No, that is fair, Hibiki was very much the producer’s baby.

Why does Yonemura get such a reaction? I've not seen Kabuto as of yet and I don't despise Decade (it had problems sure), but is there something else about Yonemura that I clearly don't know about?

Yonemura's bad reputation mostly comes from the movies he's written. He's done pretty mush all of the big spring team-up movies since Decade and they really show his limitations as a writer: he knows exactly one plot and he just keeps reusing it over and over again. I can't speak for his personality, but after several years of Superhero Taisens he's probably second only to Toshiki Inoue on the "oh shit, not this guy again" list.

I'm gonna say Yonemura has some potential amnesty for the Super Hero Taisen movies given the big crossover nature of the production. For all we know, he had to crank out those scripts in like a day, or constantly rewrite them as returning actors got locked in. It probably wouldn't have been anyone's best work.

Kabuto, which is the one relevant to the thread, I guess you have to decide for yourself. I don't remember being too hot on it myself, but the episodes of Den-O and OOO he wrote, at the very least, were not the same one plot, and the 999th/1000th episode special in OOO was an inspired bit of comic madness.

He's not the main writer, but I'd argue that Nobuhiro Mouri wrote Zi-O better than Shimoyama, especially when most of Zi-O's solid episodes are from him. I wished he was the main writer instead.

Although to be fair Shimoyama actually did a decent job, Zi-O's primary problem was having Shirakura as producer.

Yeah, I always wonder why they hired him to be the head writer of Zi-O since he’s head writer of Ninninger which is considered to be the worst Sentai show and basically the punching bag. (Like problematic plot pacing and execution, strangely inactive main villains, too much focus on Takaharu and the worst toy sales in Sentai history)

I agree with you on Shirakura, he’s the reason why Hibiki change halfway through the show.... even Hibiki’s actor didn’t like what he and Toei did to the show and their treatment toward the crew that he refused to reprise his role. (Although, it’s unlikely we will see him reprising his role due of being blacklisted by agency for his allegedly power harassment)

That’s the US opinion. In Japan, Ninninger is more popular than Den-O, Kyoryuger and OOO and was the second most popular Sentai product this decade. And the low toy sales and “too much focus” are not true.

Is... there a source on this? I've no doubt it was well received, but if it's even more popular than Den-O and Kyoryuger then I have to wonder why we haven't seen it get more post-series attention than Takaharu existing in Sentai Strongest.

Yeah, I'd be VERY surprised to find out Ninninger was more popular than Den-O. I'm pretty sure Den-O was so successful it was more popular than Kamen Rider for a while. :lol

Power harassment? What happened?