Something I Can Never Understand
 

I have a feeling this thread may cause arguments, and if it does then by all means lock it, but it's something about watching shows like Kamen Rider that's been grating to me as of late and I need to hear input on this.

Obviously tokusatsu shows run serialized over the course of a year, 49 to 52 episodes depending on the series. There have been some really great shows lately. Rider-wise, we've gotten the fantastic Gaim, the equally great Drive and Ghost has been very entertaining as well. That said, a lot of shows like these don't really get their ball rolling as quickly as shows that only get 12 to 24 episodes to tell their story. The first handful of episodes tend to be a slow burn, establishing characters, powers and abilities and having the audience getting to know the characters they'll be following for the next year.

So why do so many people literally jump ship by the fifth episode and never look back? Drive had a slow burn before hitting its peak and was a great ride. Ghost also started slowly and has escalated fairly well, too. Yet I've seen a lot of people say that these series have terrible pacing and characters when those of us who stuck with it saw these things evolve and improve over time. For example, so many people who complain about Ghost's supporting cast probably never watched past the single digits, where characters like Akari and Onari get their moments, their characters level out and have become some of the most active and useful supporting cast members we've gotten in a while.

And I've seen the argument that we don't have the time to spend waiting for pay-offs. I honestly think that's a bad excuse. Especially when people turn around and claim that Blade is one of the better Rider installments even though it apparently has a 15 episode slow burn. People nowadays have time to marathon netflix shows, so how much valuable time is someone wasting watching a 23 minute episode a week compared to that?

I can't help but feel like a lot of Rider fans write off recent installments since the "almighty" Kamen Rider Gaim (which even though I adored, I think gets way too much praise by people and is held way too high as a standard for Rider shows) as terrible seasons when they're probably going off of the first 5 or so episodes alone. Am I the only one who thinks that here?

The supporting cast should never exist in most shows they don't support the drag it down.

Ghost: Kanon is good
Drive: the cop that became the gf of Drive and that scientist lady were the only good ones.

As a quick counter argument the marathoning case, when you have to wait a week per episode, it's a lot easier to just lose interest. You have to move at the show's pace, not your own, so when things start slowly, it can lead to about 2 months worth of episode before things pick up, so even though it's only about 22 minutes a week, once a show starts losing you, it's harder for it to keep you invested.

As for everything else, it just comes down to individual taste. Most people use a 5 episode test since that gives the show time to set up it's characters, establish it's setting, it's plot, and tone (Though tones shift, the first couple episodes do (Generally) let you know what kind of show it's going to be). So it gives what some people see as a good taste of what's to come. So if it can't grab one's attention in 5 weeks, why should someone give it 45 more weeks to start coming together?
I understand it's not a perfect system (Using your example of Blade, yeah, the first 15 episodes are a bit of a slog, and many people would've dropped it using the 5 episode test if not for most of the forum vouching for it). It just has to do with patience. When the character who acts eccentrically and yells randomly starts prancing around during the early episodes in a clear act to catch children's attention, it can wear on someone's patience, and just decide that a series isn't worth continuing (And this isn't specifically targeted towards Onari. Mario from Zyuohger was shaping up to be the same, but they toned him down by episode 3-4, while other Sentai and Riders have featured much of the same (Wizard didn't, but it had it's own problems concerning the cast)).

I see where the frustration comes from, but returning to a show you just don't care about week after week on the hopes that it might become good gets difficult after so long.

I don't feel people are having unfair standards against Drive and Ghost because Gaim was good. Double was great, but people aren't rallying against OOO and Fourze as bad series. It's not a case of people having unfair terms and standards for deciding whether or not a series deserves their time, but rather how a series decides to handle it's beginning.
Gaim's beginning wasn't indicative of it's final quarter at all, but it chose to be lively and energetic while managing with a subdued cast to prevent people from rolling their eyes when character x or y appeared. Drive opened with a police force that felt like the KRC without any of the establishing moments that made you care about them, all bumbling around with props and one policeman throwing a tantrum when Shinnosuke showed up.

Gaim can be overhyped, agreed, but people aren't holding Drive and Ghost to Gaim's standard. People are just finding the flaws in the opening episode to be too overbearing to keep coming back to week after week.

