Birth really catapults into the spotlight. Eiji's alright, but OOO would not be as revered as it is were it not for Date/Birth and the story around him. It's a really unique take on the secondary rider idea and is really fucking awesome by the end.

Plus he looks awesome.

Go to at least 17. Date isn't in 16 that much.

Ryuki 13: Jeez, Bathair is really being unusally jerkish.

Okay seventeen then!

I'm sure the series has a great finale like I say it ain't a bad one but I just watched Wizard and I didn't plan on watching it again so soon, even if this version of the story has the cooler theme. I kept going with OOO to wait for it to break free from how generic it is and wow me but it hasn't yet, there have been brief moments of 'hey that is cool' but that is about it.

So I'm hoping a Date with Destiny (DO U GEDDIT) will change my mind.

It's pronounced "Dah-tey" so the joke doesn't work but points for trying!

So like dirty? That is even funnier in itself :lol

Funnier once you see him and how he dresses.

I'm looking forward to this...sort of.

By the way, I love your signature!

Ryuki just likes to sit, man. He's in no hurry.

Hehe and he looks so cute doing it :3

Wasn't that actually said in the GataKiriBa net movie?

No clue, I never saw that.

It was. It was quite odd, and even with subtitles, I barely had any idea what was going on.

Heh, Gorou's bad whistling is actually acknowledged. And they find out Zolda is the laywer!

Same here. It doesn't look as good when it's symmetrical.

He has ages to piss me off but I've absolutely loved Meteor so far, it's cool to have a physical martial arts fighting style while still keeping it flashy, his design is really cool and he's played off from Gen brilliantly.

Also in episode he adds some really interesting depth to the show, 'whose to claim your idea of justice is the same as mine?'. It's a long ironic joke of Toku that the heroes and the villains are basically the same thing, especially in Kamen Rider I feel because often the heroes get their powers from the same source as the villains near enough, but they rarely ever face it. The Kamen Rider Club keeps screaming justice, but whose? And who says theirs is the imperative?

The actor playing him is really great as well, it's gonna be a shame when he inevitably softens because I like the balance it strikes with him being badass behind closed doors. I just love Meteor. I hope that Dirty person is as as awesome a secondary Rider as Meteor.

And they did all this without overshadowing Gen, he was still able to kick ass and his power wasn't greatly diminished to make the new Rider look cooler. I love both Riders. I just love this series, normally by this point the thing starts to lose its edge and slow down but I'm just loving it.

I think another reason OOO isn't clicking is most of these opening fourteen episodes have been filler. Rather than making filler arcs and plot arcs, they kind of blend the two together so you have to force yourself through pointless stories about characters of the week we're never with long enough to give a fuck about to actually get to the stuff that matters. It's funny OOO gets away with this but Wizard gets shit for it.

And wait Os has multiple copies of the same core medal? The fuck? That kinda makes the core medals feel a lot special than they used to.

At least Cazali is almost complete so maybe this show might start getting interested and focused and start picking up the pace.

The reason Wizard gets shit and OO doesn't is because every character in Wizard is a complete moronic tool that's a pain to watch in any capacity.

Yeah, you didn't know that? I guess you haven't gotten to the big reveal on how the Greed work, but they're made up of nine core medals, but there's only three types. So yeah, OOO has a few copies, but there's only three so it's not like there's scads of medals everywhere. (And really they only do that so that the Greed can still function after OOO has taken their core medals for combos)

So, through this logic, I can state that any scene featuring Shunpei, Rinko, or Koyumi is Filler mixed with plot, then?

I haven't really liked any of the characters in the week in OOO either, they aren't unlikeable I just don't care about them.

And oh really? I guess that makes sense for the story.

Yes and no, if the stuff they are doing does nothing to further the story or their character it is filler. If it does, it is plot related obviously.

The changing medal count creates a greater illusion of story progression.

Honestly new Medals has basically been the only progression so far. Whenever it seems Ankh is developing as a character...he comes full circle, the Greed just kinda stand around and get kicked around the curb by Eiji and Happy Birthday and the gang also just kinda sit around but rather than getting beaten up they just overact.

