uselessness while leaving them alive and helpless.
  • God Maximum Critical Blessing: A powerful Rider Kick executed by closing and reopening the lever on his Gamer Driver while using God Maximum Mighty X.
  • Ganbarizing Critical Strike: Encircled and imbued with the power of manifestations of the first seventeen Heisei Riders, Genm performs an immensely powerful Rider Kick through the Ganbarizing logo. There is no prelude screen for this Critical Strike.
• Find the Cure!: Genm and Lazer are the best hope for a cure to the Gamedeus virus as bugsters are capable of developing an immunity over time. The problem is that people are dying now and Lazer doesn't think there is time to infect one of them and let the immunity develop naturally. The answer, force Genm to burn through his lives in order to accelerate the development of his immunity. Kuroto's god complex means once he realizes the plan, he's sort of willing to go along with it, because someone tampered with his creation and he sees himself as ultimately unkillable. Once he develops an immunity, he's so elated he lets Lazer kill him one more time just for the hell of it.
• First-Episode Twist: His identity is revealed almost immediately to the audience.
• Flawed Prototype: Uses the Proto Mighty Action X Gashat. While it's supposedly limitless in its potential, it has a critical design problem: long term use will ruin its user's body. Though this seems to no longer be an issue once Kuroto comes back as a Bugster.
• Foil: To Ex-Aid. Aside from the obvious, while Emu is excitable as Ex-Aid and is talking up a chatter while being as flashy as he can, Genm is always calm and quiet, only using more powerful attacks when he needs to and relying on an effective yet less flashy fighting style. Also, while Emu is constantly disrespected and looked down on but is secretly highly competent and confident as M, Kuroto is seen as a kind individual and has great respect from members of the hospital, but is secretly an arrogant and corrupt individual as Genm.
  • Amusingly, they end up in a complete reverse situation as the show goes on; Ex-Aid becomes a more serious fighter due to the show's events, while Kuroto embraces his inner Large Ham to the fullest after completing Dangerous Zombie and replaces his methodically effective fighting style with inhuman, unhinged movements.
• Glass Cannon: This seems to be fundamental to the nature of Dangerous Zombie which has high offense but intentionally terrible defense and durability. At Level 10, it's at least twice as strong as the other riders at the time of its debut yet is frequently pushed back or injured by lower level forms. With built-in resurrecting immortality, it simply doesn't matter if he can be killed as he'll be back on his feet almost instantly, and making his health low guarantees that a few hits from them will kill him. Combined with the massive power boost of Level X, and the fact that said power boosts come from harnessing each death inflicted on him, Genm is intended to be unstoppable. This poor defense causes an issue following the loss of his immortality. Level X-0 is very powerful and this combined with his various cheat abilities means he should be able to fight or perhaps even defeat any rider bar Cronos or Hyper Muteki Ex-Aid. But his lack of defense means he's the easiest rider to drop and without his immortality, he'll sacrifice a lot of lives in a fight. Exemplified in his fight with Lazer Turbo to develop the perfect Gamedeus antibody, where he's at least as offensively powerful but his poor defense means that he drops from 82 lives to just 4 by the end of the fight, whereas Lazer doesn't come close to death until the end of the battle.
• God Game: God Maximum Mighty X invokes this genre of game, and as such makes Kuroto a Reality Warper. He's naturally a Cruel Player-Character God.
• Goomba Stomp: Delivered to Lazer at the start of every closing eyecatch.
• GMPC:
  • Genm's Zombie Gamer form is basically this, being custom-made to give Kuroto, who sees himself as the Game Master of the entire thing, a gigantic and unfair advantage in the 'game' with abilities that no one else has. Most notable is his Resurrective Immortality, but he can also block the Gamer Driver's safety feature that protects the user by ejecting the Gashat when they're running the risk of a Game Over.
  • Then comes his Level 0 with his anti-Bugster skill and ninety-nine lives. Stat-wise, for such a lowly level he's on par with a Level 10. However, combining the skills of Proto Mighty Action X Origin with Dangerous Zombie's Level X stats and necromancy in the Gamer Driver turns Genm into a super dangerous Game Master.
• Golden Super Mode:
  • In the Gorider miniseries, he gets a far stronger final form with golden armor by using the power of despair he'd absorbed. It's powerful enough to overpower Ex-Aid Level 99.
  • Parodied with the Hyper Muteki Gashat, which made him invincible and exponentially more powerful for ten seconds when he used it. He then proceeded to squander the time limit by explaining how his invention worked and laughing about how unbeatable he temporarily was.
