It's super rewarding, isn't it? I remember starting the show thinking I was going to find her really frustrating, but now I'm really mostly watching it for her. I think she has a far better understanding of what it is to help others than a lot of the other characters, and she doesn't even have any powers, lol.

Watched the first two episodes of Kamen Rider Ryuki for the first time today.

Convinced a friend to do a blind watch of Kamen Rider Blade, doing two episodes a week and discussing them as we watch.


...episode 1 has so much going on. I hope I don't immediately lose my bud.

"Why are you standing there?" was funny.

Watching Toku with friends is typically pretty fun. Hope you both have a good time.

Finished Saber episode 15, what seems to be the end of the first major arc. It continues to just be sort of ok. I love Daishinji becoming a Rider, and the original Saber turning out to be the current Calibur was an interesting twist. Someone involved in the show must really hate Kento, making him go through dramatic death scenes two episodes in a row. It's modern Kamen Rider, so I doubt he's permadead, but it was still rough to watch. Ren's screams during Kento's real death were legitimately disturbing, I was surprised by his acting agility there.

Q1 upgrade suits were all pretty great. Dragonic Knight is gorgeous, and I'm disappointed how little it was used in the couple episodes after it's debut. King Lion Daisenki is pretty cool looking, if a bit overwhelmingly blue. Love the lion mode, and Mei's acting as Rintaro's personal Woz during it's debut. She continues to be the best part of the show! And Jaou Dragon was fantastic, especially the helmet, which was very reminiscent of Cross-Z. Impressive how big a difference an extra bit of armor to an unchanged undersuit can make.

Getting into the Q2 story arc next episode, I have absolutely no clue where the whole "traitor in Sword of Logos besides Kento's dad" thing came from, or why Kento's dad turning traitor because of a traitor made Kamijo turn double traitor. I still can't figure out what the purpose of anything the Megid trio are doing is, what Avalon was, and I seem to have missed where the Jaou Dragon and King Lion Daisenki WRBs came from. If anyone would be able to provide a brief summary of eps 1-15, I'd appreciate it, because i feel like I'm missing some important stuff.

I think everyone is feeling that. The most comment complaint seems to be the show's pacing. I don't really want to be down on the show in yet another thread, but the way in which it introduces new developments at the drop of a hat as if such things have been foreshadowed for months often makes the show feel disjointed and incoherent, in my opinion.

Jaoh Dragon and King Lion were set up back in episode 9 (I even uploaded some screenshots to a Facebook group I?m in). The former was made by combining the power of Jaaku Dragon with the three Wonder Combos (Crimson Dragon, Fantastic Lion and Golden Alangina) along with three Altar Books. Meanwhile, King Lion was mentioned to be created from studying Touma?s blank book and the King of Arthur book in order to make a more powerful book.

I still don't think the creation of these books is adequately explained in the show, that's my instinctive feeling, and the mention of plot-points in passing, only to be forgotten and then brought up at breakneck speed later is not ideal. I appreciate the reveal of who Calibur was supposed to be a twist, but it felt like the show expended so much effort showing footage of one actor, only to mention the possibility that it might not be him in one episode, just to seed some doubt in the viewer, and then immediately after be like, "oh, it's definitely not him. We planned this all along. We didn't just make this all up on a coffee break, promise."

Ugh! Androzani! Look what you've done! Now I'm being mean again, and I was trying to be wholesome in this thread.

This is an issue I have with Saber, as well, despite me enjoying it so far. We got the explanation that the WRBs were created when the, uh.... great book, I guess, was fragmented. So, the book is obviously magical and is some sort of bible maybe(?) and pages being separated from it become WRBs, at least the basic ones. The Alter books being fakes. So, why was it that they are books instead of pages or chapters?

Anyway, it seems the basic WRBs are from the great book, but the bigger ones (Jaou, Dragonic, King Lion, and Q2 Megids) are most likely man-made or from a different source entirely. Jaou being made by doing the hand-writing thing the Megid are doing, but inscribing it on a blank WRB, and also using the energies/powers of three WRBs and ARBs. Dragonic is most likely made by Yuri, and King Lion is artificially made using data on Dragonic. This also means that the bigger WRBs are technological somewhat? The ARBs also act like Blade's cards in that they can seal a monster, I guess.

