Characters / Kamen Rider Geats / Michinaga Azuma

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Protagonists (Ace Ukiyo | Keiwa Sakurai | Michinaga Azuma) | Desire Grand Prix (Sponsors and Supporters | Participants)
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This is a partial character sheet for Kamen Rider Geats. Subjective trope and audience reactions should go on the YMMV page.

This page details tropes for Michinaga Azuma from Kamen Rider Geats.

Warning: Due to the sheer number of spoilers associated with this character, all spoilers are left un-marked. New viewers beware.

Michinaga Azuma/Kamen Rider Buffa

Portrayed by: Kazuto Mokudai (live), Yuya Nawata (suit)

The Ambitious Man

All Kamen Riders are my enemies.

An ex-delinquent and construction worker who transforms into the buffalo-themed Kamen Rider Buffa. He is particularly acrimonious towards Geats, and wishes for the power to destroy all other Kamen Riders.

Tropes applying to Michinaga in general

• Affectionate Nickname: Beroba takes to calling him "Michi" after he joins the Jyamato.
• Animal Motifs: Bulls and buffalos. In contrast to Ace (who lampshades it), Michinaga's a bullheaded person who makes rash decisions, such as immediately going for a kill against infected players without realizing that they haven't turned into zombies yet (which would deprive him of points, and in fact penalize him). He's also shown to be a hard worker and has a strong sense of professional ethics when he's on the job.
• Always Second Best: A large part of why he has such a large grudge against Ace comes from the fact that he's never been able to beat Ace in the DGP.
• Anti-Hero: When he's a DGP Rider, Michinaga initially only cares about getting his wish to crush all Kamen Riders, and doesn't care for others even when they're his teammates. Despite this, he shows a certain degree of honor; he heavily disapproves of rule-breaking and rule-breakers, such as Ace attacking Kanato for breaking rules even though Kanato broke the rules first. He later slides into villainous territory after beginning to turn into a Jyamato, but he eventually pulls a Heel–Face Turn that discards his unsavory traits.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Although he's not on board with the Jyamato faction's plans, he eventually joins them and readily accepts Beroba's sponsorship in order to achieve his desired world without any DGP Riders. He's also generally willing to make use of ruthless and amoral means to achieve his desired end.
  • In the "Genesis" arc, even after he discovers that Stage 2 Parasite Jyamato can't be defeated without killing their human hosts, he chooses to continue fighting them anyway, killing many innocents in the process even as he opposes Daichi, Beroba, Kekera, and the rest of the DGP. Ace, on the other hand, chooses to simply contain them until he can find a solution.
• Arc Villain: In the "Yearning" arc, although the Desire Grand Prix staff take the spot, he's still The Heavy for every Rider who isn't Ace.
• Arch-Enemy: After Michinaga kills Sara, Keiwa treats Michinaga as his number one enemy, both because Michinaga killed Sara and because Michinaga is continuing to destroy other Stage 2 Jyamato despite knowing that he's condemning every infected host to death (at least as far as they both know). The two reconcile in #46.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: While Michinaga is clearly a skilled fighter — second only to Ace at the beginning of the series — his progress in the DGP is hindered by his lack of social skills, and his pride demanding that he try to one-up Ace at every opportunity. He very quickly loses the Zombie Buckle to Ace by making a bet that Ace couldn't beat his score in the first wave of the Encounter DGP's Round 2 using the Water Armed Buckle, unaware that Ace had already figured out how to use it as a Lethal Joke Item. Just about the only time that Michinaga is agreeable about working with someone else is if someone bonds with him over mutual spite, like over Ace (Kanato), or the DGP (Beroba, and later Ace himself).
• Asshole Victim: He becomes the first Rider to get beaten down by the now villainous Keiwa in his Bujin Sword form. Given Michinaga's lack of remorse over previously working with the Jyamato, the ruthless beatdowns he dished out to Riders (including Neon and Sara during the Desire Royale), and causing more casualties by destroying Stage 2 Parasite Jyamato, he definitely brings it on himself.
• The Atoner: Though he doesn't outright state his intentions, Michinaga volunteers to deal with Keiwa personally and interrogates Daichi about the Tree of Knowledge in #43 as atonement for Sara's death, choosing to shoulder the burden so that other people don't have to. For the sake of saving Sara from the Tree before Beroba can use it for some nefarious purpose, he goes to directly confront Beroba to prevent her from permanently killing Sara with a wish using the Tree as fuel.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: His default mindset in combat is leaping into enemy crowds and killing everything in sight. He's so used to this fighting style that he ends up using the Magnum Buckle, a gun, as a close-range melee weapon, something Keiwa calls him out on in #5. This same mindset ultimately leads him to his death in #15, since it prevents him from properly strategizing against the Rafflesia Fortress Jyamato aside from "run up to it and hit it".
• At Least I Admit It: Both Beroba and Chirami bring up that he talks big on how Kamen Riders are stomping over others to get their wish, yet he's not that different given his own actions to get his. His response is that they're correct.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: If a Rider he antagonizes is despicable enough, it tends to lean more toward this. A notable example comes when he purposely eliminates Morio and Daichi for their cruelty towards fellow Riders, particularly by being two-faced about said cruelty. However, his Moral Myopia means that he's not always in the right on this, as he views any other Riders like Takeshi as Asshole Victims deserving of their gruesome deaths as well.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In #32, he swoops in to defeat Geats and Gazer while they're fighting, winning the JGP and allowing him access to the Goddess of Creation to use it to obtain his ideal world.
• Bastard Understudy: Despite allying with the Jyamato faction, Michinaga makes it clear that he doesn't care about their goals at all and only sticks with them if it advances his own goals instead. As expected, he steals the Game Master's Vision Driver away from Beroba after she is weakened in #28. Unusually for this trope, he doesn't kill her or even break off their alliance, instead simply leveraging himself into a Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: His desire to surpass Geats is granted in Kamen Rider Geats 4 Aces and the Black Fox where he's paired up with "cowboy" Ace, who is so monumentally dense that Michinaga has to help him transform with his belt. Even then, he's almost worthless in fighting Mela's forces (he throws his Magnum Shooter 40X at their enemies instead of firing it), and Michinaga is unable to protect him from getting turned into a card.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Michinaga's motivation for defeating every Kamen Rider stems from the death of his friend Tohru at the hands of two DGP participants. In #40, unaware that Sara was forcibly transformed into a Jyamato by Daichi, he brutally beats up said Jyamato. He only learns her true identity just as Keiwa arrives on the scene to see her body collapse to the ground. Up to this point, Michinaga avoided directly killing Riders in lieu of retiring them if he can help it; the fact that he's aware he's done what set him on his path in the first place distresses him to the point where he lets Keiwa punch him as catharsis.
• Berserk Button:
  • Being looked down upon or feeling like he's being underestimated by anyone else (for instance, others giving him advice or helping him) will immediately set him off, especially if Ace is involved in the situation somehow. He grabs Keiwa by his collar for trying to assist him in #13, and a large part of his death in #15 comes about because his interactions with Ace in that episode infuriate him so much that he rushes forward to prove himself just as capable as Ace is.
  • Comparing him to anyone who is selfish and wicked is guaranteed to get on his nerves. Ace compares Michinaga to Beroba during the bullfighting game, and it pisses Michinaga enough that he grabs Ace and goes out of his way to emphasize that he's nothing like Beroba.
  • Treason of any sort is enough to evoke his ire, especially if it is for a petty motive or to harm someone innocent. Daichi's constant scheming means that he learns this the hard way once post-Lamentation Michinaga finally gets to take him in a straight fight and absolutely thrashes him for his constant deceptions.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He takes the Vision Driver from Beroba once she's defeated by Geats, putting himself on an even footing with her. Beroba largely keeps her position as the one who plans things while Michinaga keeps things more hands-on, though he also takes the lead in certain situations (e.g., the Bullfighting game).
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's a tough fighter and demonstrates some cunning, but he's nowhere near as threatening as the other major players in the setting. Even after he becomes the Jyamashin he gets used as a pawn by Suel.
• The Big Guy: Has a burly Rider form and prefers fighting with close-range, physical attacks.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Michinaga is killed in #15 during the final stage of the DGP, to prove how dire the situation is without Ace in the game. Subverted later, as he's revealed to have survived thanks to the Zombie Buckle.
• Blood Knight: He clearly enjoys the fights he participates in as part of the JGP, but after getting his wish granted the show presents his feelings a little more ambiguously. He still finds satisfaction in defeating and crushing other Riders, but it's less that he directly enjoys the fights and more that he's happy to make progress on his goal of crushing all Kamen Riders.
• Body Horror: His use of the Jyamato Buckle slowly has the effect of transforming his body into one, with foliage growing out from his wounds not unlike the infection of Helheim. He is cured upon becoming the Jyamashin.
• The Brute: By the time he joins the Jyamato Faction, he's gotten used to using the Jyamato Buckle alongside his Zombie Buckle, which makes him strong enough to become their powerhouse.
• Butt-Monkey: In the movie, he suffers a lot of comedic physical punishment due to the Ace of Power's "all-muscle and no brains" approach, including being launched into a sand dune head first.
• Co-Dragons: With Daichi Isuzu, he becomes one of Beroba's Rider enforcers after getting eliminated and joining the Jyamato.
