Whelp, Gaim was decent, but I'm not exactly shedding tears over it's finale. I'm kind of glad it's over (And I can't wait to see how this finale is fucked up by the next Kamen Rider Taisen), as Gaim had an annoying issue of good stories, but terrible characters to center them around.
I'm not going to beat around the bush. Gaim had some of the worst characters I've seen, and I've seen Decade twice...
However, the stories were still strong and the characters that were good (Like Bravo or Kaito until the last 5 episodes), were amazing and could hold this ship steady.

Drive doesn't have particularly large shoes to fill, but I am relatively excited for it~

How were there bad characters? Zack, Jounouchi, and Oren might not have had amazing development, and they series would have been the same without them, but they were not bad characters at all. None of the characters were utter racist jackasses like Kaixa.

As for Drive, it will never been anywhere near as good as Gaim, so I need to try to not compare it to it.

Bad characters? I really don't see where you're getting that from, tbh.

So many of the main characters that we follow were extremely one note and, to me, had nothing actually interesting about them.
Also, fuck me, Mai was a terrible central character.

That's not exactly a controversial statement. She was pretty much a macguffin for the entire last arc and not exactly useful beforehand, other than as a plot point.

Tell me a central female character in these shows that wasn't terrible? Koyomi was worse than Mai. At least Mai was a part of the show and did not sit in the background all of the time. Mai also did more than the girls from Fourze, OOO, and Decade combined.

Aside from her connection to Kaito (That went absolutely nowhere), she was just the tool to keep Micchy from being completely evil (And she even failed at that).

She may have done more, but she was still just as worthless.

I think we can all agree that all of this could have been avoided if Mai had removed herself from the timeline entirely.

No Helheim, no Bujin Gaim, no Evil Micchy, no downward spiral in general, and most importantly, Team Gaim would actually have presentable outfits instead of looking like they bought everything at a rummage sale, and Sid would be selling bootleg DVDs out of the trunk of his car.

In short: It's all Mai's fault.

Talisman's note: the entire statement above is a joke.

Man, Mai was way more useless than those girls.

Miu had the leadership skills Gentaro and Kengo both lacked to keep the herd of cats that is the KRC in line (Though Yuuki and Tomoko were pretty useless, yeah). Hina was one of the main factors in turning Ankh into a good guy, and at least tried to help the fighting with her super strength. And Natsumi actively helped Tsukasa find and connect with the Riders of each world, and eventually ended up become a Rider herself. One of only two women Riders that I can think of who never died (Mayu/Mage beng the other).

Mai was oblivious to everything until it was staring her in the face, and what few attempts she did make to help backfired due to her inability to think things through.

Mai wasn't an annoying bitch that the entire show's mythology revolved around like Yui Kanzaki. Sure, she gave Kouta the Golden Fruit, but's not like she was the only one possible of becoming the woman of the beginning.

Well, Mai isn't exactly a "bad" character per se. She had her contributions to the plot. If she was not there, the plot would have been different. We could have not seen how deranged Micchy could be. We could have not seen how far Kaito would go to obtain the Golden Fruit. Heck, we might have not seen Kouta become Gaim if it isn't because of her. We may have not seen Bujin Gaim as well like the above statement said. I could say she was...a catalyst? I could be wrong tho. Wasn't the tree inside located at their former shrine that became Yggdrasill after? Wasn't she also the shrine maiden for the said place?

imho Mai is one of the more useful female leads we've had so far in the franchise, if not one of the best female leads. tbh, should there be a bad female lead, that should be Yui from Ryuki. That's another topic tho.


Juuuust my two cents.

Well... I just watched the last two episodes of Gaim now that exam week is over. 46? Friggin' awesome. 47? Just left me asking "why?" It had some genuinely great moments, like Gridon becoming a Kurokage trooper in honor of his old friend, but a lot of it just felt like some kind of internet fanfic, between the old villain coming back for one last go and every character getting redeemed or getting a happy ending just because. To me, 46 will always be the true finale of Gaim. That was a nice medium. Micchy got some happiness but still had to live with what he done, Kaito got a satisfying ending, and we didn't have exposure to a movie rider that half the people watching the series are completely clueless about. Just kinda bummed that Gaim went out with a bit of a whisper in comparison to how the rest of the show went. Oh well, it is still by far and away my favorite Rider series yet.

Well you do have a point. I think it would be nice if Shinnosuke and his partner could have got a cameo similar to Kengo and Yuki's cameo at the end of OOO can lead up to the first episode of Drive. I love that W - Gaim exist in the same world unlike in the past where the post-Showa rider shows expect for Kuuga and Agito before W took place in their own universe.

Drive is the 16th Heisei Rider. They changed things with Decade and W, maybe they're going to try something new with the next five shows (Neo-Neo-Heisei)?

I don't think Gaim is in the same World as the previous Neo-Heisei Riders, specifically because of the way his cameo happened. He cameoed in an entirely different World, so who's to say he wasn't summoned from his own World, while the other Riders were summoned from theirs?

Decade connects all the world now, becuase Decade.

Wizard did it.

I'm disappointed about Jam. Couldn't he separate himself from the gold and silver apple riders?

What if he was the third apple rider created from the negativity of Kaito and Mitsuzane? And he would've looked like Yuuya. Perhaps as a darkness from the golden fruit after Kouta ate it.

What are your ideas if Jam isn't Kougane?

But Jam IS Kougane. That's why his suit looks like a version of the apple riders, it is one. Why speculate otherwise?

Goddamn it, Gaku and Yutaka's crying is starting to make me tear up too.