Yes and yes.

Den O episode...23 or 24 I think?

So is this only time Ryotaro becomes Wing Form in the show besides the movies?

I think so.

It's a sweet form so it kind of sucks that it's so rare.

Agito Episode 7
So what's the deal with his hands? Is it a case of every time he transforms into Gills his body starts to mutate in it's human form? Like eventually he'll permanently just be Gills?

I am telling you people, it's a conspiracy being covered up by the police. They know more then they're letting on and I bet O-Parts was about to find out something the police didn't want anybody else to know. I'm calling it, I am downright outright calling it!

The beak on that Unknown...I can't...I just can't :lol

Shouchi when the youngest in the house is facepalming you, you know you're acting pretty darn silly.

Awwwwwww that was such a lovely scene between Mana and her father. So how long until we see the shit got real version?

That little bastard is up to something, I just know it.

I take it this is our backstory episode of the show? Or at least the one for now? Alrighty then.

Wait, if Hikawa wasn't on the ship when the storm started, and he got there was a beam of light surrounded the ship and caused a storm to happen inside the beam, how exactly did Hikawa get onto the ship? It looks like he pulled over near a coast that doesn't seem to have any buildings around, so I don't think he rented a boat. Did he just decide to swim out there just to see what the beam of light was about?

So is that a boy or a girl? Facially it looks like a girl. But considering the way they shot the scene and that the person was carrying a bowl, I couldn't get a look at the chest to tell if it is indeed a girl, or just a boy who looks a little feminine.

Shouchi girls can be as messy as boys when it comes to rooms. Hell they can be even messier.

Okay I know this is a bit of a flashback but...what the fuck is with the trippiness of it?

You know Shouchi may be a little...different but he really is a nice guy. Yeah he's a little in your face when it comes to hospitality, but hey it's better then in your face assholiness. Shouchi seems like a pretty genuinely nice and pleasant fellow and I like him for that.

OMFG Shouchi I love you and your reasoning. "I don't believe in them because I don't have any." Gold, fucking gold :lolol

Jetto-Jetto-Jettoman!

Maybe he is a bad host. Just up and deserting Hikawa like that.

I think it's a boy. Still not 100% sure though.

http://fireden.net/4chan/images.4cha...1579064306.png

Man Shouchi got the snot beaten out of him.

So number seven has had it's run. What was the end result?

The episode was for the most devoid of story compared to the last two which had easily recognizable stories. You could say there was a story here with the whole Shouchi/Mana/Daddy parts, but they weren't really all that prevalent or frequent to warrant it as an actual story to me. Nothing was really added to the main plot either. So the story elements here were pretty...meh.

Character development seemed to be missing as well. Like the story one could argue that Mana and Shouchi's relationship developed, but it wasn't really anything big or played on. So whereas the story elements were there a little bit, the character development aspect seemed M.I.A.

And unfortunately, the cake of crap is now getting a nice layer of shit icing. The action has reverted back to it's pre episode 4 state of being really boring. I will admit it is nice to see Shouchi not just always win, but it was done in a boring way that didn't really drag me into the fight. I didn't care that he was losing because I wasn't invested into the fight. The verdict is self explanatory.

It's a little sad that this episode halted the breaks of momentum the last three were building. 4, 5, and 6 were some good episodes and it seemed like everything was picking up. But 7 has put a stop to that for now. It had a few entertaining moments, but everything else was boring to me. I didn't enjoy it that much compared to the last few.

Kamen Rider Wizard, Episodes 24&25

So they were pretty good, seeing Nitou being a "lady magician" was pretty nice, and it's great to see the action of Wizard again.

Decade 11.

I get that it probably expects you to have seen the original series and make your own conclusions, but episodes like this really highlight the issues of Decade trying to juggle so many things in so few episodes. There is nothing inherently wrong in any of this episode - honestly a lot of would have been pretty enjoyable otherwise - but there is just so much, happening so fast that it's just much too condensed to really be all that appreciated. Half the battle with great storytelling is context, and although Decade's set up allows him to drop in the middle of stories, it still didn't make me suddenly care about teenage angst Faiz and his racist girlfriend.

We've also got the introduction of DiEnd who looks like he could kinda be cool - I mean he shot Kiva out of a gun to fight for him FUCK YES - but it feels like he was only on set for about a day and they just shot what they could. Once again with the way he is set up it kinda makes sense that he can drop out of the episode for long stretches of time but it still doesn't make me care for him beyond base interest in the fight sequences.

And what the hell happened to Lucky Clover? Setting it in a high school made everything feel extremely silly and small. It was like a bunch of children having a tantrum only everyone died brutally...So like a lot of early Rider villains. They also went down so easily, and the quality of the suits in the close ups looked like the suits were barely holding together.

