[Enchilada645]

Issue is I don't hate him as a villain, hate is also such a strong word for a character like him. In this case, I dislike him for what he turned the show into for a good 12 episodes or so. There's a difference and that's honestly because I got bored by him four episodes in.

Because the issue is he always wins. And you can only take that for so long, even other villains and antagonists end up getting whittled down or start struggling as time goes on but with him, nothing really touched him until MCH, and even then that was like once with a lovetap later until Rampage Gatling happened. The heroes were on a bad downhill path because there was only one upgrade and Thousers power never really leveled out, he just kept dominating the fights for the most part.

Not to mention basically all the upgrades and near gear at that point coming from Gai himself instead of somewhere creative... in hindsight the dude only existed to make power-ups and that just makes him more boring. Add in the fact that he restricted the show for so long, it makes me more annoyed and displeased with him than anything else. Thankfully with Rampage Gatling we managed to level off into better territory.

And tbh with a bit of praise here, while I get his inspiration with Kusaka, he did far better drawing from his other sources aka: Gendo Ikari and Frieza, which you can easily see in his scenes now that this is pointed out. Hell he even does the Gendo pose quite a few times as well.

More recently I've enjoyed his characterization post Job-Tournament Arc, two of my favorite moments have really been:

"I just told this man his life is a lie, and am enjoying it greatly"

&

"Give me the rights to Humagears" "No" "Okay guess I have to kill you now"

Admittedly I do have a question separate from the topic about just the topic in general, are separate specialty threads constantly being made necessary when we have like a General Rider Discussion/Question thread I assume? It's hard to tell given they get buried so easily nowadays.