Takuro Fukuda and The Problems of Kamen Writing
 

So I've been keeping up with Saber by watching weekly with a friend and while I'm enjoying what I can of it I can't help but notice that head writer Takuro Fukuda has been having the same sort of problems as he did with Ghost's overall writing and plot: It feels like his story can't support the average Kamen Rider series run time. And I found that kind of fascinating since the issues Saber currently has are also very similar to Ghost's.

Now I defend Ghost constantly and still do. I think it gets way too much hate as a series and is overall a good series, but nowhere near as good as most of its predecessors or almost all of its successors. I feel Saber's gonna be in that same category. Reason being is that when watching it weekly, the series feels slow or like its spinning its wheels while if you watch it in chunks, the story flows better. I watched Ghost weekly, fell off for weeks on end then went back to catch up and enjoyed myself more by watching 2 or 3 episodes at a time. Saber's storytelling so far feels like it's gonna be better to watch near its end where you can binge it in portions, too.

There's also Fukuda's apparent habit of writing what feels like an endgame plot only 10-13 episodes into the series run. By around episode 12 Ghost found all the eyecons, got a wish, the apparent main antagonist was defeated and...now we've got like 35 episodes left. So we get things like the Ganmeisers, Another Makoto, Takeru dying for real though two or three more times, etc.

Saber? Same thing! By episode 13 we've got beams of light in the sky, wonder books opening up portals all over the place, our antagonists getting close to their goal, a showdown between Calibur and Saber aaand...35 episodes left still. So now we've got a conflict between Touma and the other Logos Riders that feels like it's been, what a surprise, spinning its wheels too much in terms of progression. Characters don't simply talk to one another, question motives that deserve questioning, devolve into what feels one-dimensional versions of who they are (REN...), repeating the same conflict over and over and while it finally feels like it's slowly starting to actually progress with Slash's side-swap and all, it's still a very notable problem I've been having with things since we ended Calibur's arc.

I can't help but feel like Fukuda's storytelling excels best in short-form mini-series length works or even single episodes rather than long-form, year-long plot threads since his ideas don't seem to be able to stretch that far. I don't think he's a bad writer at all, but I think Toei puts him on projects that are longer than his skills can deal with.

This whole thing was just an interesting thought. Especially when comparing Saber's current place to where Ghost's was around the same time. The similarities become super apparent.

This is very true. Fukuda has worked on Sin Specter, and the Drive movie and those I believe were well-received and they were only about and hour and a half in terms of length.

Personally, I don't see Saber falling in the same pit as Ghost. As long as Fukuda doesn't leave along with all the material for it. I'd see something like Blade where it got progressively good or maybe Wizard where it's just okay.

Writing for a 50-episode length story is a very big challenge for many writers, and I guess only a handful are really capable of writing that long. Especially when you've been in this genre or franchise for so long. You'll run out of steam, eventually.

I'm gonna go on a tangent and reiterate this opinion I have and say that Kamen Rider needs fresh blood. Shogo Muto and Gen Urobuchi were very welcoming guests to work on Kamen Rider. Regardless of what you feel about their shows, Build and Gaim have become one of Kamen Rider's most successful series. The only thing I think holding Toei back is they probably think they don't want ""outsiders"" to meddle with their golden goose Kamen Rider, but it should've been an incentive for them to bring in new talent with what Build and Gaim did.

This is one thing I want to see with Rider, but I feel it won't happen for a while since next year's rider would be definitely coinciding with the 50th anniversary and we'll most likely have Ohmori and/or Inoue to work on the show.

I mean I want to point out that this happened in Ex-aid as well (also maybe Zero One and Build, but I’ve yet to watch those) the plot with Dan Kurato wrapped up at the half way mark then a bait and switch was pulled with the bugsters being swapped out for Dan senior.

I feel like the difference is the future plots are intro’d earlier in the other shows then ghost or saber? I don’t know what do y’all think?

This is the identical issue I had with Ghost. While I disagree on it's quality, I did find it infinitely more watchable when I could sit and watch it in chunks at a time. While watching weekly, I just lost interest due to the seemingly erratic pacing, which is the same thing I did with Saber after episode 9 or 10 (Didn't even know they were written by the same guy. Jeez...)

I feel Fukuda's main goal is to make a series feel bigger than it is, and he aims to accomplish that by creating 3 or so story arcs that the cast has to go through, with varying levels of connectivity between them.

These are some good points.

But I also feel like, there has to be some blame with Bandai's gungho method with the toys this season. Like this particular first quarter has been bloated with a lot of stuff.

And I feel like what would have helped Fukuda is if the toys and stuff that had to be showcased, were spaced out a lot more. Because as it stands, with the tools given to you, you could probably stretch out Rider and Form and Book debuts out further than just the first 15 episodes. Like, the toys themselves just have this really good setup in terms of like, what shows up where, who gets what, and how those clash against each other and make a pretty big story out of those.

