I don't know if you really want an answer or not, and please keep in mind this is just my opinion and I am a curmudgeon, but I personally didn't like it because I thought it was puerile, because it reeked of adolescent power fantasy.

*shrugs* Takayama Jin is kind of hot though, I guess? :p

I love Amazons season 1, but thought season 2 and the movie sucked, the movie even more than S2. The thing I liked about S1 was that it felt like it was unapologetically aware of how dumb it was. Kobayashi gets paid to explore her vore fetish by having hot guys beat each other up while shouting about the morality of eating people. It was nonsense, but in an extremely entertaining way. S2 and the movie felt like they were trying too hard, took the shitty gore too far for it to be funny, it just became sort of uncomfortable. I do forever owe season 2 for introducing Asako Eiji to the franchise though!

Yeah the whole dark and edgy thing has never appealed to me in any media. I even tend to prefer the Kamen Rider series that are a little more light-hearted and fun. An occasional dip into darkness is fine, but a whole show about that would make my eyes roll a bit too much.

It's definitely what turned me off a lot. As for Amazon in its time being 'bloodier'... ehhh, in some finishers, sure; but literally just there. Otherwise it really wasn't too out of place among other Rider shows and even some of those more graphic effects are pretty laughable.

I'm actually working my way through Amazons season 2 right now and, yeah, it's a huge step down from season 1. Season 1 at least had the benefit of feeling different from what KR was doing at the time, plus "Armor Zone" is an absolute bop.

Season 2 is dialing up the melodrama with this....really weird and uncomfortable romance as the main focus. And yeah, the gore has been dialed WAY up even from the first season. Also, you can easily cut 5 minutes out of every episode and you won't miss anything.

It's equally confusing why people DO like it(at least in its entirety). It needed to stop when it was a breath of actual, fresh air. Of all things to milk in this franchise, Amazons was probably the worst thing they could have picked to do so.

The original Amazon could only be considered graphic by someone who hasn't actually seen it lol I honestly thought it was pretty funny...

On the bright side, I think every sensible Kamen Rider fan learned that this franchise does not need to be edgy to be good.

My issue with Amazons is that it's extremely boring. Like, that's literally all it comes down to for me.

I don't have some ideal vision of Kamen Rider that Amazons is assaulting -- in fact, the show's ability to adopt a wide spectrum of tones while remaining, distinctly, Kamen Rider is one of the reasons I love it. Hyperviolence is great, in my book -- it just needs to be in service of something that doesn't move at a snail's pace.

The funny thing about Amazons with me is that for both seasons, I spent the first half dozen episodes or so only being moderately interested at best before the back halves completely turned my opinion around as I better saw what the stories were doing... and presumably also became desensitized to the frankly absurd stylistic excess. Ultimately, it's a show I really shouldn't like, with my tastes, and didn't, but also really do, so it's kinda easy for me to see either side, here.

Amazons is a show I think you have to learn to laugh at before you can really love it, because it's so dedicated to its self-serious tone that it sure as heck won't be laughing for you.

(Case in point: the endless meme hilarity of blaring the theme songs over edgy scenes from other shows while muting the colors, as demonstrated beautifully by this video featuring a scene from late in Zero-One. I mostly just wanted an excuse to link this, if I'm being honest.)

I have very few opinions on Amazons except that M is the best boy ever and his fate was messed up just for the sake of edge and shock.

I'm with you! Like I can appreciate the contrast and I think it can be used to great effect, and a case could definitely be made for the fact that my record collection is like wall to wall misery, but when you don't have anything to measure tragedy against in your work, then it just becomes oblique and difficult to really feel anything about beyond, "Oh. Ew."