Oh, please don't apologise! I love reading your posts because they're always so detailed and thoughtful, so even when I feel as if we're not on the same page about something—like with the '80s sections of this show—I really appreciate you taking the time to articulate your thoughts and discuss the matter! This is why I'm here... well, this, and the fact that my cat just doesn't respond when I talk to her about these shows, so I'm glad to finally meet people who will talk to me, lol. It's almost like I'm a violin making boy with a bad haircut waiting to discover the meaning of friendship. :p

I absolutely agree with you about the way in which the two halves of the stories inform one another. I am one of those people who could broadly live without the 2008 segments, but I know that deep down this is not what I want, because the relation and reaction between the halves of the tales are what kept me watching it even when I doubted myself—if anything, I wanted more interaction between these two stories.

I know I'm always super incendiary when I post these long form re-watch posts, and I think it would probably have been easier if I had maintained my old toku blog back in the day to dump all these on, but I really cherish getting to talk with you about this stuff, so thank you for being so patient with me even though I'm relatively new-ish on the forums (this time around). As with Ryuki, re-watching this makes me want to watch the DCD and Zi-o arcs again, because I feel I might get a bit more out of them this time.

But fret not! Next on my re-watch list is a Showa show, and you know I'm going to give my favourite era a free pass, so imagine me from hereon in as Misato from Evangelion with a beer in my hands, crowing about how this is the "good stuff."

Unfortunately... unless it's Amazon or Black, I'll have nothing to say! I really haven't dipped into any other Showa season than those and it's a dishonour upon my name. It's the one era of this franchise's shows I haven't truly dug into and I seriously need to!

I'm signing you up for Showa Marathon Summer Camp as we speak. :p

Would it at least console you to know that I'm currently watching Ultra Q and after which I intend to simultaneously watch the original Ultraman and Goranger? :p

I have nothing substantial to add other than the fact that Nago was my favaorite character in the show. And he's my 2nd favoarite Secondary Rider as a whole. (Maybe bumping him down to 3rd if were including Ichijou)

You are just the best, you know that?

(Also, my exact words were "I was never watching Faiz because I cared if the Orphenochs would be defeated", if that matters at all.)

I'm not passionate enough about Kiva to really contribute here, but I have a huge soft spot for it for a lot of different reasons. (I'll probably be repeating all this to Die in a few months, by the way.)

Like, just to give you all an idea of weirdly personal they get, one of my fondest memories of it is actually just getting cold feet when going to download it, both because of its reputation, and because it was one of the last two Heisei shows I had yet to watch at the time (during Gaim), and instead going to watch the entirety of its Super Hero Time contemporary Engine Sentai Go-Onger on a total whim instead. I do not regret that decision one bit!

But it's not really because I ended up disliking Kiva or anything; Go-Onger is just awesome. Kiva is... it's what I consider the objective worst Heisei Rider show because of all the undeniably weird, aggravating quirks of its writing. I'm not sure how much it'd hold up if I went back to it, but I had a ton of fun with it, all the same.

It's my favorite Rider show to make affectionate jabs at, but the emphasis there is on affectionate. There were plenty of genuinely good episodes in there, and I especially remember it having some of the funniest comedy bits I'd ever seen in Rider. Another one of those fondest memories, for example, that I can still picture vividly, is Wataru getting dragged around by Megumi in the first episode, refusing to say a word, only feeling the need to speak up to let out a gentle chigaimasu~ when she jokingly suggests he must just be so stunned by her beauty that he's speechless. Like, it's kind of a stock gag on Megumi's end, I know, but the execution of the gag, the timing, just how weird Wataru is, covering his mouth and everything, and how that's his first ever word to her, it was a riot. And there were so many bits like that throughout the show. Not for nothing is 753 one of the most memorable things to come out of it.

Kiva is a series where I think you either need to be very into what it's doing from the outset to really have it click with you (I really respect people who unironically say Kiva is their #1 Rider show), or you can just have a really high tolerance for nonsense (yo!), and roll with everything it throws at you. It's not a show I'm in any rush to defend, per se, but I'll always try and stick up for it where I can. And Wataru is a very sweet boy; leave him alone! :D

I don't always mind when a show doesn't answer every question, but there's a version of it that respects the audience to figure things out on their own and a lazy version that just doesn't feel like putting in the effort to do any world building. Kiva is generally the latter.

It did its own monster verse or vampire story like twilight fan fiction. Looking at gimmick and aesthetic, you'll expect more dracula references, but inoue took it to his own inner child level.

I think Kiva is at least in my top 2-5 rider shows although admittedly Black and Kabuto are pretty hard to beat too, it's just always seemed to be a bit of a bandwagony thing to hate Kiva, when people used compare it to Twilight when I doubt the writers have even heard of it in Japan etc but at least the discussion on this forum is a bit more balanced and nuanced than I have seen in some terrible later 2000s/earlier 2010s year lol

Oh, Ultra Q is great! I'm a heretic, as I much prefer Q to the mainline Ultra franchise. It is one hundred per cent my type of thing. I want to rewatch this now too! And the mid-00s reboot with my Nao-chan in it.

I can't promise to leave Britn-ah, Wataru alone—as if to underline how horrible I am, I actually do prefer the little boy Wataru from DCD—but your post really made me clutch my chest, and go, "awwww!" Especially this bit here, this is so lovely, and it made me think of all the times I've got excited downloading one of those shows, and it really, really moved me to read this.

Shut up. I'm not crying, you're crying.