• Good Powers, Bad People: Near the end of the series, he manages to develop an immunity against Gamedeus' strain of Game Disease and uses it to create a Gashat to best him. This doesn't make him any less of a villain and Kiriya doesn't hesitate to lock him in a Bugvisor so he can hand his imprisoned self to the government once Doctor Mighty XX is finished.
• Hero Killer: #12 has him use his Level X form to kill Lazer and he takes the GiriGiri Chambara Gashat. #22 follows it up with an encounter with Emu where he melts Emu's Gamer Driver.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Subverted. Without access to a Bugvisor of his own, he starts using the Gashacon Breaker after he's forced to ally with the Doctor Riders, but he's a comically sociopathic Anti-Hero for the most part.
• Irony: His main Level 0 ability was to debuff the levels of other Riders and get them down to something negligible enough for him to deal with. Lazer Level X manages to take out the abilities of God Maximum Mighty X by using reset to debuff him down to a point where both can only beat each other to the death with their fists.
• Knight of Cerebus: The only Rider whose scenes are never played for comedy and never fights using a Level 1 form. The show starts to become Darker and Edgier as soon as his Level 10 form makes its debut, with him killing off Kiriya. This gets averted later in the show as Kuroto becomes a much sillier comic relief character, with his fights as Genm often reflecting this.
• Lethal Joke Character: Genm's Level 0 form is not as strong as his Level X form, but its powerset is very, very useful for dealing stronger Bugsters as beholden by Perfect Knock Out Para-DX. When he retrieves Dangerous Zombie and combines the two together, however, he becomes even stronger than he was before, though still not quite up to Level 99 levels of might.
• Let X Be the Unknown: Invoked. Kuroto explains in #20 that labeling Dangerous Zombie as "Level X" instead of "10" isn't just a fancy flourish, but represents a distinct concept from the Gashat's base level of 10. Where Mighty Brothers XX, also a Level X Gashat, had the ability to split the user into two identical Level 10 forms whose power would sum to Level 20, Dangerous Zombie gathers more data on death every time the user is slain in battle and revives, until it reaches a certain threshold and erupts in an enormous boost to the user's power. In this fully awakened state, Kuroto claims that Genm's power becomes immeasurable by the concept of levels, though in practice it's akin to achieving Level 75 or so, plenty enough to handle anything up to that point with ease. For Dangerous Zombie, "X" represents both the Roman numeral for ten and the algebraic variable.
• Level Drain: As Genm Level 0, he can drain the levels of the enemy he touches temporarily.
• Lighter and Softer: Genm in Level 0 and X-0 Forms would usually respawn from a purple Warp Pipe, fitting with his newly-formed Heroic Comedic Sociopath attitude.
• Mecha Game: God Maximum Mighty X, appearing in the Genm vs. Lazer V-Cinema. It's a Palette Swap of Maximum Mighty X with all of the same abilities, but it's at Level Billion.
• Me's a Crowd: Upon achieving Level X, Kuroto can send phantom copies of Genm to other places to fight in his stead, even if he's not currently transformed, or make dozens of copies at once using Critical Dead. As he lampshades, zombies tend to come in hordes.
• Mook Maker: The Dangerous Zombie Gashat allows him to create a small army of zombie inspired Bugsters.
• My Hero, Zero: Using Proto Mighty Action X Origin puts his Genm form at Level 0. The number is nonindicative of its strength, as it's essentially a debug tool, with features no other Gashat has like the ability to continue and Level Drain Bugsters.
• Nerf: Played with. After his revival he's left with limited lives, making him less dangerous, but he does also get new and useful powers.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: During the Another Ending trilogy, Kuroto opts to develop his own usable version of the Maximum Mighty X gashat, but instead of creating another Hyper Muteki power-up to go with it, he develops its base component further to GOD Maximum Mighty X. Since it lacks the invincibility of Hyper Muteki, Kuroto can still be damaged while using it. In exchange, its Level is 1,000,000,000 so conventional attacks barely matter to him anyway and he's amped up the Reality Warper programming powers of the gashat to ludicrous extremes.
• Not So Stoic: While Kuroto still needed to maintain his secret identity, he acted rather reservedly as Genm, barely speaking while coming and going in a rather subdued fashion. After the deception is lifted, he becomes wilder and chattier during fights.
