Man, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is pretty bad
 

I figured since I watched Ryuki last week, I'll spend this week watching Dragon Knight, and my god is it bad. I'm up to episode 21 and it seems like the budget for the show has taking a downward spiral since episode 11 hit. The sound effects, music, and visual effects seem to be downgraded. For example, Torque pulls out his Final Vent, and his monster shoots off missiles, bullets, and crap and blows up the room, but you would never know if had you just been listening to the show because the explosion sounds are pretty much non-existent. And every time sparks fly from a rider being smacked, once again, you can barely hear anything. Add on top that the acting of each new rider seems to get worse each time, and you have one hell of a terrible show. THis makes Power Rangers Operation Overdrive look good.

I'm at the point where I think I am just going to skip episodes since the previously portion of an episode pretty much gives you everything important that happened in the last one. I could probably do that up until the last three episodes of the show and not feel like I missed a thing.

The only positive things I can give the show are for actually putting all 13 riders into it and the motorcycles that Wing Nut and Dragon Knight (god Knight's name sucks in this show) ride.

The sound was actually why I pretty much dropped the series when it first aired. It made the fights much less interesting to watch.

So I've noticed. Like, the episode I just watched had Dragon Knight fighting Tiger (didn't care enough to remember his DK name) and it was just so freaking boring. Even Strike's Final Vent on Tiger was bland. Oh yeah, and then you had the fight between Dragon Knight and Ryuuga taken from the movie, that was from apperantly a dream, and the battle was great in Episode Final. Here, it felt slow and like I was watching EF on mute. In fact, what is up with the constant bullet time slow downs in this show? It does not make it stylish, it just wastes time.

SO I finished the show yesterday, and I will give it credit on one thing, the last 9 episodes were not all that bad. Once they brought in the Advent Master, the show got a little bit better, but then they had to go and use the McGuffin of, "They're not dead, the Advent Void was an interdimension where a rider would be sent if he was too badly injured to heal." So of course, everyone came back and everything ended happily ever after. On the positive side though, all 13 riders had to be there to help defeat Xaviax. However, they never really explained how Kit got the Onyx powers, he just had them.

Oh, my biggest gripe though was the character they used for Ouja. The dude was a freaking coward. Asakura would just go all out and would just wail on his attacks even if he took a hit. THis dude, JT was his name, got scared when Wing Knight went into Survive mode and started begging for forgiveness and crap. It was quite lame and an insult to the Japanese footage.

Xaviax was an amazing villain. That's the one thing I give KRDRK.

I liked KRDK. As an adaption of Ryuki, I think that the story was a nice mix of some of the aspects of the original and some new stuff. It was just neat to see a modern Kamen Rider series get the MMPR treatment.

The acting was pretty awful, I will grant you that. BUT it also had Victoria Jackson, whom I will watch in anything, so there is that.

Not a great show by any means. But certainly worth watching for the entertainment value, I think.

Funny you should mention MMPR as Tony Oliver who worked on PR's first 3 seasons worked on the KRDK game for the Wii. Rumour was the Wang brothers wanted him onboard if they got picked up for a 2nd season.

Who?

Yeah I know, we were talking about that at NDK last year. Tony said that after he did the video game the Wang brothers told him they wished they had him to do the show when they first picked it up.

Victoria Jackson, from Saturday Night Live, UHF, etc.

http://www.nndb.com/people/640/000025565/victoria3.jpg

She played the ditzy owner of the Used Book Shop.

And got kicked off the show for some pretty offensive off-camera statements.

You have to remember KRDK was done with a low budget. They were competing with disney at the time. It was a nice effort and a good original story. better lines than Pr had in my opinion.

OK, now that's a bit harsh. I mean, "Insult to the Japanese footage", really?
Anyway, if I were to be negative about the show, I'd say that there were some things didn't work out as well as they could have (such as the 'Onyx' dream & Xaviax's plans for Kit). And I'll admit some of the names could have been better (I often found it funny how Kamen Riders 'Axe' & 'Spear', barely used the weapons they're named after), but I think Wing Knight & Dragon Knight were fine, made them feel like a pair. And some editing on the fights was choppy (one of my favourite examples was the time were Wing Knight & Thrust started to fight at the end of one episode, but was completely forgotten about at the start of the next).

But at the end of the day, I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's the fact that it was technically my first Kamen Rider show but whatever. And hey, at least it wasn't Masked Rider.

I still have no idea who she is.

Yeah the show really needed someone like him or Doug Sloan behind the camera aswell as havign a stab at those scripts. Thing that bugs me the most is they had over 40-something episodes of Ryuki, the movie and the 13 Riders special YET we still got 3 clip shows? Come on!

Or she quit SNL, depending on which version you believe.

Honestly couldn't care less. I like her primarily from UHF, where she plays Weird Al's girlfriend. :D

Yeah, the editing in this show was horrendous. I mean, there was an episode where Wing Knight, Dragon Knight, and Strike are fighting in a forest, then under a bridge, then they are on top of a dam, and then over a wooden bridge with no rhyme or reason other than the fact they threw 4 episodes worth of battle footage into one fight scene.

BTW, some of you probably saw this in the Figuarts topic, but I have to post it here anyway:

http://archivaria.com/DrKain/Figuart...uja/Ouja09.jpg
http://archivaria.com/DrKain/Figuart...uja/Ouja10.jpg

Dragon Knight was far from perfect, but it's a bigass step from Saban's Masked Rider. Can you believe he may be doing a Kamen Rider show again after what went down with MR? The man lacks common sense and I doubt he'll put much effort into any series he choses to bring as "Power Rider"

Yeah, but Masked Rider was shit and Dragon Knight is shit with hot fudge. In the end, it is still shit.