[Fish Sandwich]

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Originally Posted by DecadeW Climax

Remember that his parents died when he was young? Tragedy spurred Kouta to crave the power to help others.

It did? I think you're confusing him with that guy in your signature who actually knew how to fight fate. That's an easy enough assumption to make but Kouta's selflessness was always more just kind of a natural part of his personality than anything.

If the show were going for that angle it probably would've come up a lot more. For comparison, Wizard just the year before was hugely motivated by the tragic loss of his parents, and you can tell because it forms the backbone of almost every episode involving Haruto's backstory.

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So since this is the questions thread, how would you rewrite Gaim?

Honestly it just needs to be a lot tighter than it was. The base plot is really great in concept but it's bogged down so much by the nature of how Kamen Rider shows are written (i.e. without a detailed plan). As it is there's a lot of ideas that didn't pan out quite right and lines of dialogue that seem to be setting stuff up only to be completely forgotten as soon as they're said.

Easy example of both: Marika. She serves so little meaningful purpose in the story you could write out half of her moments and give the other half to existing characters. I think the single most significant she got was interacting with Micchi after she first showed up, and mostly because she gets to have a conversation with him about "serving two masters" or whatever that ties into his dilemma of trying to work for Yggdrasil without losing his friendship with Kouta. In general, the Energy Riders are meant to be foils to the guys they share design traits with (Zangetsu/Gaim, Duke/Baron, Marika/Ryugen), but the parallels between them stop WAY quicker than those other two pairs. But what about that other guy, Sigurd? Because here's the thing, he was a foil to Micchi even before he became a Rider, egging on his darker side and generally reflecting the slimy a**hole he could become. Even afterwards, they end up in an alliance for several episodes, united by their mutual hatred of Kouta.

So why is Marika even still here? Ryouma mentions at one point (episode 18/19-ish, I think) how she hasn't ever gone all out yet (or words of that sort), but nothing EVER comes of this, begging the question of why you would even write those lines in to begin with. She doesn't ever turn out to be some amazing fighter or anything, certainly not against Kouta, becoming just as much a joke as Sigurd when fighting him. And it's not like this is implying she has some hidden agenda nobody knows about, either, because, you know, she doesn't.

I'm not grumpy about her the way I am stuff like the ending, since she's a relatively minor part of the show, but Marika really was a massive waste of a character. I guess Bandai just HAD to have four new Riders, or something? Maybe?