In the case of Yuri's WRB, it can just be easily explained it was a basic WRB that changed after Yuri fused with the Sword Of Light.

Rewatching one of myobviously favorite episodes in Zero-One just to see if Gai's ""redemption"" still holds up to my ZAIA-stained eyes.

It still does.

For what the team had to work with, I still think they did really good job in converting Gai to their side.

It's dumb, it's stupid, how can you forgive this guy just because he got his robot dog back? I don't know what to tell you, it was great seeing him get on his knees, clutching his dog. It was great to see him attempt to make amends with the cast and all of them just partially accepting it. They didn't completely forgive him, but they do need him.

The part where he defends Aruto from the Ark's attack and basically tells him "I hate you so much, kid, but I love your company so goddamn much. Now help me beat this dude!" still brings some emotion to me.

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I've begun watching Wizard, starting with the first three episodes. Using the OZC-Live subs.

Never have I see a story that starts more tragic, with our star-crossed lovers, Haruto and his precious donuts, constantly forced apart by the world around them.

Shunpei is also a really fun character, and I'm glad he seems to have become a regular cast member after the third episode. I also like to think that the rings Haruto is giving everyone means that he's marrying them, lol.

I mean, they're called "Engage Rings", so I'd say they were clearly going for that idea in a way.

Well Wizard is the same crew as Gokaiger, only headed by the guy who did Hibiki instead of the guy who did Kuuga.

The show is fairly unpopular, but that mostly seems to be boiling down to “it’s not Fourze”. (Or in one case, “I don’t like the producer”). Since I wasn’t too hot with Fourze, I have no problem with Wizard (then again, I don’t think it’s anything spectacular either, beyond the last two episodes).

Good point, and considering how the first two people he saves act around him afterward, maybe Haruto's' goal really is to just have the largest harem possible, haha.

I had mixed feelings on Fourze, so if Wizard not being Fourze is seen as some big negative by people, then I think I'm in for a mostly good time.

Just watched Shin Kamen Rider Friday night and... Oh wow, I knew it was more mature, but different than what I was imagining. But overall, I found it interesting, very different from most Kamen Rider shows (that I've seen anyway) and Shotaro Ishinomori himself made a cameo, which was very unexpected for me.

While, I see people are talking about Fourze and Wizard here, I'll leave a few thoughts here. Fourze, being my second Rider series after Decade, I really enjoyed. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it was an enjoyable show for me. Wizard, I watched afterwards, which ironically enough, was the one who made me want to see Kamen Rider (though the one that made me actually WATCH Kamen Rider was Build at the time he was revealed) just from the opening, I saw his fantastic design, the beautiful visuals and aesthetic, I knew I would have loved him, and despite hearing things that said Wizard was bad, I ignored to see for myself and strangely enough, I thought it was alright. So no matter what people say about a show, if it looks cool, watch it, then you can say whether it's good or not.

Taking a break from watching full Rider seasons, but I will watch Kuuga, Agito, and V3's episodes on YouTube, probably watch some Anime maybe some Sentai.

My biggest issue with Wizard was that it felt like yet another show that was following the same basic Neo Heisei formula that we’d been watching for several years in a row. It’s not bad - the action choreography is really good and Haruto is one of my favorite main Riders - but it really showed why we needed Gaim to come in and shake things up.

Funny enough, it's one more reason why I dislike Gaim so much. It changed Rider, for the worse in my opinion. Through that mostly is because I love the W-style of Rider and think it's the best fit for the franchise. No surprise that I think Drive and ZI-O, the shows most similar to that style are easily the best shows of anything after Wizard.

I really like Shin, controversial as it was in its placement as a Rider show. I think, having seen Brian Yuzna's Society when I was far, far too young, and being super into both Cronenberg and Tsukamoto's work as a teenager, I have something of a creepy infatuation for body horror, and when I saw Shin, it really connected with me.

I broadly tend to think of RX + the '90s films as the franchise's epilogue, but I think it's fascinating to consider what Shin might have represented had it taken off, and, as a standalone movie, I really do think very highly of it.

