[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I don't... I don't know if I'm refusing to play ball?

Sorry if I came on a bit strong there. I certainly was not trying to call you a hypocrite! I just found it amusing that after being bored by the portrayal of the monsters for two shows straight, Ryuki swings in a wildly different direction and still ends up boring you.

It's just... It's funny that you use the Phantoms as the control example for serviceable toku monsters. Because the thing is, that's the Showa era you're talking about right there. For a good few decades, nearly every plot of every toku show was just about a monster who is told at the start to do some thing by their boss, and then 20 minutes of them trying to accomplish that thing using their unique gimmicks before being blown up.

I've always had a huge soft spot for Shouichi's Agito-Sense, and the version of it that carried over into Ryuki. It's a bit lazy to just go "the hero heard a noise, time for a fight scene", yeah, but it exemplifies just how much freedom these shows were gaining in how they could be written. If an episode wanted to go almost straight soap-opera with only some token action, it could now.

Is that inherently good, or bad? You could argue points in either direction, and I think we're both in broad agreement that it comes down to how well those other elements are holding the story together. I definitely won't try and tell you Ren's weird amnesia adventure is the pinnacle of great Ryuki episodes.