Formulaic? There is a distinction between tropes and clichés. A healthy franchise has plenty of tropes and self awareness.

Keep in mind that we are all genre-savvy toku fans with enough interest in the shows to come to an online message board to discuss them. Blah blah blah, target audience etc, it's okay to grow out of something that is long running - often times it's not the show's fault for not growing with you or appearing stale, people just grow beyond the confines of what something is trying to be.

Show me a 40 year old franchise that doesn't rely on formulas and tropes, and I can show you younger ones that have failed for trying to reinvent themselves too much too soon.

For the first part of this, kind of. He comes back due to paradoxes in Super Movie Wars Genesis and as a ghost in Drive Saga: Mach. As for the second part, there was that whole arc where Gou was seemingly brainwashed by Freeze into turning on the others.

Oh, Kamen Rider is definitely formulaic, especially with how toys and forms as well as big story points are placed in the last few years.

However, and that is the big, however, each show still feels fundamentally distinct from the last. ZI-O is a two-parter show with a slowly building story in the background, Zero-One a story-driven show that goes hard in on its worldbuilding with mostly one-off episodes in its first arc before moving into a 2 episode structure in its middle and Saber has a unique mix of one-offs and two-parters while using the same monster 2 weeks in a row.

Only because you can roughly predict when the first upgrade, the new, powerful Rider, and other such things can come in, doesn't mean they can't be vastly differently executed, which Rider excellse at.

The Kamen Rider formula I've seen so far:

- Rider starts in base form.
- Rider collects new toys for sub-forms.
- Rider loses his new toys.
- Rider achieves new form by making/finding new toys.
- Rider collects more toys for new sub-forms.
- Rider loses his new toys again.
- Rider unlocks an ultimate form.
- Rider fights his final battle in base form.

I found out that one of the biggest reason Kamen Rider doesn't feature bike scenes is because of Japan's law against customized bikes on street due to biker gangs. That's very sad.

Like I was gonna suggest that if the bike scenes are too expensive, they could at least have the Riders arrive to battle with their bikes, Heisei era pre-Gaim actually did that (iirc Wizard used his bike a lot to get around). Honestly it was pretty miraculous that Build was able to use his bike as much as he can to the point where Build is that one Rider that you'd associate with his bike the most.

I think I heard somewhere that Toei originally thought that Build was going to be their last heisei rider, so they went all-in on it. Going back to the roots with the human experimentation and what not.

Makes sense because you can clearly see Build is that one series where they really, really went all out (and sadly I think Zi-O suffered because of that). It's great that the show end up as a huge success too.

The thing I always point to is Build's Legend Rider forms basically being Kamen Rides, and well; the movie being called 'Heisei Generations FINAL' and getting back as many post-Decade main riders as they could; even Gentarou and Ankh.

If they had chosen to end the entire Kamen Rider franchise after the Eiji/Ankh stuff in that movie, I'd've understood why. Is there a longer, more fulfilling journey than those two had in Heisei? Top of the mountain, end on a high note.

I realized Touma's insistence on his "YAKUSOKU"s is similar to knights being all about their oaths.