• Consummate Professional: Despite being a grumpy Jerkass to his fellow DGP contestants, Michinaga manages to keep his grudge out of his job as a construction worker. When Ace taunts him about forfeiting to fix Ace's house, Michinaga angrily rebuts that he'll get the job done quickly and properly.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Both Michinaga and Takeshi Asakura are the purple-colored 4th Riders of their respective shows filled with multiple Riders and both wanted to fight other Riders as part of their motives. While Asakura was an utter psycho to begin with, Michinaga started out an honorable Anti-Hero before sliding into a well-intentioned Anti-Villain. Additionally, Asakura failed to get his wish in the end, but Michinaga didn't, and is more than capable of fighting and crushing all Riders in his sight as a result.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Isamu Fuwa; both are tough-as-nails, brusque Experienced Protagonists who bear a grudge against an allied group (non-antagonist HumaGears/other Kamen Riders) due to a traumatic past; they even use the phrase buttsubusu (ぶっ潰す, "to crush") in their declarations. Fuwa's primary weapon was a firearm, in contrast to Michinaga who is partial to melee weapons, even resorting to Pistol-Whipping when he gets a ranged weapon. Most critically, though, when Fuwa learns the truth of Gai being the one behind Ark's corruption, he lets go of his Fantastic Racism against Humagears and redirects his hate towards Gai; in contrast, Michinaga still hates all Kamen Riders even after his brush with death and learning more about Archimedel and the Jyamato, to the point of joining the Jyamato so he can fight the Riders freely.
• Create Your Own Villain: Michinaga's brutal and dismissive treatment of his fellow Riders, and his brutal rationalization for why he killed Sara and other Phase 2 Jyamato, eventually turn Keiwa into a villain who comes to dwarf him in both strength and wrath. He initially frames it as sparing the victims the only way he knew how, but the cruelty of how he does it, regardless of his good intentions, is what fully unearths Keiwa's cynical side.
• The Cynic: He doesn't believe that anyone participating in the Grand Prix is doing it for purely selfless reasons and that they do the things they do because they get something out of it in return — for instance, rescuing civilians in order to get a higher score. He also tends to go after methods that he feels is the easiest to achieve, even though it'd be extreme, and is too stubborn to look for other possibilities, having The Needs of the Many approach.
• Cynicism Catalyst: His cynical outlook on life, especially when it comes to other Riders and the DGP, stems from seeing his friend Tohru's death in a previous DGP, where he was left for dead by other Riders.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • #25 reveals he and Tohru were aimless, violent delinquents in the past, before being picked up for construction work.
  • A Day in the Life of Master Michi shows that he doesn't get along well with his father, leading to Michinaga getting kicked out of the house.
• Darkhorse Victory: He swoops in while Ace and Niramu are fighting over the Goddess of Creation and gets rid of them both with a well-timed attack, allowing him to win the Jyamato Grand Prix and become the Jyamashin.
• Death by Irony: Back in #1, he's shown to be amused at Shirowe's death by Fortress Jyamato, as it reduced the number of competitors he had for the Desashin title. He then gets killed by another Fortress Jyamato in #15.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Michinaga demonstrates firsthand why the aloof lone-wolf type, a common archetype in Deadly Game stories, falls apart in a game like the DGP, which is largely designed around cooperation and supporting other players. He constantly finds himself stymied in situations where he refuses to work with people and only manages to see some progress when he's willing to cooperate even just a little bit. Keiwa and Neon even point this out to him in #13 when Michinaga tries to fight the Jyamato as a normal human on his own, refusing help from Keiwa despite lacking a Driver — it's one thing to lose via regular elimination, because at least he can try again when he gets his Core ID back, but getting killed by a Jyamato means that there are no second chances. Sure enough, this kind of mindset gets him killed just two episodes later, when he recklessly charges in headfirst, refusing to work with anyone or let anyone hold him back.
  • The flaws in Michinaga's Determinator attitude are also pulled apart. Aside from his aforementioned death due to his brash recklessness and his general ineffectiveness as a lone player, his stubborn and unyielding behavior is a large part of what makes him so difficult to work with, and while his goals are understandable, his refusal to consider any other way forward is what makes him an antagonist for so long. His stubbornness is also ultimately part of what turns Keiwa into an antagonist — Michinaga takes responsibility for his part in Sara's death, but he does so in the most callous way possible, which only fuels Keiwa's despair and hatred to the degree that both Jitto and Kekera are able to push Keiwa into Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. It gets even worse when Michinaga then insists on hunting down and destroying Stage 2 Parasite Jyamato like Sara, stating that it's the only way to give them peace; his refusal to consider any alternatives and to make the hard choices no matter what only infuriates Keiwa further and pushes him farther away from the other Riders.
• Defrosting Ice King: His poorly disguised concern for Keiwa towards the end of #8 confirms that Tycoon's kind nature grew on him after all. He tries to cover it up immediately afterward, but his actions speak louder than words. He also begins to show concern about Neon after Beroba makes a point of targeting her directly, and goes so far as to scold Keiwa for ignoring her peril during the Genesis arc. Eventually he even lets go of his hatred for Ace after learning the circumstances behind his wishes, choosing to believe in Ace's new world where everyone can be happy.
• Determinator: He's determined to achieve his desire, no matter what. It's his never-say-die attitude that draws the Zombie Buckle to him and finally earns Ace's respect in #9.
• Did Not Think This Through: He could've ended the whole show after winning the JGP, but the way he worded his wish simply gave him the power to destroy all Kamen Riders rather than for them all to be wiped out at once or to create a world where they could no longer exist.
• Didn't See That Coming: At the end of #33, he's briefly shocked that Ace came back; despite that, he's confident that he can take Ace down with his newfound power, only to get truly caught off guard by Ace targeting Chirami, showing that Ace is siding with Michinaga this time out to take down the DGP.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Due to his steadfast belief that all Riders are his enemies, as well as his interpreting others' support as looking down on him, he has this reaction toward anyone who lends him a helping hand.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He starts working for the Jyamato after getting eliminated, but only so he has another chance to accomplish his desire.
• The Dreaded: He becomes this toward other Riders who are not Ace during the "Yearning" arc after obtaining the power to crush Kamen Riders upon becoming the Jyamashin. Key word: "other Riders".
• Dumbass No More: The Lamentation arc sees Michinaga vastly step up his intellectual game, with him leveraging his alliance with Beroba to become stronger and seizing on opportunities as they pass him by to further his goals.
• Dumb Muscle: He just punches Jyamato until they explode and doesn't care about doing anything in any way except his own; if his first attempt doesn't work, he'll just try harder instead of thinking about why it doesn't work. That being said, he's quite clever when the situation calls for it; he pulls off a number of gambits over the course of the series, getting especially on the ball during the Lamentation arc and engineering his way to getting his wish granted.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Even though he sided with the Jyamato, played an active part in the Jyamato Grand Prix, and got dozens of civilians killed as a result, Ace, Keiwa, nor anyone else holds it against him post-Grand End.
  • This winds up double subverted in Keiwa's case, as Keiwa initially does not forgive him for his role in Sara's death; even though Michinaga wasn't aware that Sara was put through a Terminal Transformation by Daichi and that defeating her would result in her death, his uncompromising attitude about the subject only proves to infuriate Keiwa further. The second subversion happens in #46 when Keiwa ultimately does forgive Michinaga once he finally gives a proper apology for what he did to Sara.
• Enemy Mine:
  • He views his alliance with Beroba and the Jyamato as simply a means to an end and doesn't care at all about their goals. Beroba reciprocates this view, although that doesn't stop her from holding up her end of the bargain when they win.
  • In the Yearning arc, he begrudgingly teams up with a resurrected Ace to take down the DGP. However, he does let Ace know that he will be the last Rider that he wants to destroy, which Ace finds rather flattering.
• Establishing Character Moment: His first appearance as Buffa has him brutally attack the Jyamato, showcasing his strength. Later, his first interaction has him showcase his demeanor by dragging his sword on the ground and asking Takeshi what his real intentions are in saving Keiwa and Neon. His reaction immediately after Takeshi's death is to check the rankings and express glee that another contestant has been eliminated.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He will not use underhanded tactics against Riders he begrudgingly acknowledges as being somewhat decent (like Keiwa, though he had no qualms sacrificing him at the end of the Lamentation arc), presumably because it reminds him of the Riders who caused Tohru's death. Stabbing someone in the back is just not his style, even against manipulators like Ace, because he refuses to be like the Kamen Riders that inspired his hatred of Kamen Riders, and he'll prioritize targeting the Riders that cross that line — such as Daichi, who constantly preys on Sara and Neon during the Lamentation arc and is generally a lying, self-serving scumbag.
  • Even though he loathes the other participants from the bottom of his soul, he is still horrified upon finding out that there are Jyamato that have evolved enough to shapeshift into Humanoid Abomination duplicates of deceased DGP participants. This extends to Ace's situation too, where he's rather shocked to learn that Mitsume, who got forcefully turned into the Goddess of Creation, is Ace's mother.
