[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Layton13

...Wow, that sums up my feelings towards Kuuga in general really well.

Thanks! And, uh, sorry!

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Originally Posted by Kurona

I think probably the reason it feels like Superhero Show and fairly generic in that sense is that Kuuga is the revival of Kamen Rider after what was essentially a very long period off the air -- and in terms of cultural significance, Kamen Rider (and Super Sentai) to Japan basically is Superheroes.

The best possible comparison I could draw is that imagine if Superman, somehow, some way went on a long hiatus for like 10 years or so, and someone was asked to bring it back. The beats it's going to hit are naturally going to be very archetypical and even if they are going for something new, the first stretch or so especially will be trying to capture the base essence of what Superman is before its own identity. Because, goddamn, it's SUPERMAN! It's-- it's the guy everyone thinks of when they think of Superheroes and the general stereotypes of one! This is actually one of the things I love about Kuuga -- it is very, very proud of its status as "Kamen Rider Is Back, Baby!" and it keeps that drive going.

That ultimately is also what forms the core of the show, though. You'll probably find a lot of things that make it different later on, but I think if you're not into this sort of generalised archetypical idea of what Kamen Rider is, Kuuga might not be the most interesting show for you. It's what I personally love about it the most, but I can definitely see why others might not be into it; ESPECIALLY coming off literally every single Post-Decade series which are all going for a completely different theme and go all in on it. Ex-Aid is a Doctor/Video Game show; Drive is a Car/Police Drama show; Fourze is a Space/High School Drama show. Kuuga... is a Kamen Rider show. It's also very much themed around the idea of a Supernatural Police Drama, but first and foremost, Kamen Rider show is what I'd call it. It's very bare essentials.

Still, super interested to see what you think of this going forward! I've really enjoyed all your analyses so far and Kuuga unlike the post-Decade shows is a lot more recent for me, so I'll be able to recall things a lot more freshly.

The Superman comparison is good. It's true that this feels "back to basics", so much so that I have to keep editing out times where I refer to Kuuga as "typical" or "formulaic", because this is where the formula came from. That is on purpose. A feature, not a bug.

I guess the best comparison I can have for how I'm processing Kuuga is Jack Kirby. Kirby basically defined the language of post-1950s American comics. So much of what readers today see in how American comics work, that's Kirby. The artists of today learned from the artists who learned from Kirby. What Kirby did has been codified as Comics. That makes reading Kirby's stuff now, as a modern fan, super weird. It just looks like a rougher version of what you'd see today. It doesn't seem unique because it's been copied and refined to a point that anything other than that style would look wrong. Kuuga's got that sort of way about it. When you've seen the 19th Heisei show, rolling all the way back to the 1st can't help but feel basic, even if the 1st one laid the foundations for the rest to build on.