I can't tell whether I like Eiji as a character or just appreciate that he is the only thing in the series so far with any sense of depth and forward motion.

Better than wanting to punch the face off of every single chump on Wizard.

That is a fair point. I guess it wouldn't be such a problem but since I feel so emotionally invested in Fourze, I go into OOO and I'm assaulted by all these characters of the week who just dump their problems on the audience and the show expects me to care?

I guess it was never a problem for me with Wizard because I had nothing to compare it to at the time and I was watching very different kind of shows alongside it.

Honestly if Wizard wasn't my first Japanese Rider series I'd probably be much harsher on it.

Fourze 19 - Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuki~chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan :3 at least we know why all the robots are food related now.

That said episodes 18 and 19 are pretty dumb. Why is no one questioning Ryusei? Is the gang really that thick? I actually think I lost some respect for the protagonists here. I just really hate plots like this, the whole way it played out was so clichéd. I was one hundred percent on Kengo's side in this.

Also is that Running Coach like Beast's brother or something? Haha.

There's a difference between caring for a character and a show trying to make a character relatable.
You don't have to care for or even like the character, but holding it against the show for making an attempt to make the characters even remotely redeemable or likable, as opposed to Wizard's actively trying to make the worst people alive the characters of the week? That's rather mean spirited.

I'm not denying that Wizard got it wrong but OOO doesn't even make the characters relatable in my mind. I just have 0 investment in this series, it's crawling along and giving me no reason to give a damn.

That said episode fifteen of OOO was actually a lot of fun, the episode mixed up the action a lot, Cazali looks like he's actually shaping up to the series first good villain and yay RaToraTah!

So OOO 16 finally provides OOO with a focused episode that pencils in the story and builds on the universe of the show, thank God. Still I'm not entirely on any of it yet. So wait, 800 years ago some dudes made some magic medals and for whatever reason they got left with nine each time and then the medals decided they wanted to be alive? 800 years later they've evolved into monsters? Whuuuuu?

As far as Kamen Rider CGI goes, Mezul's out of control form looked pretty good and it was pretty epic to see GataKiriBa go against that giant monster, this form has really grown on me. Plus Shingo's sister sure looked hot in her Christmas Dress haha.

As for Birth, eh, there is nothing really wrong with the design but he does look sorta like a lost VR Trooper. But a sort of rejected VR Trooper, all tacky and knock off looking. You know sorta how the fake Power Rangers look in Poundland? Powerwise though that huge cannon was pretty awesome. Kinda bummed it wasn't Gotou though.

Fourze 20: Seeing Meteor and Fourze do their limit breaks together was...AWESOME! Same with Meteor using the Electric Switch, he made better use of it in one fight than Gen has through the whole show, that upgrade form really is rubbish for Fourze. At least he gets a new and badass upgrade...Magnet States!

I also love how Ryusei basically says what the audience is thinking, "what a crappy team." I know right?! Gen was lovable until episode 18, then he just went full retard and the team fell apart with him. At least it was all happy by the end, awww.

I like how the episode addressed other things, like why nothing has really come of the fact that the highschool has daily monster attacks, it's little details like this, little extra bits of effort that really end up charming me.

So....I am 8 episodes into Kuuga.

My reviews on things tend to be really shallow as i am very easy to please. My biggest complaint so far is that not once has the thought of Godai maybe taking 5 seconds to hang out with his Cop friend in a field somewhere and maybe try to figure out what the hell he is capable of while transformed. Every time he turns into Kuuga he turns a different color and it becomes a series of trial and error while getting his ass handed to him.

The positives - The monsters are vicious as hell! and the smoke that comes off Kuuga's foot after a rider kick. That is super bad ass.

I literally just finished this series...and I really didn't like it. The first ten or so episodes are pretty solid, Ichijou is one of my all time favourite characters (not just toku I mean ALL TIME), it was very well written and had some great villains.

It was after the first ten or so episodes where the series took a direction really not for me, the series got darker and darker and I just felt the series was much too grim for a toku show, I wasn't a big fan of the whole Grongi language business either. Plus I personally found the acting and action all pretty terrible as well.

