[DreadBringer]

You're going with 2 episodes review per post, maybe I'd likely cover just one so the reply won't be too much.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

As I said before -- no such thing as "late" here!

By this I gotta put an effort to prevent me getting spoiled by later episode talks, and catch up ASAP, but I don't want to skip any of the episode reviews.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Episode 2 -- "I Want to Be a Wizard"

It's also just a nicely warm setting that's perfect to come back to and rest up after a hard day fighting bad guys, and that's exactly what Haruto is doing in the opening scene here, which both starts and ends with him sleeping.

Guess turns out Wizard is the one that has the more mundane hanging spot compared to most of the more modern show similar to the Phase 1 Heisei stuffs, where modern shows have clear fantastical/ultra technological hanging spots, like the hidden spot on Build's Nascita, or Drive's police HQ.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Life is SHOW TIME is an infectiously upbeat tune, bringing the cheer the way Wizard brings hope, with lyrics by Shouko Fujibayashi that incorporate a lot of relevant imagery for the series, and still find room to touch on more layers of the story without sacrificing the positive vibes. I'm probably not done directly referencing those lyrics in this thread, either, which says a lot about how well they fit.

Though you think loving Wizard and Ghost is an unpopular take, maybe it has a pattern that you're the type who prefers lighthearted and wholesome stuff. Usually, the ones who like lighthearted stuff and/or really like Showa and really expects no betrayal to "Kamen Rider spirit" stuff (e.g. hating on darker shows that they feel don't abide to it) do usually like shows like Wizard, Ghost, and Saber too.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

More important right now is that Shunpei's persistence wears Haruto down enough to at least hear him out over some donuts. This gives Shunpei a chance to properly exposit about his childhood dream of becoming a wizard, inspired by a picture book he loved reading. He was always enamored with the thought of how fun it seemed to be someone who went around helping people out with magical powers, but even Shunpei eventually gave up on the idea that such a fantasy could ever come true. Which is why meeting a real wizard is such a big deal to him. Shunpei looks at Haruto and sees everything he's ever wanted to be his whole life. And that's another great dramatic contrast, because we start to find out here how vastly different Haruto's own perspective on the matter is. He's quick to point out that it's not all fun and games, and insists that one wizard is more than enough, the subtext of which is no doubt lost on Shunpei (and perhaps the audience), not yet knowing what Haruto has been through in life. Still, despite brushing Shunpei off, Haruto is later seen staring at his Flame Ring in a manner that implies hearing all this has given him a lot to think about.

Though Shunpei is established as a nice guy, while he doesn't have ill intentions, he's overly tactless and nosy to the point of being a disturbance to continually chase after someone and force them to do their bidding without thinking about personal space. While Shunpei is established as a manchild, this'd be usually associated with bratty kid. This rather reminds me of Kotaro's debut in Blade too where he came across as a creep too for me in how he approaches Kenzaki. Shunpei too, like why Rinko became a cop, claims that he wants to become a wizard to help people. Haruto, while a more composed, but also nice guy that cares about others, would distance himself from what he deems as nuisances and ignore their needs, a bit cold to them.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Koyomi only ends up having as much to say as she does because Rinko casually remarking on how cool having magic must be gets under her skin.

Shunpei would be luckier if he existed in other show, like Gotchard for example, where though it's not magic, there's a school that can make his dream come true. Same goes for Rinko that, if she's the one that stumbles upon the power needed to protect people, like many of the main Riders, she'd be the one who gets lucky too. While the ones that want power to protect people are both deemed as taking things for granted, indeed if you have powers, you'd do a better job in protecting people. If this existed now, likely people'd speculate about Rinko eventually becoming a Rider.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's the kind of sequence that would usually just be a symbolic nightmare a character in a story wakes up from, but for Haruto, that despair was all too real.

While this'd be impactful for you, maybe these kind of explanation won't hit hard for others, that Haruto getting his powers due to holding on hope happens due to him being unflappable unlike anyone else except Koyomi who got turned into Phantoms, thus Haruto is immune to it, leading him to get chosen to be Wizard. This may be deemed as simply a plot armor for the MC, just for being a 'boring expressionless Japanese hero'. Otherwise, I may still feel that Haruto is hypercompetent, so what'd be endangered in general would be the other people around him, but he can take care of anything. A protector of others would feel bad over failure to save everyone obviously, but still...

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This show is great at communicating through visuals, and he looks like a cool mentor character, even praising Haruto for holding on to hope, so I don't know, maybe he was trying to stop all this or something? I guess he failed in his goal then?

Dunno if this'd be spoiler, but after all, Kamen Rider's recurring theme is about using powers from evil, for good.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's not every day Wizard does a traditional bike action sequence this elaborate, so I appreciate them cramming so many classic bike action staples into this little sequence. There's a good amount of traffic, which always make the scale seem more impressive, especially when they flip one of those cars over so Wizard can jump over it.

Though not Kuuga level, I'd also say that Wizard does have a pretty good bike scenes too. Then again, for the flak it got, fighting scenes aren't what people criticize about Wizard.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I guess it's fair for Koyomi to be a little cold to Rinko here, since Rinko did kind of accidentally cause problems for Koyomi before by locking up Haruto. On the surface, Koyomi has the aloofness of Hiyori and the face of Hirose, both great heroines. And I think she's also a great heroine in her own right, for reasons that I look forward to talking about soon.

Hiyori and Koyomi are both characters that seem to get widespread hate, never see anything good about them being said other than here. Though Fish may not realize this, guess him praising Hiyori would be another unpopular stuff he defends. Dunno what'd you see as the low standards for heroines, because the likes of Hiyori and Koyomi are generally viewed as the low standards for many people in females.