Oh wow Im almost done with Kabuto. Well I guess Ill finish it latr today. But so far Im on 41-

So Daisuke gets some more focus and Reina is finally dealt with. Oh i forgot KaGAmi and Misaki are datin now.....

Blade 45: Mutsuki made a good point about the Battle Fight as there are peaceful undead like Shima and it was also nice to see Remote again, Kenzaki is broke :lol and continues to resonate with Joker, and Tennouji reveals his trump card Kerberos (Isn't that what the Missing Ace riders use?) who proceeds to steal cards, doesn't matter, because Kenzaki is a badass.

46: So Tennouji has a messed up transformation, and rather cliched goals, meh they offed him already. At least that answers why Kenzaki is broke. :lol
The guys talk with Human Undead and learn more about the Battle Fight, and that's quite informative.
Anyways we see more of the Stag Beetle King, also Mutsuki! I hope he is ok.

I guess this could go anywhere but I just finished watching the Super Hero Taisen Z net movies. The Amy ones were pretty rubbish, but the Rinko ones were pretty good. Especially Tackle cheating on Stronger with a Baltan, Black Condor's marriage proposal to Rinko (and being a massive pimp) and the Urataros/Miss America story :lol

I didn't realize the Net Movies were subbed yet. Need to watch. The first Super hero Taisen Nets were pretty hilarious. It'll be hard to top the the murder mysteries :lol

TV-Nihon have them :)
They aren't as good as last year's batch, but still have the usual net movie hilarity.

Finally finished Kabuto. Man this was a great series. Its tied with OOO for my second favorite now. :D A few things concerning the ending though-

Where the hell was Daisuke the whole last 5 episodes? After Reina, he isnt even mentioned until the epilogue. Sad as hell about Tsurugi, but at least he got closure. Oh and what happened to Kageyama and Ainiki? Im pretty sure Aniki killed Kageyama, not that Im conplainin, he was an asshole in my opinion. But still, what actually happened to them?

Now to watch the Kabuto God, Speed, and Love movie before I move on to finish Decade.

So Kabuto: God, Speed, and Love....

It was a flippin mindfuck as to how the Meteor hit Shibuya, by havin a completely different story, then havin Tendou kill himself just so everything happens as it did in the series? Okay...

God speed love was the best thing about Kabuto for me. Possibly one of my favourite rider films yet the actual series is down near the bottom.

Just dig the designs of Hercus and Ketaros, and the epic alt future/wasteland. Plus the meteor twist.

Could God Speed Love be watched without seeing all of the show? I gave up on Kabuto, but the movie sounds really great, and I've read it's a prequel.

God Speed Love is one of the more intelligent uses of time travel in Kamen Rider. It's a prequel to the story in that it involves that meteor that Shibuya at the beginning of the series. The film takes place for the most part right at the same time the series would have but the end of the film, via time travel, loops the plot and the meteor back around to the first episode of the series.

It's brilliant, easily one of my favorite rider films. Definitely one of the best pre-Megamax. Kabuto as a whole franchise was really great and they move explores the quirkier way that continuity "originally" played out before time travel was introduced into it.

From what I remember, yeah. As you said, it works as a prequel so you don't really need much or any knowledge of the series. Think everything is pretty much explained in the film =]

Been a long time since I've watched any Rider, so I thought I'd pick Black back up from where I left it, so here goes episode 23. And it was an unbelievably bad mixture of a lecture about Ammonites and ultra low budget film making, visible strings, continuity errors, poor puppeteering and all. It was also, at points, utterly disturbing. It's even funnier, that something straight out of a parody show is here played totally straight. Birgenia is still pretty boss though.

If Marumo was the good brain, why was it evil whenever it was attached? Also why did that kid spend the whole episode in his pants?

I also need to get God Speed Love down from KRDL!

Yea, Ketaros was pretty cool. But I dont see how Kabuto is a low series, out the ones Ive seen its great, might be because I dig all of the characters, but I would seriously rank this up with Den-O as my favorites.

Yea it can be, only really the last FINAL scene of the movie ties into the show. Give Kabuto another try, its the series that is on top of other Rider series. :p

It is a good movie, I just wouldnt watch it again, Sasword gets barely any screentime, Drake gets killed by a bunch of ZectTroopers, though I did like how they actually gave Hiyori and Kagami some shipping. Even if They both die, as does Tendou yet he saves everyone by goin back in time and gives his "alternate" self the Belt

I guess I can give Kabuto another go, I don't really remember what episode I was on.

