[Locke]

Decade 11.

I get that it probably expects you to have seen the original series and make your own conclusions, but episodes like this really highlight the issues of Decade trying to juggle so many things in so few episodes. There is nothing inherently wrong in any of this episode - honestly a lot of would have been pretty enjoyable otherwise - but there is just so much, happening so fast that it's just much too condensed to really be all that appreciated. Half the battle with great storytelling is context, and although Decade's set up allows him to drop in the middle of stories, it still didn't make me suddenly care about teenage angst Faiz and his racist girlfriend.

We've also got the introduction of DiEnd who looks like he could kinda be cool - I mean he shot Kiva out of a gun to fight for him FUCK YES - but it feels like he was only on set for about a day and they just shot what they could. Once again with the way he is set up it kinda makes sense that he can drop out of the episode for long stretches of time but it still doesn't make me care for him beyond base interest in the fight sequences.

And what the hell happened to Lucky Clover? Setting it in a high school made everything feel extremely silly and small. It was like a bunch of children having a tantrum only everyone died brutally...So like a lot of early Rider villains. They also went down so easily, and the quality of the suits in the close ups looked like the suits were barely holding together.

Everything Faizwise in this Faiz World story was kinda muddled. The awful Faiz finisher (probably the worst attack Ride other than Ryuki's) decimates the school which is stupid in itself, but then there is just a pile of all of the Faiz Drivers just laying in the rubble? Why?

The point is, all of this could fill its own arc and here we're watching it play out over just two episodes. I don't even particularly like this world, or story, but I'd still take more time in it to see the elements get a proper treatment than well...this.

And I know someone is bound to say 'Locke you're never happy with anything!' but that just isn't the case. It seems with toku it can go only one of two ways, you either get enough story relevant content for about five episodes worth across an entire fifty episode series or you get shows like this or Gokaiger which attempt to just do everything all at the same time and fuck cohesion to the fucking wind.

It's all especially frustrating as Gaim proved you can logically pace a series, and do your story complete justice, even as a toku show. So why is no one else doing this?