[Suzu]

Like:

The overall designs. Except for the Mages, White Wizard and Beast Hyper, the designs (including the phantoms) are super-beautiful and they all fit the magic theme perfectly.

The music. The Wizard soundtrack is amazing, even though I hate the infinity theme, but it has enough great BGM and Rider Chips music to make up for that. Also, dat opening! |3

The effects. Wizard had some truly brilliant visuals. The action was a bit slow imho, but looked good overall. And I love all the sparkles and light effects they used for the spells.

Haruto. Though he is the most poorly written character of the Neo-Heisei-Riders, he's kinda loveable and that's thanks to Shiraishi Shunya being an awesome actor. I wish they would have used his actin talent some more, especially by letting him do more comedy (instead of Shunpei and Nitoh being dorks most of the time), because he's truly great at that.

Rinko and the Mages. Rinko was a loveable female sidekick and I wish she would have been more effective because character- and acting-wise, she was great. I also liked the Mages and their backstory a lot, but they didn't have enough spotlight imho.

Dislike:

Koyomi. While having a good female sidekick in the show, the writers decided to have one of the worst characters ever to be the female lead. Koyomi was boring most of the time, annoying or just not interesting when she had some focus and was poorly acted- if the actress was even on set, that is. If the actress just didn't have the time to be there, why did no one change the plot a bit and make it work?

The comic relief characters. Most of them are just plain dumb. Shunpei had some nice sides, but was a pain most of the time and the duo that runs the doughnut shop was annoying as hell and not funny at all. The only comedy character that was okay was Nitoh, but admitted, he had his stupid moments too. Though he did have some great comedy with Haruto and some amazing serious moments.

The overall plot. While I love the basic concept of Wizard being... well, a wizard and using his powers to give hope, everything that went beyond that was... lame. The whole "Koyomeeeeh!"-stuff would've worked better if Koyomi was a character we actually cared for, same with Fueki. Rinko, Shunpei and the mages had some great backstory, but most of it was dropped too early to use their full potential. Beast would've had more great moments if the main writer would've just accepted his existance and did't waste the precious screentime by making him look an idiot, especially next to Haruto. Many interesting points had only a few episodes, seemed rushed and came out of nowhere (e.g. Haruto's soccer story), while most of the episodes were wasted with... well, nothing happening. Also: Phantoms! Why U so ineffective?! Even the Zodiarts were more successful!

The movies. Movie Taisen Ultimatum was the best of the bunch, but the Wizard portion was... kinda meh and ruined by the twist at the end, which was just plain stupid. The crossover scenes and the Fourze portion were great though. The Fateful Sengoku Battle was by far not as good as Ultimatum. The Wizard portion was a pain to watch, while the Gaim and crossover plot was kinda nice. And Wizard in Magic Land had an interesting concept, but it was super-boring and felt too long for what they actually did action- and plotwise.

That ending. Well yeah, let's use the big baddy BEFORE the actual finale and have all the great episodes be used for that and then add some nonsense-plot at the end and make one of the most weird, not at all menacing Phantoms the final boss, having a constantly whining, emo Haruto to be the only one who can defeat him. They could have just left those episodes out and it wouldn't have made much difference.