• Number of the Beast: Supplementary information about Genm's statistics once he ascends to Level X include details like his punching power striking with force equivalent to 66.6 tons, while his maximum jumping height as Zombie Action Gamer Level X-0 is 66.6 meters.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: His Level X form is accompanied by plenty of these, fitting its status as a Survival Horror themed form. Turns out it's not just an artistic idea: according to All There in the Manual materials, his helmet emits a special light that causes optics to malfunction and enemies to see hallucinations, invoking this trope in-universe.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: For the first ten episodes, Genm never declares his Rider name, or much of anything else, prompting them to simply call him 'the black Ex-Aid.' Justified, as Kuroto has an obvious interest in not stating his Rider name in their presence, given it's the same as the name of his company and would be a clue to his identity. As soon as keeping up the charade is no longer needed, he ditches this trope entirely and reveals not only his proper name but who he actually is to the other Riders.
• Our Zombies Are Different: In two ways: Genm survived the creation of Dangerous Zombie with unclear effects on his physical and mental health, for the most part appearing to still be alive and human. Dangerous Zombie itself is styled after a cybernetically-enhanced zombie, such as the ones from Doom. Fittingly, Emu renders him mortal by essentially bringing him back to life.
• Palette Swap: Acknowledged as such in-universe, with his Level 1 and Level 2 forms being simple recolors of Ex-Aid's own. His actual Rider name isn't even known for the first ten episodes, instead simply being referred to as "the black Ex-Aid". Although, given that Genm was technically created first, Ex-Aid could be considered a "pink Genm." His Level 10 form becomes more distinct, retaining only Ex-Aid's hairstyle. He later becomes a Palette Swap to himself with Level 0, which is identical to Level 2 except that the lines are silver instead of purple.
• Platform Game: Proto Mighty Action X, the basis for Genm's primary Action Gamer Level 1 & 2 forms. It bestows great mobility, allowing amazing jumps in a Mario-esque fashion. It also gives him the ability to summon digital platforms in midair that resemble blocks of chocolate.
• Power Nullifier:
  • Dangerous Zombie can nullify the forced ejection feature of a Gashat if he wants it to, requiring users to manually eject or die.
  • Proto Mighty Action X Origin suppresses nearby Bugster infection in general, preventing nearby Bugsters from taking over their hosts. It can also nullify Bugster powers in the game world.
• The Psycho Rangers: During his DVD mini-series, he creates a squad of minions that unintentionally mirrors the now defunct five Rider team-up from the movie that preceded it consisting of data copies of Kamen Rider Double, Kamen Rider OOO, Kamen Rider Fourze, Kamen Rider Hibiki, and himself.
• Purple Is Powerful: Genm has purple details on his Level 2 suit. While they're abandoned with Dangerous Zombie, the new Buggle Driver he uses is purple.
• Reality Warper: God Maximum Mighty X essentially turns Kuroto into the god he always viewed himself as, and as a result, he’s nearly unstoppable. Among these powers are the ability to create a sunbeam so focused that it turns into a laser, summon meteors from above to rain down on his opponents, or even hitting his enemies with the goddamn moon after punching them into space.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Unlike Ex-Aid, who has orange eyes, Genm has red eyes with black rings in them. Also Genm's eyes are "angrier" with a slanted curve, unlike Ex-Aid's more "confident" eyes. When using Dangerous Zombie Genm's eyes become blue, but one of them is covered by a cracked red visor.
• Resurrective Immortality: His primary advantage once he acquires Dangerous Zombie. It's actually a Healing Factor, and does have limits, but they're immensely difficult to reach. Emu strips him of it, allowing him to be defeated by the Riders and then killed by Parado, but he later gets a new kind with limited uses. Not that 99 lives is a particularly worrisome limit.
• Revive Kills Zombie: It's not quite as easy as throwing Recovery energy items at him; When Emu uses Maximum Gamer, which was made with Kiriya's research on reprogramming the Bugster Virus within an enemy, to strip him of his immortality, it results in his life gauge going from the dead, empty state it was in due to him being undead to full. He'd been unkillable because You Can't Kill What's Already Dead, but Emu essentially rendered him mortal by bringing him back to life.
• Rings of Death: In his Level 3 form, Genm can utilize his bike's wheels in this fashion.
• Sinister Scythe: After he kills Kiriya, he claims his Gashacon Sparrow as his own. Fitting for his death motif, he prefers it in this mode.
