If sappy speeches and the magic of friendship are cliches, then so be it. That's the kind of show I want to watch. Maybe we just have different tastes and writing styles. Fourze happens to be my third favorite Heisei Rider show after Faiz and Build. There definitely seems to be a thematic pattern with those 3.

Theft, blackmail, manipulation, extortion, abduction, murder, accomplice to murder, sexual harassment, attempted fratricide, betrayal.

His list of crimes is similar to Gai's, but without the abusive father backstory to explain his behavior and the adorable robot dog to explain his redemption.

Yeah, that's exactly my point. There are way too many depraved characters in Gaim and no real heroes for me to root for. I'll contrast with some other Rider shows to explain my point.

Ryuki has its own depraved characters but there are also real heroes like Shinji and Tezuka, and their philosophies are what gives Ren the development to become a hero. Antiheroes need heroes to keep them in check.

Faiz is generally considered a pretty dark show but the dark themes are useful to highlight the more powerful themes of hope and kindness. Even when faced with many tragedies, Takumi is still determined to protect dreams.

Build's major themes are love and peace as it stays a very lighthearted and comedic show despite all the very terrible things happening around it. Real heroes don't let their hearts get eroded by cynicism.

Fourze has a moral about friendship at the center, teaching that even people who are very different and have nothing in common on the surface can create a hardy bond founded on mutual respect.

Then there's Gaim....

Gaim is just dark for the sake of being dark without using it to teach any important morals and that's depressing as hell.

Forgiveness isn't really a new concept though. That's older than entertainment. Mitsuzane is guilty of way more than one bad deed and his redemption wasn't earned so his chance for my forgiveness has passed. He's crossed the line too many times for that.

Absolutely! And don't take this as me trying to say you are wrong or as an attempt to change your opinion. I just find Gaim to be a very interesting show to discuss because there's so many different plot elements and moving pieces going on that everybody really has their own feelings about it.



I agree, I would have liked to see it fleshed out more in the show proper. I think they touched upon it a little bit at the beginning of the series, but it definitely should have been the focus of at least one full episode.

But see, that's the very reason I like Gaim so much! In your typical Rider series, the secondary Rider joins the hero's side and whatever conflict previously existed between them shifts over to the Tertiary Riders of the series until they too join the "good" side.

But here, Kaito stands by his beliefs and there remains tension between him and Kouta up until the very end. He doesn't necessarily get a redemption arc, but I really don't think he needed one. His heart was ultimately in the right place, but he was so bitter and jaded from what happened to him that he truly felt the only way to create a world free of the oppression that tore his family apart was to destroy what came before. Kouta, on the other hand, learned how to use his powers to save the world that already existed and that came from his growth throughout the series, on top of having strong moral guidance from his sister.


And that's a valid take. That's why I like Mitsuzane as a villain so much. Some people see him as totally irredeemable. Others see him as a kid who got way in over his head and didn't have the emotional maturity or the moral guidance to deal with it in a healthy manner. He's a character that's extremely possessive of what's important to him, believes that he's the only one truly aware of what's going on (even though he ironically gets manipulated by just about every villain in the series) and that's what caused him to take the direction he took throughout the series.


I have to disagree here as well. A character without redeeming qualities to me is someone like Kamen Rider Ouja or Gold Drive, characters who thrive off of their ability to cause pain and suffering and have no shame about it. Mitsuzane, on the other hand, genuinely wants to be a hero, but much like Kamen Rider Tiger, has a completely backwards take on what heroism is.

Mitsuzane has always wanted to be a hero. Nearly every dirty deed he committed throughout the series was what he saw to be a heroic action. Killing Kouta was a move he decided to make because he believed Kouta would get everybody killed by giving them false hope. Siding with the Overlords was a move he made because he saw humanity's fight against them as futile, and believed serving them was the best way to protect lives (but he mostly only cared about Mai at this point). It's even apparent in his fight against Takatora, where he draws the completely wrong conclusion from Takatora's speech about nobless oblige, but nonetheless still believes he's acting heroically.

But all of those actions left him with nothing. His friends, Kouta, Mai and Takatora were all gone. The control he tried to maintain throughout the series gradually slipped away from him as he drove more people out of his life. He had to face the consequences of his actions harder than every other single character in the show. And even after everyone forgave him, he couldn't forgive himself for all the damage he caused.

Then Kouta, who he's always looked up to, gave him the words of encouragement he needed to finally strive towards becoming the hero he always wanted to be, but now having learned from his mistakes and growing from them.

I don't see this as being true at all.

Kouta is firmly a hero. Zack is definitely one after becoming Knuckle as well.

Takatora starts off as a anti-villain who only does the things he does when he sees no other viable option. The minute Kouta presents an alternative, Takatora is more than happy to go along with it because he ultimately doesn't want people to die.

Oren Pierre Alfonso starts off beating up on the Beat Riders, but only because he sees them as reckless delinquents using literal weapons to settle petty rivalries and to be fair, they kinda are. But he's a soldier and he's highly disciplined so it makes sense. He takes Jonouchi under his wing, and he actually ends up becoming a genuine (if slightly ineffective) hero himself.

