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Creator / Toshiki Inoue

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Toshiki Inoue was born in Saitama, Japan in 1959. He's the son of the man who wrote the script for the original Kamen Rider, Masaru Igami. He is well known for writing anime and Tokusatsu. He gained some bad reputation among the fandom from being part of executive-mandated retool of Kamen Rider Hibiki.

No relation to Masahiro Inoue, the actor who portrayed Tsukasa Kadoya in Kamen Rider Decade.

Compare with Frank Miller for a similar writer who does Darker and Edgier takes on established properties.


His involvement in certain works include:

Tropes associated with his writing style:

  • Anyone Can Die: In some cases.
  • Conflict Ball: Part of the Signature Style, as it mostly runs off of Poor Communication Kills.
  • Creator Thumbprint: Aside from his love of miscommunication drama (and their superhero counterpart, the Secret Identity-based shenanigans), the most bizarrely recurring part of his writing is that in damn near every show he writes, someone gets kicked off a bridge during a fight, falls into a river, and drifts away. It's weirdly specific, and yet it just keeps happening.
  • Darker and Edgier: He sure likes his grit. When watching one of his series, you should expect lots of angsting, heavy arguments between characters and at least one character dying.
  • Denser and Wackier: Along with the Darker and Edgier aspects, his writing also tends to be over-the-top and wild, including the heavy argument part in the characters, like the episodes he wrote for Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, episode 29-30 of Kamen Rider Ryuki, and Avataro Sentai Donbrothers.
  • Disposable Woman: Likes to kill off female characters just to give the male heroes motivation to fight the villains, or something to angst about.
  • Fanservice: He often has female characters placed in this. According to him, after Jetman ended, he wrote several that go a lot more into the romantic part about it. As a side effect of keeping it a kid's show, he replaced romantic undertones with plenty of eating.
  • Fantastic Racism: Most of the enemy races in series written by him look down on humanity. They believe their superiority over humans gives them the right to rule over or exterminate them.
  • Foe Romantic Subtext: In his two series Kamen Rider 555 and Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, there are two similar pairs of foes that have Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman going on, but even after their identities are revealed to the other, they still have a lot of Ho Yay with each other. They are Takumi and Yuji & Taro and Sonoi.
  • Grey-and-Grey Morality: His most distinctive writing feature is that he dislikes the idea of conventional good-and-evil heroism, so he likes creating dark hero characters and different shades of morality. That said, he's not shy about making Hate Sink villains either.
  • Love Dodecahedron: Inoue is quite fond of writing numerous love triangles into his series and wringing as much romantic drama out of them as possible.
  • Melodrama: A majority of his stories center around lost loves, whether they be romantic or familial, and people's inability to deal with their grief, often in over-the-top and excessively dramatic ways.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Boy howdy, does it ever. In many cases, the problems characters face in his works would be solved if they would just sit down and talk about it for a few minutes.
    • He self-parodies his tendency in Donbrothers by intentionally exaggerating it to the point of absurdity — for one thing, the team doesn't learn who their own Black Ranger is and vice-versa until just six episodes before the end of a fifty-episode run.
    • Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't subversions. One instance was used in three different Kamen Rider seasons and in Donbrothers. Long story short, it involves Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman, but once they find out they're the same, they start liking both.
    • He mentioned enjoying watching Symphogear (in preparation for writing the collaboration event between it and 555), where one of the major themes of the show is miscommunication.
  • Sacrificial Lamb / Sacrificial Lion: Introduces characters just to kill them off. Most of these are female, tying them to the Disposable Woman trope.

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