Blade 47: It's nice to see confirmation about Chalice's involvement in Amane's Dad death. While Tachibana has good motives, what trouble would it be to release Shima and have him and Hajime in a never ending fight?

As I pointed out before Guns>Staves, and of course as soon as Tachibana decides to trust Hajime, he bites the dust T_T WHY!!!???

Anyways as the series nears it's end Joker spawns some monstruosities...

Kabuto is really a mixed bag. While I enjoyed Tendou and Kagami, the over arcing story was really confusing and offputting to follow.

I treat it much the same as I did Fourze. I liked it overall, but I can definitely see all the problems everyone had with it.

Go for it! If I can give Decade enough of a chance to finish it, then you can finish Kabuto :p

I liked Kabuto far more than I did Fourze, I didnt stop halfway through Fourze and give up for 2 weeks. That said, I hated how the last 15 episodes we had 10 different 'final' villians. That did get confusing.

My main reason for giving up on Kabuto after like seven episodes was Tendou, obviously a hero needs to be...heroic, but if he's invincible then it is just boring. I think in those seven episodes he took damage only once, and that was on purpose.

These seven episodes also felt like they had no direction at all.

To me I loved how Tendou was like that, it showed he was chill and thought it through, he also didnt give a crap about anything much until the last few episodes and we find the truth about Hiryori.

Daisuke's actor got really busy with his idol work and couldn't commit to the series completely. Same thing that's happened with Koyomi on Wizard.

Oh man, the episodes with the tiniest shorts in the history of Japan. I remember that one. :lol

I dunno what was more disturbing, that kids hotpant puffer jacket combo or the hideous abortion that was the Mutants shrunken head.

I find a character without weakness boring as fuck and impossible to engage with.

That sucks, I didnt care for him at first, but near the end I kinda liked him. Why do my favorites wanna leave? First Hana now Daisuke? :lol

Thats why I loved Kagami, the show was about half Tendou and half Kagami, both were great characters but I feel Kagami had more growth and such.

I guess I could start the show again, and stick around until is it episode nine Kagami gets his first power set? So there.

Finished Blade, so possible WALL OF TEXT incoming and obviously beware of possible SPOILERS:

Blade was out of all the Rider shows, scratch that, out of all Toku shows the one I was more interested in, and it's not hard to see why: Excellent suit designs, a playing card motif, a balanced cast of riders, an interesting backstory with the Undead tournament and generally speaking a good reputation amongst toku fans. So how did it turn out?

Honestly it turned out quite different from what I was expecting, but in most cases it was for the best. Starting from the first few episodes Blade has different way to tell it's story compared to recent Rider shows, 2 episode arcs? nowhere to be seen, introductory episodes? not here, from the start this show wastes no time to introduce us to the plot and characters, and spends all it's episodes developing those aspects, at some points I would be screaming at my screen: Too much plot! Gimme Filler! (I know blasphemy)

I can fully understand why people felt that the show dragged to much at certain parts, the lack of those compressed arcs made it feel at points like nothing was happening, but that wasn't necesarily true, and honestly there were only a few thing I would change pacing wise. The show has a great story and it's always moving whether it's evident or not at first.

What can I say about the characters? I absolutely loved them
I'll speak about them in more detail once I watch Missing Ace (mostly to keep this post as short as possible) but generally speaking the chracters felt very well done, the actors performance was great, and the characters personalities were respected and developed in believable ways, like Matrix said "The characters felt like adults and acted as such" Overall an excellent cast.