The issue, is that they are all packed into the first 15 episodes, and can end up being a detriment as a result.

The difference with Ex-Aid I feel is that the arcs felt clear-cut. Like Dan was a big threat, but he wasn't THE threat, which was the looming threat of Gamedeus and a bugster invasion. And since that was made known early on in the series, the end of Dan's arc didn't feel like an early endgame, just the end of one of the conflicts the series had set up.

Would y'all agree, based on the obervations so far, that perhaps Fukuda would be more suited to season-based shows. I think he doesn't suck but perhaps just not utilized correctly as a writer. Or maybe have a co-writer that can help him manage his narrative pacing/length problem.

Fukada does have two co-writers there Keiichi Hasegawa and Nobohiro Mouri who both have also wrriten chunks for both Ghost and Saber.

To me it seems like a lot of recent Rider seasons have had a big "endgame-worthy" event somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way in. It might have started with Ghost (although it might have also been in Drive or Gaim and I'm just not remembering) and collecting all the Eyecons, but it's been a pretty steady pattern since then:

Ex-Aid had the defeat of Kuroto Dan, who while it's true was never shown as the only threat, neither the Bugsters nor Masamune took the "main villain" role until he was dealt with. It actually reminds me a lot of the situation in Saber: the evil Rider gets defeated first, then for a while the monster generals are the main villains until the new human villain is revealed.

Build had one "mini-endgame" with the defeat of Faust, then another with the representative battle between Touto and Hokuto, and then another with the representative battle between Touto and Seito. The reason I count those as mini-endgames instead of just plot points is that everything before each one had been building up to a showdown with that specific villain group, and once the heroes won, a new villain took the stage.

I haven't seen Zi-O, but I'll bet it has things like this too.

And Zero-One had Horobi's defeat and Jin's resulting all-out attack, leading to the debut of Shining Assault Hopper and Jin's first death.

I'll bet there are other examples of this in earlier Heisei shows, but I haven't seen enough of them to be sure. My point is, the early endgame thing might have been started by Fukuda but it's hardly unique to him.

ZI-O is probably the show the furthest from it. 15 and 16 do deal with an end of the world level threat but it never gets punched in the face. It's something far more personal and mostly as a backdrop to accelerate some character arcs. And the show continues on with the same main bad guys and only adds one additional minor antagonist to the mix.

I don’t see any of this at all. Every recent Rider show has had an ‘endgame’ event before the new years break as tradition now (at least as far back as OOO — Mezool and Gamel’s combination and subsequent demise; 01 defeating Jin, Lazer friggin dying, etc). Fukuda’s shows certainly tend to do a lot more with it, making the stakes higher and feeling like the end to a whole era of the show; but to me that’s a positive in the favour and speaks to the idea that he knows very well how to write a weekly kid’s show that’s going to be off the air for two weeks over new year’s break.

In regards to repetition or running out of steam... no, I don’t get that either. Both Ghost and Saber clearly have new things going on after that rather than repeating the same beats. If anything it’s Takahashi who runs out of plot very quickly with how much he stretches things out and doesn’t have a clue what to do with his characters. I’ve got criticisms with how things are going in Saber right now but it’s far better than what a lot of Rider seasons manage at this point; the writers know what they’re doing.

It probably goes without saying that I also don't think Ghost and Saber's overall plot structure are too different from the usual Rider show either (a lot of them could very easily be argued to do the same thing), but I'd definitely hesitate to lay the credit/blame for that entirely on Fukuda. Everything I've learned lately about the behind-the-scenes creative process for Rider shows suggests the Chief Producers have a ton of influence on that sort of thing, and both Ghost and Saber seem to intentionally pass the scripts around between their three writers a lot more evenly than most recent Rider shows do.

I mean, it's literally the exact same producer and writers, so any overall point you want to make about the structural issues both shows have can still apply; it's just that it's probably important to note that it's unlikely every decision someone might have a problem with was all made by the one guy.

Looked around and, out of the 23 episodes, Fukuda has only written 8 of them. I'm pretty sure he also supervises the other writers and is more focused on writing the lore, much like that one lore drop episode about Saikou and Kurayami.

I think Fukuda's improved a bit. He's more willing to hand key plot elements to other writers, instead of disappearing along with the material, leaving the other writers little to work with.

This time last year, most of us were struggling through the workplace competition arc. Saber doesn't have a workplace competition arc, therefore it's currently on track to become my favorite Reiwa Rider show.

Kamen Rider Ghost is my fourth favorite Heisei Rider show, mostly due to how the theme of heroism is explored through the different perspectives of the Parka Ghosts and I specifically remember Robin Hood's line about how justice means something different to each person. Takeru is already a pretty heroic guy from the start, but the wisdom he gains allows him to reach out to people and connect them. Since connections is a part of the theme of death, with how death isn't the end, everything people do has an effect and the power to leave a legacy behind to help others in the future.

