W's a great choice, but if you want something a little earlier I'd recommend Agito.

Although not many will agree with me on this, for consistent quality I'd start with Wizard. It isn't the BEST show, but unlike a lot of toku, it doesn't get so a bumbling start before exploding into epicness half way through and it doesn't start at eleven and crash and burn mid way through. Wizard is just...Wizard.

And I think Wizard's design is very good, and most of the Phantoms (at least as far as I've seen) are good too.

That helps as well. For a Kamen Rider show Wizard is very action heavy and action focused, while many other Rider shows pull in the action back for the sake of greater amounts of drama, which I appreciate, but you may want something more 'fun' focused to start with.

Wizard uses his motorbike to create a giant mech dragon Rider Kick. It's pretty damn amazing.

I wish he did it more often. I'm trying to remember just how often Haruto actually went inside of someone's..I honestly forget what they called it, to fight their inner phantom. That's something that seemed to get dropped for the most part as the series went on if I am remembering things right.

But yeah, Wizard isn't a terrible starting point. Hell it was my starting point, though that was towards the start of the season's run.

It's not the best season, but it isn't really bad either. It just has a bit of wasted potential I suppose, a few really obvious twists, but I enjoyed it.

The Underworld only played a focus, what, 7 times?

It was their Underworld. And yeah it was kinda awkwardly dropped for long stretches and then brought back without a word. I dunno, I guess I'd still rather that than like how W started with those horrible giant battles and then just never mentioned them again after the first few episodes.

But yeah Wizard is far from the best series, but its heavy action focus and lack of extreme peaks and troughs (they still exist, but not quite as dramatically as say OOO or Fourze) make it a good show to begin with and it's a show I love a lot, even if it isn't my favourite.

W 35.

Yay Ryu focus! Although I loved episode 28 (probably the best episode of the whole show) and Ws ability to defy conventions I must admit I haven't really liked the way Ryu has been handled.

They tried so desperately to wriggle free from conventions, they kinda forget what the point of conventions are for a good writer, as such some of the story lost its punch.

I think Weather is a little OP, personally. I love the way he uses his powers - and I'm not saying he is a bad villain, having a villain who is so unrelentingly brutal and evil in modern Heisei land is something special - but the power scale for the second half of the show is all over the map.

First we had Ryu being stronger than Sho, then Sho activated Xtreme, then Ryu fell right behind and the whole time Weather has been kicking their asses. The fact that Xtreme is like this over nine thousand upgrade and it's only just allowed them to scratch Weather is just insane.

This was probably some of the best giant stuff we've seen in this show, though. It was so cool seeing Sho actually ride his shield through the air and that Gunner thing is so cute.

W 36.

What a great episode. I think Trial may be one of the best upgrades I have ever seen. Not only visually, but thematically as well. I don't really get why they bothered to make vengeance cop into some kind of motorbike swordsman, but if I swallow that logic, it makes perfect sense for his upgrade to be entirely speed focused - kinda like Kabuto's cast off I guess. As much as I adore Xtreme W, it isn't exactly the most logical step up, but I couldn't imagine Accel upgrading into anything else.

Plus holy crap is it captured wonderfully, I love how for his Maximum Drive he is basically just completely untapped, raw, speed for ten seconds so he just utterly pummels the enemy. It's amazing though that the Rider he became to defeat Weather wasn't enough, and he actually had to get an upgrade just to beat him. Shroud!!!!

Also, I thought Wizard had some of the best looking fighting of all the shows. It was showy, but usually in a convincing enough way that to me it felt like it was actually part of the fighting, rather than being showy for showy-sake, which is far too common.