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  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • When the Taros are trying to possess Ryotaro together, Ryuu delivers this line:
      Ryuu: Let me be on top!
    • The frequent mentions of the Taros being "inside" Ryotaro or "entering" Ryotaro also count.
    • Also for the Western Audience, pretty much every time the word "climax" is used. Fansubbing group TV-Nihon didn't help this when, one time (possibly deliberately, given that it was only one time), they translated Momotaros's Catchphrase as "As soon as I start, I climax!" One of the Chou Den-O Trilogy movis has him saying a line which they subbed as "I've been waiting four months to climax!"
  • Angst? What Angst?: Ryotaro genuinely doesn't seem to be upset about being a Cosmic Plaything, though he's hardly happy go lucky even at the best of times.
  • Ass Pull:
    • Was it ever hinted at all in Climax Deka that Negataros had a time train?
    • Since when could Kiva enter time itself? Didn't Castle Doran simply have a tunnel to the past within it and not actual time travel capability?
  • Awesome Ego: Momotaros is loud, brash, and boasts to his enemies about his prowess and power in battle. He's not completely wrong.
  • Awesome Music: Den-O is an outlier from other Rider series in that a large portion of it's song catalogue is almost entirely composed of covers. That, however, doesn't stop them from being absolute earworms.
  • Complete Monster: While considerably Lighter and Softer than its predecessors, the show still has these two villains:
    • The Wolf Imagin is an easily-annoyed, psychotic berserker who ranks amongst the worst in Kai's army. Forging a contract with Yuka Sawada, who wished to have memories of her years in high school, Wolf began vaporizing schoolgirls and giving their possessions to Yuka, all while mocking her for having a boring wish. Going to the past, Wolf wastes no time in causing even more chaos. Frustrated by the lack of orders, Wolf goes on a rampage, collapsing entire buildings and killing countless civilians.
    • I'm Born: Gaoh/Kamen Rider Gaoh is an infamous time criminal who specializes in stealing Time Trains, and is the leader of his own gang of renegade Imagin to further his selfish goals, wishing nothing more than the destruction of time itself simply because he grew bored of it. After invading the DenLiner and taking its passengers as hostages, Gaoh goes back in time and obtains the GaohLiner, destroying an entire village as "practice". Travelling to the day when Ryotaro was born, Gaoh forces him to watch as he erases the city and its people from time, turning the place into a desolated wasteland and planning on repeating this process with the entire world.
  • Creator's Pet: To some toku fans, the series itself is this, not so much because the show itself is bad, but because of how it's been turned into a Cash-Cow Franchise, what with Toei releasing a movie every year, among other things.
  • Escapist Character: Ryotaro Nogami; he's an unlucky dropout who works in his sister's coffee shop, but he's also the most important person in the show as a Singularity Point and goes on adventures with an ever-increasing group of friends.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Pretty much the entire main cast due to their abundant comedy potential, most of all the heroic Imagin. The main four Taros are particular subjects, however, and of them the one with the biggest spotlight is Momotaros.
  • Epileptic Trees
    • Ryotaro's actor changeover, which first appeared during Kamen Rider Decade's crossover with Den-O, lead some to speculate that this version of the Den-O World was simply another Decade Alternate Universe. However, it seems that Den-O is the only original Heisei universe to be featured in Decade, as evidenced by the Cho Den-O Trilogy.
    • There are many Fanon attempts to explain why Hana herself wasn't/couldn't be Den-O, despite arguably being a better candidate than Ryotaro. The Doylist reason: female protagonists don't appeal to the Japanese boy demographic that Kamen Rider targets. 7 years later, Kiriko of Kamen Rider Drive would face the same problem.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Thanks to the Egyptian-looking collar and other elements, Shiro is sometimes called Kamen Rider Phara-Oh.
      • Because of his skull and crossbones mask and resemblance to Gaoh, he's also sometimes known as Gaoh Pirate Form.
    • The original Double-Action (the one sung by Momotaros and Ryotaro’s actors) has “Sword Form” added on, likely so it can stand out to the other versions.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: It’s very common to ship Ryoutarou with one of his Imagins (or all of them) and Yuuto with Deneb. Either that, or shipping Ryoutarou and Yuuto with each other.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • During the release of Final Countdown, much lols were had over the subtitle 'Farewell Den-O', with jokes about the Cash-Cow Franchise going on anyways despite the number of 'Final's used. Turns out it technically is the last Den-O movie... for Takeru Sato, who's moved on to other stuff. Until his triumphant return in Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FOREVER in person no less!
