The dancing has been brought up so much I don't think I can add anything to what others have already said.

However my own worst part has to be the Energy Riders.
Mainly because of that blasted Sonic Arrow, until then we had all these unique Riders show up and have unique weapons with different powers and the fun of it was seeing what the next one would have. But no, let's have all four riders use the same weapon and better yet, let's give the main character one too for the heck of it.

They could have done really creative weapons for the energy riders but instead we got five riders all using the exact same weapon.

How constructive.


- I wish Riders would switch to other arms now. When's the last time we've seen Pine, Ichigo, Kiwi, Mango or Suika arms? On top of that we have at least 7 riders who have never changed arms AT ALL and Kouta only ever uses Jinba and Kachidoki anymore.

- The dancing parts. Easily the weakest part of the show.

- By extension, Mai. She's the only one who cares about it anymore. Well Zack as well but at least he's a Rider.

- Severe lack of Bravo, Gridon and Knuckle.

By now people have mentioned the Nerf Rebelle AKA the Sonic Arrow and how overplayed and bland it is. With five Riders using it with a sixth on his way next episode it's not going to be fondly remembered.

Mai needs to grow up, but that's doubtful as she seems to be to be the one who loves dance above all else. Kota bro; you gotta man up and rise up to become the hero this show needs! Ryugen might not live past the early 30s if his shady tude keeps going the way it is.

On that note while the dark theme is refreshing there's a slight danger that the darkness could overpower all other aspects of the show, leaving it to become a endless struggle. A slight push more towards comedy will help out in the long run.

About as constructive as saying how constructive something is.

That is the fuel which makes the fire of hate burn.

Agreed one hundred percent.

I actually think his character arc is fascinating, but it's also hard to care as well due to the fact he's probably the weakest Rider in the show. Unless it's deliberate irony... But even then it isn't particularly well handled.

Also glad to see in terms of the wider thread, that I'm not the only one who despises the energy Riders.

Well there is Gridon.....which is pretty fucking sad once you think about it. About the only person Kaito isn't weaker than is fucking Gridon.

And maybe this is just me, but I don't mind the Energy Riders sameness, maybe cause it makes sense if you view it as them trying to be some organized force persay, maybe being the keyword.

Oh yeah, Gridon and Hase absolutely kicked his ass I just remembered that. Kaito God damn you SUCK.

I guess the Energy Riders make sense in context but it doesn't make them any more entertaining to watch.

Though I agree Kaito wanting power is ironic since the other riders are much powerful or skilled now, but Hase and Acorn caught him off guard at the time. So you can't really blame Kaito for a surprise attack plus add in the factor that it was 2 against one.

Kaito has always been a joke to me. Motherfucker you're talking about strength and weakness and you dance in teh streets. He's even less mature than Mai. At least she admits she just does it for fun.

Dude continues to get his ass kicked by everyone, and pretends he's such a great judge of weak and strong. He's a loser.

I don't think that really counts since fucking Mitsuzane was able to beat Gridon on his own, despite Kaito being able to best him (At the time anyways, not sure about now)

Also it seems that Hase was more or less equal to Kaito, and possibly could have surpassed him, at least in fighting skill had he not died horribly. Or do I have to bring up that Kaito went down like a bitch to Takatora in episode 11 despite having an A-Class Lockseed, whereas Hase put up the best showing against him despite having a C-Class Lockseed.

I hope we get a bit of AR Cinema that shows where Hase may have gone if he had lived.

Kaito is a hypocrite. For sure.

It's a shame too, because the Baron Banana and Mango armours are awesome and I actually quite enjoy his character arc but I just think in reality he is just executed so poorly and really just kinda sucks. By this point it feels like the show is desperately struggling to try and make him stay relevant and failing pretty hard at that.

Who knows, maybe Lemon Energy will be a way for him to worm his way back into relevancy.

He could easily be relevant if he just became a main part of Yggdrasil. But he's just coasting around by himself, directionless. If he was firmly allied with them I feel like he's be more of a presence.

he doesn't have enough story to stand alone, but if he was part of a group his subplot would maybe seem more at home if it was secondary to a main plot.

Yeah the way he just sorta randomly pops up, it's like they need to remind the audience he exists, rather than suggesting he actually has a purpose. I dunno why they don't just kill him off. Gridon may be pointless as well, but at least he's good comic relief.

To be absolutely fair, Takatora wasn't trying to fight Hase so much as get Hase out of his way while when he fought Kaito it was his mission to detain him.