However, I credit most of my enjoyment to Mouri, the same way I credit him for his work on Zi-O. He and Hasegawa gave more focus to Onari and Akari, treating them as important characters while Fukuda only used them as comic relief, similar to how he writes Mei in Saber. Fukuda was absent a lot while he wrote Ghost's summer movie, which as I mentioned before, is the third worst summer movie I've ever watched. I can only hope that Fukuda has improved and Book Of Ruin will be better.

What I will praise Fukuda for is the high stakes. I mean, Ghost Episode 1 ends with Edith telling Takeru he can only live as a ghost for 99 days and now he only has 98 days left.... That's a pretty damn big deal! Especially with how the first 12 episodes occur close to real time 99 days. Every single episode, I'm thinking "Is Takeru going to obtain the Eyecons in time?", or "How the hell is Takeru going to revive now that he sacrificed himself for Kanon?!" There was so much suspense in that first arc.

Of course, the fact that Toucon Boost exists took away some of that suspension of disbelief, but actually, things just get more extreme from there! Now Takeru has another 99 days except he's not just trying to revive but to save his father's afterlife as well. Can you imagine that? I can totally relate to Edith saying how crazy Ryu was, staking something that important. Something even more important than life. That's a crazy burden that Takeru has to carry for the rest of the show.

Then the last episode is literally 1 day left and I'm thinking "Damn, if Takeru fails, he dies and Ryu's soul fades away!" and Episode 33 does a great job at emphasizing how terrible that would be by showing the partial destruction of Takeru's soul before his friends' emotions bring him back.

Anyway, I've yammered way too long about Ghost. I should talk about Saber now. I have the same appreciation for Saber, perhaps even greater. Kento doesn't even get a "Toucon Boost". He just dies, that's it. And his friends have to carry on without him. That's a pretty big deal. But just like the Masters and Nada in Ryusoulger, his spirit lives on in his fellow Swordsmen, who carry on his will to save the world and protect the people.

Even ignoring the characters and story for a moment, Saber is such a spectacular show from the start. The pacing is a little rushed, but honestly I prefer that to something slow like Gaim or Amazons which take a while to get to the good stuff. Saber doesn't waste time on exposition, it gets right to the action and the character drama.

Somebody mentioned EX-Aid doing something similar but with more clear-cut arcs. However, I contest that it's not a good thing. I can jump in to EX-Aid in the 1-23 episode range and feel like I know what I'm watching. But everything after has a different feel to it, like it's not the same EX-Aid anymore. I think it's to the merit of Ghost and Saber that Fukuda has such competent secondary writers in Mouri and Hasegawa to pick up his slack and Takahashi didn't have that in EX-Aid. Ghost and Saber have a consistency to what they're about and where they're going which I think EX-Aid lacks.

I mean. Unless you're counting Zi-O vs. Decade it doesn't exactly have a lot of competition!

For me, I'll always say one of my biggest problems with Ghost was that they rushed through the initial conflict between Takeru and Makoto, and by extension, the "99 days" time limit as a whole.

If any Rider vs Rider conflict should have been a little bit more drawn out, it was that, because it's one where miscommunication and secrecy actually isn't at the forefront of it all. Makoto still had his issue with being trapped in the Ganma world, which added in more tension. But really the reason they fought against each other was because they both needed the same things in order to serve different, but similar goals. And in a nice inversion of what would we expect from these character dynamics, the aloof Secondary Rider has a slightly less selfish goal than our idealistic, all-loving hero. And there was definitely enough there to make it an ongoing conflict throughout at least the first half of the show.

But it got resolved far too quickly and it became clear the show didn't really know how to pad itself out for another 30+ episodes. Outside of Alain's character arc, everything from that point on up until maybe the last 5 episodes of the series felt like filler. Sure, maybe important plot-related stuff happened in that time besides that but I don't feel like the stakes ever truly raised during that time period. The plot had already reset Takeru's time limit so he has the same goal as before. And now the genuinely interesting conflict between Takeru and Makoto was replaced with....basically nothing. I loved the stuff with Alain in that middle portion, but while it was great character development, it ultimately didn't move the plot enough for me, especially since Necrom kinda stopped doing stuff at that point in the story beyond being another Rider for fight scenes.

All of this is to say that I think that Saber does this a lot better because it feels like there's an actual progression to this story. We had the initial plot with the Sword of Logos vs Calibur and the Megid. And it's deceptively simplistic because it seems like there's a clear good vs evil conflict going on here, which is why the first couple of episodes are the Riders all buddied up and fighting like a Sentai team. But then as we conclude that plot thread, we're given more information that not only throws the status quo completely out of whack, but also fundamentally changes our established character relationships and the mystery surrounding this organization has been carrying us at least into the 20s.

I think inversing the Rider formula a bit has worked in this show's favor. I don't think it's as good as Gaim, Build or Zero-One at creating an ongoing plot thread that keeps the viewer invested, but I definitely CAN say that the show's been doing a competent enough job at not totally stalling in place.