    • In Final Countdown, Yuto really does suffer a visible Gamebreaking Injury after Taking the Bullet for Kohana; this can be a little unsettling in light of how his actor, Yuichi Nakamura, was forced to leave show business for a time thanks to suffering an injury in real life.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The younger Yuto Sakurai is played by the actor of a character from Kamen Rider Hibiki, as has been said elsewhere on this page. So basically, Yuichi Nakamura went from a show with Oni to a show with Owner—and also a bunch of Imagin who look like oni.
    • The resemblance between Hibiki and Momotaros led to a fair bit of Memetic Mutation as well. Lampshaded in Decade when Kaito summons Momotaros to fight the riders in the Hibiki world.
    • Gun-wielding Riders tend to fall under The Straight Man (G3-X, Garren, Ibuki) or the Smug Snake (Zolda, Kaixa and to a lesser extent Drake). Ryutaros is literally the last person you'd trust with a gun.
    • During the Crayon Shin-chan crossover, Hana is the first to chastise Shinchan for his indifference to his mom being in danger from an Imagin. Turns out Hana has some mommy issues of her own down the line.
    • Den-O's habit of always going back to Feudal Japan in the movies is still continued through Ryotaro, through different means. Even better, Kintaros-posessed Ryotaro is basically a Palette Swap of Kenshin, and Momo!Ryo is basically an Expy of Sanosuke.
    • At the beginning of Final Countdown, the Taros don mascot costumes in order to patrol the city "inconspicuously" again. While Ura and Ryuu's costumes are befitting their nature (penguin and dragon, respectively) and Momo is wearing, ironically enough, a dog costume, what's Kin's costume? An elephant. note 
    • Not only does Climax Deka foreshadow an actual time policeman in the form of G Den-O, but the Badass Boast 'we are the badges' even foreshadows Eve, the artificial Imagin who only appears as a tiny badge-looking thing. Even better, the Rider Pass is inserted with a badge decal in Climax Deka, and another Pass has Eve's head glued to it to represent Eve in Episode Yellow.
    • Also worth noting is the final battle, where Kivat actually says "Hade Ni Ikuze!"
    • Ryotaro SUCKS as a fighter during most of the series, relying in the Taros to posess him so they can fight using his body. Then, in 2012, his actor goes into playing Himura Battousai.
    • When the [DenLiner] crew and Imagin go back in time in episode four, there is a graffiti art of a giant opening zipper. Also, that Victim Of The Week's actor is Kazuki Namioka who plays Sid in Gaim.
    • During the show's run, the staff produced joke images showing Sieg joining in the Super Modes...three years before the debut of Super Climax Form. Unlike the canon version, the joke version had Sieg on Den-O's right knee (Deneb took the left).
    • As noted under the "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!" entry, one of the complaints detractors of this series will lobby at it is that it feels more like a Sentai series than a Kamen Rider series. 10 years later, Kamen Rider × Super Sentai: Chou Super Hero Taisen brought us Kamen Sentai Gorider, an actual Sentai Team of Kamen Riders featuring Momotaros as the "Momo-Rider". Similar feelings about the Opposite later arose during the design reveals for Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger and Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, which had suit designs that were essentially Kamen Rider-levels of unique.
    • In the TV series, Kintaros says that real dancing is Seizei Dancing. His voice actor would go onto play Pega-San, a Dance Battler...who does not use Seizei dancing.
    • The Anthopper imagin's design is grasshopper-based, and half-black, half-green...unfortunately, due to the Cho Den-O trilogy not crossing over with Kamen Rider Doublenote , they don't lampshade this.
    • The fact that Hideo Ishiguro went on from portraying an unhinged ringleader of evil Imagins to a wandering Ultraman considering that Gai Kurenai's name is one kana away from Kai. However, Gai's rival, Jugglus Juggler even channels Kai's personality as if Ishiguro's other role came back to haunt him.
  • Iron Woobie: Despite Ryotaro's Cosmic Plaything status, and despite everything going wrong in his life, he never once falls into Wangst or Heroic BSoD, and he always steps up to do the right thing.
