Riders sell more than kaijins so it's understandable there'd be an abundance of unique evil riders than there would be kaijin. Tho, I appreciate Saber having kaijin generals again (despite me thinking they might become riders eventually).

I really prefer if they took the approach of Build's 1st-3rd arc more often where the kaijin generals are pseudo riders. Pseudo riders make for really interesting designs that don't necessarily need to follow the design of the main rider.

You know how in movies they make it a point that "Kamen Riders are heroes of justice" and what not? It gets really jarring to hear when you know evil riders exist. Tho, I appreciate Zero-One for kind of twisting that notion with Horobi.

I actually have hope for Saber to not have that much of dark rider villains. except maybe in movies.

In Saber lore, as stated in Ep2, to be a "Kamen Rider", you have to be chosen by the "Seiken" which is, as far as we know, an entity of "good" (wouldn't be surprised in the end if a personification of the Seiken itself was bad but for now, good).

So I don't really expect the title of "Kamen Rider" to be given that easily to villains this year.
Okay there's already Calibur. But it feels like his case is more of a "I was a Kamen Rider before being evil" and/or "Deep inside I'm still good/I have secret good intentions" so that's why he can still be a rider.


Considering who the head writer is I don't expect lot of villain riders in the show itself (in movies yes). More like Ghost with Ganmas or Drive with the Roidmudes trio.

We can trace all this modern debate about Dark Riders back to one man and one man only

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q6Th8uuk-xA/maxresdefault.jpg

I was gonna say Baron but I guess he works too

Baron started the parade, at least.

I wouldn't classify Baron as a 'Dark Rider'.

Genm is definitely a Dark Rider, but he's a bit more interesting as he took the Ex-Aid design into another level (pun unintended) with Dangerous Zombie.

Well when it comes to the big burst of evil riders, we can either blame him or Gold Drive.

Or the wizard guy.

Yep.

Kamen Rider G4.

To be fair, Riders were never supposed to be heroes. They were created to be instruments of destruction and forces of suppression.

The idea of a dark rider feels more like "What if the villain's plan actually went right?"

Oh my god you're right. I never thought of it that way.

Yep. One and only. :rock: