Alright, gonna completely sideline all my talk of who Kamen Rider Chronos might be in favor of a mind-blowing concept presented to me in conversation. I have to credit Comet for putting this one in my head.



With Kamen Rider Chronicle, it was no surprise that we’d receive a Rider using the Gashat to transform - Kamen Rider Chronos. At the time, it was to be expected that the game master, Kuroto Dan, would abandon his role as Kamen Rider Genm to achieve this form.



Since his death… well, people STILL think he’s gonna come back. But there’s also an expectation that Parado will abandon Para-DX for it, or that Graphite will become a Rider simply because he’s been revived. None of which are convincing theories to me.



Here’s the tricky thing about all those theories and why I shoot to them down: Look at what Kamen Rider Chronicle is, and what the Rider looks like. This is the Gold Drive of the series, the Sagittarius Zodiarts, the Wiseman - it’s our main villain until the end. You can’t just throw any random person into that role because it sounds cool. It’s gotta be someone with an impact, and more importantly, someone who has a deep connection to all that’s happened so far.



And as I’ve made mention of before (though maybe not worded this way), Kuroto Dan’s motivations seemed to me like they were short-term. I hesitated to say it but when he started working on Kamen Rider Chronicle and talking about making the greatest game, I had this thought of “This isn’t going to last until the end, he’s going to die.” His story has been told to the extent it could be told, and now he’s dead.



My response to the identity of Chronos, after being made aware of the possibility, has always been Kuroto’s father, former Genm Corp CEO. He’s in prison, sure, but that didn’t stop Ouja in Kamen Rider Ryuki from becoming a Rider. He is always shown in this eerie light, with a certain coldness to him, even wanting his own son dead.



Every scene with this man has made me interpret him as a potential future villain. And if Genm did not become Chronos, it would be fitting for his father to become that Rider since it has Genm’s design and eyes - but does it?



Getting to the point, I’ve been presented a much different person to take on the role of the villain. Someone who would make an impact. Someone who’s been there from the beginning. Someone you’ve been waiting to see a heel turn from.



Prodigy gamer M.



You’re either shocked or rolling your eyes. Because in my case at least, I’ve received a lot of messages with theories/hopes of some kind of moment where Emu and M - two identities we differentiate due to Mighty Brothers XX - become separated. I even said I could see that being fun for a summer movie thing, like Gaim-Yami. I didn’t think it would be a permanent thing because I thought to myself “Well we already have Chronos coming”.



But wouldn’t it be so fitting for M to become a separate Rider that Emu must fight?



Let’s take another look at Chronos. By which I mean scroll up and look at the image again. Yes, it certainly has Genm’s design… which is also Ex-Aid’s design. The eyes make you think Genm, but they might not be EXCLUSIVE to him.



The artwork for the Gashat (that being the icon that product images use) is also a tad strange. It flips the image around, so that the hair is flipped to the opposite of Ex-Aid’s. Now, this COULD be because the Gashat is used in the Buggle Driver - there’s no mirrors involved there, so the Buggle Driver just displays what’s on the Gashat as is. It gets flipped on the Gamer Driver.



However…



Dangerous Zombie, another Buggle Driver Gashat, isn’t flipped. So either this was some kind of error, or the art is trying to tell us something that the physical probably-reusing-parts suit cannot.



It could be telling us that Chronos is Ex-Aid’s mirror image… the same way Mighty Brothers XX splits up Ex-Aid, giving both Riders mirrored designs with changed colors.



But that’s not even the biggest giveaway in this theory. Let’s take a look at the toy catalog one last time to see what’s displayed on the Gashat. I edited it to make it clearer.



Whether you’ve been into it or not, Ex-Aid’s signature pose is a fist pump exactly like the one on Chronos’ Driver display. When I first saw it back then my initial thought was “Oh that’s kind of odd for the villain”, but if it’s M who has taken the lead whenever Emu transforms… it completely fits him.



Of course, this does lead me to the question of what Kuroto’s father has to do with any of this. Could it be that I - and anyone else who suspected him - just assumed his cold exterior was something more malicious? Or is he pulling the strings with M being a kind of puppet to him? Only time will tell.



Televikun teased that they’ll reveal Kamen Rider Chronos in their May issue. We’ll probably have our answer by the end of April.

