[Kiwami]

I’m about to wrap up Kabuto (9 episodes left) and I really enjoy watching it.

The formula seems straight forward at the beginning (Evil aliens appear, people transform into Rides and fight them) but it unfolds very nicely during the second half. The best thing is: Even though I knew that some sort of time travel was involved, because of the whole "Hyper Kabuto defeats every other Rider anyways"-comments we usually have around here, the most shocking reveals still hit me pretty hard.

That’s actually the only thing I kinda dislike: In the episodes around the early 30 mark they have one brainfuck after another. That’s way too many. It kept me interested for sure, but you had tons of filler episodes earlier you could’ve replaced and had the reveals more evenly spread out. I guess they had to do a bunch of them together to properly developed Hiyori’s big reveal (which I did not see coming even though it was rather obvious looking back at it) but it still felt like too much at once.

But I say filler episodes like it’s a bad thing, but it isn’t. The episodes that don’t focus on the story are very enjoyable as well. It’s kind of like that with Ryuki too: You have so many serious episodes that the ones that are rather silly and stupid are really good and a nice change of pace.

That’s my problem with current Rider comedy: It’s everywhere. Even in episodes that are serious or relevant for plot-development you still have for example Onari doing his bullshit. I rather have a serious story where the character can sometimes just be humans. I think it’s funnier to have serious characters or characters that live during serious times exposed to silliness sometimes rather than have a character who is entirely dedicated towards comedy.

Okay, some characters in Kabuto suffer from a similar problem quite a lot as well. Tsurugi for example, he started out as a rival to Tendou with him having a similar attitude and goal. His quirk that he is a master of everything that kinda sucks at everything normal quickly became boring, however I think they balanced it out a bit by giving him a really tragic backstory and making Jiiya more relevant.

And after he drops the whole emperor spiel and goes outside to try to live a "commoner’s life" he becomes funny again IMO. He works well together with Kagami (I love it when he calls him KaGAmin) although it becomes kinda confusing. Because we know his secret, Kagami knows it, but it kinda doesn’t matter currently. I know it will be addressed again, but with his kind of problem it doesn’t seem realistic that he just never goes… you know. I realize they keep him out of battle and Tendou had his Zecter, maybe that is the solution. It’s still kinda meh, but if his problem now becomes relevant again because he got the Zecter back that could be cool.

While we're talking characters, I think it's worth pointing out that so far this is the first Kamen Rider show I've watched where the poster-boy protagonist is actually very much the antagonist sometimes. Especially later on. It's obvious that Kagami is the hero in a classic Kamen Rider-sorta way, while Tendou is... different. Especially later on you get the impression that he’s the bad guy in most situations. Sometimes you get your obligatory "Tendou was just seeing through the disguise of a worm all along" kinda deal, but later on after Hiyori transforms you really get the impression hat he’s the bad guy here. I think that’s really cool to not have a cookie cutout hero.

The only characters I kind of dislike are Yaguruma and Kageyama. Yaguruma started out rather well and I liked him as the first TheBee, but after that he kinda became stupid. After his ark was wrapped up I never expected to see him again, but when he reappeared as Kick Hopper I didn’t like it. I don’t understand what his deal is. Kageyama being completely broken I can understand, but Yaguruma? I hope they have a decent explanation for this.

Kageyama on the other hand, I never liked him and I guess that's the idea behind his character, he's supposed to be a dick. Maybe with his new job as Punch Hopper they can somehow give him an end that make me appreciate the character.

So yeah, I think Kabuto is another strong Heisei series and I think the last few episodes will make me like it even more.