You wanna know the WORST thing about this show? Episode 25. Just... wtf.

Sigh. Get back to the tone you set and stop f***ing around.

And I agree with the original poster. Get back to fleshing out the interesting parts of the show, re-attach us to prodigal characters and give some compelling story elements for us to watch.

NOT goofy filler episodes that arn't even funny and have nothing to do with anything...*ehem* episode 25..*ehem*

To be fair, I like that they are letting Kaito be on his own thing right now while as they focus on developing some of the other characters in his place. The issue with this show that I did not mention is too many characters with little development. This past week's episode was the first time we have had any sort of development for Jonouchi in like 10 episodes and even Oren had some development, which was the first since he first showed up.

Seeing the same Invess episode after episode does feeling tiring after a while. Sure, it keeps is from being "episodic" like other rider seasons, but it takes away the fun imaginative (or stupid and weird) costumes we got to see. How many times have we seen a Komori Invess now? In fact, we've barely seen any blue Invess besides that Deer (Shika) or that antenna thing. Some variety would be nice, and not always recycling old monsters. I think the most recent non-Overlord Invess we've gotten was the Lion one.

Its not a deal breaker for me yet, but the way the Drivers work. Kamen Rider is naturally grounded in Sci-fi, so explaining a basic system of how the belts work is always necessary for a Rider series, at least in my opinion.

It was set up so well at the beginning with explaining the classes of the lockseeds and summoning and jailbreaking the Invess and what not. But then the Genesis core fucks it up. Wait, so an older Driver with an add-on piece for a lockseed not conceived while this was made, can get better powers out of it then the Genesis driver and energy lockseeds together? (Which may I mind you, genesis driver and energy locks were made for each other!!!!) If the Energy Riders had powers correspondent to those of the Jinba forms (I.e. super speed for Sigurd, sensitivity for Marikia, super defense for Shin Zengetsu and strength for Duke), I'd be fine with it. But hell no. Let's just have 4 suits have the same powers but visually look different.

Kachidoki bothers me too, as its more powerful then the energy riders yet works in the Sengoku driver. (Its Sagara magic though so I'll wait on that one.)

I mean if Urobochi claims he's such a huge fan of older riders, he should have noticed the logic behind those belts. Kuuga, 4 base and rising forms, perfectly balanced for each situation with an Ultimate mode that drives him off the deep end. Blade, every belt has the same amount of Jack, Queen and King cards, and the manmade belts change the users due to their origins. Gaim? Oh yeah, we have this class system and uh....... look new toys!

Which I find pretty funny considering he's using elements from those 2 shows yet giving less sense on details on the belts then Faiz's gears.

Weird how the Energy Riders and Jinba forms are inverted. The Energy Riders look different but have the same powers, but Jimba forms look about the same and have weird powers that came out of nowhere.

Yeah the random Jinba powers really bugged me, and it wasn't until your post Powerman that I realised that it really does make no sense how people can one up the guy who actually built the Driver. Surely any contingency must be something by his design, and therefore he should know about it already?

In the past I might have said it was all good, but not anymore. After Gaim 26 and 27 Micchi has crossed the line from tolerable to really uncomfortable to watch.

I've never liked characters like him, scheming and despicable, that despite getting setbacks his plans still keep going. I'm really considering on leaving the show for a while until he finally gets to pay for it, then marathon the episodes to get him out of the way as quick as possible.

Did Ryouma build the Genesis Core or did Sagara pull it out of thin air? I honestly don't remember.

If it's the latter, then yeah the guy who can materialise new Lockseeds at will could probably one up the belt designer somehow.

Mai until last week

If I remember correctly the Genesis Core was pulled out of thin air, but that only raises further questions as to how a guy can fabricate extensions of a device that was never built to support those extensions. You can't just wire in a toaster into your laptop and expect it to work - well you probably can but it'd require changing the laptop to such an extent you may as well have built something else. Considering how much the actual Driver is part of a plot, weird omissions of logic like this are especially frustrating.

That's because Ryouma built the Genesis core. Jinba itself is a prototype which got scrapped after Ryouma made the Genesis driver. If Ryouma didn't make the Genesis core he would have been surprised just like when he saw Kachidoki.

For me the only complaint i have is the cringe-worthy dancing and the fact i don't understand Kaito. What are the chances of his side-story getting translated ? :lol

So if he originally built the core...and the sengoku driver...why does the Energy Driver exist? For toy sales sure, but since Kouta's Driver is strong enough to bat off the Energy Riders, it makes the upgraded Drivers seem even more silly and pointless in the actual story.