Except in Ghost's case literally the entire supporting cast assist the main Riders in their investigations and fights and have shown, multiple times, that they're extremely competent and know exactly when not to get in the way.

Even Drive's cast was useful in solving cases gaining police support or hindering police support as a way to keep them from interfering with Rider-related issues.

And according to what you're saying, characters like the Kamen Rider Club in Fourze must also drag down the Riders as well.

Personally speaking, once I start something I watch it through to the end. If I'm going to hate something I want to be able to rip on it as best as I possibly can. If it improves, all the better! I can see how this would be more of an issue watching the show weekly though, watching slowly can be a totally different experience from binge watching.

I do agree in that how you watch it can effect your thoughts on it. Netflix is a good example of this. More people praise shows on that streaming service than some tv-only shows. And I'll bet a good portion of that judgement comes from the fact that the time, place & mood are set differently. If you feel like checking something out then you can do it as you please with a few clicks. But if you're held at the mercy of a company or studio that tells you when you get to watch something then the experience may not be as good.

I'm not really the person to answer this since I tend to like the first episodes of a show just as much as later ones, but I think it really just comes down to people having better crap to be doing.

If a show isn't doing it for them after 6 episodes, that's 2 hours they aren't getting back, and it isn't unreasonable to want to spend that time doing something you'd enjoy more instead of committing like 18 more hours in hopes the show starts to grow on you.

Again, I'm the guy who likes Wizard specifically because it's boring, so I can't claim to fully understand the mindset, but, you know, your free time is your free time, so if you wanna call Ghost crap after 3 episodes and move on regardless of how awesome it is, I guess more power to you.

Well that’s your opinion. I think Drive is a good show, but calling it equally great to Gaim is not something I’d agree with. And Ghost is just bad, that’s all I can say about that show.

That’s fine and all but if you need half of the shows runtime to get your stuff together like Drive did then you have a problem.

Because they realize that this show features a recurring theme, characters or ideas which (most likely) will be a thing throughout the entire show and they can’t stand it. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because even if that changes later on you can just pick the show up again. But even then you’ll need to sit through a few or in the worst case a lot of episodes which you won’t enjoy, and some people just don’t want to waste their time with that. And that’s their decision to make and I can absolutely see where they’re coming from with this.

Drive had a good second half, no doubt about that, but once it arrived at that point I already didn’t care anymore. I continued to watch the show, appreciated what it did better, but I couldn’t be entertained anymore. Seeing the characters always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Which is exactly the problem with shows like these: Even a great comeback needs to happen before you write the show off or it’s too late. In Drive’s case, it was too late for me.

I heavily disagree here; Ghost has not "escalated fairly well". It did tackle some more interesting plots for sure, but Onari is still insufferable, Takeru and Makoto are still bland as all hell, Kanon is still a trophy, and they still throw resurrections and power-ups around like nobody’s business.

No. Because you feel the show got better does not mean it really did. In the case of Drive I agree: It got better during the second half, a lot better in fact.

Ghost did not get better (yet?), at all. It’s the same it has ever been: A mediocre show.

Let me just stop you here: If you describe Onari as one of "the most active and useful supporting cast members we've gotten in a while" then I have no idea what show you’re watching. It’s definitely not the same Ghost I watch. He’s active, that’s for sure, but useful? Hell no.

Akari was never a problem for me; in fact I think she’s the best character in the entire show. She achieves her goals through her own power, without bullshit power-ups, and she’s the smartest and most considerate person in the entire cast.

Takeru had a time where his motives were interesting but he transformed into the bland posterboy hero really fast, and Makoto went from interesting to boring as soon as Kanon returned to life. And while we’re talking Kanon: Horrible damsel in distress trophy character. Completely useless.

Alain is the only other character I can think of right now who has generally good development, stays true to his motives and is fun to watch.

Onari though… he is useless. Plain useless. He’s an insufferable token comedic relief character who in my book had two, two generally cool moments in 35 episodes. And that’s just awful. He continues to do dumb shit because that’s just Onari, and they never bother to let him grow as a character.

Very early on he dropped a line where he said that he was a bad person in the past but Takeru’s dad took him in or something like that, and this was never mentioned again. Not a single episode where they bothered to focus on this buffoon and tell us his backstory. They waste so much time with Onari just doing stupid shit.

