None are without their issues, but Ryuki is probably the best of the three. Although, Kiva is pretty damn awesome. Nevertheless, their issues are:


Ryuki - Reset button ending and they only had 10 riders.

555 - Last 10 episodes sucked and there was no ending.

Kiva - Time traveling plot that came out in the last 20 episodes took away from it.

I haven't seen Kiva but I feel pretty confident in saying it's Ryuki. It has its moments but I feel like, at least compared to Faiz, the Riders are pretty much meat of the show and not the drama.

I never found the time travel stuff to be that bad, to be honest.

Ryuki. As it deals with actual adults and has a lot if serious storylines.

I love Faiz because of the j-drama/angst. Not because I find it cool, but in an ironic way.

I think overall, faiz is the best despite all of the cons against it..
I kind of preferring the dualism between Kiba and Takumi, and the way conflict around them changing their perspective.
And yes the ending is a real sequel bait, but between those three (Faiz, Ryuuki, and Kiva) It definitely the lesser evil.

But on the topic which one have the least J drama, probably Ryuki.
It got too many things going through, too many riders to develop their story...

Kiva and Faiz is quite chock full of drama stuff all in all..

Kiva would need a coherent story for it to count as drama. (I love Kiva but.. yea, that story got holes)

I would like to know what exactly is the definition for "j-drama" here

Those are the three series I couldn't finish. I watched more episodes of Kiva, but I think that was largely because Kivat is awesome.

Kivat is imho the best thing about Kiva. (Though not the only thing I like. The show had some more good points, but also some pretty bad ones)

The music in Kiva was enjoyable, too, and I liked the concept of basing things on classic monsters. As you say, there were definitely good points.

FWIW, my wife watched through the whole series; I just got the recap from her and swooped back in for the last bit.