  • He isn't too thrilled to work with the Jyamato crew, constantly emphasizing to them that he only cares about his wish and that he has no interest in any of their quirks, like Beroba's sadism. He also shows disgust at their actions during the JGP, like Beroba's constant cheating; he's especially appalled when Beroba asserts herself in the bullfighting round by both cheating and going out of her way to psychologically torture Neon when he genuinely intended it to be a fair fight, and when Ace accuses him of being like Beroba, he outright snaps at the fox rider and strangles him for it.
  • Once Chirami starts sending Riders after him, he opts to simply defeat the DGP Riders and destroy their ID Cores (which prevents them from ever being a Rider again) instead of killing them outright. He also spares the Riders who are still civilians, like Neon, telling her not to touch the Na-Go ID Core and not involving her in the Desire Royale when she winds up getting her memories back.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He finds it ridiculous that the only reason Ace saves Keiwa, Neon, and Sara from him is that Ace bonded with them over soba.
• Evil Duo: Forms one with Beroba once he joins the Jyamato side and she becomes his sponsor. For the most part, Beroba is the one who plans and Buffa is the one who smashes, though he can be cunning on his own as well.
• Evil Is Easy: Michinaga joins the Jyamato faction after his revival partially because he can't rejoin the DGP, but also because it's much easier for him to get a chance to destroy all Kamen Riders as a Jyamato Rider than staying a DGP Rider would ever allow. This is especially true because joining the Jyamato allows him to fight against DGP Riders as he wishes, including direct confrontations with Ace, instead of having to worry about getting disqualified.
• The Evils of Free Will: He feels that everything's wrong in the world is caused by people, particularly those chosen to be Riders, for having desires and wanting to seek happiness, thinking it's the root of them screwing over others to get what they want (including thinking that good deeds are done for ulterior motives). He deals with that by invoking Death of Personality via elimination, to ensure that conflicts don't happen.
• Experienced Protagonist: While technically a supporting character, he's the only main Rider other than Ace who is introduced as a DGP veteran from the start, surviving to the final round of the Dawn DGP that ends in #1 along with Ace.
• Expy: Of Kaito Kumon. Both are standoffish and sometimes cruel people who are aggressively pursuing their own goals from the very beginning. As time goes on they're willing to go to extremes to accomplish what they want, even pulling a Face–Heel Turn in the process — only for them to reveal that their pursuit of power was driven by striving to eliminate a corrupt system that is abusing those within it. They also both share a strong sense of honor and a construction background with the only difference being that Kaito is the son of a construction worker while Michinaga is a construction worker himself.
• Face–Heel Turn: After spending the first two arcs as an Aloof Ally (albeit one fully willing to go against them if it gets him what he wants), and questioning the motives behind the creation of the Jyamato while insisting that he still retains his humanity and is Not So Similar to them, he finally turns against Ace and the others to work with the Jyamato after Beroba tells him he can acquire the power he wants by doing so.
• Fair-Play Villain: He retains some of his sense of honor after joining the Jyamato. The Bullfighting Game that he runs during his stint as a Game Master is intended to be a set of purely 1-on-1 matches between the DGP Riders and the Jyamato, and he's not pleased when Beroba adds a second Jyamato to gang up on the Riders while the Riders are forced to fight alone. He also hands Ziin and Chirami their Transformation Trinkets to have them both face him in a head-on battle.
• False Friend: When Tohru's memories are copied and the Knight Jyamato evolves into a clone of him, Michinaga seems open to rekindling his friendship with the now-reborn Tohru. After Tohru is critically wounded however, Michinaga coldly states that he was just pretending to be his friend to get his help in defeating Geats and that he never saw him as the real Tohru, before leaving him to die.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Hatred. He saw his best friend, Tohru, die at the hands of Riders in a previous DGP; because of that, as well as the competitive nature of the DGP, Michinaga hates all Kamen Riders, viewing all of them as selfish scumbags who only care about their own self-serving goals. This attitude causes him to make enemies with other Riders and completely reject almost all help and support from them regardless of the situation, and comes to a head in #15; in the face of an overwhelming enemy, he refuses to listen to those around him and charges straight ahead, getting himself killed in one shot by the Rafflesia Fortress Jyamato. It's also the primary driver behind his decision to accept Beroba's offer and join the Jyamato as a Rider; all she does is say that she's more than fine with supporting Michinaga's wish, which eventually convinces him to join her.
  • Stubbornness and cruelty. Because Michinaga is adamant about doing things his way and his way only, he winds up putting himself into situations that he could have avoided if he wasn't so bullheaded about things; this usually gets himself or other people harmed as a result, and his cruelty in the way he goes about things doesn't help. He temporarily dies to the Rafflesia Fortress Jyamato at the climax of the Scheme arc because he refuses to work with Neon and Keiwa to fight the boss, beats up and retires several Riders against their wishes as the Jyamashin in the Yearning arc (including Sara and Neon), and gets punched by Keiwa in the Genesis arc because he flatly claims responsibility for Sara's death rather than admit it was an accident. This last one is especially egregious because he then persists in hunting down other Stage 2 Jyamato and destroying them like he did Sara's Jyamato form, insisting to Keiwa that it's the only thing that can be done for them now; Keiwa, already infuriated at him over Sara's death, gets pushed even further by more proof of Michinaga's callousness and promptly manhandles him using the Bujin Sword Buckle.
• Foil: To Keiwa.
  • Keiwa is a Nice Guy who helps other Riders, acts as their peacemaker, and has a wish to revive all Riders killed by the DGP. Michinaga is a Jerkass who views all Riders as his enemies, is hostile to them even when they're trying to help him, and wishes for a power to destroy all Kamen Riders. Their hidden side also contrasts each other, that Keiwa's goal of world peace is dedicated for one person, Sara, while Michinaga's destructive approaches are done in an attempt to stop the DGP from causing misery.
  • Both Keiwa and Michinaga are cynical people who becomeWell Intentioned Extremists to fix the world, and are adamant about doing things their way. The contrast is that Keiwa tries to make a difference in the world he views as miserable and unfair for Sara's sake, being heroic for most of the show until he [[undergoes a Protagonist Journey to Villain eventually sides with the DGP to guarantee the revival of its victims]]. Michinaga, on the other hand, is openly distrusting of everyone he encounters and has loose set of morals due to his distrust of Kamen Riders. As a result, he is antagonistic (and at one point, villainous) for most of the series. After sacrificing a huge number of people to achieve his goals, one mistake too many leads him to go on a succesful Redemption Quest to atone for what he did.
  • They both join antagonistic factions influenced by DGP Supporters to grant their wishes—the main difference is that Michinaga joins the Jyamato faction led by Beroba to oppose the DGP and other Riders, while Keiwa joins the Gang Riders, who Beroba and Kekera are using as the DGP's patsies. Their roles in each faction also contrast each other—Michinaga is presented as the Jyamato faction's powerhouse and one of their Rider enforcers along with Daichi until he steals the Vision Driver from Beroba and puts himself on even footing with her as co-Game Master for the JGP. While Keiwa is presented as the Gang Riders' new leader with Beroba and Kekera seemingly acting as his Co-Dragons after he defeats the previous leader Kirito, he's actually just a figurehead leader; in reality, he's The Dragon for Beroba and Kekera, who are actually the ones pulling the strings behind the Gang Riders, and are acting as a Big Bad Duumvirate along with the DGP management.
  • Both Keiwa and Michinaga's relationships and dynamics with Ace end up mirroring each other. Michinaga starts off as an Experienced Protagonist who is antagonistic towards Ace, while Keiwa starts off as a Naïve Newcomer for Ace to take advantage of, he eventually becomes Ace's Friendly Rival and his second-closest ally. Later in the series, the revelations of Ace's mother Mitsume's nature as the Goddess of Creation and the role she indirectly played in the deaths of Keiwa's parents swaps their role. Keiwa becomes gradually more antagonistic to Ace, to the point that he eventually sides with the DGP to revive his family by kidnapping Tsumuri, partly to spite Ace, while Michinaga learns about the nature of Ace's wishes leading to him wanting to take down the DGP, making them work together, and Michinaga gradually comes to believe in Ace.
• Force and Finesse: He acts as the Force to pretty much every other main Rider's Finesse both before and during the final arcs. Ace generally fights with precise, measured flare in the majority of his forms, particularly Magnum and Geats IX forms, Keiwa's use of the Ninja and Bujin Sword Buckles rely more on either careful misdirection or precise application of techniques to strike at critical points, and Neon's Na-Go Fantasy combines misdirection and evasion with mid-range attacks. In contrast to all of these, Michinaga relies on stomps, headbutts, kicks, and powerful slashes from the Zombie Breaker when he has it; when he doesn't, he'll either use whatever weapon he's holding as a club or reserve it for extremely close range.
• Four Is Death: He's introduced as the fourth main Rider. His death in #15 is when things get drastically shaken up. After his return, he becomes set on eliminating all other Riders by whatever means. And his victory over the fourth on-screen Grand Prix results in the beginning of the Desire Royale as well as granting him the power to destroy other Riders.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric
