[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

You know, every year I hear complaints about the lead in Rider being "bland" and every year I don't get it. Takeru is only bland in the sense that he's really nice. Sure, he doesn't have any overt flaws, but he has a personality, and the show consistently show him learning lessons and growing as a hero.

My problem with Takeru isn't that he's bland. I actually agree with you that he does have a clearly defined personality (now you want bland, that's when you go to Makoto, who is about as dynamic as a sheet of plywood). My problem with Takeru is the same one I had with Wataru back in Kiva: he's almost entirely reactionary. I like my heroes to be proactive, that's one of the big reasons why I'm the biggest cheerleader on Team Haruto. When there's some kind of big evil threat, I want to see the Kamen Rider out there confronting it head on, not waiting around for it to come to him. Takeru, especially during the first 99-day countdown, was frustratingly passive. He only got involved in events when they came to him and showed zero initiative in hunting for the Heroic Eyecons; he just waited for the old man to show up and spoon-feed him a clue (I think that the opening narration date tracker is a huge factor in giving me this impression of Takeru, as a side note; in the first part of the show it would sometimes show us that well over a week had passed between episodes with the characters making absolutely zero progress on anything). At least Takeru doesn't spend most episodes moping in the bathtub between monster fights, but he still doesn't give off much sense of a being a man on borrowed time trying to stop an evil invasion.