I will agree that the plot was stagnant until Nitou showed up, but every Kamen Rider from W on has been that way until the second rider appears, so I've come to expect that.

I fail to see why I should care what the doll was supposed to symbolize, it was just there for stupid comedy, something that OOO could have used a little less of. I'm not saying it had to get completely serious, but it needed to take things a lot more seriously than it did.

I would take Phoenix, Medusa, and Gremlin over Uva, Mezool, and Kizaru any day of the week. And subpar MOTW? What about Beelzebub, Spriggan, Gargoyle, Legion, and Argos? Those were pretty awesome MOTW.

You say the show has pointless characters, but again, that is every Kamen Rider series. Wizard has Shunpei and Koyomi. OOO had the girl assistant. Fourze had half of its cast. W had the useless cops. Decade had the grandfather and Natsumi, Den-O had Naomi, Hana, and Ryotaro's sister, 555 had the likes of Keitaro, etc.

I'm not telling you that you should care about Maki's doll. I'm just telling you why is was there.

Anyway, if you're considering Hana, a character only marginally less vital than Ryotaro himself, a pointless character, then I'm done here.

Seeing as how they turned her into a child out of the blue and then make a dumb reason to do so, and have it occur off screen, she really wasn't that important of a character.

Because writers and directors are actually gods who have complete control over the actors, and can alter fate to prevent sickness and disease and can mentally prevent them from taking on other projects.

You work with what you got. Doesn't change that Hana was pretty much the driving force for both riders' existence.

If you say so. I don't remember her having any effect on the plot of the series outside of the first few episodes when she said her world was destroyed. But then, I don't remember much of anything of Den-O due to how bland it was.

Dafuq is this about a doll? That just reminds me of W...but considering there is no Dr. Maki in W, I know that you all are talking about something else.

Dr. Maki is the antagonist in OOO.

Ah, really do need to get around to watching more than a couple episodes of OOO....

Indeed you do!

Because she was part of the building plot. She would have likely been far more important, but as a result of the actress leaving, they obviously had to heavily rewrite the story to do away with whatever they had planned.

You're funny.

It's a good show. In case you're curious, the doll (kinda big OOO spoilers) was a gift Dr. Maki recieved when he was a little boy from his sister, who he remembered as very kind and always by his side since their parents died. Then she got married, or was going to, and his perfect memory of her was being tarnished. He saw her getting married as abandoning him/replacing him, so he killed her to preserve his mental image of her instead of watching the only thing he have left turn into something he saw as ugly and cruel for leaving him.

Yeah, so comedic. I'm busting up at the sides just thinking about it.

Seriously, I think the doll was used for comedy... I want to say three times? The rest of the "comedy" was just natural reactions to a grown man carrying a doll perched on his arm all the time. Hardly written-in gags.

And of course "Bob... BOB MARLEY." But you know.