Also very heavy-handed toy promotion by Phase 1 standards.

I hope not, but maybe? It's possible, in that I don't have the biggest sample size. Also... I mean, there's his work, and my reaction to his work, and those can be two very different things. I love a lot of Inoue's work because of how progressive it can be read as, not necessarily because of how progressive it's meant as. I'm not sure I've seen much so far that gives me pause, though. His female characters haven't come off any worse to me than his male characters (they're all great?), and what problems I've seen him have with centering women's narratives are largely Kamen Rider problems.

But, yeah, we'll see!

I am an Ex-Aid kid at heart! "Heavy-handed toy promotion?" You are singing my tune!

It's been a long time, but honestly I don't remember it being that much different from "How come Hana doesn't just use the Den-O belt herself?" or "Why didn't Mr. Belt just let Kiriko be Drive?"

Yeah, like: the end of Mai's story in Gaim. I obviously can't speak to Kiva yet, but I feel like nearly every Kamen Rider series has a thing in it where I'm like Did Not Do Right By That Lady's Story.

When it comes to Inoue vs Women, I feel like Hibiki was the worst of it. His other stuff I never got the sense of any active malice towards women.

Oh thank god, I’d heard it was way worse,

Funnily enough, I got the EXACT opposite to this opinion. If anything, Kiva BARELY promotes its own toys. The form changes only have a handful of appearances, with the relevant items being featured more as characters rather than plot coupons, the secondary almost never uses the shows main gimmick even though he can, plus his belt spends half its screen time doing something the toy CANNOT do and whenever the show brings in a super form, the regular form stops appearing soon after.

Kiva is definitely where Inoue's sexism comes to the fore and is the main reason I dislike it so much. Like... holy hell it's bad. Kamen Rider is hardly a stalwart of this kind of thing but little comes to mind that compares.

Yeah... Kiva is very much Inoue at his worst... And that's coming from someone who generally likes his stuff.