boo this man

Anyway, despite my... disposition, when it comes to Decade, it was fun to finally feel like I was contributing something (somewhat) unique to these threads for once.

And really if anything I feel like I should be thanking you, since my end was kinda the easy part comparatively. I can't imagine putting up with my constant moaning about the show over Discord was any fun; I appreciate the patience!

While I was mostly quiet throughout this thread, that was mainly due to the same reason I stayed completely out of the Faiz thread: Almost everyone seemed to be having a good time and I didn't wanna come in and ruin the good vibes.

Decade might have turned out to be my current most hated show in all of Kamen Rider(yes, even worse than Inoue Hibiki[say the thing, you know you want to]), but, that mainly comes down to how I handle stories being alot different than what alot of other people who participate in these threads seem to, and that's good, because it meant everyone got to find enjoyment.

And hey, the entire experience did atleast give me one thing.

https://i.imgur.com/GHr7qXD.png

As much as I hated the characters in this, Daiki was always an absolute treasure to watch. Even if his writing is incredibly inconsistent like everyone else in the show(seriously Kobayashi can't write Daiki worth anything), his actor has a ton of charisma, he has some legit good moments focused on him, Diend is way cooler than Decade in every way, and by the end, I was actually rooting for him specifically when it came to the story. Fantastic gay representation, this guy.

So was the experience a complete waste? Can't say that it was. So thanks for making this thread and making it a special occasion ontop of that, otherwise I'd've continued missing out on the diamond hidden in the garbage.

It's always fun talking to you and I hope that when it comes to the Zi-O thread that I can--

why do u hate me

I would not fight anyone who said that Kaitou was both the best character and the best actor on the show. I think the need to incorporate Kaitou's mysterious background was one spinning plate too many for a show that was dropping plates weekly, but Kaitou still managed to be awesome. Really great secondary Rider. (Sorry, Onodera.)

While I've yet to watch Movie Wars 2010, I do want to drop by and just say that I'm thankful for having participated in this thread. And it was just a fun time to just talk with everyone in here as my first big real contribution to these discussion threads.

To Zi-O I say good luck! And I'll absolutely be PM'ing Die sometime in the coming days.

I watch both Showa and Heisei I still get why they must put Showa in its Heisei Celebration?

What a Journey, it has been...

Decade was where I saw my first completed Kamen Rider Season after I the episodes for Amazon (1973) eluded me, not counting the first episode of the original (1971), and this certainly threw me for a loop. It wasn't like the stories I've been used to at the time, and it was nothing like your usual Anime seasons (as far as I've seen), and there were ups and downs, but in the end, this introduced me into the world of Kamen Rider, where my only real connections to Toku (from Japan, Power Rangers doesn't really count, per se) were Godzilla and recently at the time, Ultraman.

I did consider rewatching the whole season with everyone, but couldn't work out good time, and chose to rely on my not-exactly-reliable memory, and some passing comments of others on this thread. This was fun, especially for someone like me, who usually ends up playing catchup and hasn't really interacted with people to such degree.

And so, I'd like to thank everyone, Die, our eleven contributors for the AR Worlds, and everyone who followed this thread. Thank you for this wonderful Journey where I got to reminisce Decade, the good, the bad, and learned a lot I never knew from the begining.

Zi-O, boy, that's going to be one heck of a beast. At the moment, I don't think I'll be able to join you for the next Heisei Celebration, but there's always a possibility that might change. Should it happen before the call to arms is over, I might consider joining you for the Final Heisei Rider, and technically the first Reiwa Rider.

Hey so is the den-o ooo crossover on the list before zi-o?

Thanks for pulling double-duty on Den-O! Now that you're a contributor, I hope you feel like you've arrived!

Big ol' mystery. Like Switchblade said, it would be a dream to hear someone spill the tea on Decade's production. Some very weird decisions got made, and I would love to hear why.

Yeah, I... I always hope these things can be followed without watching the episodes fresh? I tried to toss in some episode synopses when there were two of us, to help frame the episodes for people.

And thank you for chiming in throughout this thread! I hope your first year on the boards is turning out to be a good one.

I don't know if I'll be rewatching Kamen Rider Brain, but maybe!

(I kid! I hope you're able to join in for Zi-O!)

Yeah, it'll land in the Legend Riders thread, for sure. I might finally understand why it's a big deal that Teddy gets killed in the beginning!

So we're at kind of a finish line for me. I've been following Die's threads since he started this project, but when he hit Faiz I realized that I didn't remember the show well enough to chime in on the discussion. I started watching the show, too, and really rediscovered how much better it was than I remembered. So I've been following along with the rest of these, revisiting some old favorites and rediscovering some shows that I haven't seen in over a decade (pun unintended, but welcomed). It's been a lot of fun, but I always intended for this to be the end of the watch-along.

