[Switchblade]

Okay, so my first Rider show. That's actually kind of hard to answer. I got interested in Kamen Rider back in mid-2009 after watching some toy reviews from Vangelus and TJ Omega. I generally respect their tastes and was curious to see what this "Kamen Rider" thing was all about. So I started by watching the first episode of the current Rider series: Decade. I was pretty instantly hooked - it looked very cool and fun and was very different from Power Rangers, which I'd gotten back into during Dino Thunder. But I don't really count Decade as my first series because, after that one episode, I decided that the best way to watch it was to see the previous nine shows first, so that I could really geek out when I saw all of those old characters and worlds come back (yes, I know - I learned about that about halfway through Agito).

So with Decade not an option I started up Kuuga. I caught the first two episodes and absolutely fell in love with the show. And that's when I found out that it wasn't fully subbed (again, this was mid-09). That left me kind of depressed, but it also led me to move on to Agito, which I truly consider my first Rider show, as it's the first show I watched to completion. It still stands as one of my personal favorites, too. But not my all-time favorite.

No, my all-time favorite Rider series is kind of a toss-up between Black and Hibiki. I usually go with Black because Hibiki, although a masterpiece, was tragically left unfinished due to executive meddling. I try not to let the last nineteen episodes damper my love for the show, but I can't ignore the fact that the real Hibiki is unfinished. Black, on the other hand, is pretty much perfect for me. It's got a lot of the Showa era episodic structure, but does have an ongoing plot that frequently returns. The hero is really likable and has a great suit design. The villains are all fantastic and memorable, especially Shadow Moon. The action scenes are great, the music is fantastic, the stories are usually really good (especially the ending arc)... honestly, I can't think of any way in which Black isn't an amazing show. I tend to think Hibiki has better high points than Black, but Black is consistently amazing.

Least favorite? Surprisingly, it's not Kiva (sorry to disappoint you, coturos ). I mean, don't get me wrong, Kiva's a really bad show and definitely first runner up on my least favorite list, but the all-time bottom has to go to 555. There are just so many, many things that go wrong with Faiz. The show is full of ridiculously over-the-top melodrama, the characters are constantly making everything worse by (often pointlessly) refusing to talk about even simple things, and then Kusaka comes along and just makes every awkward situation even more intolerable. And what do you get as a reward for making it through all that? An ending that's just a series of cliffhangers. Kiva had a lot of problems - a lot of the same problems, even - but at least it had an ending.