I don't hate Kiva.

I just rather intensely dislike it. :p

I was talking about Switchblade, I was saying you shouldn't listen to him.

"Dai-chan" is Rook

and yeah Otoya is awesome.

Pretty much all of this.

Adding that the movie itself was just an absolute bore and it painted Eternal as an ungrateful bitch, yeah. It didn't win me over, either.

I know the point of Skull was for him to be surrounded in mystery, but his portion in Movie War Core could have honestly filled an entire movie itself. It was disheartening learning one of the lamest movie Riders ever was getting a movie (When you're making KR Kabuto's Caucasus look like a character with depth, then something is wrong).

Oh right lol, well I have first hand experience anyways. Maybe it 'gets good' later on but me and Split Lip discussed in length about how much we hate that statement a few pages back.

Kiva is a series that was pretty much carried by Otoya in the 1986 segments.
In all honesty, watching Otoya was the entire reason why I continued with Kiva. So, imagine my annoyance when he's toned down and tries to woo a particular woman, eventually winning her over (Because this is a major plot point, I won't spoil who it is, should you ever decide to actually finish Kiva).

I hate how "It gets better later" is wantonly thrown around, but there are a few series where it's legitimately true (Fourze, Blade, probably Wizard).

My main problem with the five or six episodes I think I watched is that the fighting was really bland, but the show was also so hard to follow I couldn't get engaged anywhere else either.

For all of Kuuga's many, many problems it easily has the best characters out of any Rider series I've watched and I'm realising more and more as I get older that I'm a big lover of characters who are a big factor for me between liking and disliking a series.

In the episodes of Kiva I saw, there was a dude who was obsessed with varnish and two chicks who fought monsters. I don't even remember anyone else, so that says a lot.

Also I know I'm in the minority here but I really really have loved Wizard practically all the way through, there have been some throwaway arcs, some awful characters and these later comedy episodes are kinda crappy but man the universe, the lore...the battles, Haruto! I love that shit.

I thought we already established you were the minority when it comes to liking Haruto :lol

Anyway, to be fair towards the two women in Kiva, they aren't just bit characters. They both remain important characters throughout the series.

Kiva's fighting style itself is rather bland. It wasn't going to set the world on fire because he just fights so...boringly. Even with his 5 other forms (Which, outside of his final, go painfully underutilized), he's just a boring fighter.

I think Haruto is one of the best Riders of the entire Heisei era, not just the post-Decade stuff.

I'll have Haruto all to myself <3

Yah the badass chicks were kinda cool at first but due to the convoluted and slow storytelling I was so confused by who they were I couldn't appreciate their fighting.

And yeah, I feel like I probably shouldn't have watched Wizard first (I mean I saw series before it but the only one I saw in its entirety was Dragon Knight), although none of Wizard's forms exactly set my world on fire he's just such an extremely flashy fighter (I mean serious he turned into a dragon mech and kicked a guy...INTO THE SUN!) that pretty much makes everyone feel extremely bland in comparison. I mean I'm basically forcing myself to find reasons to enjoy Kuuga's battles and I probably would have have done the same for Kiva if I actually enjoyed what was going on around him.

Out of the series I've seen, I'd probably rank him just above Tendou, and below Shinja.
I still like Kazuma over most others (I'm flip flopping on whether he's my favorite or not, though).