But since nothing is perfect let's dive into my cons of Kamen Rider Blade:
-Kenzaki, felt too much like a supporting character at the beginning, don't misunderstand me I love Kenzaki he's a great Rider, and his interactions with the other characters gave him all the personality and development he needed, so when he fianlly takes the spotlight, he carries the show without problems, but at early stages Hajime and Tachibana were the ones that carried the story forward, he would have greatly benefited from some arcs of his own early on.
-Related to the above point the Shima/Jack form arc was too short and was done too close to the King one, this basically meant that Shima a wonderful character was sadly underused, likewise Blade's Jack Form was basically pointless since King was introduced soon after, if they had done it earlier Shima and Jack would have had more time to shine, and Kenzaki would have had a longer arc in the early episodes, doing this arc earlier would have also helped to tie up Spider's arc sooner, which is the next point.
-The Spider Undead arc GOD! the Spider Undead arc. It went nowhere for so long, had they finished it after Shima's arc I wouldn't have much of a problem with it, but man that thing just lasted too long, Mutsuki was an interesting character, I like Mutsuki, Spider? Not at all, he was boring forgettable and basically had no real personality, it could have been a strong arc and an interesting burden for Leangle had it been shorter.
-And last for not least: the Undead, with the exception of the high level Undead which assumed Human Form the rest of the undead were so forgettable, they never felt like a threat or even relevant, a undead would be detected roaming around, because for the biggest part they had no objectives, Kenzaki would folllow it, get beaten around and then in the last second win without much effort. The fights did gt better as the series went on, but the undead remained a tool for the sotry to move forward, they had no role of their own or interesting arcs, they were msotly fodder for the Rouze cards. Teh high-level however shined, and showed the potential the undead had as a whole specially since they weren't fighting for themselves but rather for their species.

But besides that I can't complain as I absolutely loved this series, the characters and story were memorable and thought-provoking, Blade is an excellent show overall.

As for Blade main thematic, I spent quite a while thinking about it, Kiva was about family, Decade about finding your place in the world (arguably), W about partners, OOO about desire and Fourze about friendship.
At first I was gonna say that Blade was about human nature, but that's both too large and too ambiguous.

So what's Blade about? In my opinion, about Kindness and Love, Hajime was driven by family love from the start, whereas Tachibana and Mutsuki love for their sentimental partners and friends lead them too suffering due to being unable to rely on others, as for Kenzaki he is the purest form of love, as he said himself: he loves Humans, for him that's the only logic way to do things, loving others more than you do yourself is natural for him, it's what drives him and gives sense to his life. The Riders interactions were defined by love and trust, and even in the villains you could see similar motives.

Finishing this stupidly large post, where does this show fits in my favorites list? High, way too high, ad far as other toku shows go, the only one that it can stand against is W, this is a battle of jokers. And like Kenzaki would have done, I'm not choosing either of them as my favorite, both of them are, I love them both for different reasons and I won't choose between them, this is the way I do things this is the way Blade does things.

I'm glad to see you enjoyed Blade.

Also, I told you the Spider Undead/Mutsuki arc took too long. It felt like it was 10 episodes longer than it needed to have been :lol
Shima was probably the one thing I didn't like how Blade handled. He shows up for 3 episodes, dies, then comes back 15 episodes later to help free Mutsuki and that's that. It really peeved me how they treated him, considering he was one of the better characters. Though, it was rather endearing during the end, when Mutsuki was told to use Remote and unseal an Undead and stop the Darkroaches, he chose the Tarantula Undead, Shima, over the Tiger Undead.

Anyway, I'm not going to dissect your post since 90% of it will be me nodding in agreement, but I'm curious, how did you feel about the ending?

I always felt that Mutsuki was the one casualty of the writer change. It seems like the new writers just had no idea what to do with him, so they kept going with the Spider storyline.

It wouldn't surprise me if that's what happened, honestly. It felt like they were going somewhere with Mutsuki's story, then just stopped it and put it on repeat until the final 5 episodes.

Decade 18:

Didn't the guy who played Zanki in this also play Zanki in Hibiki? I thought it was supposed to be an AR world. It was...ok...I guess. I find Tsukasa an inconsistent character. It seems like at the beginning of a new world he'll be all cocky, then by the end it's gone, or at least he'll talk up other riders more than himself (which he does at the beginning of each world). Also, DiEnd's powers. I thought he just summoned the powers of the Riders, ala Basco from Gokaiger, but that was clearly Momotaros. Can somebody please explain?

Momo transcends everything.

Kabuto 13. This was a pretty loaded episode. At the start of the episode I thought Kageyama would probably be the next The Bee because he gets a lot of screen time to be a minor character and sure enough he did henshin into The Bee. Now whether that's for good or for the mean time... and he sure got cocky quickly.

I thought for sure the Yaguruma that came back was a Worm and its killing off former shadow members. Could still be a Worm though.

It seems Tadokoro knows that Kagami know who Kabuto is. And what is that weapon supposed to be? It seems to contain beetles.