The theme of the series is about power and what people choose to do with that power. So yeah, it's going to be a pretty dark series, because realistically speaking, most of the people that crave power don't have the best of intentions. But it also underlines just how heroic Kouta truly is because he never lets that power corrupt or twist his morals and yeah, he's the one that gets the ultimate power and saves the world at the end of the day. Gaim starts off as a deconstruction, but comes back right around to becoming a reconstruction. You have the idealistic hero archetype who ultimately successfully remains the idealistic hero, you have the typical Tsundere Shonen-rival character who actually follows through on his beliefs but ultimately still has a good heart behind him, you have the loyal best friend who actually isn't all that loyal but does learn from his mistakes and grows, and you have the Well-Intentioned Extremist villain who you'd initially think would stick to that extremist ideology, but actually wants to be proven wrong. The villains are so depraved, but that only makes characters look even better when they act genuinely heroic.

Of course, likewise you are entitled to your opinion and I'm glad you were able to enjoy Gaim. It tried a lot of controversial things which aren't going to work for everybody and I personally wasn't a fan. I think there was a lot of potential for a decent story here if the execution was a little different.

Yeah, I'm very interested in the idea of two people clashing with each other for the entire show. Most recently, there was Aruto and Horobi, and before that, Sougo and Geiz although their rivalry ended at the halfway point. Maybe I would have been okay with this if Kaito's morality was more consistent with his actions.

I liked the portrayal of Mitsuzane as a villain as well, he's a truly despicable person. But I feel like that character stops working when you try redeeming him. Instead, it's Kaito who gets killed without a redemption and I feel like their arcs were mixed up at the end.

So I do actually acknowledge Zack as the token hero and I was really rooting for him as an underdog to try and stop the pointless fighting between Riders, but he kind of just stays an underdog and gets left behind by all the stronger Riders and even gets his Driver destroyed. He's stronger than Kurokage but that's the extent of his power, at least until he got his own movie and Jimber Arms. It's like all the stuff that should've been in the show was in V-Cinemas written by Mouri.

Kouta on the other hand, he definitely has some heroic qualities at least compared to the really depraved characters, but he sometimes goes in to antihero territory when he does something impulsive and unprovoked like in his interactions with Yoko. It's probably due to some of these hypocrisies that made him unable to redeem Kaito. He's portrayed as a hero simply by being better than some of the worst guys ever and a benevolent space god but compared to most of the Primary Riders in the franchise, he's quite morally challenged and he doesn't always move past that.

The theme of power and its application is there for sure and it's something that was very prominent in Ryuki as well. I just think Ryuki did it better and gave me more a feeling of hope, that despite all these people murdering each other for their selfish wishes, there is still someone trying to learn what's the right way and what does it mean to protect a life? I feel like those things were lacking in Gaim, unfortunately.

Okay, so let's talk Wizard for a sec. Aside from Wizard being handed new power-ups when there's a toy to promote and the Phantom generals getting killed off one by one, it's basically all episodic, there's not really an overarching plot up until the final act of the show with the Mages. The characters have some amusing quirks but not really any depth or development, I think Haruto might be even more bland a protagonist than Takeru, and that's saying a lot! (I do hear he's better in crossover movies, but I haven't seen those.)

My unpopular opinion is that all of that is actually fine. I love Rider shows with overarching plots and complex, developing characters, those always seem to stumble at some point but I definitely hope Toei keeps doing them. But sometimes, you just want to see a flashy hero beat up monsters in a needlessly stylish way (and god damn, if there was one part Wizard nailed, it was the needless stylishness) and be left feeling like everything will be okay. Maybe I'm biased because I saw Wizard during a time in my life when I was juggling a lot of other stressful stuff, but it was exactly what I needed at that time, a fun diversion without too much to keep track of.

So yeah, that's my defense of Kamen Rider Wizard.

Wizard wasn’t really a show I enjoyed much myself, but with how much I love Hibiki’s first half it hopefully shows that I’m all behind “Rider doesn’t have to be serialised and heavy on plot”! It’s good to judge each show as its own thing rather than by one’s expectations and it’s nice to see some praise for a show that often doesn’t get any :)

I admit I did like Wizard a bit more towards the end when they finally started to bring in more riders again after a good couple of years of basically just the 2 for the whole show but all in all I wasn't a big fan of most sentai/rider in 2012 and 13(although still watchable), I actually preferred whatever random smaller toku those years funnily enough!

RPM has the worst theme song in all of Power Rangers history. Yes, that includes being less than Operation Overdrive & Ninja Steel. How they ended up choosing that generic, bland forgettable "song" over some legitimately good demos will never make sense to me.

Hilariously, we almost had Danny from Game Grumps ending up singing the RPM theme :lol

Oh I heard that one too. Not my favorite but still such a wonder to behold. XD

But seriously, I'm sure it's just my taste, but WHY wasn't the "We're here to save humanity" demo used!? It's such a better song. It fits with the series while still feeling like Power Rangers. What we ended up getting was some try-hardy mush of guitar & techno rhythms. We get it, ya wanna be a dark & serious show. But you're still freaking POWER RANGERS; don't pretend you aren't RPM.

Rant: Over. ^^;