[Kiwami]

I don’t really get the Sentai comparisons as they feel superficial. "He's nice to children!"... like every other Kamen Rider? "He's red!"... like many other Kamen Riders? "He fights a giant monster!"... yeah, but like, it's not "miniature city"-giant and Saber doesn’t summon a robot so?

I don't know. Sentai didn’t pop up in my head once watching this, at all. It's just Kamen Rider.

And for a first Rider episode it was okay. None of them every blew me away, they need all the time they can get to establish a basic foundation of the world, its characters and the Rider himself so of course it’s always a breakneck pace with little time for creative writing.

But actually commenting on what I saw: I liked it. The premise is very much rooted in fantasy which I enjoy, books as a central theme are awesome and the visuals are stunning. Even the fully CGI "Saber vs. some random rocks"-scene was okay really, it looked like a decent videogame cutscene instead of a cheap one, although the cuts were super weird. Golem-guy flips the pages... why exactly? What was he hoping to accomplish here? And the scene itself suffered massively from the cut between the full CG-footage and the ones with the suits in it, mainly because the lightning didn’t match at all, it seemed like they were in two entirely different places. But still, the overall presentation with the giant book and the fantasy world was great.

The characters, from the little I’ve seen so far, are acceptable. Touma is a likable main protagonist, Mei is okay but I fear she might get too annoying later on, and blue lion guy barely did anything to I can't say much. The narrator guy took me by surprise, he looks outlandishly weird. But, I'm okay with that - I get the feeling he's an ancient being which documents the stories that have written our world, he may have been the author too actually. I just wonder if he will appear in the story or just narrate it. I think I would prefer the later, although his importance could be made more obvious if he drops in from time to time like DJ Sagara.

Lastly: The action was fine. Nothing super-amazing like Zero-One but thankfully not super-lame like Zi-O either. Just a decent middle ground. But I like that we were once again allowed to have a first episode were just the base Rider suit appeared. They didn't force the first alternate form or the bike in there which is nice.

All in all I think it was fine. Simple fun, nothing more, nothing less.