Everything Faizwise in this Faiz World story was kinda muddled. The awful Faiz finisher (probably the worst attack Ride other than Ryuki's) decimates the school which is stupid in itself, but then there is just a pile of all of the Faiz Drivers just laying in the rubble? Why?

The point is, all of this could fill its own arc and here we're watching it play out over just two episodes. I don't even particularly like this world, or story, but I'd still take more time in it to see the elements get a proper treatment than well...this.

And I know someone is bound to say 'Locke you're never happy with anything!' but that just isn't the case. It seems with toku it can go only one of two ways, you either get enough story relevant content for about five episodes worth across an entire fifty episode series or you get shows like this or Gokaiger which attempt to just do everything all at the same time and fuck cohesion to the fucking wind.

It's all especially frustrating as Gaim proved you can logically pace a series, and do your story complete justice, even as a toku show. So why is no one else doing this?

But you're never happy with anything Locke. I'm not defending other toku shows that don't have a perfectly paced plot like Gaim, I'm just making a statement.

I never let flaws wash over me like more passive fans, no. It's physically impossible for a show to be perfect in every regard but there are still things I like more overall than I dislike.

I talk about my love for Wizard all the time, and never hesitate to try and push it towards those new to the franchise before the haters start piling in. But people seem to selectively ignore my positive side and paint me as entirely negative.

Heaven forbid on the internet someone actually tries to react and respond to the media they consume and not just assimilate it like a brainless sponge.

Well, I since I can't come up with paragraph after paragraph of complaint, I guess I'm "passive" then. I do have problems with certain shows though, but I generally try to focus on the positives.

Complaints and criticisms are not the same thing. And when your criticisms are constructive, you provide much more stuff for discussion in a thread than saying 'it was good'.

If at any point you genuinely believe all I'm doing is complaining, then do say, but I would say Decade's overstuffed, rushed pacing is a genuine criticism not just a complaint and wondering how the show may have played out with more episodes is worthy of critical discussion within the parameters of our forum.

I agree on that point about Decade. I'll try to be more constructive about stuff that I do bring up though.

I'm scared to touch Decade. It sounds like everything wrong with a Rider show compiled into one nice little shit package. You know the reason why Decade is 30 episodes? It's because TOEI and Bandai did not want the new Rider and Sentai toy lines to debut at the same time and devour each other's sales. Its one of the things that got in the way from Decade potentially saving itself from the train wreck it became.

It makes me pretty sad, because minus Faiz's world which was easily the shows low point the first nine episodes of Decade all had lots of really interesting ideas. The problem is pretty much every entrance to a Rider world raises a bunch of interesting dynamics which are all dropped or fizzle out by the second episode that already had to wrap everything up. For a franchise that is so used to drawing everything out for all it's worth, it's so odd to watch a show which always has beginnings, always has ends but never has any real middle.

If they inverted Decade's length, where it was half a year longer then a normal Rider series then shorter, would it have made it better?

From what I've watched so far, I'd have said yes.

If Kiva's world had more time to establish the "utopia" and the uneasy tension that feels set to burst, the utter carnage that ensues could have actually had impact. That first episode of Kiva's world chucked around enough ideas for a whole series in itself. A world where monsters live side by side with humans, and the one thing standing between them blowing up into an all out war of races is a king who is one whole, made up of the two halves. What we got was interesting, but nonetheless still a rushed mess of barely coherent stuff.

If Blade's world had more time to establish BOARD as a legitimate company, and the ethics behind their survival battle card system that ruled their offices, and just in general spent more time realising a world where being a Rider is just a way to put meals on the table, the eventual collapse of the system and the subsequent betrayals would have actually held some kind of narrative importance and resonance.

The only reason I don't think this arc could really sustain itself for any prolonged periods is simply because it's build around the idea of 'what if being a Rider was just a mundane, everyday thing you can just put on your CV' and taking out the air of the fantastical and fun will only ultimately lead to boredom.

And I'd love more time in Ryuki's world just because it was great.

Decade 12. God this show loves Kiva.

I liked that Decade didn't care about Kuuga's sacred integrity or whatever and just went ahead and made Agito the sequel it was intended to be. It created an interesting and cleverly simple dynamic for the Agito world, with a world with no proper Rider, smack bang in the middle of a war with the Grongi, not relying on Kuuga but their own power - even G3-X is man made - and right smack bang in the middle of all of that a new threat appears who is even more deadly than the Grongi.

It's funny that Faiz is the only real arc in the whole show, that actually downplayed the story and made it all seem small and silly. I guess the producers hated Faiz as much as the fandom.

It was also nice for the show to remember Yusuke was a Rider once, even if he still doesn't actually transform and apparently despite being Kuuga he can't handle the G3-X body armour(?)

Wasnt G3-X always man made or did I suddenly miss something?

