[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER REVICE EPISODE 22 - ?BANGING ABOUT? ATMOSPHERE STAIRWAY!??

I don?t know how people quit these shows.

I hear it a lot in these threads, that someone made it to Episode Whatever and bounced, owing to either a general lack of enthusiasm or a specific objection to a plot point/character/insert song. Despite this post?s opening sentence, I?d never say that anyone was wrong for dropping a show that they aren?t engaged with. It?s entertainment; if you aren?t being entertained, spare yourself the discomfort and aggravation. There?s nothing worse than watching a show that you can?t stand, just because you feel obligated to do so. You don?t. Quitting can be a victory for your mental health.

But I don?t keep watching these shows out of obligation. I watch them out of a sense of hope. I watch them because a show can be like Revice: turning in a series-worst story in Episode 21, and then pivot before the opening credits of Episode 22 into a story about Ikki and Vice going undercover as a comedy duo to suss out a Deadmans-related mystery. The way these shows constantly change and evolve ? the malleability of the production team, and their willingness to take risks ? makes it so I can never drop a show after a bad episode or two. Every horrible episode is literally a scene away from winning me over. Every failure could become a success, in time.

But hope can be an enemy as well. Like with Aguilera here, she was betrayed by Olteca once and now she's giving him a second chance, but Olteca hasn't even apologized for his betrayal yet and there's no reason to believe he won't do it again, so is Aguilera actually unwise to have hope? In Ryuki, Shinji had to learn the hard way that people don't always live up to the hope that they can become better. That doesn't mean hope is bad, but it's definitely a painful road of abuse that only true heroes like Shinji and Sento are willing to endure and a reason why I respect those guys for doing everything they can for the sake of love and peace, even when the world is against them.

It's the same principle with these TV shows, right? I seldom quit, but I do take hiatus for the various reasons you mentioned, sometimes even for a small criticism. If a show dissatisfies me too much or too often, then I need time to heal my mental health before I can restore my hope. A vulnerable wound will eventually harden in to a tough scar, figuratively speaking. Even as someone who mostly enjoyed Mouri's Hiromi arc (it was nice to see Patren 3 and Unicorn Zodiart actors anyway, in morally opposite roles), I still had a vague feeling of increasing uneasiness about the future of Revice, which I'll talk about later. To my recollection though, there's only that one Sentai show I quit for good.

EDIT: 1700th post, yay!