I can respect that, since more people probably like darker/mature stories compared to the toy-centric Heisei shows, or just wildly new takes in general. That's fine with me because franchises need to explore new territory and experiment to survive, that's true for things like Final Fantasy, Godzilla, Ultraman, and others. Body horror and horror in general aren't my thing, but I really did like Shin Kamen Rider, along with the other 90's films, if I had to pick a favorite, I might pick between J or ZO, but Shin was an interesting take on the early Kamen Rider formula, which I really enjoyed.

I feel like I have a rep now for looking down on the Heisei shows, lol. A lot of them I quite like, Hibiki I especially like, but I do think of the Showa and Heisei as two distinctly different canons that have only a few superficial themes in common beyond the shared nomenclature. Not that I would ever want to criticise anyone for liking the Heisei shows, because you like what you like, and I quite clearly have weird tastes because I am broken. Whilst I don't like shows that are dark for the sake of being dark, I did spend a lot of my childhood sneaking downstairs to watch horror movies, and that clearly informed my tastes.

Whatever the case, I'm glad you enjoyed Shin! Even though it never went anywhere, I do think it's a fascinating glimpse of what an "alternative Heisei era" might have looked like.

The best of the Showa Movie Trilogy is J, solely for the incredibly hype climax.

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I have zero idea how anyone could call this show bland.

Also, man, they immediately gave up on the belt jingle, huh? Starting from episode 6 they start cutting the thing off almost immediately. You'd think they'd let it rock while we're still early in and things are light, then start cutting it off only when things are getting serious.

Ah well, still having a good time watching it so far. Though I do have some issue with how episode 7 concluded, since it unintentionally makes Haruto look like a dismissive jerk. Still not seeing any reason to dislike this show so far though.

The more I think about it, I think Wizard’s reputation is more a mix of stigma against magic-based Rider shows from the general fandom and the fact that two of the 4 movies (the crossover with the last series, the big spring crossover event, the summer movie and the return for the next crossover) aren’t considered particularly great.

Wizard isn't really my thing as I just don't find a lot interesting about it until the last third, but it's always been wild to me how it's derided as the worst thing ever by some parts of the fandom. It's, like, fine at worst to me.

I have no major problems with Wizard, as I love the suit and aesthetics of the show, and especially the theme song. Though as I've said before, it's no masterpiece, but for me at least, I enjoyed it well enough, probably not as much as some other Rider shows I've seen since, but it wasn't as bad as people were making it out to be.

I'd imagine the majority of outright hate for Wizard comes pretty specifically from the people who were getting very tired of its formula week after week for the entire year it aired? I feel like for fans coming in after the fact, in this post-Gaim world we now live in, reactions to it tend to be more mild. At least from what I've personally seen. Especially after Ghost (because of course), I see a lot more people willing to, if not say they like Wizard, acknowledge that it wasn't a show without redeeming qualities.

(And I mean, you know, it's still my second favorite Rider show, too, in case anyone needed a reminder.)

This is where I come at the show from. I remember defending it a lot as it aired (and I will still stand up for Haruto against anyone who calls him boring), but I eventually hit a point where I realized that I actually didn't even like it all that much. It was definitely the formulaic nature; even making the serious Rider the lead and the goofball the secondary didn't really shake things up. I think Gaim is really overrated, but it definitely came around when it needed to.

The show was rather "plain" but then Magical Girl Beast joined the party and that was when it got better. :lolol

Just got done watching the Wizard and Fourze crossover movie.

And ya know? Of the admittedly very few Kamen Rider movies I've seen so far, I think this one is probably the dumbest.

Like, putting aside that I found the plot to be super disjointed and dumb and the action scenes to be stock standard(outside of the final sequence with Fusion States, that was hype), what is it with Fourze and bastardizing past Toku heroes?

Seriously. First it was Groundain and Skydain from the Fourze movie, and now not only are the Akumaizers turned into cliche villains, but the movie also seemed to be attempting to kick off a really crappy reboot of Inazuman? Like, I'm only vaguely familiar with any of these shows, but if I were a fan I think I'd feel insulted.

Meanwhile, as for Wizard itself, I'm currently just past the Christmas episode, and while I am still overall enjoying myself, I do now have some critiques. Just like how I didn't like how early OOO introduced Full Combos, I don't like how quick the Dragon forms got introduced in Wizard. I would've liked to see the Base forms remain useful for a few more episodes.