I get it, he’s supposed to be funny and apparently it’s working because Japan loves him, but calling him "useful" is just wrong IMO.

I watch the new episode every week and I think the show sucks, so what? It's not like everyone who sticks around magically enjoys the hell out of every show.

I don’t think that’s the case. People just drop stuff because they don’t like it. And the comparison with Gaim is unfair IMO, people don’t dislike stuff because Gaim was good. They dislike it because they don’t like it.

Gaim was my first show, I watched a lot of Rider after, found lots of shows I enjoy, so I won’t accept that people write my opinion off because I’m a Gaim fanboy who has high expectations. I don’t have high expectations; I just think I watched enough Rider by now to know when a show just isn’t good.

Or maybe Ghost just isn’t for me, that could be a thing too. But it has nothing to do with me having high expectations still.

I generally agree that 5 episodes might not be enough to full gauge just where a show is going, but the line has to be drawn somewhere I guess. These shows are long and with the amount of other stuff people may watch, it's time consuming to juggle a show simply on the basis that it MAY get better.

The problem with Ghost is that it threw everything that it had into the first few episodes, spamming new power ups like there was no tomorrow which in turn made none of them feel at all special. As for the supporting cast - Akari has been fantastic and one of my favourite support cast members in the entire franchise, but the rest really haven't gone anywhere other than Alain. The only lingering interest in Makoto since the Kanon arc ended is the Deep Specter stuff (which feels forgotten about most of the time), Onari is just loud and Kanon is just a damsel in distress. I got more out of Kubei than I did those three.

Out of all of them, why Kanon?

I don't see why it's a big deal that some fans drop a certain series.

I dropped W after 9 episodes.

I dropped Gaim after 14 episodes.

The only reason I made it through 30 episodes of Ghost is because apparently I'm a masochist and the show is ripe for memes. And what enjoyment I did get out of it was mocking it.

I have a short attention span and limited free time. I want to watch something I can get into and into early. If the show doesn't have me by around episode 10, I'm around. I even gave Gaim some extra leeway and it failed me.

You know, every year I hear complaints about the lead in Rider being "bland" and every year I don't get it. Takeru is only bland in the sense that he's really nice. Sure, he doesn't have any overt flaws, but he has a personality, and the show consistently show him learning lessons and growing as a hero.

As for the supporting cast, not all of them can be as useful as Akari because most of them are normal people, and not super scientists, and they still find things to do anyway. I hear people act like Kanon had nothing to do after coming back to life, but she plays a huge role in Alain's character development through their conversations. And in Onari's case, he may not be active all the time, but he's supportive in a very literal and emotional sense. He's extremely dedicated to helping Takeru, even if there's not much he can do, and nonetheless he basically starts a ghost-busting business to find Ganma, which I'd say is pretty dang helpful.

There's more to the plot and characters in a story than the literal events that happen. Little moments and broader themes count for something too, and I find Ghost has those in abundance.

I guess Ghost really isn't for you, because you seem to not fully understand it. I know "You just don't get it" is an excuse that gets thrown around a lot, and I don't mean to disparage your taste, but I don't really know what else to call it here.

It's interesting you describe Kanon as a "damsel in distress trophy" though, given I hear a lot of people complain about Mai saying the same thing, both from people who liked and who didn't like Gaim.

Not to mention the tossing around power-ups thing. Pretty much every Rider show since like, 2006 has that problem to some extent. It's just kind of something you have to accept.

The thing that I have found with tokusatsu shows and with Ghost and Amazons in particular is that they are better to "binge-watch" than to sit through week to week.

Before I went on my break of Ghost for a few months I found the show to be dreadful with only a handful of good moments. When I started to pick the show back up I found that it is a lot more enjoyable than what I had remembered. Now is it the best Kamen Rider show? No not by a long shot, but it has elements in it that I really like and have kept me invested. I have yet to be caught up, but when I am I think I'm going to take another break. Why? Because if the show dips again for me then if I binge through it the struggle won't feel as bad as it would watching week to week.

Then with Amazons with the story developing as it is its a lot better to me to just go straight through episodes than week to week.

Also the whole first handful of episodes thing. The beginning of a show is what gets people hooked onto a show. If people don't find something that they enjoy in that time frame then they don't have to watch it. One day I told myself that I'd watch every Heisei show out there. After four years I've only got six series left to complete. There are complaints about those shows that people have found and I didn't because I "binged" through them.

