Maybe they want to leave spots in the Ghost line-up open for Grateful, Mugen, or maybe even Deep Specter as retail releases? That's the only answer I can come up with.

I hope for how few Ghost figuarts we're seeing (kinda doubting the possibility of more retail figuarts after Boost at this point to be honest, if even Necrom couldn't make it I don't see much hope for the rest. Plus last year the last Drive release was in August, and Boost is August...) they make up for it with some Super Hero Year Figuarts. We saw Sangou last year, so it may not be too much to hope for the new Ichigou...probably.

And of course, I'd love to see the Amazons get Figuarts this year. At retail seems unlikely, but I'm kinda hoping for it anyway. Though they may end up being Amazon exclusives or something weird like that. Don't know whether that would make them any more or less easy to get, though. But in whatever case, crossing my fingers.

I would say the final forms are retail releases but then again, with Drive we only got Deadheat at retail in terms of Super forms, nothing else. I kinda doubt that they bother releasing Deep Specter at retail.

And honestly I don’t care anymore at this point, Necrom is the only design I like out of a show that keeps disappointing me, so why should I bother with how they handle their releases.

Hope that's true... but I doubt it.

It isn't just the fact Necrom is an exclusive that bugs me. It's that he's an exclusive coming out one month after the show will have finished. It's Chaser all over again, only he actually had the excuse of appearing toward the end of Drive.

I hadn’t even seen the release date… November? That’s 8 months from now, holy shit.

At this point it really does seem like that they have something planned and shove Ghost to the side. Or Ghost is doing really terrible with adult collectors but it’s a bit too early to have good data on that.

Say, doesn't Bandai as a whole sort of plan the next Rider's toy releases based on how the previous series does? Drive didn't sell particularly well from what I hear, though I don't know if that applies to the Figuarts as well or just the regular toyline. Though I did get the impression that Type Deadheat and maybe Wild shelfwarmed pretty hard.

We're seeing only 4 retail Figuarts in the time window in which the (underperforming?) Drive had 7, doesn't seem like it would be a coincidence.

In the meantime, I'm thrilled that Darkraider is getting a preorder. I've been waiting for it to go up since Dragranzer went up.

(Though I wonder if it'll be the last new Ryuki thing we ever get, since I'm not expecting the remaining Contract Monsters anytime.)

Well, the Survive monsters kinda came out of nowhere, so they may surprise us yet. Maybe if they sell well enough we may see the rest released. I hope.

Since no one has exactly answered this, What's the GARO figuart pictured?

Renewal standard Garo by the looks of it.