Toshiki Inoue

## Biography

Some say Toshiki Inoue was born from the flames of a dying star. Some say he was formed in the depths of the ocean in a time long gone. What is generally agreed on is that whoever actually raised him was inhaling a little bit too much of the funny gas.

In the late 80s, a genius idea came upon the fine folks at Toei. "I hear that the son of Masaru Igami is writing stuff now," and so they decided to let him write episodes for some of their Sentai shows.

This was a decision they would likely later come to regret.

You see, Inoue possesses certain features within his writing which are rather noticable across his work. This includes introducing characters which he then promptly kills off by the end of the episode, love triangles which usually end with one of the people involved getting killed off, really ridiculous plotlines which only he could pull off, and just making everyone really sad all the time.

Of course, these quirks didn't stop the people at Toei from letting him write a 51 episode Sentai in 1991. This Sentai was known as Choujin Sentai Jetman, which was basically a full show of all the features mentioned above, which was interesting for how different it was as well as acting as an early showcase of what happens when you give Inoue any degree of creative freedom over how the story of something goes.

For the next couple of years, he wrote episodes for even more Sentai shows, including an entire character arc in Dairanger in which he introduced a very talented martial artist who was unsurprisingly depressed as fuck because his love interest's father had stabbed him in the hand, which is a pretty dick move which was only worsened by the fact he was hanging off a cliff at the time.

Then in 1996, a miracle happened. A Toei executive, obviously hitting the ol' Baxter Leaves, decided that his new concept needed an extra layer of autism added to it. So he enlisted Inoue to write it for him, obviously giving them a good amount of creative freedom, and thus *Choukou Senshi Changéríon* was born. This show could be considered the masterwork of Inoue's career, as he wrote the amusing tale of a hopeless womaniser with massive debts who accidentally ends up becoming a superhero and spends the entire series getting into wacky shenanigans. Like all good shows that get on TV however, it got cancelled after 39 episodes. This is much to the pain of the people who have actually finished the show who can easily be hurt by saying the words "Gai Apollon."

For a while after this, Inoue continued to write episodes occasionally for some shows, albeit mostly anime for kids and the like, until 2001. That was the year they first let him write a Kamen Rider series, known as Kamen Rider Agito. This did not go well, as it served as an example of one of Inoue's greatest weaknesses, which is writing ongoing narratives that actually make sense. So what actually happened is that he was given his orders to make something alike the good series from the previous year, so he basically ripped it off while missing everything that made it good by giving his main character the rough character of a cardboard box and having basically no actual point or narrative.

Agito also marked the first time in the early Heisei shows that they let Inoue write the movies, which was a very interesting move on Toei's part since the ones that Inoue typically writes are set in alternate timelines and consist of everyone being much more opressed and depressed than usual. He would proceed to write these styles of films for each show for the next few years until it was realised that it'd probably be better if the actual writer for the shows wrote each one.

Luckily for Inoue, Agito was sort of well recieved at the time it was airing, so 2 years later he was let loose on another Kamen Rider series known as Kamen Rider 555. Kamen Rider 555 was a slightly better attempt at an Inoue Kamen Rider series on account of everyoone actually developing somewhat, although it was still true that nobody was ever really happy at any point, and the love triangle didn't so much get broken up so much as had its neck snapped. This time, on top of the annual movie, they also let him write a novel for the series, which would normally a responsible thing to let the series writer do, except this was an Inoue who had realised that the restrictions on the content would be looser than he could get with a show, and a book was written which has became mildly infamous for that little bit of rape in it.

A few years ahead, in 2005, he was brought on to write the latter half of Kamen Rider Hibiki,as the fine folks in Toei had booted a good amount of the people involved with the first half off the project to save some money, and thought that Inoue would be a valid replacement. This may have been a minor mistake on their part though, as the quality did dip a bit on account of Inoue dumping a bunch of planned storylines and characters in favour of his own.

In the same year of 2005, Inoue wrote a film of pure evil which is widely hated by most people. This film was known as Kamen Rider the First and was intended to be a modernised reboot of the original Kamen Rider series from 1971, which would have been at least interesting were it not for the fact that this was the mid-2000s and for Inoue's writing quality having taken another dip at that point, so what actually happened was that it turned out to be a very edgy movie that was an insult to the source material it was based off on account of Inoue having turned the two original Kamen Riders into his own brand of character which was directly opposed to their original characterisations, and also the fact that the plotline was largely pointless and could have easily been cut down if it wasn't for the really forced romantic subplot.

One of the most diabolical bits about Kamen Rider the First was that it was apparently quite successful to a degree that an actual sequel was released 2 years later called Kamen Rider the Next, which was once again written by Inoue, and achieved the monumental feat of being worse than the first film on account of being in the complete wrong genre and also the fact that they tried to write in another classic Kamen Rider in the form of Kamen Rider V3, but managed to ruin him just as badly as the original Kamen Riders had been, as he also got an Inoue makeover.

Skipping forward a bit to 2013, Inoue was reunited with his old pal, Keita Amemiya who directed a lot of Inoue's earlier bouts of madness.. They got together while Inoue was writing an episode of GARO, obviously got quite drunk, and decided to work together again on something. The product of this was Shougeki Gouraigan, which was a very interesting project indeed as it only ever got 12 episodes and is mostly known now for being somewhat insane, which sounds perfectly like every other Inoue show where he's stopped taking himself seriously.

Shockingly, Inoue has basically stopped working on actual shows, which is a blessing to some, and is currently working on a manga adaption of Kamen Rider Kuuga in which he's inserted characters from Agito ~~because he doesn't know when to quit~~, along with his own original manga which is likely of debatable quality, and shockingly a mildly autistic Hello Kitty webmanga.

This was thought to be the end of the Inoue. But, alas, his story was borne anew. On the 23th of January, on the second millennium and 19 years. Episode 2 of the Zi-O special, Rider Time, was announced to be written by none other than the Messiah himself. Inoue. As of the time of writing, this special is a month away, and therefore will not be available to view. But soon, we shall see him once again.

## THE SQUAD

Over the almost 3 decades that Inoue has been writing stuff for Toei, he has accumulated his own little posse of actors and creators who happily return to work on his projects. In fact, anyone who watches enough Inoue shows eventually realises that there are a bunch of people who keep showing up over and over again in them.

### Kohei Murakami

Kohei Murakami is an interesting guy. That is all that can be said about him. Ever since he got cast as Masato Kusaka in Kamen Rider 555, him and Inoue have been on good terms. Such good terms in fact that Kohei's blog has plenty of pictures of Inoue, and he has a habit of popping up every so often in stuff that Inoue has written, such as that one episode of GARO: Makai Senki that Inoue wrote, or that Cutie Honey live-action show that Inoue wrote.

He's also the guy responsible for planning out the Hello Kitty manga that Inoue writes, because he's a Hello Kitty ambassador or something, so we have him to thank for Hello Kitty going around rider-kicking people.

### Keita Amemiya

Long before Amemiya created the GARO series, he was just a wandering director who directed and designed a bunch of the bizarre shit that Toei put out in the 90s, such as the Kamen Rider movies. One of the bizarre things they put him on was Choujin Sentai Jetman, a show which was written by Inoue, and their partnership has been sort of existent ever since. It can be inferred that whenever they got together for the first time in like 20 years to make an episode of GARO, they must have had the idea right there to just make another series together, except this time it wouldn't be a kids show by Toei but instead a really weird, more adult show where both of them could show their true power-levels to the world. It is hoped that Inoue and Amemiya will get back together at some point to make even more weird stuff.