It's been years since I saw many of these shows, but going forward we're getting into stuff that I watched fairly recently: Zi-O, Zero-One, and Saber. Regardless of my thoughts on their individual quality (of which I have many), I don't really want to watch any of them again so soon. I'm going to keep following the threads and chiming in - and if we are doing this approach again for Zi-O I know which tribute I want to discuss - but I'm going back to participating by memory and not by rewatch.

Doing a TN watches Zi-O thread might be a bit harder than doing one for Decade, since Zi-O has a tendency to merge characters from different series into one storyline (the winter movie is Kuuga, Den-O and W all in one). Unless you’d be willing to work with two contributors in a post, I wouldn’t recommend it.

I really appreciate the months of support! You've made these threads a lot more fun for me. I don't blame you for taking a break and skipping some shows that just aired! It'll maybe be weird to have me "discovering" a show that everyone got sick of talking about only two years ago, but hopefully it'll still have some fun to offer.

We'll see! Let's get to 20 first, and then we can figure out scheduling.

Actually, the eyes aren't the only difference with Violent Emotion. The gem on the head is also purple instead of yellow! Violent Emotion is my favorite Decade form for how crazy OP it is. If you count it as a variation of the base form, then you could probably say that Decade is the strongest Rider in base form, since he has access to all the Riders' powers and weapons, including non-Primary Riders, without the need to Kamen Ride. He's even the final boss of Battride War while being possessed by Callas!

When is Decade ever a standalone though? This is a special event for Double, getting to team-up with a Rider from another show, but for Decade, this is just business as usual. The W half of the Movie War is real good as well, focusing on Begins Night where Shoutarou and Phillip had their destined meeting, the reason why Phillip is scared of using Fang Memory and the lore of Shoutarou's mentor Soukichi. The teamup itself has the awesome triple Rider kick between Decade, Double CycloneCyclone and Double JokerJoker, with the Final Form Ride being business as usual for them as well since they're always splitting in half for finishers like Joker Extreme and Joker Strange.

W is 6/19 in my Heisei Rider Ranking. Decade is 9/19 and would be higher if the ending had better execution.

Have you considered when you're planning to watch Kamen Rider G, The First and The Next though?

Thanks for giving the opportunity and being very accommodating as a host. I enjoyed it!

Oh man, I was going to make that joke.

And Zi-O and Build.

Double may have a prominent place on the poster, but not so much in the movie, due to a scheduling conflict forcing Toei to improvise on their plan.

Somewhere between 2023 and 2030! Mark your calendar!


It was my pleasure! Thanks again for pulling last-minute double duty!

I wish I could see your reviews of W to Build.

I can help with some of that!

The second half of Ghost is here. The Ex-Aid movies are here. Build is here.

The current plan is to follow up Revice with less-often writing projects (probably only two or three a year, rather than five or six) that alternate between the Heisei shows I never wrote up (W through the first half of Ghost, plus Ex-Aid) and brand-new experiences like Sentai, Power Rangers, Ultraman, and others. I'm nearly current with Rider, which was the original goal, but I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching these shows and talking about them here.

I mean, honestly; you could just watch G now! It's technically Decade Media and it's, what, 10 minutes?

Which Toku you going to watch after Kamen rider ?

Those threads may actually get more traffic since they're more recent shows that are fresh in a lot of minds.

It's over a year away, but I'd be shocked if it wasn't either Go-Busters or an Ultraman. (Trigger? Is that one of the good ones?)

Maybe! I never know what to expect, but I haven't been let down by this board yet. Y'all are great!

Thanks for yet another fun couple of months, Die! I'm really glad this crazy idea you had ended up panning out, because as you've taken note of, there really is a strong parallel between Decade's storytelling formula and what you wanted to do with this thread. It's nice that this got to be the special occasion you were hoping for. Despite teasing you around the start of the thread about how you were *obviously* supposed to watch Decade early on (like apparently everyone else did!), I've honestly been very excited about the idea of you working your way through these ten shows, and then circling back from Decade to where you left off after Build. I have a feeling that's actually going to be a pretty awesome way to head into Zi-O. Again, it's very neat seeing this all come to fruition.

As for that Zi-O thread, though! If I could make one suggestion that I believe will make things easier on you: maybe consider having people directly suggest five episode groups they'd like to pitch in for, instead of/in addition to five shows? Just episode numbers with no context shouldn't be too revealing for you (it's not a spoiler to say Zi-O largely sticks to two-parters, right?), and I really feel like that extra set of data will be a lot simpler to work with in the long run.

Thanks for being there for all of it!