• Friendship Denial: He denies any partnership between him and Keiwa in #5, despite the current game round requiring them to cooperate. He also gives one to Neon at the start of the Scheme DGP after her return. When the Knight Jyamato-respawned Tohru gets fatally injured, Michinaga allows him to die, stating that the real Tohru died long ago.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Downplayed. Michinaga was always relatively skilled as a DGP competitor, if held back by his own flaws, but in the Yearning arc, he becomes a potent anti-Rider threat thanks to the power of his wish. It is literally impossible for any Kamen Riders to defeat him, as he flat-out tanks any attacks that they hit him with; with this power, he defeats Keiwa multiple times and single-handedly destroys the Na-Go, Hakubi, and Nadge-Sparrow ID Cores to De-power Neon, Sara, and Daichi respectively.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: He personally thinks it's best for Riders to just forget about the DGP, their time as Riders, and their desires, so he breaks their ID Cores in the Yearning arc to enforce this, making them lose all their memories of the DGP and their time as Riders.
• Godhood Seeker: Michinaga's ideal world is one where he obtains the power to destroy all Kamen Riders and the DGP; he aims to become Desashin or Jyamashin in order to achieve that, basically making him the god of his ideal world.
• He Who Fights Monsters: After joining the Jyamato faction, he becomes much clearer about explaining why he wants to destroy Kamen Riders and the DGP proper (to stop the suffering they're responsible for), and still maintains some sense of morality about what's acceptable or not, but he gradually becomes more and more comfortable with doing exactly the same manipulative, destructive things the DGP does in order to get his chance at his wish, including ruining the lives of innocent people who had nothing to do with the DGP at all.
• The Heavy: He is the most consistent enemy of Ace (and to a degree the other Riders), starting out as his rival in the DGP before becoming a key player on the Jyamato side and eventually, the "Jyamashin" once he wins the JGP.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: He starts off an abrasive player in the DGP, mellows out a little bit before getting eliminated and finding himself on the Jyamato side, only to wide up in an Enemy Mine with Ace to take down the DGP, after which he goes on to become a player in Ace's DGP, albeit an extremely ruthless and only nominally heroic one, before finally settling on good by growing out of his ruthless traits.
• Heel–Face Turn: He eventually acknowledges his sins and reedeems himself by killing Beroba to stop her from converting the victims of the Tree of Knowledge into a Jyamato, and apologizes to Keiwa for hurting Sara and later Sara herself. Whe he has to fight against the End Riders in the finale of the show, he doesn't seek to destroy them for fighting each other—instead, he becomes their punching bag to buy time for Ace to end the DGP and spare them all.
• Hero Killer:
  • Michinaga's primary goal is to defeat all other Kamen Riders. This is more pronounced when he's in a more antagonistic role to the other Riders as a JGP participant. He starts getting much more serious about this after #31; he eliminates Keiwa during the Heaven and Hell JGP game and in the following episode gets both Ace and Niramu eliminated. He then personally hunts down any Riders he can find by #33, crushing their ID Cores to ensure they won't be selected as Riders.
  • This is played for drama when he kills Sara in #40; not only was the act completely unintentional, but the normally-indifferent Michinaga is absolutely horrified when he realizes what he's done, as Sara wasn't a Rider when he killed her and didn't realize that she was the Jyamato he defeated... until she turns back to her normal appearance after he's already finished her off.
• Hero of Another Story: He becomes the central character for the B-plot of the Jyamar Garden happenings after awakening there, interacting directly with Archimedel and learning of the Jyamato's origins. His plot is still connected with the others though, like Ace learning about the dead Riders' fates from him to bail out Keiwa, and Niramu trying to keep his existence hidden. The status doesn't last long before he passes on his knowledge and then completes his Face–Heel Turn, becoming The Dragon.
• Hero with an F in Good: Michinaga stops working with the Jyamato once the JGP ends and even ends up enlisting in Ace's new DGP to sweep up the remaining Jyamato, but he doesn't fundamentally change as a person. He's still bull-headed and merciless in his solutions to things, to the point of continuing to kill Stage 2 Parasite Jyamato even after he learns that doing so will take their hosts with him. He also berates Keiwa for his screwups while refusing to take responsibility for his own part in how things turned out, which just angers Keiwa even more. He grows out of this later on and eventually properly apologizes to Keiwa for everything he's done.
• Hidden Depths: Ace points out in #36 that Michinaga's trying to save the Riders in his own way, as getting their ID Cores crushed instead of being killed by Jyamato just sends them back to their normal lives. Michinaga eventually admits as much when he tells Neon not to get involved with the DGP again during the Yearning arc.
• Humble Goal: After the DGP is finally taken down, his new wish at the end of the series is to eat meat.
• Hypocrite: For all that he hates specific people or groups for their atrocities (e.g. the Kamen Riders, or even the DGP itself as he explains in #30), he's more than fine with imitating them if it gets him what he wants. Keiwa even calls him out on his actions during the Jyamato Grand Prix indirectly when Michinaga tries to reason with Keiwa that Beroba and Kekera are only using him.
  • He steals Sae's Zombie Buckle in #21 despite her begging for him to let her keep it to save her family, acting very much like the Riders who stole it from Tohru.
  • The final game of the Lamentation JGP, by his design, resembles the DGP itself, endangering civilians and Riders alike until there's only one left standing.
• Hypocrisy Nod: At the beginning of #33, Beroba points out that Michinaga's actions make him no different from the Kamen Riders he hates. Michinaga is aware of this, but accepts—or doesn't bother denying or justifying—the hypocrisy of his actions.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How he justifies killing the Stage 2 Jyamato.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • After coming back from the dead and escaping back to Earth, he runs into Ace and tells Ace everything he's learned about the Jyamar Garden. When Ace suggests he fix up his ID Core and get back in the game, Michinaga just reaffirms his desire to work alone to gain the power of the Desashin and destroy all Kamen Riders, showing that he's learned absolutely nothing from his brush with death, being too consumed with his hatred to bother doing anything different.
  • In the Genesis arc, while he does feel guilt upon learning he killed Keiwa's sister (albeit unintentionally, as he didn't know she was a Parasite Jyamato or that the Stage 2 transformation was irreversible, he outright ignores the guilt-induced hallucinations of Sara confronting him continues to defeat more stage 2 Jyamato, even though he knows that doing so kills their human hosts.
• Ineffectual Loner:
  • His lone-wolf tendencies cause his team to fall behind in the Concentration game during the Encounter arc with his inability to cooperate, such as refusing to listen to Keiwa's input about him using a ranged weapon only as a club. It hinders him even more in the Scheme arc, where he would have been eliminated if not for stealing a Driver that Ace had liberated, and even that only worked because Ace deliberately let Michinaga take it; by this time, the other characters have become much more willing to call him out about his fixation on avoiding help.
  • This bites him hard in the Genesis arc. His insistence on working alone keeps him out of the loop on the Stage 2 infection of Parasite Jyamato, which causes him to unintentionally kill Keiwa's sister Sara. Then, he goes to take down Daichi alone, but ends up going toe-to-toe with the hard-hitting tag team of Kekera and Beroba in their new Premium Forms. While he puts up a decent fight in the beginning, his insistence on solo fights puts him at a decisive disadvantage against experienced and powerful fighters working as a team. Thus, the battle ends up going against him in the end.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He has one towards Ace due to constantly losing to him, which is one of the reasons why of all the Kamen Riders, Michinaga wants to defeat Ace the most.
• Insistent Terminology: He prefers to refer to himself and his fellow participants by their respective Kamen Rider aliases instead of their civilian names. He even stops to look up Keiwa and Neon’s aliases when they introduce themselves.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Forms one with Haruki in Jyamato Awaking, both of them being half-Jyamato hybrids.
• Irony:
  • His friend Tohru got killed due to lacking proper means to fight the Jyamato, as his Zombie Buckle got stolen by two other Riders. In #13, Michinaga gets his Driver stolen by Red Hat Girl, forcing him to fight the Jyamato as a normal human, and would've been killed if he hadn't been saved by other Riders who retrieved their Drivers. For bonus points, he's saved by Riders he once dismissed as "extras".
  • Despite him hating Kamen Riders due to viewing them as cruel, self-serving scumbags, he has worked with several Riders who fit that definition the most, specifically Kanato, Morio, Daichi, and (as a non-competitor example) Beroba. This is partly because he views their cruel nature, particularly Beroba's as being upfront and not hiding anything. He makes it clear, however, that any betrayal from them will be met with betrayal from him in turn.
  • Though he's a construction worker, he's never once used the Powered Builder Buckle—only Zombie.
  • He ends up adopting Ace's outlook towards people who he feels shouldn't be involved in the DGP: to just forget about the DGP and live normal lives. The irony here is that this is exactly what Ace said to Michinaga when Michinaga found Tohru's dying body and is what got Michinaga both motivated to join the DGP and started his grudge against Ace.
  • His wish at the end of the series is to eat meat. This same wish was one of the wishes Chirami offered to him (in unlimited amounts) when Michinaga was pummeling him in #33.
• Irrational Hatred:
  • Holds an immense grudge against Ace due to the circumstances surrounding Tohru's death, despite Ace having nothing to do with it and actually saving Michinaga's life from Jyamato when they first met. This is probably a downplayed case as Ace also told him — rather bluntly — to forget about the DGP, inadvertently dismissing Michinaga's grief regarding his friend's death. However, Ace is also more than happy to get under Michinaga's skin when he's being stubborn, which feeds into why Michinaga dislikes him so much.