It also might be a case of toku fans are just starting to bet burned out on everything. Its understandable because when I got into tokusatsu I was fascinated by how much there was and I really wanted to know everything. Then in the fall of last year I had started to notice to many trend and patterns in these shows. I just started to find each show similar to the last and after a while I just burned out. So I took a break and varied the shows that I watch and only recently I have started to watch these shows again and not feel so burnt out on them.

I don't think that's the case honestly, I think the problem is that I dislike some factors of Ghost so much that it blinds me and I miss the actual good stuff. I guess I shouldn't bitch and moan so much about a Japanese kids show, I should really get into a more neutral and laid back perspective about these shows. That would help me to identify actual problems instead of complaining about details again and again. Also, I'm starting to sound like a certain somebody I met early on in this forum whose comments I deeply despise. No Matrix, it’s not you :p

I should keep this in mind when the next season starts.

Anyways, you raise some interesting points, I don’t give Takeru enough credit and your argument with Kanon helping out Alain is valid, I forgot about that.

But one of my points I'll defend until the end: Onari is stupid and they could handle him way better if they wanted to, but he's still just a clown. Yes he does root for Takeru, and as I said he had some good moments, only that I can count them with one hand.

My problem with Takeru isn't that he's bland. I actually agree with you that he does have a clearly defined personality (now you want bland, that's when you go to Makoto, who is about as dynamic as a sheet of plywood). My problem with Takeru is the same one I had with Wataru back in Kiva: he's almost entirely reactionary. I like my heroes to be proactive, that's one of the big reasons why I'm the biggest cheerleader on Team Haruto. When there's some kind of big evil threat, I want to see the Kamen Rider out there confronting it head on, not waiting around for it to come to him. Takeru, especially during the first 99-day countdown, was frustratingly passive. He only got involved in events when they came to him and showed zero initiative in hunting for the Heroic Eyecons; he just waited for the old man to show up and spoon-feed him a clue (I think that the opening narration date tracker is a huge factor in giving me this impression of Takeru, as a side note; in the first part of the show it would sometimes show us that well over a week had passed between episodes with the characters making absolutely zero progress on anything). At least Takeru doesn't spend most episodes moping in the bathtub between monster fights, but he still doesn't give off much sense of a being a man on borrowed time trying to stop an evil invasion.

I'm still fairly new to Rider, but Ghost has been way more interesting than any Sentai I've ever watched. The plot started developing as soon as the show started - it's not just "let's send this monster out and watch as it blows stuff up and fights the sentai" for 50 episodes. It might help because I started when the show was already on episode 30 and could knock em all out in a couple of sittings, but if Ghost has a boring beginning then I don't get how people can actually watch some other toku shows.

I could tell early on that he was going to be the over the top comic relief, and didn't expect anything more from him. Because of that, I like the character.

Let me answer this from 3 perspectives:

1) As a cynic, toku is aimed towards 11-14 year-olds. That demographic is particularly adept at discerning what is to their tastes, and what they find unpalatable within a very brief span of time. If a show isn't compelling within a reasonable timeframe it will be dropped (and one would argue that 5 episodes is being extremely generous given modern attention spans).

2) As a toku fan, there is a plethora of wonderful content which has accrued over the decades. Simply put if Black, a show from 1987 edited on a 7 MHz Amiga 500, can grip you from the opening frames of Ep. 1 then any other competitor had better at least be in the same region of attractiveness to stand a chance against its historical competition. Otherwise why shouldn't people just rewatch their Laserdiscs?

3) As a writer, I can appreciate deliberate languour in pacing. Two of my favourite movies, Jaws and 2001: A Space Odyssey have extended sequences of zero plot significance which go on for lengthy minutes. Lengthy excruciating minutes for the uninitiated. We cannot expect everyone to be writers.

That's actually more what I was trying to say. I find a lot of the time people's opinion on a show hinges less on how many qualities it has and more on how bothered they get by its flaws.

I totally get it if Onari being over-the-top takes you out of the show though. It's kind of like the weird editing gags in Drive in that it can kill the mood sometimes. But compared to someone like Shunpei in Wizard who's obnoxious and useless, at least Onari is just obnoxious.