Jinba is inferior than the Genesis driver, it was a prototype after all. the Genesis driver is supposed to be the best driver currently available. If you remember, Ryouma also remarked how Kouta was able to draw more potential from Jinba, so I can't see how either of them are pointless.
The lockseed/driver isn't the only part of the equation, skills and tactics also come into play, and that explains how Sid with superior tech could be beaten by Jinba.

The Genesis Driver exists because it's the next step in Ryoma's driver technology. Gaim is doing the thing Blade did where a lot of reason why he can keep up with the energy riders is his natural compatibility.(Or in Kaito's case, an insane amount of training) Ryoma notes about how Gaim is doing so well with the core, mind you, this is coming from the guy who's friend (Takatora) has been using Drivers longer then Kouta has and is a professional. It was unexpected to get the same results to get power from the Sengoku Driver in the same ballpark as the Genesis driver.

I still think it's all a little contrived if you ask me, and unnecessarily convoluted, especially for such an otherwise well written show. So far the Drivers in this show make about as much sense as the Faiz Gear which is ironically another show which focussed on a lot on the belts without actually making any sense of them.

Outside of the Genesis core and Sagara magic, I think the drivers make perfect sense. My problem with the core is how does an older driver get new abilities (super speed and super senses) out of a type of lockseed that the Genesis driver was made for? Kouta's own compatibility is completely separate from that issue.

LOL, the Faiz gears made sense, but there was a lot more dumb gray areas with those. What I interpreted those as, was that each Gear had its own set of advantages and drawbacks, but a lot had to do with the person's compatibility. The Orphonchs don't seem to have this compatibility issue but the humans that use it seems to have radically varying effects. (Which leads the writers to do whatever they fuck the wanted with the main characters).

Maybe those abilities comes from mixing with Orange lock seed. That's how I see it, but it might be totally wrong as well. I would only imagine 2 lockeeds together would allow you to gain some type of new ability. Kinda like how W memories work, if you mix and match the gaia memories you tend to get a different Maximum Drive move.

They're probably future proof. You see that sort of thing all the time in modern technology, so it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. Though this still raises the issue of how Ryoma would be unaware of that facet.

Okay, Driver problems aside.

I have a minor problem with Gaim's middle. Everyone is praising it for not slacking in the middle like other series. And while I think that it is doing a better job, its still slacking.

Its the same problem I have with Faiz's middle section, where most of the plot just goes around in circles with some plot developments sprinkled in. While Gaim's "bad" section isn't as long as other Rider shows, it still is there. Over like the course of like 10 or 12 episodes the plot has been, "Oh my ideals somewhat align with yours let's be allies" and then backstabbed. The reasoning for some of the midseason alliances are flimsy at best.

Least favorite part of Gaim for is the humor bits. Maybe it's a cultural difference thing but I don't find all of antics of Bravo that funny. They also feel out of place when compared to the rest of series.

Although I wouldn't say Gaim is flagging, I do think the cast is a bit too large so to that extent I do think some of the developments have been pretty flimsy also.

At this point about the only well realised character is Kouta, everyone else is being juggled around everyone else as every episode crams in a back up story to another back up story. And it's all fine and good in the moment, but seemingly interesting characters have deflated to almost cartoon like dimensions by this point because they have no proper room to grow. The show is bursting at the seams with characters while trying desperately to make every character seem as relevant as the next.

It's a valiant effort, and I love how nothing in this show is played safe but there are so many characters by this point that could have been removed from the start, barely made a dent by being gone but would have given much more important characters more breathing room.

The only character that hasn't been full realized YET is Minato Yoko. All we know about her is that she's tagging along with Ryoma's plans, she likes hitting on highschool kids and might have the same natural potential as Kouta.

I'd disagree with that thoroughly. Kaitou constantly shouts 'STRENGTH' but the only thing we ever seem him do on screen is get creamed.

Takatora turns out to be a good guy, but Takatora really has done VERY little on screen other than provide novelty 'shit got real' moments to really justify this character arc.

Honestly pretty much all of the Yggadrasil dudes are unjustified in how they are played. Ryouma is evil because...fuck it. Sid is entirely defined by being shady and beyond being shady we know nothing about him.

As much as I like Bravo, I would rather not have comedy with him and Oren, so then at least we could have Sid do more than dramatically stand with his hat. Or for Takatora to do more than be betrayed. Or for Kaitou to actually justify his completely unclear motivations. And so on.