Blade is the best, but most people think it starts out slowly.

Black is awesome, Kotaro is one of the most badass riders ever, but this show misses a lot of potential and the character development is subpar.

Kabuto is a mixed bag. THe first 40 episodes are pretty good, but the show falls to crap during the last 10 with forgotten plot lines, deus ex machina bull****, and a lackluster finale.

So far I am enjoying Black WAY more than Blade, Blade is cripplingly slow and the action sequences are terrible.

Black on the other hand may not have as much focus as modern series, being less of one long story and more a series of unified adventures but man those adventures are enjoyable, the action scenes are great and Kotaro is such a cool Rider.

Completely disagree, but I don't think you have gotten to Leangle yet either.

I do agree with you on this.

Black Eleven was another fantastic episode! The Cactus Mutant in himself was awesome, and the story of converting people into basically compost for the plants was fucked up in a cool way.

Plus, who could have expected an added bonus of Black fighting Golgom directly! Black is extremely badass anyway, but it gave me chills that Golgom actually backed away from him, that they were scared of our hero! Fucking awesome.

Really my only annoyance is the creative liberties, like this episode where Kotaro walks into a crimescene and no one stops him, then a policeman explains at length what I assume is information no policeman would give to the public in the real world. I know it's just a toku show blahblah but I'm not dumb enough to swallow this stuff.

Up to the part in Den-O where Zeronos comes in, and this show just continues to beat OOO in the "WTF is going on" department. But it is good to see another Imagin that is more fun to watch than the human charaters :lol

Hilariously, Leangle's story starts decently, but then gets spread way to long.

I still think Blade is one of the better Rider series, though. It had a compelling story, mostly likable characters (Even characters who showed up for a whopping 4 episodes become memorable), and wonderful designs. I'll concede that the action isn't the best KR has presented, but I like the story and characters enough to overlook that fault.

Blade's design has to be one of, if not the, absolute best Rider designs that they've ever come up with. It's so clean and smooth. Chalice is a very close second.

Chalice's is my favourite Blade Rider design so far, I wasn't huge on Garren or Blade at the beginning but the more time I spend with them the more I notice all the little details on their suits that really makes me warm to them, I reckon they'll be fantastic figures.

What I truly love in this series though is not the Rider suits, but the Undead. So far all of the Undead have looked FANTASTIC, especially, ironically, the throwaway of the week Undead.

For that I'd go Grongi. They are my absolute favorite.

Chalice has one of my favorite Rider designs of all time. I love it.

The Undead have great designs. Even monsters of the week look great. The only fault I have are that they don't really indicate the monster's rank in their design.

Blade Fifteen was actually a really great episode.

I've always kinda felt Tachibana was kind of a weak link amongst the characters that truly matter, minus Aname who may well be the worst child character in all of television and Hirose who I'm only glad is around because she is gorgeous, she serves no other real purpose. So I was very satisfied that he's now starting to grow into a compelling character, it's just a shame his girlfriend had to die to do so...

Although the action was improved this week, helped by the added emotional investment, wow Wesker was...rubbish. I assumed he was a major player but seeing how little of a fight he actually put up once he was forced into fighting, I'm surprised he's lasted this long.

That is kind of the problem here, people say you can look past bad action for the sake of the story and the characters and I one hundred percent agree with this...but not in Toku. In Toku action is integral to the stories and characters, a majority of a shows progression and wrapping up is done through action and so it's important that the action be...good, especially so in this genre.

As such Wesker basically turning out to be utterly pathetic basically means the show has wasted my time for the last ten or so episodes, as not only did he not put up a fight but none of his actions turned out to be particularly meaningful or long lasting. And yes, I know he killed Sayako but that wasn't something specifically to him, they could have done that whole arc perfectly fine without him.

Ryuki's kind of losing me. Zolda's boytoy coolguy got captured by Ouja's dumb snake, and now Raia's gonna die. Even though I like him, he's really quite stupid. "My predictions are always right" but "fates can be changed. Okay, so are you sollumnly accepting your fate, or confident that you can change it? Make up your fucking mind!

Also, people sure like saying eachother's names for no real reason. I see this a lot in Japanese shows. It's like they can't trust the audience to realise they're thinking about someone unless they pointlessly and emotionlessly utter their name.

I've noticed this! Sometimes whole debates are answered just by dramatically shouting their name, then the character nods as if he's just understood the meaning of life.

I like the Lords from Agito most, personally. Fantastic designs, all of them.

Anyway, I finally watched Ultimatum now that the O-T subs are out. Overall I really loved it - Mega Max was probably just a little bit better as a whole, but I think this one was really strong.

