Wouldn't that render the disability moot?

I don't about this moot but I feel Toei should make a Kamen Rider show that can help people with disabilities to overcome it.

They did the whole friendship gimmick for Kamen Rider Fourze. So just them do the disability gimmick. It would make our Kamen Rider a flawed person and he cannot fight when he's not Kamen Rider

When the last time they have Kamen Rider with a disability?

Well define disability. Do you need to be born with it or...? Because technically Rider 1 has a serious heart problem in this year’s movie, at least that's what I'm getting from the trailers. That’s a disability.

And Kamen Rider always had that theme of the protagonist being an outcast do to their bodies being changed against their will. In Showa they're Cyborgs/Mutants, in Heisei their body changes after they use the equipment too much or something similar.

The challenges they face in terms of being different isn't that unrelated to the challenges a disabled person has to face every day if you think about it. I don’t want to offend anyone with a disability; I just think you can compare it to some extent. The big difference of course being that disabled people who live their everyday life with the challenges it brings but still haven’t given up on the world and their fellow humans are real heroes as opposed to the fictional Kamen Riders.

Not necessarily, because it wouldn't rid them of the disability completely. Imagine a scenario like this:

-Kid gets into an accident and is put into a wheelchair; may never walk again.
-He has some kind of special potential that a private agency picks up on.
-They sponsor him for a special program that promises to restore his legs if he helps them.
-He's miraculously compatible with their Rider system and it enables him to get up and fight monsters, but reverts back to paralysis after the transformation times out.
-He's grateful for the opportunity, but has to mentally cope with the impermanence of these abilities.

Could be an interesting dynamic with some great psychological drama. Then again, this is a kids show, so who knows?

I originally wanted to watch through Rider in order (at least to the best of my ability) to see the evolution of the series, and also find out what the core rider tropes are (so I don't mix up season-specific elements with core tropes like I did when I got into sentai) but lately I've been thinking screw that. So I'm probably just gonna jump into Ghost. However, i've heard pretty mixed things about Ghost. For somebody who has only seen the first Rider and has nothing to really compare it to other than that, is it pretty good? Or will I be disappointed?

I always say: Start where you want to start. It's your choice. However, Ghost is already full of collectable gimmicks and the annoying token funny character, that might put you off.

Maybe you would want to start with early Heisei instead, to see how the series developed after Showa. Kuuga, Agito and Ryuki are all great IMO (Although you may want to watch Agito after Kuuga, it's some kind of sequel but not really a sequel, either way you're better off watching Kuuga first).

And then you can watch some post-Decade shows where the collectible toys are a much bigger factor than they were pre-Decade, but they're still good shows. Double & OOO are fantastic IMO.

Gaim is the best of the bunch so far, but it has a lot of toys to advertise and it was written by an author who usually writes manga/anime (The one who also wrote Madoka Magica), so that can either put you off or make you even more interested, depends if you like anime or not.

In the end you can start wherever you want, I started with Gaim. But if you feel like you want to see how the show evolved I’d say start with Kuuga & Agito or Ryuki. Kuuga could be really interesting to you since it was the first new show after the break and it created a new Kamen Rider formula that inspired most shows that came after it.

That doesn't really bother me that much. I also really like the Rider's design and the look of that little ghost thing

See, it's more that I just want to be up on what's going on right now in the world of Rider than still wanting to see how things develop.

Gaim is the best of the bunch so far, but it has a lot of toys to advertise and it was written by an author who usually writes manga/anime (The one who also wrote Madoka Magica), so that can either put you off or make you even more interested, depends if you like anime or not.[/quote]

See Gaim is the series that really introduced me to Rider, in the sense that I saw pictures of it and thought "this looks awesome!" However, I've heard one of the great things about Gaim is how it shakes up the formula a bit, so I always thought I should probably wait until a bit later to watch it.

I do quite enjoy anime. So it was written by the guy who made Madoka, Psycho Pass, Gargantia, and Aldnoah.Zero? Sounds good to me.

I guess maybe I could start with Kuuga. Start off with how the series started, then see where it changed with the Heisei series. Which leads me to another question: are there any other Showa series that had a large impact on the Rider formula? Like, did any of them contribute to the development of new tropes in the series? For example, on the Sentai side of things, Goranger was the first but Battle Fever J was the first mecha, Denziman was the first transforming mech, Sun Vulcan first 3-person team and first combining robo, etc. If so, I might just watch a couple of episodes of them just to see where it came from. After that, I'll check out Kuuga and then Ghost?

Then watch it, I only started Gaim because I liked the designs. You don’t need a better reason than that.

Just watch Ghost and see if you like it or not.

Eh... people told me the same but I started with Gaim and watched others shows later and I still got what Rider is about. Gaim is different, but not that different, it's still a Kamen Rider show.

You can also just watch Kuuga later, I watched Kuuga after I watched nearly every post-Decade show. You can appreciate the later shows without watching Kuuga (or any other pre-Decade show) first and you can watch Kuuga after everything else and still see where the formula that the others shows build on first started.

The current one? Not really. Showa is episodic as hell and has next to no character development and lacks any real story, Heisei has an ongoing story line which develops alongside the characters and just happens to throw a monster against the heroes every week. While Showa is much more "One story a week", Heisei started with episodes that build a story arch and then come together to finish the story. Its learning and growing more than Showa's "Beat like 40 monsters until you beat the last one". Kuuga is still a bit episodic but already has much more plot going on than any Showa show, and with Agito & Ryuki they really started to tell one big story and not 40+ single ones with a finale.

I just meant Rider in general. Like...where did the first secondary Rider come from (I already know it's the first series, just an example) or the first show where the MC gets a new form, etc. I guess the better question is are there any important milestones?

And actually, I think I'm gonna catch up on Ghost and watch Amazon - it's nice and short, I've been meaning to watch it for a while, and there's the reimagining series going on currently as well. Maybe i'll check out Kuuga after.

Well yeah but why do you need to watch all these shows? The first secondary Rider as we know them today was Riderman in V3, first form change was technically Stronger but form change as we know it today was first done in Black RX. I haven't watched V3, Stronger or RX but I know it, I just read it up. I don’t have to watch an entire show just because there might be one notable thing in it I want to know more about.

Do that, just watch whatever you want!