So ZECT now suspects Kagami to be a traitor. And that ZECT guy with glasses, I think that's Gorou from Ryuki though I'm not sure.

It seems that Juka's whole existence is to eat. Except for that one episode where Tendou was in the hospital all her appearances has her eating or about to eat.

Now I can say that I find Misaki pretty. Still hasn't dislodge Hirose as my favorite KR Babe but pretty close.

My only complaint this episode was there wasn't enough Daisuke and Gon. I just find Gon adorable how she completes Daisukes sentences. By the way why is Daisuke's make up tools inside a guitar case? Was it ever explained or is it something you just roll with?

And Hiyori finally finding out that Tendou is Kabuto and accusing him of killing her parents? Wow. Like I said loaded episode.

Yes, that is Kenji Matsuda. All of the secondary Riders from Hibiki reprised their roles for Decade. It's still a very different world from real Hibiki, though.

Yeah you warned me, but it's still a shame, I liked Mutsuki a lot, but his character would have been way better had they shortened that arc.
But meh who cares, Mutsuki is awesome and that Rider suit is glorious.

As for the ending (Kenzaki's choice), I sadly knew about it for quite a while (effing spoilers T_T), but when an ending that you already know manages to impress, impact and make you sad. There's no doubt it's a great ending, one of the best I've seen.

Writer A: We have 4 riders?
Writer B: YES! A poker deck has 4 suits!
A: You sure?
B: YES!
A: Just stick him in an easily resolved problem and forget about him till the final episodes.
B: *Facepalm*

Momotaros is basically Den-O in decade, so yeah...

Watching Blade Episode 1: Goddamn, more dead relatives? You just out to kill any an every possible emotional link for your characters, huh Japan? I mean, do they just consider people with loving parents and stable homes weak?

I mean, I actually find it a bit unnerving, that "dead parents" is so commonplace that nobody bats an eye at it. It's expected for people to be alone when it comes to relatives.

Also, serious problem right off the bat: I'm watching the scene where Blade and the obnoxious guy go back to his shitty house and I am totally lost. Both these guys sound virtually the same, look virtually the same, and act virtually the same. Thus, what would normally be enjoyable, quick repetoire between characters is fucking befuddling. Who's who? Who's saying waht? WHAT's being said? All I know is ONE is completely unlikable... but I can't tell which anymore.

I think the whole cast all looking the same thing is a problem everyone has with at the start of Blade, and just when you start differentiating characters all the other problems pour in.

Also, off topic, but joy of joys, this must be a TV-Nihon dub. How can I tell? "Welcome home" was evidently too difficult to translate except in that little note.

Seriously, if you can translate it in a note, why can't you just translate it in every line of dialogue? Also, said dialogue is unbelievably unnatural. "Isn't that my dead brother-in-law's camera?" Isn't that the most awkward possible way you could have worded that question?"

Plus their video quality is always shit.

Kamen Rider loves to screw with families.
Hopefully you'll get used to it, the problem with the first few eps is that everything happens so fast that it's almost impossible to tel who's who.

Tadaima! *Facepalm*

I'm about two thirds through God Speed Love, I had plans to watch it all tonight and write a review, but it's been really bad so far so I decided to just save the final third for the morning.

Despite the epic setting, the majority of the movie is focused on some chick called Hiyori, who has no real introduction or characterisation, and is portrayed by such a poor actress she has no personality or likeability either. I didn't come here for romance, I came for dudes in spandex punching the sparks out of each other!

They focus on Hiyori to such a point, it makes me wonder why they included so much of everything else. We have almost as many Rider's here as we did through the entirety of Dragon Knight and every fight is so brief, slotted between chemistryless romance scenes, that Rider's die before they do anything at all, others get killed by flashy finishing moves while the rest of their fights take place off screen, some Rider's die from things other Rider's can shrug off, it just feels cheap.

Plus we can't forget Kabuto himself, a Rider whose very characterisation is to dramatically understate everything and make everything look as easy and natural as possible. It makes him come across as so ridiculously overpowered he is basically broken, and makes action scenes feel like nuisances to get out of the way.

Finished Den-O on Sunday. Good god, what an amazing series. Figuarts Zeronos Vega form and Den-O Wing Form when?

Feel my pain. I own all the SHF's for Den-O and I need those too, along with Zeronos Zero Form badly.