But those older shows were clearly micro budget productions as well, but they made it work with imagination and creativity. Kuuga just looked like shit, bar one or two fights.

Actually, I'd make all of the Kamen Rider series movies take place after the series and made once the series was done. I know its sorta cheating but let me explain.

The so called "Alternate Ending" movies are inconsistent as fuck due to being made in the middle of the series. Also, a lot of the plots of the movies that take place near the end of the series should be after series anyway( W, OOO Fourze and Wizard's movies). And I feel a lot of the plots suffer from this by trying to be squeezed into the series continuity (I'm looking at you W forever). Do it the way Gundam does it, have the series and then a movie.

Are you kidding? Gaim went somewhere almost right away with Yggdrasil and the armoured riders showing up more and more. It takes most KR series ten to fifteen episodes to get going.

It brought in MINIMUM one new rider or power per episode, usually two by the time 7 rolled around. How that's not "picking up" when just about every rider series is minimal thin-stretched plot over filler for the first ten I cannot understand. We're not even at episode ten in Gaim and it's already changing things. The show has no status quo because so much happens per episode.

Gaim was really fast to set up, hell it's at the point that within the first near dozen episodes it blew through what most seasons would have taken the majority of their run to do including what would have been seen as major revelations, leaving us with a story that, at this point, can go almost anywhere.

If they rewritten Fourze, they'd fix the zodiarts.

Turn them into a student council. Perhaps they can be like the major Undead (Ace, Jack, Queen & King).