Regardless of the show's flaws and which ones were caused by Covid and other complications vs which ones were just bad decisions by the creators, it is cool to hear that they consulted with experts for the technology, and that they talked to people who actually were in those professions for some of the job battles.

Agree with all of this. And it's not even like writing good female characters is any harder than writing males, there's different cliches to watch out for but that's about it. Heck, most of the secondary and even main Riders recently could've been women without changing the story! But for some reason the creators seem unable to have a female Rider without sidelining her :/

It’s because Kamen Rider’s main audience is young boys and boys generally don’t care for female characters. And with Pretty Cure going strong, Bandai/Toei isn’t keen to push for that to change anytime soon, since they’re not losing that audience anytime soon.

I think in a franchise that decided to let Gen Urobuchi take the wheel and thus alienating every single kid before the halfway point it wouldn’t be unheard of to include more female Riders.

And at the end of the day all that matters is toy-sales. And if you include like 4 items tailor made for female characters that don’t sell as well as the gazillion of other things you make then that isn’t a huge deal.

Especially in stuff like Kamen Rider were items are interchangeable throughout the line, I wouldn’t believe a young boy would turn down a Progrise key just because it has Valkyrie's helmet on its packaging. Since you know, it makes new unique sounds in the main belt anyways and the children are taught that it would become a new form they could wear.

Bottom-line: Including more female Riders is super easy, and I don’t think it would impact their sales negatively at all.

Valkyrie’s items instantly sold out on pre-orders like all other DX items, so...

Agreed. As much as I am a fan of Rider, the inclusion and portrayal of women is severely lacking.

If we can even presuppose that Japanese boys don't care for female characters, it's another thing to assume that their inclusion would somehow hurt the show or other male characters.

At some point, your work of fiction stops being influenced by fans and starts influencing fans themselves. You can't pretend that Kamen Rider can teach us the nuanced intricacies of robotic-humanoid-cyborgs and their adaption into modern society, before it can recognize that women can be compelling characters?

I really think this tops McKuuga as the weirdest cross promotion Rider has ever done

I mean ultimately it isn't up to poppa Toei or the writers to decide who gets toys and who doesn't.

Geiz wasn't allowed to have an in-show power up to put him on par with GrandZi-O, blame Bandai going "Yeah but, girls don't like Rider".

Yaiba from the opening and vitamin c commercials is promote to be the third rider like woz and greases, but treated worst than poppy and marika.

It really just comes down Bandai/Plex not wanting to do it for whatever reason. Who knows maybe it's only the Western fanbase that really clamors for more good female representation in Kamen Rider maybe the Japanese doesn't care about it as much? I don't know and love to get more insight on this topic from the Japanese fanbase but alas I don't speak Japanese so that's gonna be kinda of hard.