• Space Master: God Maximum Gamer's Cosmic Chronicle gives Genm the power to manipulate space and gravity, from having to summon meteorite, fire solar rays as lasers, or even hurl the Earth's moon on his opponent's face. It also renders Cronus's ability to Pause time obsolete, as the flow of time in space is much slower than on Earth due to the presence of gravity and relative velocity; something that Kuroto himself pointed out.
• Sports Game: Shakariki Sports, the basis for Genm's Sports Action Gamer Level 3 form. It equips him with a set of shoulder-mounted Deadly Discs and improves his all-around performance.
• Squishy Wizard: While Genm Level X-0 comes with 99 extra lives and a host of useful features, Kuroto desperately needs those extra lives, as he has almost no defensive ability and dies when hit by anything more dangerous than a stiff breeze.
• Stone Wall: As an antagonist, while his ability to revive himself using Dangerous Zombie does have an upper limit, it's absolutely enormous: where Ex-Aid in a Level 10 form was defeated in a single shot from a Level 50 suit that wasn't even being worn, Genm endures a Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs assault from another Level 50, gets hit so hard at the end he gets sent flying into a mountain that explodes, and then still needs to take a a triple Super-Strength boosted Rider Kick to finally get his Gashat to eject. On the other hand, his offensive abilities aren't anything to write home about, rarely able to do damage of any note to other Riders at or above his level. Once he switches sides, he becomes a Squishy Wizard.
• Strong as They Need to Be: According to supplementary information, Genm's statistics and ability parameters such as jumping height, speed, and punching power while in God Maximum Gamer Level 1000000000 are "freely configurable", which is about as much this trope as you could get.
• Super Prototype: The Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat has better stats than the Proto Mighty Action X Gashat with the additional bonus of having Level Drain, ninety-nine lives, and a Gashacon Breaker.
• Survival Horror: Dangerous Zombie, the basis for Genm's Zombie Gamer Level X and Zombie Action Gamer Level X-0 forms. It initially requires the Buggle Driver to use rather than the Gamer Driver, and grants a host of powers such as immortality and self-replication.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Genm's Gashacon Bugvisor, a wrist-mounted multi-tool that doesn't conform to the other Gashacon weaponry. To swap modes, all that needs to be adjusted is how it's held. Also, it has THREE modes, compared to the others' two. Given its owner, it isn't surprising to see why it's overpowered.
  • Beam Gun Mode: Shoots out twin laser blasts.
  • Chainsaw Mode: Cuts through everything in its path.
  • Pad Mode: Allows the weapon to rest on a belt buckle. When combined with the Bugster Buckle, it is known as the Buggle Driver.
  • There's apparently one more mode that allows Bugster generals to change into their true form. And it has a glitchy and twisted version of the Riders' transformation call.
• Technically-Living Zombie: Genm's Level X-0 form qualifies as this, since it looks similar to his Level X form with the Buggle Driver replaced by the Gamer Driver.
• Technician Versus Performer: The technician to Ex-Aid's performer. While his fighting style uses simple, yet effective brutal attacks to overpower his opponents and keep them down, Ex-Aid's is flashy, focuses on agility, and makes use of energy items to win.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His main advantage, and his main weakness. He dominates fights only when he has a clear and decisive edge in terms of sheer power over the other Riders, who actually play video games or otherwise have combat-useful skills. When they gain an equal level to him, he's quickly defeated.
• Video Game Genres: Though he's not one of the Medical Riders, Genm can still utilize all the benefits of Rider Gashats that they can... and perhaps he can do even more.
• The Voiceless: Maintained for the first five episodes, with the next five having him speak using a heavily modulated voice when he's not around people who know his identity. Once it comes out, he drops any pretense and speaks normally.
• Voice of the Legion: From episodes 5 to 10, the only times in which he speaks while his identity is concealed. He also has a more subdued version during his first use of Dangerous Zombie, but drops it afterwards.
• Weaponized Car: Inverted with his bike variant. The Shakariki Sports bike that Kamen Rider Genm summons becomes his armor of all things when he upgrades into Sports Action Gamer. He even uses the wheels like Deadly Discs! The trope can also be played straight if he puts Shakariki Sports in the finisher slot instead, like he does in his pre-show cameo appearances.
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: As Zombie Gamer Level X is programmed with death data, he can't really be defeated even though his HP is 0. However, a higher-leveled gamer may overwhelm him to the point he can be forced out of transformation. His second death comes from reversing this, making him alive again so he must fear death. The Riders only intended to force him to behave by taking away his advantage, but Parado is more than happy to finish him.