One of the things I love about Faiz is just how nonchalant Takumi is as a character.
Just casually shooting a monster, with his posture suggesting he's more annoyed than anything else.

He gets a form upgrade literally chucked at him and he just looks at the ground like "Huh?"

Not to mention when he actually gets the Rider belt, he doesn't even want it and doesn't even care about all of the crazy shit he's seeing (of course, it's completely justified)

Funny, as the show has tried real hard to make the viewer assume that Otoya is their shared father, at least thus far. So, thanks for the spoil, Fish. And don't you "like, um" me!

I really wish I could roll with all of the truly stupid shit some of these shows throw at you the way you do, Fish. I really mean that. I mean, I feel like I love Kamen Rider - but definitely not as much as you. I'm actually envious that I just can't just make dumb, sloppy, lazy stuff okay in my head.


On that same tip, how about when he gets the Faiz Blaster in sword form - and just throws it on the ground!

SkyRider Episode 1: This was something else. I didn't know what to expect here. I loved it though. Hiroshi was fantastic and man he sure as hell didn't know what he was getting himself into. I love that his nature was to help the Professor even though he didn't need to. The deaths of his friends was a bit shocking here but then again most Showa Riders lose someone in the first episode. I like how they touched more upon his cyborg state being his true form and that it kind of felt like he turned into a monster. It goes deeper on this whole transformation thing to me. A very intriguing and awesome start, I can't wait for more.

You know, it didn't actually occur to me saying that could be considered a spoiler. My bad.

On a less spoilerly note, that "watch the DVD" comment from Kivat is a reference to him coming up with that nickname for Megumi early in the series (the use of the word onee-chan in that context has nothing to do with actual familial relationships, by the way). Of course, it's also a not so subtle attempt to shill more product. Never change, Kamen Rider. :p

I'm going to attempt to take that as a compliment?

Still, even by my standards, I feel like there's WAY more nonsensical things in Kiva to be complaining about.

No really though. Takkun's the best. Truly one of a kind.

It was sincere.
Every episode has at least one extremely stupid thing about it (usually more). No way Ghost is worse than this. No way!!

I mean I figured as much but when someone basically compliments your ability to be delusional it kind of creates some mixed feelings. :lol

You know, as much as I was just defending it, that about matches my experience watching Kiva too. Although watching it with TV-Nihon subs didn't help matters (2008 TV-N is baaaaaaad). I guess it really just doesn't bother me anywhere near as much.

Also, the movie seems to have completely broken whatever was left of your spirit, so it's probably a good thing I just saved it for after I was done with the series proper. :p

Kamen Rider 555 Episode 34.

I'm sick of Takumi and Kiba's lovers' tiff
I'm sick of every character worshipping the ground Mari walks on
I'm sick of Kaidou being...whatever the hell Kaidou is supposed to be at this stage
I'm sick of all this forced drama
I'm sick of this show

I relent. This show is the worst Kamen Rider series I've seen so far. I love the suits but even Ghost was better than this crap.

I know you'll probably do as I am and watch it anyway but, as you know, I just watched Faiz and, trust me, Kiva wears that crown - and I haven't even finished it yet. That being the case, I highly recommend Daimajin Kanon to wash the bad vibes away before you flog yourself with Kiva. It's not perfect (the lead is, essentially, an adult with a toddler's view of the world - it can be trying to watch her) but the acting, the art direction, the cinematography, the FX, the fight choreography - all top notch. It's Hibiki without the Toei / toy baggage.

Skyrider episode 2: I freaking loved this episode so much. Mainly because the SpiderMan thought Hiroshi was from NeoShocker. Hiroshi took advantage of this brilliantly to find the NeoShocker base. I also loved that Skyrider actually helped inspire the older brother to get past his depression with his own experience. I love that the Professor created the Hang gliding team. I also love that he stays transformed for a lot of the normal situations that it's him showing getting used to his new form. The photographer is funny lol. General Monster is pretty awesome too, has a ferocity to him. I can't wait for more.

V3 39-42: What was this, Be Mean to Shiro Month? Lament your dead family, accidentally get a child injured in a fight, kill one of your friends, and then get accused of murder all in a row? Yeesh...

EDIT: Apparantly all 4 of those episodes were based on fan favorite episodes from the original Kamen Rider. Cool. Also, Riderman is kinda a dick, wow.

Oh yeah, I'm watching Kabuto...

Episode whatever-I-was-at-last-time-10: That old TheBee guy was cool. Kagami is cool. Tendou is a bore. His sister is annoying. That mopey girl is pointless.

WHAT? His sister is Awesome! With the exception of maybe five times, all she does is eat
"mmm GUUUD!"
If she's missing during something important, don't worry, she's off stuffing her face somewhere.
"mmm GUUUD!"
They probably filmed all of her scenes in one day.

Mopey girl has a point, trust me.

Okay, I'll admit Faiz has gotten considerably more watchable since Takumi has been revealed as an Orphnoch.

