[ShyGuy]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Just a heads up, Shining Form was actually introduced in the "A New Transformation" special that aired between episodes 35 and 36, and it does more or less explain the solar power thing.

Good to know, thanks for the info! That does make more sense now, though that's kind of a weird way to do a final form introduction.

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Originally Posted by TF RyuShin

Oh come on, try to feel the angst for Ryou... Life is already harsh to him and you should give this man a hug. He didn't want to become a Rider in the first place and his life went so bad since then. Don't you remember during the time where Gills had a very dangerous side effect for decaying Ryou's body? Thankfully, the OoD minimized the effect to him short after until his apparent death. Well, that side effect went away after Mana revived back Ryou, though

My problem is that the show tried way too hard to make you feel sorry for him, it just absolutely beats the viewer over the head with "look how bad this guy's life sucks." I did feel for him, but it just got to the point where I couldn't take it seriously anymore because they just run so far with it.

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On the other side, Agito is particularly a good series. I agree that it has much better pacing than Kuuga but can't be nowhere as good as Kuuga. Both Shoichi and Hikawa tried to become Godai and Ichijo 2.0 but it went miserably. Still, because of this, they became an apparent comic relief and it actually works for a rather dark series, like Agito. Just look at the craziness of them by playing tennis with a frying pan!

I really enjoyed Shouichi's and Hikawa's friendship, their scenes together were usually my favorite. I thought their comic relief worked really well. One of my major issues with many of the Neo-Heisei shows is the loud and obnoxious slapstick humor, which I can't stand, so the more subdued humor in the earlier Heisei shows is vastly preferable to me. I like it a lot more when the humor comes naturally just from the way the characters' differing personalities interact.

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It's surprising that you talked about Agito without even mentioning Hojo. He is basically a pretty jerkass character that should be spoken at least on one Agito's post, haha. While I'm sure not many people like him, I don't recall him as a bad guy. I still thought he is a good guy but with a rather cunning and stern personalities.

Yeah this was a big omission on my part, meant to talk about him and forgot. I actually thought he was one of the most well-done characters in the show. He was a colossal jackass, but despite that, really did have genuine intentions. Another Kuuga comparison here, but compared to Kuuga, the police force in Agito was incredibly incompetent. One of my favorite things in Kuuga was how active the police are in trying to stop the Gurongi, by developing ways to fight back and working with Godai. In Agito, it's like they don't do anything except wait around for more Lord attacks so they can just show up to say "Yep, this murder was from an Unknown." Hojo was the most prominent exception to this, throughout the show he's actively trying to find ways to fight back against the Lords and even though he constantly antagonizes the G3 team, he really does want to do the right thing. He just needs to work on his teamwork skills! The only development with him I really didn't like was close to the end when he decides to have the police protect the Lords and let them kill the people with the seed of Agito to prevent more Agitos from arising and taking power over normal humans. It just felt really out of character to take him that far, and really ruined his complexity by making him just a straight up villain. I think that was a really poor decision, and either should have been discarded entirely or a better conclusion to it written where he ultimately can't bring himself to go that far. It just absolutely ruined all of his characterization up to that point.

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That being said, the most let down and the disappointing part of Agito is they didn't explain the villains properly. The real nature of Lords, the Overlords and even that Tetsuya man was explained rather subtly. I recommend you to check the external information and links about Agito for better understanding this series. I'm serious, Agito is actually a pretty confusing series if you don't have enough information beforehand.

Yeah I researched a lot of this stuff as I watched because the show never really goes into any of this stuff much at all, despite how significant it is. It's all there to some degree, but really needed more focus. All of the major explanation and detail comes from sources outside of the main show, and it should never be necessary to need something like that to fully explain content from the main series. I think it's the show's biggest failing.