Look at Gaim. Gaim had really good qualities. But it also lacked in a lot of areas.

Unnatural attraction to powdered donuts and screaming about a girl who doesn't exist don't count as character development or emotion.

... Moving along.

Compared to Shoutarou & Philip, Eiji, Gentarou, Kouta and Shinnosuke alone, Haruto's bottom of the barrel, honestly.

While I do like him as well, it's more due to his non-series appearances, where he somehow comes off as more of a fleshed-out character. It's weird how Wizard is cooler in things that aren't his own series.

Yeah, I can't agree at all about Haruto. The guy has about as much development as a Showa rider. Not that the Showa riders did not get development, but for the most part, they never truly advanced as a character outside of a few episodes.

Well, at least we could hope that it has a good cast, like Wizard did- because, except for maybe Koyomi and some of the comedy characters, the actors from Wizard were all pretty good. Especially Fueki.
Though if we talk about good cast, I'd rather ask for Gaim or Drive level, even though it might be hard to get such good actors three years in a row.

The problem with Kida was not his name but his stubbornness. If you can't adjust your script to the circumstances, a year-long show might not be for you and that applies to Kida very well. Also, aside from Jetman and Agito, Inoue's writing is pretty bad despite him being well-known. You know, at some point, those people were also no "big names"...

^Sadly have to agree to that. As much as I like Haruto, he was the least well-written Main Rider in this era :/

I don't know if I would say least well written, that kind of goes to Shinnosuke. The Shift Cars have had more development.

Oh, and you forgot Kiva, which was also a great Inoue show.

I don't particulary like Drive but this isn’t true. At all.

Haruto had no development, the only times we learned something about him where flashbacks from which he had already learned his morals so whatever. He was literally the same dude from start to finish.

Shinnosuke at least changes a little bit and he has some conflict with the whole murder of his dad thingy.

Yeah, at first one of my biggest gripes about Shinnosuke was that he got no development.



That's changed drastically since Drive hit its 30 episode mark. Shinnosuke has had plenty of development.

Yeah Shinnosuke has enough development to be considered developed. Just because he doesnt fundamentally change in his personality doesnt mean he is not developed. Characters develop in tons of different ways.

Shinnosukes development comes from the refusal to change. When he is up against the police department and forced to fight a fow who is outmatching him not just in physical power but in political power as well he refuses to back down. Logically he wouldnt be able to win this battle and knows that he will eventually die but he still keeps fighting for what he thinks is right.
He is presented with a moral conflict and is given the opportunity for change. Be a subservient police officer and stop working on the case and do what your superiors tell you to do or stay the way you are and keep investigating and trying to expose the corruption inside of the established order of the police department.

I haven't seen him in the series except for the first episode, but in the movies I've seen him in Haruto is an amazing character to me.

I hope Ghost gets a solid writer on the series honestly. I know their is a lot of Inoue hate but I must be the crazy one because I love all the stuff he's done on Kamen Rider, so I personally wouldn't mind him. I wouldn't mind someone new/has written on some series but hasn't been a main writer before.

See, that's why I like Haruto so much: he's a modern Showa Rider. He's serious, he's dedicated to proactively doing his job, and he's highly competent. After three years of goofballs who needed varying degrees of hand-holding he was a real breath of fresh air. I especially liked how the actor played him, too. Shunya Shiraishi was really good at subtle emotion and humor, which made a great contrast to his immediate predecessor as well as the rest of his own show's cast. I'm a big fan of subtlety in Kamen Rider - it's part of the reason why early Drive annoyed me so damn much.

Wizard was a mess of a show that I struggled to defend at the time and have subsequently cooled on in almost every regard, but I will always stand up for Haruto as one of the best Riders.