He might have been, I watched like one episode of Agito, I was speaking entirely within the context of the story in Decade.

Now I understand what you meant.

In the original show the G3 System was purely man made so I got kinda confused with your statement there for a second.

I remember the G3 armour being the best part of what I saw in Agito until in the closing few seconds he got his ass kicked after a whole episode of build up, to be immediately out shined by Agito who comes out of nowhere.

Thats pretty much the whole G3 stick until G3-X comes along. G3 was designed to fight the Grongi and not the Unknown/Agito so he pretty much gets his ass kicked most of the time.

God Agito sounds thrilling.

But he never stopped trying, because Hikawa is awesome. You could give him Nobuo's cardboard suit from Akibaranger and Hikawa would still go out in it and try to save lives.

Yup Hikawa is a friggin awesome dude. He and the G3 Unit are really cool characters. To this day I want a movie just about those guys :lol

I'd watch the heck out of that. I love those characters.

Maybe I'll give Agito another chance.

The show takes a while before it really gets going but its a cool show. Definitely Toshiki Inoues last "good" show before he completely dropped the ball with Faiz :lol

When does the show hit the 'get good' stage?

For me it was some time after the first ten episodes. Its four years since I last saw it so I cant really remember when exactly though :lol

Another question for those who know, is CAP the only group to actually finish Agito? TVN are never my first choice, but their DVD rips sound a lot more appealing than the CAP files which are under 150MB - I dread to think how bad that quality is. Thing is, after thirty six TVNs releases just stop which means I might have to watch the climax of the show in really shit quality.

You should check out GomenRider then. He did a scrub of the CAP stuff, fixed alot of the translation errors and used better DVD rips.

Oh really? Gomen seem to only have episodes up to twenty five on KRDL.

He did the whole show. I think the rest should be up on his website or site like Nyaa.

Yeah it's a confusing minefield of half finished scrubs of scrubs and unofficial batches. I've got no idea which is the best one to go for.

Getting good Agito subs is really hard work. You would assume that by now someone would have collected them on some website for us to download without searching through 300+ files and websites :lol

I actually found a torrent where someone had compiled the various half finished pile of V2s, 3s, 4s and 5s by Gomen. Time will tell how good it turns out to be, as it's not got a lot of seeds.

Agito 01. Ah so this was why I never watched more than a single episode. Here we go... *inhales*

To give credit where credit is due, I did like how well this episode constructed atmosphere. There is a constant uneasiness surrounding this episode and like the characters it's so troubling because you can't really put your finger on why. Sadly though, when it all starts to come together, at least for the immediate game, it's just not very good.

Yes the imagery and MO of something so twisted as stuffing people into trees is disturbing but it's also unnecessary too. The brutality achieves nothing more for the narrative, as it's literally a Jaguar Man, in a camp red scarf, murdering people like he forget he was a VERY cheap looking looking rubber suit from a Japanese Kids TV show and found himself in the middle of an Eli Roth production.

I know a lot of people think classic Rider is "mature" because of the content, and sure it's mature in an 18 rated sense but brutality isn't the same thing as intelligence or depth. Porn is exclusively for adults, but that doesn't make it a better storytelling medium than Power Rangers which is made for children. Violence loses impact when every kill is so disgustingly gratuitous.

Honestly though I may not like gratuitous horror in my toku, it is still largely well realised which makes it a crying shame that nothing else really is. The G3 suit is gorgeous and although they've done tech riders many a time, there's never been one that felt quite so artificial and robotic like that one - and I mean that in the best possible way, it actually feels like power armour, a mech suit...Iron Man and I can totally forget it's just a costume. But then it doesn't even get one fight where it's effective, literally G3's introductory fight involves him getting creamed, what kind of creative decision is that? We spend the whole episode following a Rider who immediately gets his ass beat.

Maybe it's to make Agito seem more awesome, but not only is that stupid the Agito suit isn't even that nice. It looks unfinished and rushed through the production line, it's simple in the worst possible way and lacks a sense of polish. Although his Rider kick is kinda cool, in that downplayed and pretty dated sort of way.

*exhales*

Yeah...get use to that...

Just finished up both Fourze and OOO along with the movies for each.

Pretty good runs on each, both very unique which I love, really love the powers in OOO and the characters in Fourze.

Up next, Kamen Rider Wizard, which I've heard has gotten mixed reviews.

It's meh. It has some cool plot points, but the two-episode structure really drags at times, and the character's personalities get screwed over for the ending. Still worth a watch though.

It certainly depends now if you care for Hikawa as a character since that is the whole point him. The G3 unit designed the Suit to fight Grongi and not the Unknown and still Hikawa fights and never ever backs down. If you cant get behind this Underdog aspect of the character I dont think you will enjoy G3 until G3-X shows up.