I was actually talking to someone who has been watching Ghost recently (and not loving it), and I mentioned that Ghost's very specific storytelling decisions were what made me start posting on TokuNation. They'd joked that you must've come in to set me straight, and I was like Actually No Fish Was Very Cool About Having A Discussion. You've always been incredibly gracious in the ways you let people have their own perspective, while still trying to to address criticisms that are in bad faith, or just misreading the story. It's a rare gift, honestly. It's tough to disagree with people on the internet without starting a fight, but from day one you've been great at keeping things friendly and inquisitive. And on Ghost, even! I don't know if I'd've been so equanimous if someone joined the boards to say watching Ex-Aid was killing them!

Anyway, thanks for being a consistently positive presence in these threads. I can't think of a way you could be more help to--

!!!!

!!!!!!!!

Thank you! This is an incredibly good idea! I am changing the post and messaging people tonight!

One request (for Fish or anyone else who watched Zi-O): Can someone PM or post a non-spoiler breakdown for Zi-O, by blocks of episodes? Like-

EPISODE 1-2
EPISODE 3-4
HEISEI FOREVER
EPISODE 5-6
RIDER TIME: RYUKI
EPISODE 7-8

and so on. Just episode numbers and where ancillary projects fit in. That would be awesome! Thank you for streamlining this whole process!

Did somebody say ZI-O!?

Alright breaking it down
Episode 1-2
3-4
5-6
7-8
9-10
11-12
Heisei Generation Forever
13-14
15-16
17-18
Rider Time Shinobi
19-20
21-22
23-24
25-28
Rider Time Ryuki
29-30
31-32
33-34
35-36
37-38
39-40
41-43
Over Quartzer
ZI-O hyper battle
44-46
47-48
Final Episode
Reiwa The First Generation crossover with Zero-One in which you would watch after episode 9 of Zero-One
Geiz Majesty
Rider Time Decade vs ZI-O
Rider Time Zi-O vs Decade

Let me know if I got anything wrong.

Nothing wrong I can see, but I will also add on that Reiwa First Gen has zero bearing on any other Zi-O stuff; so if you want you can watch all other Zi-O content (Geiz Majesty, Vs Decade) before starting Zero-One

Yeah that is true Reiwa just placing it where it is for completion sake and also for context when he does get to that movie.

The only thing to add is just make sure you watch the .5 episodes after their respective episodes for the first 16.

The .5's are the closest we've gotten to Net Movies in years, but they're also heavily attached to the content from the episode they're .5'ing. So you know, best to watch them as was intended which is immediately after the episode.

Brilliant! Thank you both!

ridiculous. who would watch power rangers

Noted! Thanks!

i just want to be like the other cool kids on the board

Oh goddd yeah the .5 episodes are the best. Just. The 'net movie' description is dead on they are so fun

Right the .5 episodes how did I forget to mention it. Though in my mind it such an intrinsict to ZI-O I just readily assumed Die already knew about watching .5 Episodes. Why didn’t only go up to 16th episode

I would've probably figured it out from the file names, but I'm glad to hear they're both entertaining and integral!

Neat! I've never really looked that closely at Violent Emotion before, but that's still nice to see the subtle differences to the suit. Also, I just realize this could be one of the basis for the Reiwa Final Forms.

Oh nothing against W or his inclusion in the movie, since I like W and Begins Night was still very enjoyable and set up my experience with the show proper. And creative (if you can call most of them that) movie finishers are always extremely satisfying to behold.

While I might rate W higher than Decade (depending, I might wait until I've seen more Rider shows first), I definitely agree Decade's endings could have been better, but overall, Decade was still an enjoyable show, not sure if that's just nostalgia or something, but I definitely see that.

Anyway, Zi-O's .5s Episodes are the closest things to Net Movies I've seen (I'll get around to the Decade ones or any others from shows I've completed). And good thing we're preparing Die for Zi-O's "scheduling" since unlike Decade, it's going to be a full season, and not as consistent as the former all things considered.

The .5 episodes are a weird mix of in-universe background and production context. I think they're where I first really wrapped my head around how the early tribute episodes' gimmick worked and it explained some of the guest casting decisions.

Yeah, Decade was doing the whole "Base Form but better" thing before it was cool and I think it's still the best example of the concept! Violent Emotion is truly an intimidating form representing Decade's nature as the Destroyer of Worlds, as he becomes like an inescapable grim reaper to any Rider who's unlucky enough to be in his proximity. The only downside is that it makes Complete seem pointless.

Sorry if I was unclear, 6/19 means my sixth favorite out of 19 Heisei Rider shows that I've watched. So I also prefer W to Decade.

Decade was an enjoyable show for sure and even though I agree with pretty much everybody about how lame the ending was, I can't help but appreciate the journey. Maybe that nostalgia bias is also affecting my judgement, but it's hard for me to hold it against Decade the same way I would hold it against Hibiki or EX-Aid for similar problems. There's something about Decade, in how open-ended it is, that keeps the journey moving and fresh.

