[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwami

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.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwami

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.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

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.

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.