[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Geez, it's been a minute since I posted in this thread! But here I am, back with my thoughts on Kamen Rider Ghost!

I've been cramming Ghost so I have a clean slate for Ex-Aid (I can't handle two Rider series at once these days). I'm still about 8 episodes from the end, but I think I have a pretty solid handle on my feelings by now.

I was really enjoying the show for about 35 episodes. I loved its soft, almost feminine, fairy tale vibe. I appreciated how Ghost's powers were emotion-based, which reminds me of a lot of my favorite magical girl anime. I loved Alain's journey from villain to hero -- it was poignantly executed and quite lovely to watch. I also dug Akari's growth as a character. I thought she was gonna be a one-note skeptic for the whole series, but she quickly accepted all the supernatural stuff and is perhaps the most competent and reliable character in the whole cast. She's definitely unusual as far as Rider's "girl sidekick" characters go -- they're almost always passive love interests, and Akari is anything but that. (In a lot of ways, she reminds me of Hermione from Harry Potter (actually, I think the show takes a lot of cues from Harry Potter, but that's a digression for another time).)

For the longest time, I was impressed that the Kamen Rider producers had finally discovered how to balance Gaim-style serialization and Neo Heisei-style two-parters. I think that allowed the show to parcel out its plot and character development in fresh and interesting ways. But over the last five-to-six episodes I've watched, that balance has been lost, and my interest has almost completely evaporated. I went from singing the show's praises to being bored out of my gourd, largely due to a string of sub-Wizard-quality two-parters that have moved the story and characters forward at a snail's pace.

Not helping matters, those filler episodes came at a point where the writers completely betrayed their portrayal of the show's villains. Once Alain did his face-turn, my interest in the Ganma waned. But with the introduction of the Ganmaisers, it's possible the show has lost me for good. The Ganma went from being morally ambiguous bad guys with arguably altruistic intentions to being one-dimensional world dominators in the span of like, 3 episodes. A criticism I've often heard is that Takeru is very one-dimensional. I agree, but I was fine with that kind of hero as long as the villains were multifaceted and morally complex. Now that they've become your run-of-the-mill, "I must control the greatest power in the universe"-style baddies, having such a milquetoast hero is unacceptable.

I know there are still a handful of episodes left, and the final eight tend to be the best of any Rider series. I have hope, but if things don't get more interesting immediately, Ghost will become the Ninninger of Kamen Rider (i.e., a show that I loved for the bulk of its run but turned on when the last 10-15 episodes failed to pay anything off in emotionally resonant or interesting ways).

All that said, I still don't get the vitriol with which much of fandom has responded to Ghost. Even with all the above flaws taken into account, I don't think it's a bad show. I'd love to hear why you guys dislike it so much (without spoiling the last handful of episodes, obviously).