[Dr Kain]

Well we watched episodes 49-51 tonight, and from an action point of view, they were pretty awesome. From a story point, they were the most predictable sack of **** ever!!! My god, what the hell happened? We went from the build up of something great to the final 6 episodes of crap. The series as a whole was good, but it has been knocked down in rank from being better than OOO to being behind it. This series just did not know what it wanted to be and played everything safe.

I have no complaints about Haruto, as he felt the closest to a Showa rider compared to all of the Heisei riders, but it is the rest of the characters where things fell flat. Koyomi was pretty much useless for a block of 30 episodes. Shunpei is one of the worst characters ever. Rinko is one of the worst detectives ever. And Medusa, my god, I won't even get into how much of a waste she was. At least Phoenix and Gremlin made up for her, but she had about as much purpose in the show as Shunpei.

The story of the show could have been told in 20 episodes. Hell, they should have built up the additional wizards back in the early twenties, given them legitimate looking costumes, and built up the Philosopher's Stone Sabbat as an opposing force against the Phantoms so much earlier in the series. As it turned out, that whole portion felt rushed. They could have easily spent less time doing Gate of the Week plots and more on the actual Gates Turned to Wizard plots.

I was absolutely loving this show for a while, but there is so much potential with it that it is easily the weakest series in the Post-Decade era. I did love how Chimera set Beast free, but of course he is going to find him in the next cross over movie just so he can return, and that is something I am sick of. As much as I love cross overs, I don't want the evolution of the characters to be restricted to future movies. Not every rider needs to always be there just to please the fans of the shows.

Anyway, overall, I give Wizard a 6/10. The last several episodes did not completely ruin the show as series in the past have (555 and Kabuto), but they could have done A LOT more with them had they actually spent time to build this whole thing up months ago.