Man, I don't even remember them using Accel's bike mode more than twice. Guess I need to rewatch W.

The bike mode is something that appears... maybe four times total? I only remember because there's the first instance, and two instances of gimmickry showing off, (Tank drone guys! He was in the show, remember? He was, uh, he was a tank that was there once!) and one honestly pretty humourous use of it. Maybe it appears more, but not in any severe capacity.

Mostly however I want to say it's just for his maximum drive finisher, where he turns into bike mode and is immediately engulfed in flames as he shoots through and enemy type thing. Needless to say, it appears more in the intro than the TV show. :lol

I actually REALLY like Accel's design, and I don't find the execution that bad. He's very knightly, and his bulky, detailed design is, again, contrast to the clean and streamlined W. Accel's base form is clearly a warrior straight-up, and the bulk of the backpack when he runs really makes him feel geared-up. The only hang up are the shoulder pads, but flappy shoulderpads are just something you kind of get used to in Kamen Rider. I actually just got the Figurerise model of his base design, because the deisgn itself is sweet. (it can, uh, also turn into a bike. Looks more convincing than the show's :lol) It's also probably the only time a "gunblade" design for a sword hasn't seemed utterly stupid since it actually serves a purpose. But yeah, Trial deffinitely surpasses it in execution.

As for the character, Accel seemed like a solid and successful attempt do do the "typical" secondary rider right before later series tried mixing it up to varying degrees. One who is initially antagonistic but unlike, say, in Kiva where Ixa is literally insane and laughably bad at his attempts at any sort of character, Accel actually pulls off the "don't get in my way" aspect without seeming needlessly villainistic. Mostly because he has no pointlessly shoe-horned-in beef with W aside from the fact he doesn't find Shotaro too competant.

Been rewatching Blade with the new encodes/subs and it really makes a difference. The early episodes still have issues but are much more tolerable now.

While Accel is fine, I think my problem is that he still carried the cliched secondary rider necessities, so to speak. He may not have been needlessly dickish as some others, but he was still eye rollingly typical in what to expect.

Yeah, I can't agree with that. Accel was pretty cool, and like I said, he was typical done right.

That's my problem with a lot of Heishi-Neo Heishi series: dickish Riders.

Fair enough.

I need to finish Amazon and start on Black...

Didn't showa also have dickish riders?

Or was that just another opportunity to crap on Heisei?

Well I've only seen some of V3,Black and RX,the whole of Kiva,some of Decade and some of Ryuki so perhaps my opinion is skewed.

Probably.

Kiva, as I said, has just a ludicrously dumb secondary rider. The entire point of Ryuki is that everyone besides Ryuki is evil or morally ambigious, and Decaed is just... Decade.