Some stray observations, in roughly the order they came to me.

- Love the SIC style they went with for the Akumaizer redesigns.

- Hey, it's Mikie Hara! And boy did she get suspiciously sweaty during her short fight scene. Thank you for that, movie. :thumb:

- Hey, it's Nao Nagasawa! I guess this is officially a tokusatsu from the last three years, then. :p

- Boy, Koichi Sakamoto sure loves him some wire work, huh?

- Why is there a Yuuki mk. 2?

- Very cool cinematography on the parkour sequence.

- It is very cool seeing what all of the Rider Club kids are doing five years later, although it seems like that's a bit too short of a time for some of these jobs. I mean, yeah, Kengo as a scientist I can see, but Gentaro really graduated high school, went to college (and realize here I know very little about the Japanese educational system), and got his teaching degree in just five years?

- Please don't have Shun do the "bling!" thing every five minutes like the last Fourze movie.

- Miu still doesn't know what "Oops" means.

- This "Village" of mutants Ryusei mentions, is that the place from the W Returns Eternal movie?

- Boy, Koichi Sakamoto sure loves him some women's legs, huh?

- I kinda liked the brown armored thing more than the final Inazuman suit. I think it's the stupid feather eyebrows.

- Well, Yuuki's dead. That may have been the single best thing to...

- Oh.

- Drat. :(

- Gentaro meeting himself is probably the single funniest moment of the entire movie.

- Yay, very early era Wizard time!

- This is the Rinko we should've gotten on the show and I'm kinda sad now. :(

- I just want to point out that pretty much the entire last 75 minutes of this movie helps really reinforce why Haruto is one of my favorite Riders ever. He's cool and collected, but not arrogant or standoffish; he reacts to the funny or crazy shit going on around him, but doesn't go over-the-top crazy when doing so; he gets invested in saving the people around him, but doesn't get taken in by obvious traps and ruses; he always comes out on top, but rarely does so without breaking a sweat... I really, really like this character.

- I think Koyomi's been in more scenes in this movie than she was in all of the 20s and 30s of the show.

- Poitrine is... yeah. I know she was from a comedy show and all, but... yeah.

- Boy, Koichi Sakamoto sure loves him some crotch shots, huh?

- I think I've seen enough of Poitrine's crotch now to test out of an introductory gynecology class.

- I really love how Wizard and Poitrine's powers work in tandem. I wish stuff like this happened on the show more.

- Oh, time travel stories...

- Oh lord, I'd forgotten what Nadeshiko fight scenes are like. Please stop the sound effects. Please, just... just, please. No more harp runs, no more sparkles, just make it stop.

- Boy, Koichi Sakamoto sure loves him some girl butt, huh?

- You're making fucking POITRINE look serious.

- How is this the one female Rider that's gotten the most appearances so far?

- I want Mayu to show up from 25 episodes in the future and slap you.

- Shortest but most awesome Eiji cameo ever!

- It's not as cool as having the actual actors back, but it works and I'll take it.

- Hey, kids, go buy the Rider-themed Wizard Rings!

- Oh, Gentaro. You're a total spaz, but I love you. :lol

- So, um, where exactly are they driving the big truck and why do they need it in the first place?

- Love how Nadeshiko is riding Accel. Also how they're nowhere to be seen in the group motorcycle shots because the Accel bike mode isn't a practical prop.

- Boy, Koichi Sakamoto sure loves him some motorcycles jumping in slow motion in front of explosions, huh?

- We're using BuraKaWani here because we paid a decent amount for a suit and we want to use it at least twice.

- Wait, Eiji has scannable purple medals now? When the fuck did that happen?

- So scanning Nadeshiko's powers gives Fourze skis? How the hell does that even work?

- I knew the Donut Tranny joke was coming - read spoilers for the movie when it came out. That doesn't make it any less hilarious. Second-biggest laugh of the movie. :lol

- Wait, why is Nadeshiko leaving again?

- Hey, Yuuki. You were barely in this movie and I kinda love you for that.

- Seriously. Freaking love Haruto.

- And look, it's the new Rider that will be debuting on Wizard. I hope he's cool and not an occasionally funny, but largely useless moron.

So yeah, awesome movie.

Honestly, after coming from years of anime, where EVERYONE referred to each other as "ONIISAN!" "BROTHER!" "ONEESAN!" "ANIKI!" Hearing characters actually use names is a godsend. :

I completely forgot about Ultimatum, I have to grab it now the DC is out!

So I'm on the introductory episode of Road Sector, it was great. Although Battle Hopper is way cooler, I like how Road Sector was actually given an episode to it, we know nothing about Battle Hopper but everything about Road Sector. The bike itself is pretty badass as well.

