While I agree it would be fun to have a unifying villain for the crossovers... I kind of profoundly disagree when it comes to there being one overriding voice that streamlines continuity.

I think each series' drastically different creative vision is the secret ingredient for Kamen Rider's unique success. It leads to fresh interpretation after fresh interpretation -- even if common elements are reused, how they're used is different depending on the creator in charge. And there's a special friction -- borne out of a sort of cognitive dissonance -- that's created when those distinct visions cross paths. It's special in the world of genre media, and I wouldn't change that for anything.

Long way of saying... Continuity is for the birds! :lol

On the downside though, when stuff isn't regulated it also isn't consistent either. Pretty much every Rider show in the Heisei/Neo era has had to 'find its feet', leaving series to be defined by a good half and a bad half - surely it'd be better if shows were great all the way through? Then there are shows where the quality between one season and the next can be so far at either end of the scale, it's truly astounding.

Within theory pretty much all of that would be eliminated, if you had a more singular voice ruling the thing.

I don't know that a singular voice would solve that problem. If you compared it to American shows -- which do have consistent creators throughout -- seasons can range wildly in quality as well. And with Rider, even when quality shifts drastically from series to series, I feel like there's never a lack of ambition or good, unique ideas going into each series.

I think unification would only make things more homogeneous and rigid. It would eliminate -- or mute -- the beautiful messiness of the franchise.

Sure, I want a series to be good from start to finish -- but I think the way to do that is to cut the number of episodes each year in half.

Or to give toku more plot. Lots of people have given well worded straw man arguments as to why toku is paced in the way it is, but ultimately there is no excuse for a fifty episode series to only have plot for twenty of them.

If they know they have fifty episodes, they should write a plot that spans that, it isn't hard and if the writer is finding it hard, don't hire a headwriter who doesn't know how to carry a story that far. American shows have lasted for like twenty seasons and although you can argue the details of those shows they still never had the quantity of filler Japanese programming does like toku and anime.

It is very hard to generate a new, coherent, character-rich, plot-filled story every week -- let alone one that contributes to a giant, cohesive whole. There are very, very few writers who can see the macro and micro views of a story at the same time. It's torturously difficult, and I think those who are good at it only make it look easy.

And I dunno. I think Buffy, X-Files, Supernatural, Lost -- all massively well regarded and influential shows -- are about 50% filler (or more). And the shows that have lasted for 20 years are highly procedural -- meaning, they're 100% filler.

Hard for us maybe, but if your job is to be the headwriter of a fifty episode series...you should be able to do that job. No excuses. You don't hire a guy to plaster your house only to find out that they aren't even a plasterer. Apples and oranges maybe but I still find it baffling that people defend this nonsense.

"Yeah but it's hard for the headwriter..."
"What to do his job?"
"Err...HARD."

And I'm not saying US programming is without sin, because they play to the ratings US shows are generally a fucking mess but even bad shows when you look at individual seasons there is rarely throw away episodes and they rarely fail as a whole cohesive unit.

I can't think of a single toku show which is worth watching from the very start to the very finish.

Not defending failure. Just refuting your assertion that "it's not hard" to create an ongoing 50 episode TV series that is satisfying on an episodic level and also contributes to a grand story -- while also taking into account the chaos of filming weekly, episodic TV (i.e., actors get sick or hurt and are suddenly unusable; weather conditions make certain scenes unfilmable as written; practical effects artists run behind on suit fabrication; a director has an idea for a scene change -- all these things require on the fly rewrites which create ripple effects that disrupt everything that comes next). There are very few people who can do that, and even fewer who can do it well -- as proven by the number of people who have failed (in your estimation, every single head writer that's ever written for a Toei show has failed at this "not hard" task). It it weren't hard, every Sentai and Rider show would be flawless.

These writers are doing their jobs. To stretch your analogy to its breaking point -- they're plastering the house. But the house they're plastering is 1 of 6 mass produced pre-fabs in Ohio they pop up in 3 months, not a multi-million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills that takes 3 years to construct.

I'm not saying Sentai and Rider's head writers shouldn't aspire to perfection or that they shouldn't be held accountable for their failures. I'm just saying that those who succeed should be highly respected because while they made writing their show seem easy, it was an incredibly difficult, uphill battle all the way. That's just the nature of writing for weekly TV.

But you're going in the opposite direction -- you're coming off as incredibly dismissive of the writers' gargantuan efforts. We're talking a team of 1-to-5 writers who have to churn out 1500 pages of high-quality script in a year. How in the world is that easy for any writer, regardless of medium??? (Compare that to an American TV series, which has half-to-a-quarter of the number of episodes a year to write and twice as many people on the writing staff.)

I think you're forgetting that this is a pulp genre. It's about fast, mass production. It's not meticulously crafted high art. As such, Kamen Rider can't be held to the same standards of quality as, say, The Wire. That would be like saying "well, "Game of Thrones" can do XYZ. Why can't "Teen Mom" do the same?"

Maybe because you're from the UK, you're not exposed to the sheer volume of shit on American TV. Bad shows fail constantly. Good shows fail all the time, too (see: Buffy Season 6, Supernatural seasons 6-9, X-Files' last 2 seasons, Battlestar Galactica Season 4, Lost season 6, and on and on and on).

Why? Because writing weekly TV is murder!


To end on a less contentious note... :lol

I've come around to your idea of having a consistent producer in place, for like, 5 years at a time. They can hire different head writers with different visions & voices, but the producer could be the gel that keeps everything consistent.

Outside pressures I perfectly accept, but when it comes to the core story itself, there is no excuses for the head writer paid to write a fifty episode series to not do that. I'm not dismissing their efforts, I just believe that if someone is hired to do something...they should do it.

Comparing shows, genres, cultures, it's all relative, my only point ever was they were hired to do a thing, that they rarely ever do, and that is wrong no matter what factors you draw into the equation.

There is simply no excuse for the defence of tokus bad pacing but the fact it's so embraced by an internet too insecure to criticise their favourite things, they'll just keep doing it. At least we know they'll always put in more effort than Saban, as it's impossible to put in less effort than no effort at all.

I don't think you can separate outside pressures from the story when it comes to TV writing. One tends to inform the other, and that's kind of the magic of TV. The controlled chaos of production informs the story in an almost improvisational way. In the best cases, the approach lends to lively and dynamic stories. In the worst cases, it leads to complete disaster. But I digress...

The fact is that the writers are being paid to write. They're not being paid to write well. There's a hope or expectation that what they write will be good -- but there's just as great a risk that what they write will be bad. Regardless of the quality of the end product, they're doing their job. They've written 1500 pages, which is difficult work whether those pages are good or bad.

Toei shows, over the course of a series, do tend to have wildly inconsistent pacing. I think there are plenty of excuses for that -- production limitations, cultural differences in how we interpret media, conflict between creatives and execs -- but whether the excuses are viable is obviously case-dependent.

While I do think there are a lot of internet folks who are too insecure to criticize their favorite things, there are also a lot of internet folks who are so arrogant that they rail against anything that doesn't live up to their unrealistic expectations. That doesn't apply to you -- you just have strong critical opinions and are very idealistic, which is admirable. But that same idealism must make it hard to enjoy shows that are as flawed as Sentai and Rider tend to be.

I don't think it's idealism to expect a professional product to be done well, but if we take toku as the McDonalds of TV, I guess I can appreciate its doing its job 'providing food', they never had to provide 'nice food', I've never really though of it like that.

Won't stop me being critical though!