[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Okay, first of all, that sauce looks disgusting.

So I wasn't the only one thinking that! Stuff honestly already looks like poison before the Nightmare even gets to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Personally, I think it's redundant to give a green form to a green Rider, like, it could at least have used a different accent color to make it look less monotonous.

I actually like that about the main four forms. Physicam being the only one to get a major secondary color worked in nicely emphasizes it as the most important one (...even if we're already doing episodes without any version of it showing up), and Esprim's green is more of a pure Green than the distinctly bluish Rider #1 hue the base form has as part of that whole homage, so they stay distinct that way too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

I dunno man, "All he did was stop the situation from getting worse" seems like a really jaded take to me. Like, yeah. He prevented a bunch of people from dying to food poisoning as well as keeping a business(and those who work for it) from going under. I'm not seeing how there isn't a value of heroism to that.

You're completely right about that sounding jaded, and I think you know me well enough by now to know from there that the point I was making there is something else entirely, even if I'm apparently not expressing it properly. I never said that Baku stopping a monster and saving the day isn't heroic. My issue is more complex than that.

The part of it that's probably making me sound more harsh than I intend is that -- as I've gone on about many, many times on this site -- I do personally want for there to be heroism going on outside of the fighting, because that's something that I deeply respect about Kamen Rider as a franchise, and something I consider nearly ubiquitous across just about every show since Kuuga came along. These are generally shows that place a notable emphasis on stuff like having empathy for others and things of that sort -- forms of heroism that the average viewer will actually have chances to apply to their own real lives, as opposed to just the spectacular feats that thrill them because of how fantastical they are.

But that's admittedly wrapped up in my own philosphy of the importance of stories of this sort for children and all that more abstract stuff, which is why the word "inherently" is extremely important when I say it's also "less inherently gratifying" to watch a story that only has one of those two layers. I mostly just want there to be a second layer! I understand completely that it doesn't fit the show for Baku to run around playing therapist or anything that extreme, and I'm not trying to ask for that. But while it's not at all the *only* way to get there, a bit of emphasis on the protagonist helping out people on a more personal level is a very *reliable* way to end up with a richer, more cohesive story for an episode (pair), which I think is another big reason Rider tends to have plots of that sort so often. When all the characters matter to each other that directly, the different plotlines naturally tie together tighter, and you get more chances to have those relationships result in change for somebody involved, whether it's the main characters for the sake of the overaching plot, or the guest characters to give that smaller arc a satisfying sense of progression.

The cohesion is what I'm struggling to see in this show so far, more than anything. If the plots were presented on a less personal level to begin with -- the city being the thing in danger, for example -- I could buy that I'm simply missing the point, but if the emotions and struggles of the guest characters aren't supposed to be as central a focus as anything else, it strikes me as odd to make the basic formula of the show about a hero who runs around in the subconscious minds of individuals, for the express purpose of saving those specific individuals. One of the things about this show's stories I really enjoy is actually how in every single plot so far, there's a turning point where Baku has to stop and consider the Dreamer from a new perspective to get to the bottom of the current case, and aspects like that definitely feel like they're screaming out to be leveraged for drama even further.

I think that's why my posts on Zeztz keep coming out so negative, too. I'm only trying to quickly get across my general opinion, and when I try and consider the episodes as wholes, that's just sort of the result. There's lots of moment-to-moment stuff I liked quite a bit in here, like Nem saving Seven at the start, and Nasuka's little character arc was nice, but they're just that little bit too detached from any grander point to be the things I'm going to mention right away.