There are some great moments dotted around those last forty or so episodes though, the fight with the Porcupine dude was great and the villains get some cool developments powerwise towards the end of the series but meh.

The thing is, he doesn't really have time to do that. The Grongi aren't just gonna take a holiday while Godai figures out what he can do. And really, the trial and error thing isn't a bad thing to me. It really hammers home the fact that Godai is very inexperienced and that he is fallible; you can beat him, he just refuses to go down. He gets better at fighting as he goes along and gains slightly more control over his powers (until they get way too strong for him that he's creating MASSIVE explosions when he kills Grongi and has to fight them in unpopulated areas just so he doesn't accidentally kill anyone), which to me is more fun to watch than the "Guy who gets Rider powers and is immediately awesome".

Kuuga is my favourite Rider show (for reasons stated here: http://www.tokunation.com/showpost.p...postcount=4792), so I'm glad you're watching it and I hope you enjoy it more than some people. :D

I think the way they handled this got worse as the series progressed.

I really liked how they had a side character who could slowly decode Kuuga and feed it to the audience, plus Sakurako was gorgeous heh...heh...heh, but Godai was such a flat character with practically no character arc throughout the entire series.

I felt like I was getting more insight into Kuuga from the side characters than I was from Godai, this would have been fine if Godai was put in a position of experience but he was learning his abilities at the same pace as the audience (well minus the messy timeskips at the end) and yet he responded so little to his powers, except when stories demanded it (like the first time he did the Nuke Rider Kick) it was almost as if a suit actor took over during the fights....

How can I get excited for new forms and new powers and what have you if the main Rider seems so uninterested in it all himself?

Well he has to concentrate on saving people, the insight job is left to the supporters. They're a team, he isn't alone.

I kinda dig the Grim tone and Grongi language. It certainly is different from what i am used to. I can see how they both are acquired tastes though.


It's not that i expect for the Grongi to give him a day off to figure out how to be like Wizard and show up with 1,000 abilities and be insta-awesome. But just one scene of him trying to get a rough idea how to use these powers would help. It's a minor gripe , but almost all inexperienced superheroes have that right of passage. I still am looking forward to seeing how the show plays out. The Ichijou / Godai partnership is interesting. It makes me wish that Haruto and Rinko were more like this in Wizard.

Yeah, Birth really feels like a lost Metal Heroes design. He's a fun character, though. And Gotou's story with Birth is far from finished.

Episodes fifteen and sixteen of OOO were pretty great, so as long as seventeen is a good episode as well, I'll stick around. Even if this shows mythology is confusing as balls.

I think you're clear of the musical medals portion of OOO now. It's pretty good-great from now on.

Fourze 21 was another, rare, weak episode for the series.

This episode just really felt like it was going through the motions, sadly the series has been going that way for a while. Just really clichéd by the numbers plotting that really doesn't attempt to do anything new. I hope Virgo kicks some life back into the series and mixes it up again, I love her design.

Virgo was such a cool character, but tragically underused. She does become prominent, but I don't think her true "Arc" doesn't occur until the mid-late 30's.

Her introduction was especially badass, as she literally stepped out of the shadows and opened a giant vortex as the first thing she did. Sweet!

I'm just worried the show is losing steam, most Kamen Rider shows I've tried don't keep me this hooked this consistently, this far into the series and I was really hoping Fourze would be the first series to really carry the quality through to the end.

But sadly, as much as I love Meteor as a Rider, since his introduction the quality of the show really has started to dip. And I've had experiences in the past where I've hit the half way point of a series completely adoring it and then I completely hate the show by the end.

To be honest, while I kept with Fourze until the end, I wasn't so much hating it, but more just bored by the ending. While the series does keep it's twists and turns until the finale, the twists are followed by obvious plot developments.

It's like 5 minutes of jaw dropping surprise followed by 15 minutes of "I saw that coming."

That said, Fourze's fights are still fun, flashy, and when he uses a creative switch combination, it's awesome, but the actual plot doesn't do much for me in the latter half beyond aforementioned twists and interesting developments.