  • Michinaga's hatred also extends to all Kamen Riders, even the ones who are kind and decent people, like Takeshi (probably), Keiwa, and Neon. He'll twist any of the Riders' good deeds as Engineered Heroics for their own benefit and is still willing to lump Keiwa and Neon together with the bad Riders he hates, despite them not reciprocating that hatred and standing ready to aid him when needed. He's so consumed by his hatred and distrust of other Kamen Riders that it results in an ultimately futile last stand against the Rafflesia Jyamato, believing that he doesn't need anyone's help to beat it — and it gets him killed. He instead agrees more to work with outright evil Riders, for mutual benefit, because in his eyes, they're honest about their nature.
  • Even after reviving from death and briefly making it back to Earth from the Jyamar Garden, he hates other Kamen Riders so much that he refuses to even think of allying with Ace or anyone else to deal with the mysteries of the Jyamato, despite questioning the reasons why they were created. This lets Beroba lure him into working for her by confirming that she's more than happy to back his wish of crushing all Kamen Riders.
• Jerkass: He is a cynical jerk who has an Irrational Hatred of his fellow contestants. As if his pleased reaction when Shirowe dies wasn't an indication, his dismissive treatment of the other participants—outright labeling them as "extras"—establishes him as a complete and utter asshole.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As barbaric as Michinaga is about wanting to crush all the Kamen Riders to avenge Tohru, it's hard to really side against him considering how selfish and deceptive a lot of the other Riders are in this series, most notably Kanato, Morio, Daichi, and the two Riders who assaulted Tohru for his Zombie Buckle. Even Ace can count to some degree, due to his Smug Super and Manipulative Bastard tendencies. The fact that past DGP competitors included a gang leader and a serial killer only further proves his point.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • It's implied in #6 that the reason he rerolled his teammate is that (apart from his disgust with Morio's behavior) he wanted to repay Keiwa's kindness for getting Ace to return the Zombie Buckle to Michinaga in a trade, even though Keiwa lost his Boost Buckle in said trade and gained nothing from it. The Zombie Buckle itself has sentimental value to Michinaga, as it was the buckle Tohru was using before he died.
  • He disapproves of Beroba's excessive sadism when they work together—he is especially irritated with her for cheating during the Bullfighting round of the Jyamato Grand Prix and revealing Neon's true nature.
  • He has his own code of honor as well: he's willing to put his life on the line to save Sara from being permanently killed after accepting responsibility for being the one to hurt her, and he succeeds.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope:
  • When participating in the DGP, he typically disagrees with attacking other Riders head-on due to the DGP's rules, despite his hatred for all Kamen Riders. Once he's no longer bound by the rules preventing him from attacking other Riders without penalty, though, he has no qualms about going straight for their throats, as shown in #20.
  • He goes another step further upon winning the JGP and getting to make his wish for an ideal world. Instead of wishing for the Kamen Riders to simply go away, or a world where the DGP can no longer mess with the past, he wishes for the power to crush all Kamen Riders—which makes a world that all the Riders are in so he can personally track them down and break their ID Cores as they come to him—and sacrifices a large number of people to get it.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Even though he caused dozens of civilians to be killed as part of the Heaven or Hell game in the JGP, he seemingly gets away with this when he agrees to a truce with Ace, then joins the others in Ace's DGP. However, his remaining callous traits finally come back to haunt him—after he kills Sara without realing she's been turned into a Jyamato, he later justifies her and more stage 2 Jyamato human hosts as sacrifices for The Needs of the Many. This not only results in a hallucination of Sara literally haunting him and calling him out for what he's doing, it also results in a very pissed vengeful Keiwa punching him and giving him several well-deserved beatdowns in Tycoon Bujin Sword Form. Seeing what he's done to Keiwa is what finally forces him to come to terms with his negative traits and make up for it to get a second chance.
• Kick the Dog: As he hates all Kamen Riders, his antagonism to other Riders tends to extend to petty jackassery, such as expressing happiness over Takeshi's death and attempting to eliminate the infected Neon in #4, including using a "Just Joking" Justification when it's revealed she's not infected yet, and later claiming it'd be better to leave her to rot after she cures herself. He also literally does this in #21 to Sae (who has a wolf motif); when she begs for him to let her save her family after forcibly taking away her Zombie Buckle, he kicks her off of his ankle and stumbles off, completely ignoring her pleas.
• Knight Templar: Michinaga's general goal of stopping the DGP from continually remaking the world and ruining peoples' lives is understandable, even admirable. The main problem is that he considers all Kamen Riders to be part of the problem (even Keiwa, who doesn't have a selfish wish), is too stubborn to acknowledge the good-natured Riders in the DGP or work with them, and is so single-mindedly focused on his goals that he'll do whatever it takes to achieve the power to crush other Kamen Riders, even if it means becoming a Jyamato or hypocritically perpetrating the same crimes he criticizes the DGP for. This all comes back to bite him in the ass multiple times in later arcs, as he refuses to acknowledge the flaws in his thinking until after he accidentally kills Sara and pushes Keiwa past the breaking point.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While Michinaga is certainly not a good guy by the time he joins the Jyamato Grand Prix, and is definitely willing to Kick the Dog and hurt others to attain his goals, he's also more sympathetic than the amoral showrunners of the DGP or the sadistic Beroba. #33 demonstrates this by him choosing to De-power the Riders Chirami sends against him rather than outright killing them, as well as giving Chirami a Motive Rant that boils down to calling out the DGP for enabling people with darker desires through their game.
• Lean and Mean: It's not apparent when wearing his civilian clothes or full DGP uniform, and it doesn't fit him as a brutish Dumb Muscle and The Big Guy, but he is built from toothpicks and pretty much skin and bones, with most of his Rider Form's bulk coming from the armor. As for the "mean" part, it speaks for itself given his personality.
• Leitmotif: "Azuma Michinaga no Theme", a melancholy piano and saxophone duet.
• Leeroy Jenkins: He basically operates on this trope in contrast to Ace who's more level-headed, cunning, and strategic. Although he can be cunning as well, his first instinct is always rushing in headfirst and beating the problem down.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Played for Drama. He isn't informed of the new parasitic Jyamato Daichi has created, which leads to him accidentally killing Sara mistaking her for another Jyamato.
• Made of Iron: Thanks to his prolonged usage of the Zombie Buckle, Michinaga is much harder to kill than your average Rider.
• Meaningful Name: According to Takahashi, Michinaga's first name is from the phrase "a man who travels a long road" (一本の長い道を征く男/Ippon no nagai michi o sei ku otoko), referring to his coming a long way from his desire to destroy all Kamen Riders to sharing Ace's ambition to create a world where everyone can be happy.
• Mirror Character: Despite being responsible for Sara's death along with Daichi and their different wishes and goals, he and Keiwa actually become quite alike in some ways, they both lost their loved ones to the DGP — Michinaga's best friend Tohru participated in the DGP, was ambushed by fellow Riders, and left to die. While Keiwa's parents died in a previous game, and ultimately Daichi and Michinaga himself were both responsible for Sara's death. Their losses leave them cold and embittered, and drive them to start a vengeful crusade against those responsible for their pain, becoming prejudiced against those they feel responsible (Kamen Riders for Michinaga, Creation Deities for Keiwa), and are influenced by their own supporters into joining antagonistic factions led/influenced by them for a chance to grant their wishes by exploiting a Goddess of Creation's powers. They also resent Ace for what he represents in their eyes and treat him as both a rival and a primary obstacle to their goals, and seek to defeat him to get their wishes granted, but ultimately end up defeating their former supporters at the end of the series and dedicate themselves fully to Ace's cause.
• Moral Myopia: While Michinaga hates selfish people that are willing to throw others under the bus for their own gain, he's guilty of the same thing, given that he willingly sacrifices a huge number of people in order to fulfill his wish of obtaining the power to crush Kamen Riders. He's also willing to impose his views on others by breaking their ID Cores, erasing their memories and stopping them from becoming Riders ever again, but hates Ace for telling him to forget about everything he's seen following Tohru's death.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The most accurate description for his expression after realizing he killed Sara is pure, unfiltered HORROR. This traumatizes Michinaga enough that he sees hallucinations of her questioning his reasons for fighting after killing similar victims.
• Mythology Gag:
  • He's a purple Rider whose preferred form is zombie-themed. Given how Yuya Takahashi was also the head writer for Ex-Aid, this was likely intentional.
  • His full given name is Michinaga, and Beroba's nickname for him is "Michi", which sounds a lot like the nickname of another Rider clad in purple-colored grape armor in a series with the same producer as Geats. It really cements him having fully turned to the dark side thanks to his Irrational Hatred of the heroes, just like Micchy himself did.
  • He's a bloodthirsty purple Rider bent on destroying all the other Riders in the game he's in. The Hyper Battle DVD even gives him Ouja as his Legend Rider form.
• The Needs of the Many: This is how he justifies himself fighting Stage 2 Parasite Jyamato even if he knows he's sending people to their doom, reasoning that it's better to Mercy Kill them rather than let them infect other people. His hallucination of Sara as well as Keiwa calls him out on it.
• Never My Fault: Though he acknowledges that he's a hypocrite, he still tends to deflect blame when others confront him about his failings; when Ace calls him out for being similar to Beroba by enjoying other Riders' misery, he angrily denies it, and when he berates Keiwa for screwing up their chance to save Sara, Keiwa angrily tells him that he doesn't want to hear that from Michinaga considering how many atrocities he's been responsible for.
