[MaskedRiderAsakura]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I think it's overstating a bit to call Hojo a "part-time Rider" (pot calling the kettle black, I know). He was G3 for about an episode or two, and then a Metal Hero that one time. And once again, he's fighting monsters, not other Riders.

Oh trust me, I'm not trying to say he had any significance as a Kamen Rider. I'm just saying that the idea was already sort of there with Agito.

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And just like everyone else, his problems are strictly with "Agito", the weird monster guy who keeps picking fights with other monsters, and not Shouichi, the guy selflessly fighting monsters to protect people.

Not necessarily true. Hojo was a jerkass to pretty much everyone, rider or not because he had a massive ego and hero complex (something that also came up again with Another Agito later in the series). Plus one of the big conflicts in Agito was his rivalry with Hikawa, which was very much the type of conflict you described earlier.

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This is what I keep trying to get at about the relationships between Riders being so different. In Ryuki, Shinji doesn't get along with so many of the other Riders because their personalities are so different. Takumi and Kusaka don't get along for the same reasons. Kenzaki and Hajime don't get along for the reasons. Tendou and Kagami have a rocky relationship for the same reasons. In Agito, the other guys all have problems with Agito specifically because they know nothing about him. He's just another mysterious creature in their minds.

I can see this being true of Knight and Zolda, but Shinji clashes with the other Riders, not because they're strong personalities, but because all of the other Riders are genuinely evil and are actively trying to kill him on behalf of the big bad. They clash because he's the protagonist, and they're all antagonists, not simply as a result of them not being able to get along.

Compare that with your other examples. The other Riders actually DO bicker with each other because they're different personalities, not just because one Rider happens to be on the villain's side (well, except for Hajime).

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The way you're talking about it you could pull out pretty much any one show without it affecting "the big picture", but I think it'd be easier to make the case that isn't true for Ryuki than it would be for most other shows.

That's because there's very few series that I would say have a huge impact on the big picture to begin with. Some might disagree, but I've found that many Rider series introduce some very interesting and unique things, but it doesn't really spill over into other series like that (which I'm perfectly fine with, since it just gives me something to love about each show).

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It was the result of the brand being in kind of a weird place and I don't think you can just "skip" to Faiz because without that year spent experimenting they might not have felt comfortable doing a lot of the stuff they did and calling it Kamen Rider.

If anything, I'd argue that Faiz itself was the experiment here, at least in regards to what you're talking about. That's when the franchise started edging into J-Drama territory.