[NGW]

Finished watching the episode before going into work earlier today.

Overall not a bad one, not amongst the best in the season, but not bad. Definitely like seeing a bit of Sora's past, and I quite liked the revelations in regards to him, though I do hope we get a better idea of his actual motives in the next episode or so.

Also, the obsession everyone had with this week's gate was giving me all kinds of flashbacks to a certain Sonozaki from Kamen Rider W.....

[ZeoRangerV]

Was an alright episode, but nothing really grabbed me about it. Even the interesting revelations with Gremlin/Sora.

[GeneralTekno]

I'm curious how long Sora's been a Phantom.

The fact they mentioned a couple times that his regular customers all disappeared seems a little TOO coincidental. Was he involved at all in the last mass summoning, perhaps?

[Kagezuno]

It's never not cool when someone gets smacked with the henshin effect mid-transformation

[Electric Turahk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeneralTekno

I'm curious how long Sora's been a Phantom.

The fact they mentioned a couple times that his regular customers all disappeared seems a little TOO coincidental. Was he involved at all in the last mass summoning, perhaps?

It was stated that it was around the eclipse that he left the job, though. So I figure he was made around the same time as the others.

[Barricade64]

Not sure if it's O-T but I don't feel "humanity" is the right word for Gremlin, since he's still willing to create Phantoms and fight Haruto and Nitou. Unless he was a total dick when he was Sora, maybe personality would have been the better word to go with. That small gripe aside I like how we're focusing on him and I can't wait to see where things go next week.

[Switchblade]

Finally got around to this one. I liked it, but this is one of the biggest examples yet of Wizard's tendency towards mood whiplashes. On the one hand we have Haruto and Rinko going around and investigating Sora, leading to the reveal that he's a unique Phantom who still has his human soul. On the other hand, we have Kousuke and Shunpei clowning around with the model, complete with silly sound effects and fantasy sequences. It's like someone took half an episode of Kuuga, half an episode of Den-O (and the model story is straight out of Den-O - I think they're even reusing some of the same sets), and tried stapling them together. It really doesn't work.

In a nutshell, I think that's Wizard's biggest overall problem (that doesn't wear rainbow pantyhose under his shorts): it's trying to be both a serious, dark, early-00s style show and a funny, lighthearted, Den-O/Fourze-esque show at the same time. It's really frustrating for me because, while I can enjoy both of those styles of Rider, trying to mix and match them like this just doesn't work. I think if we outright lost Shunpei and dialed Kousuke back to a character a bit we'd have a much stronger series. It sucks, because Haruto is a great Rider and he's having so much of his show dragged down by over-the-top comic relief.

[Matrixbeast]

You'll take any reason to lose Shunpei.
Quite literally every suggestion you've made concerning Wizard involved ditching him.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matrixbeast

You'll take any reason to lose Shunpei.
Quite literally every suggestion you've made concerning Wizard involved ditching him.

That's because it needs doing. Kousuke can at least pull off dramatic moments well, even if he's still being goofy. Shunpei does nothing but drag the whole show down. There is no Rider character in the history of the franchise that I dislike this much - not Akiko, not Kusaka, not even the weird-looking reporter guy from early Skyrider.

[bluesparrow]

Shunpei needs to be around because frankly Haruto needs someone to be around and talk to when he's going around looking for Gates. Otherwise it becomes "creepy quiet guy stalking random people." Rinko wouldn't be bad for this except that she's generally useless and not around all the time because of her job. Shunpei is pretty useless too but he's always around. He also tends to connect better with people than Haruto does.

I'm not saying they did it the best possible way they could have, frankly they made some bad decisions at the start of the show. What I was hoping was going to happen after the pilot was that Haruto would be investigating things with Rinko. That'd make sense, since these attacks on the Gates are all technically crimes and she has a motivation to take them down because of what happened to her partner. It'd be a classic plot engine.

Instead they have a bizarre non-sensical thing where everyone hangs out at an antique shop and accidentally bump into someone they knew previously who was actually secretly a Gate all along. It's stupid but it's become a decent dynamic finally. Or maybe I'm just used to it.