• Noble Demon: Even when he sides with the Jyamato, he maintains some of his code of honor and at the very least dislikes underhanded tactics and prefers for fights to be fair. Additionally, Michinaga will avoid bothering civilians directly if he can help it; he doesn't make any moves to trouble Neon when she's a civilian during the Yearning arc, and the fact that Sara died at his hands while she did not have any Rider powers in #40 leaves him horrified when he realizes what he did.
• Nominal Hero: As a DGP player, Michinaga is on the heroes' side, but he's ultimately more concerned with winning the Desire Grand Prix by almost any means than actually being a heroic person. It's to the point he's happy when Takeshi dies in #1. It turns out that his goal of winning the DGP is his means to take down the DGP and anyone related to it in order to stop both the DGP and Riders from trampling over people's lives, but by then he has turned to the dark side in his attempts.
• Not Quite Dead: While he's indeed killed fighting the Fortress Jyamato, his body manages to partially survive, apparently a side-effect of overusing the Zombie Buckle.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Michinaga is usually gleeful or indifferent about defeating or killing people, so the fact that his face clearly shows horror after killing Sara is a huge giveaway that he realizes he royally screwed up.
• Perpetual Frowner: He is never seen without a scowl on his face, though it's shown that he had a softer demeanor around Tohru.
• Pet the Dog: He explicitly doesn't want Neon, who is still a normal civilian when the Yearning arc begins, to get caught up in his Rider hunting, given the painful memories that she's had as a Rider. He even goes out of his way to tell her that if she touches the ID Core that Tsumuri gave her, he'll have to hunt her down, too. It would've worked, except that Neon gets dragged back into being a Rider anyway because Beroba just can't leave her alone.
• The Power of Hate: Michinaga's burning desire for the destruction of Kamen Riders and the DGP is motivated by hatred which stems from the death of his friend Tohru, who was killed by Kamen Riders, and he draws his power from his hatred for Kamen Riders to crush them.
• Psychotic Smirk: Whenever he’s not being a Perpetual Frowner, he tends to occasionally show a smirk or a satisfied grin whenever he succeeds and is one step closer to achieving his goal.
• Recurring Element: Fills the role characteristic of arc-based Rider series of being a significant character killed or being Put on a Bus around the one-third mark to establish Nothing Is the Same Anymore, as the likes of Hase, Kiriya, Jin, Kento, and Hiromi, before him. As with Kiriya, Jin, and Kento, Michinaga does come back, but in a decidedly altered form.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He’s the hotheaded, rash, reckless Red Oni to Ace’s calm, collected, level-headed Blue Oni.
• Redemption Quest: Late in the series, he seeks to make up for his sins—including killing Sara—after Daichi implies that the Phase 2 Jyamato victims can be saved and he realizes the futility of how he's been acting. Accepting that his actions are the crux of Keiwa's Face–Heel Turn, he tries to ensure that Sara can be brought back from Daichi's Tree of Knowledge by killing Beroba, who plans to convert the Tree into an Ultimate Jyamato—and succeeds.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • He attacks Ace during the Last Boss round of the "Encounter" DGP, even though doing so costs him points and lets the boss run away; he doesn't care, though, because he's more invested in seeing Ace lose.
  • He wants to use his wish to gain the power to defeat all Riders, mostly to stop the DGP from continuing to ruin the lives of everyone that gets involved in it but also to avenge Tohru's death. However, none of the Riders he fights against are the ones who killed Tohru, and eventually, he becomes nearly as immoral as the ones that started his downward spiral.
• The Rival: He sees himself as such to Ace and does not miss a chance to one-up him, though it seems that he's beneath Ace's notice. This starts to change after Michinaga proves himself determined enough to fight impossible odds in #9, to the point where Ace starts seeing him as a Worthy Opponent.
• Rival Turned Evil: He was a DGP participant who vows to one-up Ace. Later he pulls a Face–Heel Turn by joining the Jyamato crew.
• Sacrificial Lion: During the "Scheme" arc, he gets killed in #15 thanks to his Suicidal Overconfidence. However, he survives due to his overuse of the Zombie Buckle and regains consciousness in the Jyamar Garden.
• Sadist: His hatred for all Kamen Riders leads him to enjoy watching them suffer, get eliminated, and outright killed. As he believes all Kamen Riders to be irredeemably evil, this is a case of Smiting Evil Feels Good in his eyes. While he does not initially stoop to Beroba's level, and utterly abhors her indulgences, he slowly begins to slip more into this; after winning the JGP in #32, his wish creates a world where he's invincible against Kamen Riders and can defeat them with zero effort. He still has limits even after all that, however, if the horror on his face after realizing he killed Sara is any indication.
• Shadow Archetype: He and Ace have a lot in common. Both are extremely determined loners who participate in the DGP, are motivated by the loss of a loved one (Michinaga's dead friend and Ace's Missing Mom respectively), and both even decide to work against the DGP writ large by depriving it of Riders to manipulate. The main thing that sets them apart is that though Ace is a dirty player willing to manipulate others, he's able to hold onto some sense of morality, is genuinely altruistic, and softens his underhanded tactics over the course of the series; Michinaga, though he has some sense of honor, is callous towards others' misfortunes, and is willing to forsake most of his scruples as a means of obtaining his desire even if it turns him into a hypocrite. Insofar as discouraging new Riders, though, Ace simply just tells people who have the option to walk away to forget about the DGP, but won't force them to stay away if they choose to fight; by contrast, Michinaga is more than happy to use force to impose his view on them.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Gives this to Neon in #15 when she objects to his Motive Rant about his reason to crush all Kamen Riders. However, Neon was calling him out on his attitude to try and dissuade him from the reckless, borderline suicidal behavior he was displaying at that point in time, not to tear him down. His completely dismissing Neon showcases how self-defeating his mindset is, leading directly to his death. He does this again in #25 when Keiwa and Neon call him out for siding with the Jyamato, to the point that Ace convinces them that he's not worth reasoning with. In #37 he gets sick of hearing Keiwa's beliefs before attempting to eliminate him.
• Slow Transformation: His repeated use of the Jyamato Buckle over time is slowly turning himself into a Jyamato. While this is all in Niramu's plans to eventually reintroduce him back into the DGP as a potentially powerful foe, Beroba unexpectedly wants to sponsor him back in early as a Player before the transformation is complete, while he can still be considered a competing "Kamen Rider".
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • He can actually pull off some cunning plans when he bothers putting the effort into it, demonstrated by how he sneakily undercuts Morio for cheating Keiwa in #6 by arranging a team switch at the last moment to leave Morio with PunkJack and get Morio eliminated.
  • In stark contrast to previous instances where a monster mimics a dead human, after the Jyamato copy of Tohru is defeated, Michinaga only expresses disappointment that his help wasn't enough to defeat Ace, and reveals that he was never fooled by the impersonation of his friend.
  • With a little help from Beroba, he one-ups himself in #32 by successfully winning the JGP. After Ace steals the Vision Driver from Michinaga, Ace's buttons over his mother's state are pushed enough to ensure that he'll get into a fight with Niramu; while Ace and Niramu are fighting, Michinaga drags them both out of the bounds of the current game that he and Beroba set up using the hands from the Zombie Buckle's finishing attack, eliminating them both and claiming both Vision Drivers in one fell swoop.
• Spanner in the Works: Michinaga talking to Ace about him surviving his apparent death and explaining what he saw in the Jyamar Garden gives Ace the evidence needed to expose Daichi's schemes and get Keiwa to stop hesitating against the Jyamato using Takeshi's face.
• The Starscream: A more passive example than most. After spending several episodes as Beroba's underling, he seizes the first chance he gets to take the Vision Driver when she loses it, although instead of overthrowing her he just uses it to up himself into a Big Bad Duumvirate with her, something which Beroba doesn't mind at all.
• Stock Shōnen Rival: Michinaga resembles the trope in most aspects at the start of the show: he's an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who prefers to rely on his own power, and is cold and standoffish towards others. The main difference is that he's never actually been stronger than Ace, which makes him willing to pull a Face–Heel Turn and switch sides to gain the power to crush Ace and all other Kamen Riders. This ruthlessness also demonstrates that while Ace is willing to manipulate people, Michinaga has fewer scruples than Ace does about what he's willing to do to get what he wants. The series consequently deconstructs all of these traits, as his stubborn, uncompromising, lone wolf attitude repeatedly gets him in over his head and leads him into trouble.
• Superdickery: Preview photos of #14 displayed him attacking Neon, seemingly following through on his threats of attacking her from #4 when she was infected by a zombie virus. It turns out that he was under the influence of the Kakurenbo Jyamato's ability to create illusions, leading Michinaga to unwittingly attack other Riders.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He has a very cynical view of his fellow Riders in the DGP, which only becomes more apparent as the series progresses. Ace is an insufferable narcissist who Michinaga considers his greatest obstacle, and he immediately dismisses Keiwa and Neon as "extras" for being newcomers (he does grow to be a little less harsh to Keiwa, but is still outwardly abrasive to him). Kanato and Morio were outright scumbags, and Michinaga finds Win obnoxious due to his loud and bombastic personality. Michinaga also gets upset with Ittetsu and Yukie since they're inexperienced participants with little to no combat experience, as Ittetsu is a fragile old man whose age is taking a toll on his physical capacity, and Yukie lacks the resolve to fight and dies in her round.