Dunno how long this will last, but it's nice to feel engaged with the show at long last!

Is it a spoiler to say, Everyone will just be okay with it after a couple episodes and only Kusaka will mention it.

At least he's consistent. Nago in Kiva goes from "KIVAAAA I'LL KILLLL YOUUU!!" to "Oh, Wataru is Kiva. No biggie" at which point he becomes absurdist comic relief.

V3 is all finished, and it was quite fun. I frankly enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, although I keep going back and forth on whether I like Amazon or V3 more. On one hand I liked that V3 had a decent sense of continuity to it and was less cheesy than Amazon. On the other hand, I thought the concepts in Amazon were really unique, the short length worked in its favor, and it was SO CHEESY. I think I lean sliiiightly more towards Amazon in the end.

I was a little amused that Riderman died at the end of V3, since I thought he was going to die at the end of his OWN series. Unless he dies at the end of that one too, I dunno. The final battle was insanely anticlimatic, with V3 just smashing... a spooky skeleton.

I'll round this off with The First and The Next.

I think V3 is probably the best version of conventional Kamen Rider - like a really, really good vanilla ice cream cone. It's very standard, almost generic, but excellent at it. Most of the other shows have something more unique or dynamic, but aside from the Riderman arc V3 is just a more refined and polished version of the structure set up in the original series.

And Riderman didn't die at the end of his own series because he doesn't have his own series. The next show after this is X (my favorite of the classic 70s Showa era). If you're curious as to when he comes back, it happens sometime off-screen before the X movie; never gets explained on-screen, but Spirits does tell a version of how it happened.

Read Spirits in general. It's some really, really great stuff.

Kamen Rider W for like the 5th time.

Oh cool, more Inoue. Just what this thread was lacking right now. :lol

Jokes aside, I'm eager to hear if you find any enjoyment in them. I'm a pretty aggressively positive person but The Next somehow managed to nearly put me to sleep. The First is slightly more enjoyable, though. Slightly.

Swap some terms and phrases out of this and you have my review of Wizard. :p

:lol, I’ll confess that even though I consider THE FIRST to be the better of the two, I like THE NEXT better. XD

How in the world did I not realize that Riderman doesn't have his own season all this time. I was just so convinced he had one I never realized I had literally never seen any evidence it existed.

Yeah though, I think vanilla ice cream is a good comparison for V3. It's really good, but not memorable. Amazon is something like... purple sweet potato and cheese ice cream.

Kiva 26

The next sentence really shouldn't come as a surprise, but

Man, this is stupid.

Nago goes from "im so perf" to "sob sob i suk" within the span of one episode.

And you know, on paper, that should be fine. Nago absolutely does suk, and it's about high time he realized this. It just, you know, would be nice if there was any real reason or development to cause him to have this realization and start acting this way. Cause as it is it's just about the most shallow, convenient development that's happened in Kiva since....well, let's be honest, since not that long ago at all. It's sort of a recurring thing with this series.

Well, I carbo-loaded the rest of Kiva and my final analysis is:
Inoue had a beginning and an ending pretty well mapped out; when King appears, the show gains a focus previously vacant for twenty some odd episodes. While it's not perfect, obviously, it at least fucking goes somewhere. Inoue seems to have just filled up those middle shows with a bunch of crap and gave no shits at all that none of it made sense because... well, who knows but, damn, what lousy show.

From the late thirties until the finale, the show gets more exciting, the threats are more compelling and the action is great. True, most of the characterization still makes no sense (Nago is bat-shit insane - a better show would have had him committed, Eritate "Shakin'" Kengo loses the ability to play guitar {THANK GOD} and becomes a badass who, despite no strumming abilities, has no problem punching the shit out of Fangire {and Nago}, Yuri and Megumi are still not using IXA because...?) but, there's a PLOT to focus on.

No, it still makes no sense and, if I continue to think about it, I'll shred even the final stretch to bits (IXA 1 arm save - so cool until you take a moment to realize "Da Fuk It Cum From?") but, in a show this genuinely bad, it's something like redemption. I will say the final scene is awesome and what you'd want a Kamen Rider show to end like (Wataru's Otoya clone future son's wardrobe is so brilliantly dumb, I love it).

As I said elsewhere, what Kiva really had going for it is a high production value; the CGI is much better than most Toei product, the cinematography is beautiful and the designs are great (though, yeah, Emperor form is terrible - too bad the other forms weren't so life threatening to suit actor, Seiji Takaiwa). Sure, Kiva and his kin aren't really Riders (IXA is more traditionally Riderish) and their belt system isn't explained at all, despite how cool / stupid it is - but it was so ripe with potential. I mean, Kivat 1-3, Sagarc, those movie bats and Tatsulot are ridiculous but the idea is brilliant - robotic vampire bats that bite the belt user, "infecting" them with a Kiva thing (super vampire?) - fucking brilliant. Castle Doran - no clue what it is (a lot of it's shtick - emerging from that skyscraper, Fangire soul eating - was dropped and never mentioned again) but, again, brilliant.

