Also loke always the Crow Imagin has its name written on it

I don't know that it feels very formulaic to me? First story sets up the premise, second one builds out the hero's philosophy, third one introduces The Secondary Rider (essentially)... fourth one is entirely about some random couple and the limits of magical intervention? I'm straining to think of a previous Rider show that had the same type of early episodes. Like:

Kuuga: Nope.
Agito: Not really?
Ryuki: Nope.
Faiz: Nope.
Blade: Nope.
Hibiki: Mmmmaybe.
Kabuto: Ish?

Like, if there's a formula at play, it's one that Den-O is creating. I'd have an easier time pointing to later series that ape this format (Ex-Aid and Fourze for sure, with how the Recruitment process is deployed) than in seeing how Den-O is copying earlier shows. I'd love to hear what I'm overlooking, though!

The formulaic portion is more in hindsight and with future knowledge and yeah while Kabuto is the only series really like this in formatting this is the book for the 2nd phase of Rider shows starting with W and considering this is one of your final Heisei riders....

As they really want to sell you not only on the Den O belt but the modular Den Gasher and the Den liner train and additional train cars all available now at your local toys r us*

*only in Japan 14 years ago


Granted I prefer this slower pace compared to say ghost or build but the toyetic predictable nature of the first act of the show starts to become apparent

I said I had some beef with this episode and boy do I have beef.

First off, the ending with the couple getting remarried. It just feels fairly unrealistic and a blatant attempt to make the ending “fully” happy. If they’d simply repaired their relationship, I’d be fine with it, but getting remarried? Now that kills suspension of disbelief a bit too much.

Second off, the is the debut of Rod Form’s battle song, which is a remix of Sword Form’s battle song. This brings me to my second issue with this show’s music. 90% of it is remixes. And I hate remixes. Covers? Fine. Re-recordings? Go ahead. But hearing the same song over and over again with different backing music gets really repetitive (which was my issue with the main soundtrack). Heck in an album full of remixes and re-recordings for Heisei’s 20th, Kuuga got a re-recording with a faster pace and better pronunciation of the English words, Ghost’s theme got an idol show-esque cover by the Kamen Rider Girls, even Time Judged All gets a minor lyrical change (from “why did we meet?” to “why did you leave me?”). But the Den-O theme? It sounds the same as always, and that’s not a compliment.

But to be fair, as much as I rag on about Den-O’s songs, the Sentai show for that year didn’t do much better. Maybe 2007 was just a bad year for Toku music.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5b8lSBi3Ihk

I agree by the time they milked this show till 2010 with the further movies it was too much. But for the mixes they did during the actual 2007 show's run I think they are fine considering how the form changes for Den-O work. And Gekiranger I thought worked well with its kung fu shtick.

I found the formula for the first arc pretty quickly. It's predictable but I think it's a convenient way to gather the characters gradually and dedicate focus to them before moving on to the next.

In summary, 2 episodes of the new Imagin's introduction followed by 2 episodes establishing the new status quo with that Imagin on Denliner.

Thinking about it more overnight... the formula isn't even really about the Imagin. It's about Form Changes.

It's the Kuuga/Agito thing of spending the first act introducing all the cool things the hero can do, the stuff he can turn himself into. Ryuki through Kabuto basically ditched Form Changes for Secondaries and Upgrades, and all of the storytelling went into different places. We didn't get a story where the hero discovered a new power that he'd need to master just in time to defeat the episode's conveniently-vulnerable monster, we got a story where some brand-new Rider rolled into town.

Den-O, though, is bringing back Form Changes, and that whole The First Third Of The Show Is About Form Changes would be the formula for nearly every Phase 2 show, on some level. (Not really for Gaim, which went back to the Secondaries and Upgrades style of storytelling.) Like, you can see how Den-O's success in portraying Form Changes becomes a template for W, for OOO, for Fourze, for Wizard, and so on. It's storytelling that generates out from the main hero, rather than being some new external introduction. That was how Kuuga and Agito did it; Den-O's twist is that each new Form Change has a personality!

Sorry to hear you didn't like the new song!

As for Yuumi and Tomoya getting remarried... I don't know that they do? They're back as a couple, and they've got the necklaces that Tomoya made, but time'll tell if they can actually get married. They had one good afternoon, they're happy right now, Airi's rooting for them, but who knows what'll happen tomorrow? I think it's an ending that's supposed to be more hopeful than definite.

Oh man, remember that whole conversation I had with Die about beetle horns at the end of the Kabuto thread? Because I am similarly struggling to understand how you can say that Gekiranger had weak music and then put a video right under that starts with Gekiranger's god-tier theme song. :lol

(Though admittedly, the actual BGM in that show isn't any ~huge~ standout to me, I still like quite a bit about it.)

It's safe to say my tastes are pretty different, as I'm quite fond of the variations on Double-Action the show uses. The differences between the overall sound and lyrics are big enough between them to fit the wildly different characters they're representing. It never got that old for me, but obviously this sort of thing is going to be hugely subjective.

It's a darn good template! And I can't overstate how much I particularly love Den-O's take on it. "Each form is its own character" is such a perfect fit for what Kobayashi values in her writing, and it also appeals to what I want in a story and massively increases my attachment to each form. Fight scenes in Den-O can be so much livelier and varied because of it. Much like Double would do later, I find having more than one voice in the main Rider's head at any given time lends the show that much more energy. Den-O is right up there with Kuuga when I think of Rider shows that utterly nail having multiple forms, albeit with an approach that's much more specific to the kind of series it is.

Probably worth noting that all of those forms are still just played by Takaiwa, by the way? Like, I'm sure that sounds obvious, but I just want everyone to take a moment to consciously think about how much work and talent that dude put into this show in particular. I'll probably bring this up at least one more time, because I am eternally impressed by how herculean a task he had here compared to usual.

Yeah, I find that two-mind-in-one-body thing adds so much dynamism to a fight. It allows for more narration during a battle: what are the heroes trying to do, how is the monster thwarting that, what do the heroes have in their arsenal that can deliver victory, etc etc. It adds storytelling to the fights, which makes them more interesting to watch. You can tell by how much time I spend writing about the fights on Den-O!

(Also, one of my favorite superheroes as a kid was Firestorm, where Professor Stein was a voice in Ronnie Raymond's ear, which the Double/Den-O dynamic is very reminiscent of.)

Ironically, the subject of my watch thread has the same guy doing the BGM and I’ve twice now stopped in the middle of posts to gush about the music. Comparatively, I’ve spoken about the direction all of once and the writing… well, that’s a given.