  • Memetic Mutation: See this page for examples.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The Zeronos Belt mixes quiet guitar music with marimba and flute solos for a very soothing standby, which is similar to Wing Form's, which has harp strings and piano music. However, most fans are more likely to recognize the Sword Form standby, which is most likely due to the Imagin associated with it.
  • Narm: The mooing sound made by Zeronos' visor when he turns into Altair Form. The sounds made by the Wing Form's swan-shaped visor are excused because of the form's over-the-top nature, but the mooing—especially when it's also done in Zero Form—is a bit much.
  • Never Live It Down: Not a moment from the show itself, but from TV-Nihon's translation. For whatever reason, someone thought that when Owner said the line "mesdames et messieurs." he was saying "Banana New Shoe". This actually lead TV-N to release a V2 of the subs, a practice many other groups follow which, at the time, TV-N often didn't.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Kai. The guy is just creepy as hell.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Den-O was released when Kamen Rider was in danger of being cancelled due to low ratings compared to its long-time rival Super Sentai, and consequently was made very stylistically different from prior Rider series, straying away from the complex ideological clashes and low-key character writing of prior series in favour of focusing on the dynamics between its core cast, who all sported much more exaggerated personalities akin to anime and manga characters (even getting popular voice actors to voice the Taros). While this proved to be a wild success that propelled the franchise well past Super Sentai into being one of Toei's main IP's, its deviations are far less likely to be felt now, as much of what made it so iconic would quickly become the norm in the Neo-Heisei Era, while aspects such as its comparatively thin main narrative and weak lead villain stick out much more. That being said, nobody is too mad about the Den-O cast for making continual reappearances given the fact that the entire DenLiner crew is comedy gold.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Yuto was The Scrappy before he even made his debut, as his actor Yuichi Nakamura had annoyed so many people with his portrayal of Jerkass Kyosuke Kiriya in Kamen Rider Hibiki and fans feared a repeat performance. Fortunately, Yuto turned out to be more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • Takeru Satoh finds more success in the Japanese entertainment business upon portraying Himura Kenshin in the Rurouni Kenshin film series.
    • Almost a year after Climax Deka, Ryota Murai became the new Kuuga in Kamen Rider Decade.
    • Hideo Ishiguro gained more popularity in the Ultra Series than in Kamen Rider thanks to his role as Gai Kurenai.
    • Yuichi Nakamura was very hated in his debut series Kamen Rider Hibiki due to his character being a massive Jerkass, but his role as Yuuto has gained him much more popularity, especially with younger generation fans, who are more likely to remember him as Yuuto than Kiriya Kyosuke.
  • The Scrappy: Beloved as the series might be, you'd find very few fans who would admit to liking Kai, viewing him as an incredibly uninteresting and underdeveloped Generic Doomsday Villain introduced far too late to have any strong presence. Many joke to having forgotten Den-O even had a central villain.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
    • Kai's alteration of time causes Yuto to disappear and Deneb to be contracted to Ryotaro; unfortunately, we don't get to see Den-O Vega Form. Onigashima Battleship does include this, although it's Kotaro/New Den-O rather than Ryotaro.
      • Speaking of The Onigashima Battleship, during that movie, all of the 4 Taros sans Momo possess riders summoned by Diend. This would've been a perfect time for Teddy to possess Yusuke Onodera and transform into Kuuga, much like Momo did with Decade...too bad Onodera isn't in the movie for no real reasonnote .
    • Similarly, we never did get to see how the New DenLiner would fight, or even if it's cars are Transforming Mecha.
    • Climax Deka is this in a multitude of ways. Negataros has a whole gang of humans, Fangire, Imagin and even a time train at his disposal, yet nothing interesting is done with it. He simply wants to make an empire of evil because...evil. This is only made worse by the fact that Kiva has less than ten minutes of screen time in a movie that is supposed to be a crossover with him, serving only to help the protagonists when they are stuck by the plot.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: An understated version, but near any scene where someone is possessed by one of the Taros, Sieg or Deneb, the dubbing is damn near perfect, making it seem as though the person really is speaking the voices. The actors themselves do a great job of portraying the personalities of the Imagin possessing them, effectively acting as different characters.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The stylistic differences compared to previous series, from the giant monsters, mecha-like trains and the vast amount of humor, made a portion of Rider fans feel the series was closer to a Sentai series. Some got past this initial feeling, while others claim that it ruined all Kamen Rider series since.
  • Unexpected Character: Pretty Den-O features a cameo by Kamen Rider BLACK RX

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