[GoldenXtreme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This two-parter in particular felt very much in the balance I felt Ex-Aid always had that used to bother me. The guest character gets their scenes in among everything else going on, with the absolute essentials of a clear beginning, middle, and end to their personal story, squeezed in with an almost brutal sort of efficiency that I could argue whispers "...but let's get back to the *real* characters already" the whole time, if I still felt like making that argument. I just sorta don't mind it being like this anymore though? Brutal or not, the time *is* used efficiently, resulting in a plot thread that's still totally complete, and as long that part is true, and you can also clearly see why an episode wanted to focus more on other things (which I think is easy here), I think I could also argue this sort of formula is a happy medium that allows a series to actually still show the hero helping people regularly even when the drama hinges much more on the ongoing conflicts between the main characters.

You know, I've been wanting to bring this up, but I keep wondering how I would feel about Ex-Aid nowadays. It was the first Kamen Rider show I watched as it aired and back then Yuuya's writing style felt pretty novel to me, but I've soured on him so much over time that I'm almost afraid to see how I would feel on rewatch. As you have illustrated here, I think Zeztz is perhaps closest to Ex-Aid among his works and I've really had my ups and downs with Zeztz so far. I do think that Ex-Aid has the advantage of being far tackier, hammier, and generally tonally all over the place in a way that made it very entertaining to watch week to week. Maybe I'm just deluding myself with faded memories of a decade old show, and honestly I don't think I'll find out any time soon because watching even more Yuuya Takahashi shows is a not a good way to resolve my feelings of burnout on the guy's writing.