Admittedly, even I don't think Ghost is top ten material for how much I like it, but what I'm getting at is that when someone says something is the "best", they usually just mean it's their favorite. You can't take it at face value too much.

Sure, I guess, but can someone elaborate on that? The best I can think of is that the special effects were really weak sometimes, but now we have weak CG giant monsters and flying watermelons so I wouldn't consider that much of a difference.

Apparently I'm not immune to making broad generalizations either. I do remember a lot of people being outright dismissive of it at the time (including before it even aired!), which is a real shame.

Exactly. It does what it needs to. Kouta's parting words to Micchi made me genuinely emotional, and by that point I hated Kouta and thought Mitsuzane had been horribly mishandled, so to get a reaction like that of me, the episode must have been doing something right.

If that's the case I won't disagree, because I can't tell people if their enjoyment of a show is valid or not. It's just that I would've wrote something like "I think it's among the best", it was just the selection of words which threw me off a bit I guess.

I only watched Black but what I would call cheesy is stuff like the Killer Children Squad, the armadillo monster ejaculating on future astronauts to make copies of them, the whole episode where they kidnap people and turn them into psychics to then let them infiltrate companies to screw them up so that humanity ultimately goes bankrupt... this kinda stuff.

The plots are just so out of this world that together with the for our standards poor effects they seem to be cheesy. I don’t think the effects are bad mind you, I think Black does some amazing stuff, but for people who started/watch Heisei and modern shows and accepted how they do things Showa may seem like a step backwards.

And I'm fairly certain that there's even more crazy stuff to be found outside of Black that I haven't watched yet. So basically: Bad/silly things with "bad" effects = cheesy is what I'm guessing. This is the case for me at least. Or when they reuse the same plot over and over again and it gets worse every time.

The irony wasn’t lost on me but I decided not to go there :)

I can't really remember that time since I was barely around here, it was before I became a regular so I don’t know how people reacted. I just know that I love Gaim and that I really liked the epilogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRFQyMKEE50

But really, it's the dated special effects and filming techniques that make the Showa stuff seem cheesy. While almost all Rider and Sentai monsters look ridiculous, they at least look high quality. Some of the older ones look kind of awful. Then you have weird filming techniques. The first Rider's henshin is basically him driving his motorcycle while an image of him in the suit fades in over it. Amazon's henshin is basically a kaleidoscope. Sure, they had to make do with what they could do, but when you're used to today's henshins, it's weird.

I actually think some of the early Rider shows were much more inventive than the modern ones. Due in part to special effects and budget limitations, it required a lot more creativity to get cool effects than we see nowadays with everything defaulting to CGI. The first block of the original series, before Fujioka's accident, had some especially interesting cinematography that's unrivaled by anything in the Heisei era outside of Hibiki.

Why has no one told me about Starfish Hitler?! I need to know if anything else this amazing happens in other seasons asap.

Well there was Ant-Capone from the same season...

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/...20150630114232

I think it goes back to this attitude Some (not all!) Gaim fans have that anything not directly written by Urobuchi must suck, even if it doesn't.

For the record, I also thought the glorified movie ad episodes were fun breaks too, and that was when I still loved Gaim as much as most people on this forum seemed to at the time.

But the epilogue goes beyond that in my opinion. It more than earns its place as a "real" episode and a dang good note to leave on. I do think it left Movie War Full Throttle without much to work with, but hey.

Which is exactly why I have a hard time understanding that perspective. To me, Rider back then had tons of imagination to do the stuff it did, even when it was a little wonky.

X's original transformation sticks out to me in that respect. Sure the fancy new version in Kamen Rider War was really cool to see, but there's such a charm to how they cobbled the old one together in my eyes.

I really hope in the (hopefully not hypothetical) future where more of the Showa series are subbed, people start to come around to them more.

Of course, given that I see people say shows like Wizard or Fourze are too episodic, special effects may be the least of their problems.

He and Capone are from the aforementioned Kamen Rider X if you're wondering. Also, no, it pretty much never gets as awesome as Starfish Hitler.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't watch the video up above before I wrote this, seems I'm stating the obvious when the dude in the video has a big X on his chest.

Also, Hall of Fail? That's Hall of Win and you know it, random Youtube video!

That's two birds with one stone though, since it shows X transforming. For that matter, it shows that equally sweet Rider Kick. Remember when Riders did that more than twice a series?

I didn't like any Gaim not written by Urobuchi since it felt out of place. It would be good if in any other season IMO.
WHAAAT?!? I miss Rider Kicks... Those were the coolest parts of the battle where they would scream RIDER KICK!

I could see how someone would feel that way. I think the intention was to give some sort of resolve the tension between Kouta and Micchy while at the same time essentially having a "passing the torch" moment. Remember, the last time Kouta and Micchy actually see each other is after Micchy "kills" Kouta so it was nice to have that moment where Kouta gives Micchy his approval and tells him that they'll always be friends.

I do agree, it does take a little bit of the challenge away from Micchy, but then again, Micchy was kicking major amounts of ass leading up to that point, only losing the battle once he realized killing Jam would mean harming an innocent person (another little plot detail that shows how far Micchy has come; at the beginning of the series, he was perfectly willing to let innocent people get hurt just to avoid providing data to Yggdrasil).

Seriously, Mitsuzane's character progression throughout Gaim is one of my favorite things EVER in any Rider show. So well done.

Jounouchi is kind of a double-edged sword. It would have been nice for him to really do some damage as Kurokage, but at the same time it's more realistic that he simply got tossed aside. He was already probably the weakest fighter in the entire series, and he's using the weakest lockseed (can't remember if Kurumi Arms was weaker or not). It's true to who Jounochi became later on in the series: even when completely out of his league, he was still willing to fight to redeem himself. Just the gesture alone is beautiful.

Yeah, but maybe it would've been better if Kouta just visited Micchy in his head like Takatora.



That scene where he puts Hase's picture on the wall of missing people, THAT was heartbreaking. I just wish Jounouchi fought alongside Micchy and not just got defeated and that's the end of it. He could've at least tried again.