Eh, it's like most first episodes, just there, way too much advertising for the toys.

Like seriously a new form right away?

I wish the puppet will go away in time, possibly when the 15 Eyecons are collected.

Our characters are okay, some annoying, others can see myself liking and others I'm indifferent towards.

The suit looks cool and all, but when it starts form changing the orange just clashes toooooo much for me.

The monsters have okay designs. Their base is quite cheap looking but their full forms kind of make up for it.

Throughout the episode I felt like getting pumped but then not because of how rushed it felt.

Overall I'm just going to wait for more of Ghost to see what I like and don't like.

Okay, so first things first: the wee little puppet ghost is actually pretty cool. It is not the height of quality special effects, but it works well enough and he's amusingly dickish. He is not Mandora Boy (de gozarimasu desu). That is a huge relief.

Second: The episode was incredibly rushed; there was easily enough plot here for two, maybe even three episodes. A lot of it was also stuff that we knew from all the promo material and pre-release info. It's unavoidable that we had to actually see all that in the show itself, but it's still always a bummer when you have to watch an entire episode of set-up that you've already read all about. This is obviously not going to be the best episode of the show and definitely not the best judge of what the average episode is going to be like.

That said, I still liked it. The characters are pretty basic for the moment, but Takeru seems like he'll be pretty cool. I'm not sure about his friends, though. The monk (Onari?) is obviously a major source of comic relief, but he's so lower key than anything on Drive that I don't find him overly annoying. Akari, on the other hand, I'm going to get real tired of if she's going to spend the whole season trying to Scully everything. Sage seems reasonably amusing, though; reminds me a bit of Ninninger's grandfather, only not insufferable. Wee little puppet ghost is, as mentioned, amusing dickish. Honestly, though, I'm going to need a couple episodes to get a full sense of the cast.

The action is looking pretty good, though. We're getting a lot of new fight locations so far, and that's always fun. I'd love to see more natural setting and less of the same old warehouses, industrial zones, and goddamn Ajinomoto Stadium. I'm liking the suits and weapons, too. The belt's standby noises don't bother me that much - I watched Wizard for fuck's sake and anything is better than Wizard in that (and many other) regard(s). I kinda like that Ghost is invisible while fighting, too, it reminds me a bit of Ryuki and the Mirror World. Again, I do want to see more to get a better idea of how everything will work.

Last point: Takeru is so damn lucky that was really Musashi's sword hilt and not something his dad bought at a thrift shop that belonged to the samurai equivalent of a Shocker mook or something.

Yeah, that's probably what I dislike the most about Ghost's design. With Gaim they were careful to keep the designs from clashing with the Arms, but orange just does not go well with red.

I got that feeling too! As a big fan of Ryuki, that's certainly something of a plus for me. It's an interesting way of doing it in general.

I don't really have an issue with the pacing of the episode. It's a pilot. They always move at lightspeed to ensure they introduce everything, and since it's an action series, they gotta have a fight, too. It was kind of inevitable.

I'm off two minds about it: it did feel really rushed to me, but I'm also glad that we got all the set-up out of the way. This could've been two episodes but I don't know if I'd want it to be two episodes.

To me, what felt rushed was the introduction of the Musashi Eyecon.
I would've much preferred all the fighting in this episode to be Ghost at his purest.

I'm fine with them pushing all the exposition out quickly, though I will admit that it was rather sloppy in doing so. I really didn't enjoy how our two secondary characters just spewed out everything to get it out of the way quickly.

But, in the end, I had fun and enjoyed it. It also gave me this.
http://i.imgur.com/VHEGQkU.jpg

Yes!! Love that! I'm going to save that pic!

I need a plush of Yurusen.

Was a bit more..don't want to say comedic, but lighter in tone than I had hoped, but overall I really liked it. Takeru seems like he will be a good protagonist, and his being a ghost has interesting potential and the time limit gives a nice sense of urgency to everything. His ore form is damn near one of my favorite suit designs ever, I dig the driver and sounds, I like how he henshins and the damashi, the ganma are cool villains. Just..a lot of the show is really appealing to me.