Yes! So glad to find others that look at it this way too. Why get bogged down with what sucks, when there is so much more to enjoy?

Wow, that's insane. I always get the feeling the supporting cast is the single most hated part of Wizard by pretty much everyone. Obviously I love them too but I couldn't really defend Shunpei too hard if you asked me to. Honestly I think Onari is kind of what Shunpei was trying to be.

I'm also quite fond of the sudden bit of realism where she repeatedly gets chewed out for not showing up to work until Section Zero explicitly tells the cops to just ignore her.

Rinko in general is basically a comic-relief version of Ichijou from Kuuga and I think she's easily the best of the supporting characters in Wizard.

Can you elaborate on that one? It always seemed the CG was pretty much on par with any other show. No better, no worse.

Ahhhh, the memories. I haven't seen Blade's finale in years. I should give it a watch again and then cry for several hours.

YES ABSOLUTELY DO IT! In case you can't tell, Blade inspires some pretty devoted fans to this day. I consider it one of the best Rider shows and one that "should" be my favorite even though it isn't. It's way better than Wizard, anyway.

Just remember, if you like it from the first couple episodes you'll love it by the end. If you don't like it right away I simply cannot imagine you will regret sticking with it anyway. There's really no losing.

I'll take over for a bit then.

So I think probably the biggest reason Wizard is my favorite show, since it hangs over the whole series, is the general tone and style of it.

Wizard got a lot of hate at the time for sticking to the Double formula (light-hearted, all two-parters, etc.), but I think it's the closest Rider has ever gotten to recapturing the soap-operatic magic of the early Hesei shows. It's got a generally laid-back feel with a lot of scenes of the characters just hanging out and being goofy, mixed in with some serious drama and dangerous villains.

It's not nearly as over the top as the shows surrounding it (if you didn't like the goofy sound-effects in Drive, know that Gaim started it), and while I can understand how that made it stale and boring to people, it's really up my alley. It's basically my ideal balance of capital P PLOT and character-building side stuff.

Wizard shared a head-writer with Hibiki's first half and in my opinion it has the exact same sort of qualities that make Hibiki the cult-classic it is. I can only hope it gets a bit of a reevaluation some day.

Also, I'm still only scratching the surface of how much I love this show. Ask me about the Christmas special!

S'all good, I got your back bro.

On that note, if anyone tries to poop on Go-Busters, I will end them. Except not really, you're entitled to your opinion, no hard feelings.

I'll watch it someday, but I have much higher priorities right now. I have my eye on W, Wizard, Ryuki, Fourze, and Kiva. I've narrowed it mostly down to W or Fourze, but I just can't decide. And yes, I'm aware that Wizard and Kiva aren't very highly regarded, but I still have my reasons for wanting to watch them.

Well, Wizard is highly regarded by me, anyway. I've never seen someone try to say Kiva was really good though. I like it, but I think in any objective sense it's probably the worst Rider show ever. It's not bad, but you'd be better off watching pretty much anything else unless it really clicks with you.

Between W or Fourze, though, I don't think you can go wrong. Just pick whatever premise appeals to you more. Personally I like Fourze more, but I find W has something of a cool western comic-book superhero feel that no other Rider show really has. It puts emphasis on a hero with a secret identity who acts as the sworn protector of a city against similarly empowered criminals, which hits me right in the Spider-Man sweet spot.

--

Getting back to gushing about Wizard, since I'm in the mood, I actually just got done re-watching the Flame Dragon two-parter (8 & 9) to see if it was as awesome as I remember it. Spoiler alert: It's exactly as awesome as I remember it. Almost everything that makes me love Wizard is on display in those two episodes, and I could go on about it long enough and it's late enough that instead I'm just gonna do some bullet-points again:

- Amazing fight choreography! Wizard's swordplay is always something to behold.
- Phoenix is a great villain. His personality makes him simultaneously fun to watch and genuinely threatening.
- The use of Just The Beginning in the climax is one of the most memorable instances of an insert song in Rider to me. There's an extra layer of catharsis to it because of how poorly things had been going for Haruto up to that point.
- Having the obligatory victim of the week tie into Haruto's past is a thing the show did several times that really allowed them to build on Haruto's character. I find he's a way deeper protagonist than a lot of people give him credit for and these episodes are a great example of the kind of range he has emotionally.

Those are just a couple major thoughts but rest assured I could say more. If anyone is curious why I'm so infatuated with Wizard and has 44 minutes I really recommend giving these episodes a watch.

If you've seen it before and hated it maybe you can see it from a different perspective, and if you haven't, one of the upsides of not being super arc-based is that you can just jump in with no context and still get 90% of the story.

Hey Fish Sandwich, I think Kiva is amazing.

Well, it's a hercules beetle horn and a spade. Also, it's more of a crest, the rest of the head is rounded.

And I hope you can overlook your dislike of the suit for the rest of the show. It's truly amazing~

Wizard CLEARLY had a higher special effects budget, and the fights with All Dragon, Wizardragon and just magic spamming looked nice

It's the gothic/vampire motif that really appeals to me with Kiva. Even though I've heard it isn't great, the motif REALLY makes me want to watch it. Besides, I figured I may as well get it and Wizard out of the way before I get to the really good stuff.

I LOVE shows that focus on people keeping their secret identities. That was actually one of my favorite aspects of Drive, and I was really disappointed that they put so little focus on it outside of like 3 episodes.

Makes sense. Like I said, I'll watch it sometime, but I'm going to check out the shows I'm more excited about first.

I guess it did, come to think of it. Well, that's one more thing I can bang on about then.

Well that's good because if you like the motif you'll probably like the show just fine.

W isn't too different from other Rider shows in that regard, but he is a well known public figure, compared to something like Drive or Blade, who are basically urban legends for a while, or compared to like, OOO or Fourze, where nobody seems to care weird bug people are running around no matter how many people they directly save.

I remember a moment in the later episodes of OOO where Eiji refuses to transform in front of a supporting character because he doesn't want her to know he's OOO and I also remember thinking "dude, you transform in front of people all the time, whatever cat there may have been is thoroughly out of the bag."

Will the Kamen Rider Black lovers shout "Must be Golgom!"
Boy was that the bomb.
Shadow Moon hands down one of the best looking villain of all time.