• The Resenter: Ace's skill in the game is a severe sore point for him; this is especially evident in #15, where his dying words express anger and disbelief at how Ace seems to be able to do whatever he wants to do, while Michinaga's struggles constantly come to nothing.
• This Cannot Be!: At the end of #33, He is stunned to see that Ace comes back despite that he was sacrificed to the Evil Goddess.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A flashback shows that he used to be a laid-back man content with just having a job and friends. Seeing his much more ambitious friend die in the DGP while the other participants looked on without doing anything made him who he is now. And there's his Face–Heel Turn after being eliminated from the Scheme DGP.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed. In between the "Encounter" and "Scheme" arcs, he softens a little bit. While he's still rather abrasive, he actually tries to motivate Ittetsu and Yukie to fight (as they're The Loads to him) and has a less acrimonious relationship with Ace and Neon from time to time. However, he never lets go of his view of the DGP Riders as self-serving scumbags. He plays it straight in the "Genesis" arc, where he takes responsibility for his actions by giving proper apologies to his victims.
• Transhuman Treachery: Sides with the Jyamato and uses the Jyamato Buckle to continue being a Rider, even though prolonged usage of it will turn him into a Jyamato.
• Trauma Button: Laughter, especially when it's particularly smug or malicious. This is because Tohru died in large part due to a pair of Riders gleefully stealing away the Zombie Raise Buckle and continuing to beat him down even when he could no longer fight back, laughing as they did so.
• Tsundere:
  • Though he hates Kamen Riders with a passion, it's implied that he has a soft spot for Keiwa, even when he's still outwardly abrasive to him, shown by how he instinctively catches himself from running toward Keiwa after Keiwa's nearly fatally injured after using the Ninja Buckle. He leans heavily on tsun, though; he dismisses Keiwa's elimination as one less opponent to deal with, and still lumps him together with all of the bad Riders in #15.
  • Michinaga's insistence that he should be the one to deal with Keiwa after Keiwa resets the world and takes command of the Gang Riders during the latter half of the Genesis arc implies that Michinaga regrets what his actions have turned Keiwa into, and that he wants to get the old Keiwa back himself as atonement for what he's done.
• Uncertain Doom: Keiwa manhandles him in #41 and goes for a Tactical Victory straight to the gut using the Bujin Sword Buckle, but what happens to Michinaga afterward isn't shown. The next episode reveals that Keiwa just continues beating on him until his Driver disengages, leaving Michinaga alive but bloodied.
• The Unfettered: Downplayed. He proclaims that he'll do anything to win, which Beroba lampshades in #20, and it's shown by him having no qualms about sacrificing others or hanging them out to dry if it means achieving his goals. However, he draws the line at certain methods, like outright sabotage (which Morio pulled), and pointless sadism (which Beroba pulled). He seems to be finally aware of how screwed up he is in #40 if his horror from killing Sara is any indication, and though not immediately, he gradually grows out of this.
• Unperson: After breaking the system by surviving his elimination, Archimedel ponders over how he doesn't belong anywhere anymore in #18. In #19, despite escaping the Jyamar Garden, he's thrown back in there since the DGP wants to ensure that he's still "dead" anyway.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He had no idea that 1. Sara had been turned into a Parasite Jyamato, and 2. that defeating her would result in her dying. Because of this, her tragedy sends Keiwa over the edge.
• Villainous BSoD: The realization that he killed Sara leaves him unable to do anything but stand still looking horrified.
• Villain Respect: He eventually develops this towards Ace. When Ace sneaks into the second round of his JGP game to replace Neon, he smirks and says that's exactly what he would have expected from him.
• Walking Spoiler: After a certain point it becomes difficult to talk about Buffa without mentioning that he switches sides to become a Jyamato.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His true motive is to destroy the DGP itself, and the Kamen Riders along with it, as he believes them to be the cause of all the suffering and wants to ensure nobody is further harmed from it. He will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to meet that goal, even if it means participating in the JGP, working with the likes of Beroba, Archimedel, and Daichi, or indiscriminately eliminating all Riders himself. #33 fully cements him as this if his Motive Rant is anything to go by.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In #13, Ace, Keiwa, and Neon all together call him out on his Ineffectual Loner ways, as at this point, his unflinching view of the DGP being a competitive game with other Riders as only rivals to beat is practically suicidal against the Jyamato when he doesn't have a Driver.
  • In the Genesis arc, he starts having visions of Sara Sakurai giving him these speeches when he takes down people who have progressed to Stage 2 of Parasite Jyamato infection after he unintentionally kills her.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Inverted. Instead of using a single weapon in multiple ways, Michinaga uses all weapons available to him as a club or blade, regardless of what their intended use is. His explanation is that ranged attacks are not his style, thus he has no other use for ranged weapons than to hit stuff and shoot from up close. The only exception is the Raising Sword, which he instead throws away in favor of his fists.
• When He Smiles: When Sara is successfully brought back and reunites with Keiwa in #46, Michinaga and Neon both have sincere smiles on their faces.
• Wild Card: He joins several different factions throughout the course of the series, siding with anyone who opposes the DGP, be it the Jyamato faction or even Ace after learning that Ace intends to take down the DGP.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Michinaga usually tends to take beatings if a stage takes more than just brute strength to clear early on in the show, then outright gets killed in #15 by the DGP's Final Boss trying to prove that he can outdo Ace.
  • After he's revived in the Jyamar Garden, he gets manhandled by Gazer to demonstrate Niramu's prowess as the game producer and gets beaten up alongside Nadge-Sparrow by Ziin to show that sponsors are not to be underestimated.
  • After becoming the Jyamashin, this is inverted, as numerous Riders take him on and completely fail to damage him to show off his wish-granted invincibility, ranging from regular players to former Desashin, to even supporter Riders and Game Masters. He even tanks a punch from Geats LaserBoost punch in #34 without even slowing down. However, in the last episode, this is played straight against a Rider, where Regad Omega has a means to take down Jyamashin with Reverse, erasing his Buckle and Driver from existence.
  • Outside of his invincibility against other Riders as the Jyamashin, he's still a DGP Rider with Mid-Season Upgrade (Fever Zombie), thus he's beaten by Archimedel/Dunkleosteus Jyamato (who takes a supporter Rider or Geats LaserBoost to defeat) to prove that he's Not So Invincible After All when Riders aren't involved.
  • Tycoon Bujin Sword Form is so far beyond the Zombie Buckle that Michinaga gets thrashed and defeated with relatively little effort on Keiwa's part, especially without his Rider invulnerability factoring into things anymore.
  • Michinaga's fight against Kekera and Beroba in the Premium forms is a clear indication that the supporters are now one of the biggest active threats the heroes have to deal with, which is especially significant as they manage to Curb Stomp him in Command Form, which was shown to be capable of taking on a Fortress Jyamato and an Administration Rider.
• Would Hit a Girl: If you're a Kamen Rider, not even being a woman will save you from his wrath, as Neon, Sae, and Sara found out the hard way, and #46 further proves this by showing that he he has no hesitation in taking on Beroba for all of her cruel acts. The key words there are if you're a Kamen Rider: when Neon doesn't have her powers for part of the Yearning arc, he leaves her alone, and during the Genesis arc, he has to justify his murder of Sara and other Stage 2 Jyamato Hosts as a Necessarily Evil in order to deny that he's aware of how completely screwed up his actions are.
• You Are What You Hate:
  • He hates all Riders because two of them stole Tohru's Zombie Buckle and left him for dead against the Jyamato, viewing all of them as irredeemable scumbags who use others as stepping stones for their own gain. Come #21, he does the exact same thing to Sae, stealing her Zombie Buckle with no hesitation or regret, even when Sae tells him she needs its power to save her family. He takes this cruelty one step further when he eliminates Keiwa himself in #31, right in front of Sara's eyes, and flat-out says that Keiwa will be fuel for his wish.
  • He hates both the Riders and the DGP for the misery they cause to others, but he joins the JGP, a game made to cause as much misery as possible for Beroba's amusement, in an attempt to get his wish, and has no problems either participating in or eventually orchestrating games that are meant to further the JGP's goal of causing despair.
  • He hates that the Goddess of Creation sacrifices the happiness of innocent people for the sake of the Desashin's wish. but the Heaven and Hell game he creates for the final round of the Lamentation JGP is a cruel, rude mirror of the DGP and the Goddess proper: Riders and civilians are isolated on a floating chunk of the city, and the Jyamato harass them unless they stand on colored circles; the Evil Goddess then turns a specific color of those circles into pits, dropping their victims through the ground and turning them into bubbles—and fuel—for the Evil Goddess until only one person remains. On top of that, the Goddess can choose to change the color whenever it wants even for those that are "safe", meaning that Michinaga's game is just subjecting innocent people to the same misery as the Goddess does with even fewer safeguards.
  • To a lesser degree, while he bears a grudge towards Ace due to telling him to just forget the DGP and turn back to their normal lives, he turns out to have the same approach towards other Riders, to the degree that he'll force it on them by directly destroying their ID Cores.
  • The capstone for his character arc in this trope? Him (unknowingly) killing Sara in front of Keiwa, making him realize he's no better than the Riders who left Tohru for dead.