I think the only thing this list is missing is "Kamen Rider Blade: The Joker's Path" which takes place before episode 29 of Zi-O. Although it is a Drama CD, so I dunno if Die would be down for it.

PLEASE Watch Shinkenger and Kamen Rider Black. :lolol

Don't sweat it, I probably should have realized this beforehand (who scores 1 out of 19? :lol).

Only saw the two episodes of Hibiki, courtesy of Toei Tokusatsu World (still need to get around to some of the others), and Ex-Aid, have yet to see the True Ending Trilogy. I'm currently considering Den-O or Gokaiger for my next Toku binge after Code Geas.

Well, there can be a villainous central character, and there can be unscrupulous approach to achieve one's goals, and not everything has ties to moral lesson... but I guess if, Tsukasa is OOC here, then go ahead criticizing this part, because yeah being a jerk =/= being (anti-)villainous, and I'd be also more critical on OOC depictions of a character (including when it's portrayed as joke moments too though); or anything unfaithful to the source material (except if it's on purpose to improve). Though Tsukasa's attitude here still flows well IMO on his usual, albeit of course acting differently including to his friends such as throwing away the camera with.. ehem.. violent emotion. Albeit probably it's just his great acting despite the setting here. I feel like this 'teaches' the end justifies the means mindset, with how Tsukasa kills all the Riders, but it makes the world better at the end, which'd mean you have to be completely ruthless on your mission to do the greater good, and that humane traits like emotion are just weakness. Unfortunately, though Tsukasa can be OOC here, this is what people can argue about heroes being "actually bad" (if pitted against well-intentioned extremist baddie), that they only hinder the "actual hero" (said extremist)'s plan to make the world better; end justifies the means ofc, doesn't matter what atrocities the extremist had done.

For the Wataru explanation, I never got a sense that this'd be a Build-like ending of unifying worlds though, the premise iirc is always only about keeping the world getting destroyed, and this time Earth crashing into each other only means their destruction instead of unifying like Build (logical :p), I guess this is the new reveal instead of more explanation about previous stuff, as it wasn't explained about the end part of the rider battle. As usual though, there are arguments of Onodera just starting that the Ultimate form is weaker, but it's a punching bag again to Decade, albeit Violent Emotion is also considered as one of the stronger Riders (outside of that certain one). Other than that, there's a new flavor of Decade Complete's ability here where he calls out all previous Riders in their Ultimate form at once, instead of just calling one.

I guess the explanation of how everyone comes back is similar to Tsukasa here.... as other Riders "died" just like Tsukasa.

Didn't you think that the asshole term means if someone is malicious? Otherwise true Natsumi is one of Riders, and it's probably canon if this is the continuation of the TV ending. Still wonder why Natsumi didn't henshin when she's together with Kaitou against the Shockers. Probably that way, it means that Natsumi.. still can't fight outside of the suit? Usually Riders after fighting for a while with a suit can fend off mooks just fine, and it's also seen in Kaitou. For wanting the movie to stuck on that story... I wonder what's the execution you'd want for Natsumi being the one to stop Decade.... killing Decade before he kills other Riders? Kinda totally different outcome that it means Decade didn't win, and it feels like Natsumi submits to Narutaki's propaganda instead of keep her faith on Tsukasa...

I don't really love plotting out better/more appealing stories. I try to keep criticisms to the material, and where I think the material goes astray. I don't... I'm not a fanfic guy. There's what happened, and it's either good or bad. I liked it or I didn't.

That said, I think you can do a story where Tsukasa brings in his friends on his plan, and it still ends up with Natsumi having to physically stop Tsukasa. Looking at how conflicted and betrayed Onodera is in the movie, that's the template for how you include the regular cast for Decade's plan: they hear out Tsukasa's plan, they're all onboard with the ugly necessity of it, and it eventually becomes something that Tsukasa starts feeding off of. Something where we see the shift from Decade to Violent Emotion, and Natsumi realizes that she has to do something about it. (Onodera wouldn't because he'd just lose, and it's not like Kaitou would ever just shoot Tsukasa in the face or anything stupid like that.) There's plenty of scaffolding in place for that story, if the production team had felt like using it.

It was great to see you get so much out of Decade, Die, even as the series continues to evade any attempt to end in a reasonable and/or satisfying manner. Especially when there are aniversary series out there which take Decade's anniversary concept and manage to be a lot more crowd-pleasing (Gokaiger, it's Gokaiger), this lovable-but-frustrating show still has some unique things that make it stand out. I don't think it'll ever be one of the all-time greats that always gets recommended, but it's interesting how I've seen the atttude on it changed from "Worst of all time" to "It's got some good ideas".

Also you missed Wataru's infamous "Decade has no story" line, 0/10 review.