[Tokumonkey]

I'm getting worried about this series. On the "stuff I like" side, I enjoyed that Akari finally got to do something other than shrilly deny everything happening around her. I enjoyed that - thank goodness! - this wasn't a two-parter.

My "stuff I didn't like" list is way longer, though. So far, we haven't seen enough of the master villains to be interested in them, and the monsters-of-the-week might have nice designs, but they're boring and generic. They're actually less interesting than MotWs in Sentai. Onari is borderline-unwatchably annoying, and Yurusen is... not enhancing episodes for me, so far. I almost kinda like Sennin, although this episode made me doubt that a bit.

Several people have pointed out that this episode felt too rushed, and I agree up to a point, but it also felt too thin to have been stretched into a satisfying two-parter.

I'm guessing that, given that the Ghost theme has the potential to come across as dark, the showrunners have been trying really, really hard to adopt a light tone. They've succeeded - a cast mostly comprised of comic relief characters, the driver's standby tune, the peppy theme song that seems more appropriate to OOO or Fourze - but I think they've gone too far in that direction. This feels more like Sentai than Kamen Rider. (And I say that as someone who enjoys Sentai.)

I was lukewarm on Robin Damashii despite that I really kinda dig the condor phone. Actually, that I'm not more excited about the hoodies makes Gaim's use of fruit arms seem brilliant: they didn't have to spend an entire episode explaining what's unique about strawberries or mangoes.

Here's hoping next week gives me a little more to be optimistic about. (I'm watching with a friend who's usually only available about a week after episodes air, so I'm probably going to be essentially a week behind forever.)