I have to ask though...why is it here? Battle Hopper is already a sentient, fighting motorcycle with not nearly enough time spent on it to justify the weird bromance between it and Kotaro and now we're getting a new bike? We aren't even half way through the show...

I also loved that Kotaro had two enemies to fight, three if you count Golgom now getting involved directly, both with identifiable and interesting fighting styles, especially the beetle who was actually more of a crab with a whip. :lol

When the Rider has no alternate forms, no allies, and no weapons you need something to make new toys of.

Makes sense, but why give him something else he already has? Especially as I'm assuming the bike is the most expensive thing they could have added to the series aside from hiring a new cast member to fight alongside him as a Rider.

Seems like it would have been much more logical to give him a weapon or a new form or something.

Yeah, Road Sector is one of the worst things to happen in Black. It is pointless and served no purpose to the plot. They should have just given it to Shadow Moon.

I'm thinking of watching Blade, it's leaning more to that. I don't know yet I'm still split.

No, Black!

Honestly, Ryuki was the series that got me into Kamen Rider.

Blade Sixteen, I LOVED the fight scene in this episode, as they went flying through the window and the fight erupted in a chaotic public space, Chalice is so awesome - I love his savage, animalistic fighting style.

Kenzaki is really growing on me as a main Rider as well, in the early episodes he was just ANGST and I found him really annoying but they've softened his character a lot, striking a good balance between him doing epic heroics and being a bit of a goof. This makes him a better hero and protagonist.

Also the new Rider's entrance was RIDICULOUS in an awesome way. Shame his suit design isn't particularly interesting or good looking.

Black Thirteen was...kinda bad. The title of the episode was really stupid and the monster killing people with soap suds was especially dumb.

Also, what the hell happened to Kotaro this episode? I'm not complaining he was BOSS but he suddenly out of nowhere became Batman with the ideals of Superman. It is like his whole character changed without reason or warning. His quest to learn a new technique was pretty awesome though.

He saved a baby, a puppy, punched a boulder into pieces, read a book and used science all in one episode.

Black is the best Rider ever.

After like ten episodes of him simply turning up by accident, it was hilarious to see him suddenly become a Japanese Sherlock Holmes for no reason.

I don't even know what kamen rider I should see next after watching, ryuki any suggestions?

Which ones have you seen already?

My recommendations would be Wizard, OOO, Dragon Knight and Black.

I'm glad you're warming to Blade, both the series and the characters. It's great.

It was just a shame that after that episode the next episode mehed me so much I really didn't have a whole lot to say. Tachibana's character arc seems to always stop as soon as it starts and although an Evil Rider should be awesome, the action is so disappointing most of the time in this series I find it hard to care.

So Black Fourteen was probably the worst episode of the series yet, the action scenes were fun but everything else was corny or dumb or both. It is like the show is becoming less focused and more filler like the further we get.

24 episodes kitaaa!

I liked the cygnus zodiarts arc, an even if I don't like meteor design very much I really like ryuusei as a character. So far so good.

Also 600 pages... that's neat.

?! What?! I thought he looked awesome, I LOVE Meteor, it's just a shame his upgrade form sucks.

In general the idea behind his design is very cool, but in action something doesn't work for me. I may warm up more to his design in the future though.

Meteor is like a what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at design. It's not bad, just kind of out there.

Meteor lacks any inkling of practicality. With Fourze, he has silly aspects, but the overal design evokes an actual space suit with weird shit added on. Lots of Riders that have complex designs usually have some kind of basis, like Kabuto looking like combat armour, or Ryuki being Knight-themed. Then you have riders that lack any practical basis, but offset it by being simple and streamlined like OOO or W. Meteor... it's like he started basic, but then they gave him the big asymmetrical shoulder piece and covered his outfit in stars like he's opening in Vegas. He's got too much going on. He's like the upgrade to a more subdued deisgn. (another reason his actual upgrade is pap, since it goes even more outrageous) It's like he needs more sculpted detail, less surface detail. If he lacked the stars and maybe had the red compound eyes integrated into the blue meteor helmet and not behind it, he'd look better IMO.

Yeah, Meteor has some interesting ideas behinds his design, but overall they don't work together, personally I feel the Trans Blue Parts don't work when the rest of the body has such a simple design.

So, to some up the last major plot turn of Ryuki:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c5...ps8a9ede7c.png

No we're focusing on Raia. Result!

Den-O 24, Oh crap I though Ryuutarous was annyoing now Ive got to put up with Sieg?