Tropes exclusive to him as Kamen Rider Buffa

Grab! Crush out! Zombie...! Ready, Fight!

Dual On! Grab and crush them! Zombie and Boost! Ready, Fight!

^{Click here to see...} ...his FeverZombie Form as the Jyamashin
Zombie! Hit! Fever Zombie!

Jyamato! Zombie!

Twin Set! Take off complete! Jet and Cannon! Ready, Fight!

Awakening Power! Plosion Rage! Ready, Fight!

• Badass Cape: His unique accessory is the Buffa Muleta on his waist, which turns gold in Fever Zombie Form. It is in a ripped and discolored state when he transforms with a cracked Core ID. He gains another one on his shoulders as the Jyamashin.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: The Zombie Raise Buckle evokes this, as it is modeled after a hand bursting open from either a coffin or a burial plot.
• Bling of War: His Jyamashin form replaces his buffalo horns with a new pair of shiny golden ones.
• Broken Faceplate: The Buffa Head gets damaged a lot. In #9 his left visor and horn get broken. After his death in #15, when he transforms with his cracked Core ID, his left visor is broken. It's repaired at the end of #32 when he becomes the winner of the JGP.
• Brutish Bulls: He is themed on a buffalo, and is shown to be savage in both personality and in combat. In Buffa Mode, the Boostriker transforms into a mechanical buffalo.
• Close-Range Combatant: He seems to prefer to do things up close and personal. Even when he has a ranged weapon like the Raise Water or Magnum Shooter 40X, he uses the guns like clubs rather than shoot with them unless it's No Range Like Point-Blank Range.
• Cool Sword: His main weapon is the Zombie Breaker, a sword with a chainsaw blade granted by the Zombie Raise Buckle. Command Form additionally grants him the Raising Sword.
• Crippling Overspecialization: While Michinaga's Jyamashin powers are enough to take out other Kamen Riders, that's all they're good for; the wording of his wish means that despite being completely invincible against other Riders, he is just as vulnerable as any of them when fighting a Jyamato.
• Evil Is Bigger: Has one of the bulkiest Rider forms in the show and is one of the most villainous DGP Riders, particularly after he throws his lot in with the Jyamato.
• Exact Words: His wish is written as "the power to destroy all other Kamen Riders", and true to that, his Jyamashin buffs make him invincible and more powerful against other Riders (even supporters and Game Masters). Jyamato, however, are exempt from this, so they can hurt him just fine and he gets no powerups while fighting them.
• Finishing Move:
  • Tactical Break: After charging the Zombie Breaker with poisonous energy, Buffa performs a series of Rider Slashes towards his foe.
  • ZombieBoost Grand Victory^note Boost upper body, Zombie lower body: The Boostriker transforms into buffalo mode, with Buffa riding on it as it charges the enemy and tosses them into the air with its horns. Buffa then jumps after the enemy and delivers a downward Rider Punch, smashing them into the ground.
  • ZombieDrill Victory^note Drill upper body, Zombie lower body: Buffa stomps the ground with the Berserclaw, creating a column of toxic sludge beneath him that lifts him towards the enemy, as he performs a Rider Punch with the Raise Drill.
  • Golden Fever Victory (Zombie):
    • Buffa summons a second Zombie Breaker, revving and charging both swords with purple energy before dealing a powerful double Rider Slash to the enemy.
    • Jyamashin!Buffa launches a Rider Kick to the target.
  • Zombie Strike: Has two variations.
    • Zombie lower body: Buffa performs a roundhouse kick with the Beserclaw, unleashing a wave of sludge at the enemy that detonates upon impact.
    • Zombie upper body: Buffa slams the ground with his claw arm, producing a pair of gigantic spectral copies of his arm which can grab and drag an enemy or catch a falling object.
  • Jya-jya-jya Strike: Buffa charges his leg with energy and stomps the ground, summoning multiple Broy Arms that home in on and strike the target.
  • Plosion Rage Strike:
    • Buffa charges the claws on his shield and delivers a Rider Slash to the target.
    • Buffa stabs the ground with his shield-claws, calling forth purple lightning bolts that bombard the enemy from above.
  • Plosion Rage Victory:
    • Buffa shrouds himself in energy and performs a thrusting drill attack with his shield.
    • Buffa leaps into the air, charging his foot with purple energy and performing a Rider Kick.
• Godzilla Threshold: Surrounded by two Jyamato Riders, he steals a Jyamato Buckle and activates it, briefly becoming Kamen Rider Buffa Jyamato Form. He eventually resorts to using the Jyamato Buckle full-time once he joins up with the Jyamato, combining it with the Zombie Buckle for the majority of his screen time thereafter.
• Heroic Second Wind: Beyond his own natural resolve given his motivation for fighting, Buffa's Rider ability boosts his determination and fighting spirit. Even when literally having a foot in the grave, he will always get back up and fight.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In the Genesis arc, he fights with just the regular Zombie Buckle, and when Beroba asks him about his Jyamashin powers, he tells her that he doesn't need them, as his only target is her and the Jyamato. She assumes that he's using bravado to cover up for losing them, but as it turns out, he's able to call on them when he goes up against Beroba in #46. This allows him to grasp victory by the skin of his teeth in their last clash, as the anti-Rider nature of said powers means that Beroba's Kamen Rider form can't beat it.
• Iconic Item: His preferred Raise Buckle is Zombie, which shares his color scheme. He easily re-obtains it post-Bag of Spilling in the first round of the Encounter DGP, but then loses it very quickly to Geats by making an ill-advised bet. He does eventually get it in the Concentration round after his teammate Keiwa exchanges their Magnum and Boost Raise Buckles for it. In the Scheme DGP, he quickly exchanges his Ninja Buckle for his teammate Ittetsu's Zombie Buckle. In addition, it's revealed that in #16 the Buckle was also responsible for his body's (partial) survival by overuse after his death by the Rafflesia Jyamato.
• Implacable Man: His Jyamashin form proves to be insurmountable for any Riders, as he's able to decisively defeat each one he goes up against with minimal effort.
• The Juggernaut: Buffa Plosion Rage is one of the toughest Kamen Riders in Geats, if not the toughest outright. Despite Doom Geats' raw power, Michinaga was able to tank Doom Geats' attacks without difficulty, and showed no signs of stopping. Doom Geats nearly resorts to rewriting reality just to break the stalemate, and would have if not for Ace's timely arrival.
• Logical Weakness: By his wish's wording, his Jyamashin form's buffs are engineered to defeat Kamen Riders exclusively. This makes his attacks especially powerful against them and lets him No-Sell their attacks...but these buffs only work against Riders. As such, powerful Jyamato like Archimedel/Dunkleosteus​ Jyamato are actually able to fight him.
• Meaningful Name: A more straightforward example in comparison to the notable DGP Riders; his name is simply "buffalo" without the "lo". Played for laughs in Desire Grand Prix Full of Men! where his motivational speech is him complaining how simple the name is and asking where the "lo" went, leading to Ace calling him "Lo" for the rest of the special.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Feverslot Buckle, which allows him to use a randomized power from any Raise Buckle. He later gets a second one with the Command Twin Buckles, favoring Command Form: Jet. After winning the JGP and wishing for the power to crush all Kamen Riders, he gains an upgraded version of Feverslot which comes with larger golden horns and a Badass Cape.
• Mighty Glacier: Rather slow when it comes to speed but is able to land powerful, brutal, and savage blows.
• One-Winged Angel: Once he's able to access the Goddess of Creation, he wishes for the power to crush all Kamen Riders. By #33, his Zombie Fever Form sports a new Badass Cape and longer, golden horns, and he's able to deliver Curb Stomp Battles to all other Kamen Riders, even supporter and Game Master Riders, while being invulnerable to any attacks they throw at him.
• Our Zombies Are Different: He has the best compatibility with the Zombie Buckle as Buffa. As it turns out, its name isn't just for show - the Buckle literally has a zombifying effect on the user through prolonged use, allowing Michinaga's body to survive after being killed by the Rafflesia Jyamato.
• Palette Swap: His Plosion Rage From is a recolored Jyamashin!FeverZombie Form.
• Poisonous Person: Buffa uses poison as part of his combat style; appropriately enough, his armor is colored purple. It later has green added to it after he obtains the Jyamato Buckle.
• Punny Name: His name is Buffa and his preferred Zombie Buckle makes him rather top-heavy.
• Purple Is Powerful: His helm and favored Buckle are predominantly colored purple, and he's one of the strongest competitors in the series, only bested by the likes of Ace. Much more so after he gets his wish granted, as he outright No Sells several attacks from multiple Kamen Riders, even those using Laser Raise Risers or Vision Drivers.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Buffa's primary colors are purple and orange, and he eventually joins the Jyamato. In his Jyamato form, his left eye even glows green on occasion.
• Super Mode: Plosion Rage Form.
• This Is a Drill: He gains the Raise Drill Buckle in #9, which he combos with the Zombie Buckle.
• Tragic Keepsake: The reason he's most comfortable with the Zombie Buckle, aside from its high compatibility with his ID Core, is because it was the Buckle used by his friend Tohru in the DGP right before he died in Michinaga's arms.
• Use Your Head: Employs headbutts as part of his combat style, using the horns on his helm.
• Vine Tentacles: The Broy Arms, gained via the Jyamato Buckle.
• Weak, but Skilled: Though he often uses only the Zombie Buckle in the Genesis arc, he's still more than capable of keeping pace with stronger Buckles for at least a short period of time, such as using Revolve On to disorient Tycoon Bujin Sword and let Michinaga land a few hits on him.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: In response to his wish, Buffa's new suit parts as the Jyamashin amplify his abilities dozens of times over when he's in battle against other Kamen Riders, making him essentially invincible when he's fighting them. Non-Rider opponents, such as Jyamato, are still able to fight on an even footing with him.
• Wolverine Claws: The Berserclaw mounted on his left arm in Zombie Form (upper body), which can poison enemies. Plosion Rage Form ups the ante by giving it chainsaws.
• World's Strongest Man: Played With. His wish for the power to destroy all Kamen Riders makes him able to easily defeat any kind of Rider, including supporter Riders, Glare2, and Geats LaserBoost. However, Exact Words apply — his invulnerability works only on Kamen Riders, so he has no extra strengths when fighting Jyamato.
• Wrecked Weapon: The Buffa ID Core is damaged in #17, making his transformation systems not work properly. Buffa eventually adapts to the malfunctioning Core, and it's repaired at the end of #32.