[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwami

I think many people have suppressed the memory on who provided the "jokes" in W. And I don't really blame you:



I'll take the entire Special Crimes Unit + Shunpei over that girl.

Sure, W had some really funny moments, but I don't see how the comedy itself was any better. It still came from characters who obviously only where in it to provide cheap jokes.

Akiko had some place in the story, but they simply forgot about it or outsourced it into the movies. I mean in the first ten episodes we had the suspense that Shotaro knew about the fate of her father and struggled to tell her, then no one talks about it again until the one dude from prison comes to the agency much later and somehow Akiko already knows her dad is “dead” and that's it.

And we had the same silly moments in Gaim, facial expressions and stuff, difference was they where provided by characters people actually like and they toned down drastically in the later parts of the show.

I can see how people don't like the comedy parts at all, but I can't understand how they cherry pick the stuff over other shows who had the exact same thing, only that people don't remember it as clearly anymore. I don't blame anyone, I for example completely forgot many things about shows I watched some time ago.

I've actually been rewatching W recently and it's really changed my opinion on Akiko. I absolutely hated her the first time through, but the second time around I'm finding her far more entertaining (and not just because Shunpei has set a permanent low bar for comedic relief in Kamen Rider). There are two things that make Akiko work for me that separates her from the comic relief in Drive:

First of all, Akiko is a comic relief character, yes, but she's a comic relief character. She actually has a personality, she contributes to the plot in meaningful ways, and the way she acts actually changes based around the situation she's in. Her default mode is "goofball," but that doesn't mean that she's incapable of being serious when she has to be. The comic relief on Drive doesn't have that - there's a reason why we're twelve episodes in and I still don't know the captain or doll guy's names: they aren't characters. All they are is joke fodder: guy who makes funny faces and guy who plays with dolls. Compare them to Watcherman or Santa-chan, two of the minor comic characters from W; they didn't do a ton either, but they were far more memorable and better realized.

Second: Hikaru Yamamoto had really good comedic chops. Everything she did felt really natural where Drive's humor is incredibly forced. There are some really funny scenes in W where Akiko is still acting silly, even though she's in the background. It's just an aspect of the character and Yamamoto pulled it off really well.