Also, Haruto. I've read that opinions on him are rather split, and really, I think I can see why: It's because, atleast so far, his character and how he handles situations is really inconsistent. Half the time he's the standard hero you'd expect; Getting involved and helping people not just because they're Gates, but because they're troubled. And the other half of the time he's all "Well this really isn't my problem lol."

I'm also really hoping that the side characters get more screentime as the show goes on, because so far outside of Shunpei they might as well not even exist. Heck, Rinko actually lost alot of the badass points she displayed in the first episode. Like, I'm not expecting Kuuga or Ryuki levels of character balance here, but a little more of it would be nice, ya know? Oh, and I forgot to note this in past posts, but props to this show for having the first Trans character in the franchise(atleast as far as I know). Good stuff!

Yeah this always bugged me. And I like Fourze. Argueablly turning these past heroes into being movie villians is more disrspectful then anything say Yonemura,Inoue or even Shirakura would do. (Note I do like all of thse guys works but I can acknoweldge some of their flaws.)

On the plus side, the movie did have a slightly less bastardised take on Poitrine (probably helped by the fact the original writer wrote the segment)

Same. That's my biggest issue with Fourze, being that we have these classic Heroes who haven't been seen in ages, only to return as Villains (Though these versions of Skyzel and Groundzel were "good guys" in Super Hero Taisen Z, but only slightly) and I loved Fourze, but the treatment they gave some of these Heroes is kind of disrespectful.

I dunno... I do agree that I would have much preferred them as one-off heroic allies, but it never actually felt disrespectful or like a bastardization to me? It felt just like a fun little reference. It's not that bad.

I think casting the Akumaizers in particular as cool demonic looking bad guys is wildly missing the point, but, to spin it a more positive way – I think that the brief trend of digging up dormant Ishinomori heroes to use as villains only stuck out as disappointing specifically because we had movies around the same time like MegaMax, those cameos in Let's Go, and even other parts of Ultimatum that were treating the Showa Era with such clear respect to begin with?

So it doesn't bum me out that much at the end of the day. Even the guys who got brought back just as largely unrelated antagonists probably drew some new fans and attention to those series, you know?

You make a good point. I mean, that Kikaider movie didn’t generate interest on its own merits.

I'll be real I keep forgetting that the Kikaider Reboot movie is a thing.

Especially since the Gaim crossover is insanely memorable in it's own right. Which is something I'm suddenly realizing that Gaim had quite a lot of promotions/specials for shows/movies from the mid 20's to the late 30's.

Ryouma Sengoku: "Aight I'm just gonna remove my own brain and put it in the robot."

The difference though is that Kikaider is still portrayed as a hero, and that his character was kept mostly intact when it came to the Gaim crossover.

Meanwhile, the Fourze crossovers come across as pretty mean-spirited to me. Almost as if saying "Check out how much better Kamen Rider is compared to these older properties!" Like, the line "The Akumaizer show is still going!" as the villain dies in the Fourze/Wizard crossover is so incredibly blatant I can't help but sigh.

You all have a fair point. For instance Skyzel is female, which probably means these are alternate versions or something. But I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever, I just think that there could have been better ways of doing it, like in Ultraman Zero the Revenge of Belial where Fireman, Mirrorman, and Jeanborg Ace were a part of the crew, or just something that doesn't just feel like "Mwahaha! I'm evil!" like in this case.

But on positive notes, the suits look great, it's always nice to see old characters like this get updated, modernized designs, and for all we know, they might have been testing the waters for rebooting these Heroes as well.

On the topic of old Ishinomori heroes, I feel like while you can argue some of them are more 'aligned' with the originals than others. New!Inazuman, for example, ends up as a hero with his own origin story and motivation, and I'm honestly a little disappointed he never came back after his second appearance, and Poitrine gets a good showing that's quite faithful to her classic stories. But then, as Fish says, you have the Akumazier 3, who are design only and pretty unmemorable villains besides those designs, and the Space Ironmen, who are more re-imagined for a new situation.

I don't feel any of the camos I'd seen were mean-spirited; I've seen those before, and these come off wth at least some love for the originals. It's an intent to reimagine them for a new situation and provide a little treat for those who are familiar with the originals (I'd need access to far more Japanese promo material to argue how much the advertising played up the connections to the original).