First, I bet I could give you a run for your money when it comes to singing Haruto's praises.

Second, I think that passivity in the early episodes is less a flaw in the writing and more a trait of the character. Takeru explicitly feels a little lost and overwhelmed by all the crap he suddenly finds himself dealing with, and in I think the second episode, he even confides in Akari how worried he is he won't be able to find all 15 Eyecons before he disappears.

There's a moment in the episode where Takeru gets the Boost Eyecon where, during the montage of everyone looking for the last Eyecons before his last few days are over, he stops (on Christmas no less) to just lie down and admire how pretty the sky is for a bit. I can't put it into words super adequately so I hope you get what I mean by this, but especially the way the scene is acted, it sort of shows just how exhausted Takeru actually is from what his life's become.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but subtle character moments like that are what made me like Haruto so much.

As for after that, I don't really know what you mean. He's still a little lackadaisical about coming back to life, but that's only because he's so concerned with the Ganma by that point. He decides pretty early on after Necrom shows up that he wants to try and understand and make peace with the Ganma and 20 episodes later he's still sticking to that. If anything, he seems more driven than the usual Rider.

At first, when I got into Toku, I was a lot like what MrHerofan said, seeing that there was so much of it and wanting to learn it all, but now I'm having a hard time starting other series.

Funny thing is, when I watch a toku show, it seems like the opposite happens to me than everyone else. I'm fine with watching an episode a week, in fact I think it's been helping me get through Ghost. Lately it's been teetering on the edge of "Meh" for me, but being able to watch an episode a week at a time, it gives a kind of cool down and gets me excited for the next one to come out. Meanwhile I've tried to start up both Ryuki and Kabuto, both praised from what I've seen in the toku community, but after a while I just forget about it and... stop. Even Amazon kind of got like that after the first few episodes, and I've been lenient on it for the virtue that its much older than shows I'm used to. Maybe I'm starting to get burnt out on toku, or maybe I'm just completely mad and enjoy mediocrity.

Also, going back to Ghost, I don't see Onari as useless. Yes he can be annoying (I personally don't like the way he talks), but in the beginning he pretty much drove the plot. His paranormal investigation led them to almost every single eyecon, and while we don't see it all that much, him and the other two temple guys were constantly out searching for stuff. Actually... now that I think about it, alot of what he did that was useful was handling mostly mundane things off screen...

That I believe is true, I've heard a lot of people saying that they and others have been losing patience with Ghost, and really that's the thing, it's all up to your mindset on how you enjoy shows.

Me I have a ton of patience due to the job I work so Ghost really hasn't driven my patience to it's limits too much, and by too much I mean only one time, which was the Mugen tease, that legitimately angered me but other than that I've had a fun time with Ghost. Could it be better? Yeah, it could, but for what it is, I personally don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be. But alas that is only my opinion.

For myself it varies per show. Blade I gave up after episode 3 only to return after episode 16-ish, Ghost I just gave up after episode 20 ish cause I was too tired and lazy to continue that the synopsis on Toei was good enough.

I absolutely loved Ghost as I was trying to catch up. Once I caught up, I immediately got bored with it, so I watched Drive instead. Once I finished Drive, I had 3-4 episodes of Ghost to watch. I definitely feel like Ghost is better to watch in chunks. Actually, I feel that way about Sentai too. While I was following Zyuohger, I got bored of it 4-5 episodes in and I haven't really found the motivation to catch up since. I watch another episode here and there but i'm still only on episode 9 or 10.

Ghost is definitely going into a slump during the 30s after a relatively good run of episodes. I'm hoping it doesn't mirror the experience I had with Drive - there were about 10 really good episodes in the 20s going into the 30s and then I lost all interest as soon as the Nira stuff ended. People kept telling me it got better, but I never found myself interested again and never cared about the characters. My biggest annoyance with the show was that you essentially had the story happening behind Shinnosuke.

With Ghost, I care about the characters when they're given something to do, but lately it's as if most of them spend episodes standing around.

I'm just at the point I want Ghost to be over. I see no quality in it whatsoever. While I can't stand W or Gaim, I can at least tell there was effort in there somewhere. I can't see that with Ghost.

Just give me my neon Gamer God already.