[ShyGuy]

Finished Agito this afternoon. Overall it was a very fun, but very flawed show. I had a lot of thoughts on this one.

The characters were a mixed bag to me. Shouichi came across as someone who is very likable and entertaining, but not someone who really works too well as a protagonist. He just didn’t have much depth, and his whole personality was basically just “friendly buffoon.” I didn’t feel like he ever came into his own as a real character or protagonist until near the end, it took far too long for him to get any real development or growth. Having just watched Kuuga beforehand, I thought Godai was a far better lead Rider. I did like Shouichi, I just wish the development they started giving him near the end had come sooner.

Hikawa was my favorite of the three Riders. I felt he had the most development and really made for a better lead character than Shouichi. Their scenes together were always enjoyable to watch, and he also had a great dynamic with Ozawa (Who was another of my favorites). It was frustrating at times though because I felt like the show would sometimes lean too hard into his hardheadedness when it was narratively convenient to do so. This is most glaring when everyone is trying to hide Agito’s identity from him, and even though they all basically give it away repeatedly and obviously, he doesn’t get it. Then there’s when he sees Another Agito and gets the mistaken impression he’s the real Agito. Even in shadow, Agito and Another Agito have very distinctive and obviously differing silhouettes, and considering how often Hikawa fought with Agito it’s entirely unbelievable he would ever confuse them.

Ryou was…well, he existed, and that’s about all I can say about him. I just didn’t find him or his story interesting at all, especially considering how disconnected he is from the others for so much of it, and how much of his story is just a series of misfortunes to the point it becomes comical. I didn’t dislike him, I just really had no feelings towards him whatsoever.

Then there’s Kino…this guy was, for me, the weakest part of the show. He shows up and dies too quick to care about him, and what content he does have is not handled great. He decides he has to be the only Agito and has to kill the others for…reasons. At no point does he ever express a coherent motive for this. Then he decides to stop trying to murder them, dies soon after, and is never mentioned again outside of one brief scene. His story had no impact on the overarching plot, and it feels like they just threw him and his arc in there because otherwise they were too close to the end of the story and needed to extend the show to meet the episode requirement. It’s a shame because I think underneath all of that he had a lot of potential, but it was badly squandered.

The story itself was interesting, I liked the mystery surrounding Shouichi’s amnesia, the Akatsuki, the Lords, and the way it all ties together. The pacing was drastically improved over Kuuga, it’s never boring, but towards the end it does start falling apart. Besides my aforementioned issues with Kino, plot holes just start appearing everywhere. Just to give a couple of examples, there’s the thing with Hikawa’s vision that suddenly comes up, is briefly made a big deal, then suddenly goes away without explanation. There’s also the way it introduces Agito’s Shining Form…it’s his ultimate form, but in a stark contrast to other Rider series, it just randomly appears with no real build up and one of its main features (Gaining power from the sun) is never discussed or explained. And then the ending itself is pretty underwhelming. The Overlord has had his views challenged repeatedly by the real Shouichi, but shows no signs at all that it’s getting through to him. But then he suddenly gets Rider kicked by Shining Agito and just out of nowhere goes to the real Shouichi and tells him he’s stopping and is just going to watch humans now before deciding what to do. It feels rushed and not at all consistent with what’s happened in the story up to that point.

The suit designs I thought were really great. All of the main Riders had very unique and distinctive looks, I really liked that variety. The Lords were great too, they’re some of my favorite monster designs in the franchise. I really liked the way they focused so much on their faces, the way they handled the eyes and mouths made them feel much more like living creatures than monster designs in any of the other Rider series I’ve seen.

Ultimately, I enjoyed watching Agito. It was far from perfect, but I always looked forward to another episode, no matter how messy it got. I sound more critical of it than I really am, this stuff all stood out to me but didn’t majorly detract from my enjoyment of it. It was a lot of fun for just a relatively simple action show.