[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShyGuy

I was nervous about Wizard, because over the years I’ve become well aware of its overall negative reputation. Until Ghost, it was probably the season I always heard the most bad things about. So I was prepared for something bad when I went in, but…I actually kind of liked it? It’s certainly not perfect, and I think there are a lot of valid criticisms one can say about it, but I felt that the positives outweighed the negatives, at least for me.

It makes me so happy seeing how often Wizard gets the love it deserves now. Even though Ghost has since supplanted it as my favorite Rider show, it's still a huge favorite of mine. It's definitely not the best show ever, but the things it gets right, I still feel it got VERY right. Formulaic as they are, I also maintain it has the strongest Monster-of-the-Week(s) plots of that whole era of Rider. I felt a lot more invested in those guest characters than I did in any other series that had a similar structure, and having rewatched the show fairly recently, I especially think they did a good job connecting the stories back to the main cast. Sure, when Nitou's grandma shows up, or the several different Gates directly related to Haruto's past, it's obviously going to be a chance to explore the characters a bit, but even outside of that, a lot of those episodes did a good job digging into what makes everybody tick.

I understand why it's a sticking point for a lot of people, especially when the show is dangling overarching plot threads in your face for so long, but as someone who enjoys a good episodic series, Wizard's pacing has just never bothered me.