There's a good show here - 1 to whenever we get Jiro and the "Arm Monsters" general back story, then jump ahead to 38-ish to finish. Everything in between is 90% time wasting and sloppy to a X-Men Origins: Wolverine degree.

DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE THINKING IT WILL HAVE ANY BEARING ON THE SHOW - IT WON'T, DESPITE WHAT KIVAT TELLS YOU!

Heeeey everyone I brought this thread a present! More Inoue!

So The First... definitely is a thing that exists. The suits were pretty cool I guess? Beyond that it's just typical Inoue forced drama making for a pretty forgettable movie. I'm pretty sure if you swapped the characters and tweaked some of the dialogue, you could have slapped this in the middle of Faiz and fooled me. I actually enjoyed the making of documentary more than the film itself, though to be fair the making of had a cat wander onto set at one point so that makes it instantly amazing.

My favorite part though? The credits theme sounds like something out of a softcore porno:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jqI-tySlKM

Wait, people don't like Emperor form? What? I mean, it's not quite as cool in concept as baseline Kiva, but I've always gotten the impression, partially because I share the sentiment, that it was held in a similar regard to King Form.

What's so bad about it?

I also get the impression that it's well liked, but I couldn't say why because at I least echo the feeling that it's pretty lame. The colors are just kinda ugly (shade of gold used is garish at best) and a bit boring and it really loses a lot of the more unique and interesting aspects of the base Kiva suit, like the chains or the asymmetrical wing leg thing. Also I think this may just be me, but the fact that the "nose" part is colored red like the eyes just looks bad.

I also don't like Rising IXA and I just got to the part where Nago gets that, so, the next 18 episodes should be fun.

Least Dark Kiva is cool, whenever I get to that. Speaking of which, I was surprised to find out a few days ago that Dark Kiva is literally a recolored Emperor Form suit (sans head of course) since that's a suit I actually really like. It convinced me that a better color scheme would do wonders for the form, but the ugly gold and red does nothing for me.

The cape is also wantonly goofy.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I like the design quite a bit but I don't like the shade of gold used. I wish they'd gone with something a bit darker and more metallic, like the color used on King Form Blade. The really bright, yellow gold used here makes it too obvious that the suit is just plastic and not real metal.

Has it really taken 41 episodes for Keitaro and Yuka to even entertain the idea that they've been emailing each other all this time? :lol

I mean, I imagine it is the kind of thing the Japanese would be notoriously private about but given their personalities I would have expected at least one of them to go "Hey your name is ____? I know a ____..." etc.

Faiz communication at its finest :lol

Yes, but now it's all out in the open and, because it's Faiz, everything is going to turn out just fine.

You're on episode 41 already? Damn. I'm still in the early twenties as I can't really muster enough strength to even watch one episode a day.

My morning routine/commute to work allows me to get in about 3 a day. It was especially a struggle through the 20s to mid-30s but sticking to that schedule helped me get through it quicker :lol

Yup, totally a fairy tale ending.

The Keitaro/Yuka relationship has got to be one of the most mishandled plot points on this show. I'll wait till ZeoRangerV sees how it concludes before ranting about it but oh boy do I have a lot to say about it.

Yeah I've got to that point now (well, the bit where Yuka dies anyway)

I wouldn't say it was mishandled, more it was barely handled at all.

All right, time for my rant.
One of the major overarching themes of the show is whether or not the Orphnochs can still considered human and if they can coexist with humanity. The Keitaro/Yuka relationship could have been used to expand upon this theme since it deals with the relationship between a human and an orphnochs however it is complete and utterly wasted. I got 3 major problems with how it was handled.

1. The sheer fact that they didn't realize who the other person was despite interacting for at least 4/5th of the show is completely ridiculous. Faiz was already pretty bad with how many conflicts could of been solved by talking more but this ranks up as one of the shows worst examples.

2. Them finally being together last a total of 1 episode, maybe 2 at best before Yuka gets offed. What was the point of having us wait so long for this relationship to finally come to fruition only to then end it after a few episodes. It makes to whole thing seem pointless, though there is one thing came as a result of this, which leads to...

3. The one that changes the most from Yuka being killed is actually Kiba. Her death becomes the catalyst for his face-heel turn. Keitaro on the other hand doesn't seem any different after the fact and Yuka herself is barely mentioned at all afterwards. The one time she is brought seems to suggest that Mari and Keitaro don't know that she died which granted is not the first time they weren't told of things that they probably should of known.

Again this could of been done well. In fact the scene where Keitaro figures out who Yuka is and that she is an Orphnoch is one of the best scenes in show. In the end however the entire relationship feels like it was just.....there.

Cheap pathos. It's one of Inoue's favorite tricks. It's basically the same reason why the whole sick kids subplot exists in The First: to generate a strong emotional reaction from the audience with some kind of tragedy. He also loves to do it by giving artists career-ending injuries.

That explains why Faiz shoehorned that in then.