[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It might have been part budget, and part Kamen Rider trying to get away from old Showa tropes as much as possible. The demands of making tons of mook suits usually mean they end up as cheap spandex onesies with a helmet, and 12 of those guys running around every episode might've clashed horribly with the lavish, realistic monster suits in a show like Kuuga or Agito.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

The more cynical side of me would put forward that the need to sell toys and the toyetic aesthetics of Kamen Rider, while present since Kuuga, really kicked into hyperdrive with W. As such a bunch of mooks is probably an easy, possibly mandated way to show off all these New Toys In Store Now For 17.99.

It's for sure more toyetic to have a bunch of nobodies to beat up. It's easier to have constant form changes and finishers in a fight if you've got a dozen mooks to knock out, rather than one monster that gets detonated.

But, yeah, I don't know that Toyetic and Serious go hand-in-hand that well, especially for a franchise that wants more of a horror vibe. It's dazzling to see, like, Ex-Aid or Snipe wade through a group of Bugsters, using a variety of Gashats, but it's incongruent with trying to sell visceral, unnerving stakes. Low-level mooks need mid-level lieutenants need boss-level maniacs, and all of that becomes cartoony. It's not impossible to tell a grounded, mature story while selling a billion toys (*cough*Build*cough*), but it's a very high degree of difficulty.