My problem with early Drive was that it felt like a big step backwards after Gaim. We'd spent so many years with two-part MotW episodes before Gaim shook things up and Drive started by going right back to the old status quo. The overabundance of slapstick comic relief didn't help, either.

I never get why they choose to go backwards after Gaim. I know Gaim didn't get good TV ratings, but at least it did well with toys sales. I would imagine kids must have like the show if it did well in merchandise sales. Drive is made me to start to lose interest with the series. Ghost broke me from Kamen Rider and now Build is slowly bringing me back to the franchise.

I hope Freddy got you in your dreams while falling asleep when watching his movie :p

Well you have to remember that there were two different writers between those shows and they were both doing what they were comfortable with, not to mention the toys and stuff get finalized before the writing begins, Baron Lemon Energy Arms being an exception. Urubuchi knew he had a larger cast than average to work with and could work with that, Riku Sanjou only had 4 total to work with

Is it merely a context thing? Gaim raised the bar and Drive just did more of the same?

Yeah, I remember quite a few people giving Drive flak back in the day because it wasn't Gaim. When you just finish a show as it's airing it'll still be in your mind. It's why I'm personally considering giving Kamen Rider a shirt break after Build wraps up so I can have a more fair opinion on Zi-O

I can understand that. Zyuranger was my first full toku series* and when I finished, I started Dairanger immediately after. I hated Dairanger, simply because I loved Zyuranger and it wasn't Zyuranger. Once I got over the "every Sentai needs to be Zyuranger" thing I started enjoying them all a lot more.

It can also have the reverse effect where if you just come off of a shit show the next one seem a lot better. See Dino Charge and Ex-Aid for example as they both came after some pretty bad shows.

I still like OOO after W. To me, Drive was meh and I didn't bother to finish it. It should not take over 30-40 something episodes to get good. Otherwise your viewer is just going to stop watching it and move on to something else. I see people say the same thing for anime like Bleach and One Piece that it gets good at episode 100 something when you should not wait that long for good story telling.

I could not get into the story and characters in Drive because they felt flat to me. Even Mach didn't save it for me.

I really dislike Kuroto and Kiriya are revived in Ex-Aid series. Kiriya's revival in Ex-Aid series is just ruined sad feels in episode 12. I more prefer if we has new Lazer user (maybe Kiriya's friend?). For Kuroto, I really dislike he is become funny antihero character after he is revived. Kuroto before episode 30 is so much better than after his revival. I felt Kuroto is revived because he is most popular character in Ex-Aid (even the human verion of S.H.Figuarts are planned to be released).

Could it been written better? Most certainly and only having 31 episodes didn't help it much either. But I was only invested in the action so I was pretty much satisfied with that. :)