[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Sorry if I came on a bit strong there. I certainly was not trying to call you a hypocrite! I just found it amusing that after being bored by the portrayal of the monsters for two shows straight, Ryuki swings in a wildly different direction and still ends up boring you.

It's just... It's funny that you use the Phantoms as the control example for serviceable toku monsters. Because the thing is, that's the Showa era you're talking about right there. For a good few decades, nearly every plot of every toku show was just about a monster who is told at the start to do some thing by their boss, and then 20 minutes of them trying to accomplish that thing using their unique gimmicks before being blown up.

I've always had a huge soft spot for Shouichi's Agito-Sense, and the version of it that carried over into Ryuki. It's a bit lazy to just go "the hero heard a noise, time for a fight scene", yeah, but it exemplifies just how much freedom these shows were gaining in how they could be written. If an episode wanted to go almost straight soap-opera with only some token action, it could now.

Is that inherently good, or bad? You could argue points in either direction, and I think we're both in broad agreement that it comes down to how well those other elements are holding the story together. I definitely won't try and tell you Ren's weird amnesia adventure is the pinnacle of great Ryuki episodes.

No, you're good. We all care a lot about Kamen Rider, and it's cool to me that folks are willing to think hard about what they love. That's a healthy community.

For me, since I came in through Ex-Aid, I definitely have a subconscious expectation of how monster plots should work as compared to how Ex-Aid did it. Deep within me, the bar of greatness a monster plot has to clear is, "Is this plot as interesting as Lovelica?" Very few things can reach those heights, so I start trying to analyze what choices a show is making that keep it from thrilling me in the same way. I'd love to find a different type of monster plot that feels as vital as those Phase 2 ones do, but all I feel like I'm getting is less than.

And, yeah, to reiterate, I'm not furious if a show/episode skimps on monster plots to deliver a different kind of story. Some of my favorite stuff from Kuuga was about Godai's relationship with his teacher, or the way he'd try and help a sad, unmoored boy. I couldn't have cared less if the monsters sucked, as long as the story was good. Here, this one, there's no other adversary or objective to be worth a phoned-in monster plot. You can half-ass the dessert if you killed yourself making the main course, but if you half-ass everything, I'm sending it back to the kitchen.

Anyway, I'm going to go watch another episode of Ryuki, because I don't like being this guy. I don't like being a guy who complains about Kamen Rider. I want to be excited again!