[Kiwami]

Heisei.

Showa is great. Charming, fun, some crazy unique ideas and memorable characters. But sooner or later, it gets stale. Every show I’ve watched sooner or later completely fades into "Random kid is in trouble, Kamen Rider to the rescue".

It's such a shame too, because most Showa shows start off incredibly strong. It's so good that you cannot stop watching. But as I said, sooner or later it just becomes the same MOTW-plots every single time until they remember there's a big bad so let's just beat him in the last episode.

I do enjoy me some Showa, no doubt about that.

But: Heisei is just superior to me in every single way. They tell compelling stories from start to finish, have so much more complex characters, plots and settings - interestingly Heisei starts slower than Showa does IMO, I need some time to get used to the environment and its rules, but once I do and like what I'm seeing? I keep on watching. And thankfully, it wraps up into a satisfying experience form start to finish in the end.

I won’t go into detail about how the fighting scenes and action is better because even though story and characters also hugely benefited from a more demanding audience and more opportunity to cater to them in more modern times, special effects and stunt work naturally involved as well. So even though the fight scenes are incredibly good in Heisei, Showa is just as ambiguous and fun to watch in that regard.

But overall, I absolutely prefer Heisei to Showa.