[Kurona]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omnikaiser

- Next one is more obvious :
KR Saber number of characters is too big and lore is potentially too big

I know what some people will say, "it's not new for the KR franchise", "Gaim had a lot of riders and character to handle in its first arc too..." and that's true.
But Saber particular lore make all the characters equally important. In Gaim, Gridon, Kurokage or even Bravo were obviously not going to be developed a lot.
In Saber, while it's the same and some Riders won't be developed as well, each of them is presented as a member of Sword of Logos and is supposedly equal to the other.

I disagree with this specific assessment, even though I definitely agree that too much is being thrown at us in too little time. Buster, Kenzan and Slash all easily feel like the 'less important' characters to me; beyond their debut episode - where naturally they're gonna get the focus - they've been recurring characters with at best tangential background storylines. Our three Swordriver users and Calibur are the focus while the other three dip in and out of the series occasionally -- to use the same example as you, they feel VERY similar to Gridon, Kurokage and Bravo (though in my opinion far more interesting).

I think what's making this feel too much is the deluge of toys, rather. Personally I feel that these three are much more like recurring characters, but obviously a lot of others aren't quite getting that -- and no wonder when even outside of their introduction episode, their henshin blades and auxiliary forms and ridebooks are thrown at us repeatedly because Bandai wants us to buy them. To once again compare to the Gaim riders, they had no unique DX toy weapons and used the same driver as everyone else; their only unique toys were their lockseeds and accompanying plates. In comparison, these three all have their own unique driver AND unique power-up ridebook. Repeated appearances and shilling of these toys is necessitated for advertising them, so they don't slip into the background as naturally as Knuckle or Gridon could despite that being their role.

And it's hardly limited to our auxiliary riders, either -- it's been 13 episodes and Touma has gotten three things that can be considered some sort of upgrade between King of Arthur, Crimson Dragon and now Dragonic Knight. Now before anyone gets on me for this, trust me, I KNOW that Dragonic Knight is the first actual upgrade form like Sparkling or Shining or Toucon and I know that the others fit more into auxiliary forms and the now obligatory mech... but all of them are treated as some sort of huge escalation, some sort of major event more than your usual auxiliary forms -- but oh no, don't worry; we've got a ridiculous amount of auxiliary forms, too! So many that Saber's gained a new form in like every episode and SO-DO is only getting to some October forms in friggin' January!


This is a lot of rambling, but to TLDR it -- this is all directly related to how many toys there are, because each new toy necessitates focus and treating something like an event. There's little room for slower moments when any given episode will introduce a new henshin belt, a wonder combo and a new random Saber form; only for next episode to introduce the mech and two episodes later we're getting a major upgrade for the villain. Even aspects of these that are supposed to be minor like Kenzan's existence or Saber 3pigs have to be much more of a focus than they really should be. Compare again to Gaim, whose Q1 toyline consisted simply of one driver, extra lockseeds and a mech -- it simply had more room to breathe.