This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-Decent hero cast overall. Everyone in the hero team feels useful to a degree and can fight untransformed, which helps them stay relevant throughout the show.
-Consistently entertaining villains from start to finish.
-Pretty entertaining monsters and characters of the week for most of the show.
-Pretty great action outside of the constant use of CGI; Gotchard Igniter and Kamen Rider Valvarad in particular come to mind.
-Some interesting concepts in the world-building and story here and there.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
Everything the show did bad:
-This is the Kamen Rider season that has the most spin-offs that are essential to the plot, which makes the story feel incomplete and disjointed. Usually one doesn't need to watch specials and movies to understand a show; at most they introduce a movie character for 1 episode and not properly explain the character to make the viewer want to watch the movie, but they usually aren't that essential. Even when specials are essential for a season, there usually aren't many, and one can watch them after the show is over and still get about the same experience.
However, Gotchard has too many cases where these spin-offs matter. One of the recurring villains of the first quarter suddenly stops appearing; this is because his arc gets resolved in the winter crossover movie with Geats. Said movie introduces the powers of Rinne, who's supposed to be the second most important character in the show, and the show doesn't do a proper job at summarizing the movie in order to understand where her powers come from. The second quarter has the protagonist Houtaro getting a mentor, which leads to him getting an upgrade; however said mentor's character arc gets resolved in this show's summer movie and he barely appears for the rest of the show's run past the second quarter. The third quarter has a whole mini-arc dedicated to Kaguya Quartz a character from the Kamen Rider Legend spin-off, said special and mini-arc have several references to past rider shows and the crossover mini-series Kamen Rider Outsiders.
-Despite Toei's kodomo Tokusatsu not really being known for having good acting, the acting of this show's main duo Houtaro and Rinne is way worse than usual. Houtaro's actor Junsei Motojima at least improves enough after the first quarter outside his occasional weird stare, so he's not really that big of an issue. But Rinne's actress Reiyo Matsumoto while she definitely improves, never improves enough to be considered a good actress, so despite her character having the most consistently well-written character out of the main trio, the fact that she gets her main powers in a movie and the actress consistently having poor delivery for the character's emotional scenes, end up making it hard to care for the character.
-The show fails at giving Houtaro a proper motivation besides empathy to care for the chemies which makes his whole character feel cheap most of the time despite him developing a proper friendship with Hopper1 and most chemies of the week. While episode 18 does give a better explanation of why he wants to befriend all chemies it also opens a bunch of other questions that aren't answered in the show, so it doesn't really fix this issue.
-The show fails at making proper use of its setting. They hardly ever do any proper alchemy and instead it just evolves into being used as normal magic or transmutation. The alchemy academy barely feels like an academy and hardly ever shows them practicing to become better alchemists after the first quarter, this really affects Houtaro's character since he's the newest of the team and is almost never shown doing alchemy or trying to get better at it until Rainbow Gotchard, he should have made the connection with cooking way earlier in the show so that his progression feels more natural, because of this, the final episode feels way less engaging. The school setting feels very disconnected from the main plot, which makes a character like Kajiki, while likeable overall, not really accomplish anything and not hang out with the cast that much during the show's middle. The alchemy sages pretty much don't matter for the show, which makes the alchemist organization barely have any background or any interesting traits, most of the important world-building elements and lore end up coming from the villain Giggist.
-Spanner's arc in the first quarter feels unnecessary and makes so that the character doesn't have proper set up or foreshadowing for his later arcs even if they're competently written.
-After the first quarter, Sabimaru and Renge don't get much to do. Sabimaru at least gets a 2 parter near the end to close his character arc and show how much he's grown, but Renge basically gets nothing, even her backstory episode barely focuses on her.
-Despite Minato's backstory being great, his actions in the show's middle are not justified enough. After Houtaro obtains CrossHopper, he doesn't get much to do despite the show setting him to change the alchemist's order.
-Fuga is a severely underutilized character, which makes it hard to care for him despite his cool moments.
-Clotho loses too many battles to be taken seriously. Out of the 3 sisters she's the one who gets treated the worst.
-Despite Lachesis getting a lot of cool developments throughout the show, it also feels like she barely gets to do something in the second half. She also barely fights despite getting new powers in episode 33.
-Germain and Gaelijah are kind of forgettable.
-Despite Geryon's actions making sense due to the kind of character he is and being a very entertaining villain overall, his main goal is still kind of hard to take seriously. It feels that his backstory should have been explored further since we only get a brief dialogue from Giggist explaining his origins.
-Kaguya and his personal villains are extremely disconnected from the show, which makes his mini-arc feel out place even if it does progress the story.
-While the content of the final arc is good for the most part, it still feels really rushed. The villains in the final arc get the short end of the stick, it feels that Rinne and Spanner didn't get the most use of their new powers and due to the Ouroboros Realm existing it doesn't feel like the finale has much emotional weight.
-Some pretty bad/forgettable monsters/cases of the week in the first quarter of the show.
-Due to the chemmies barely having any character besides Hopper1, not being able to talk besides Nijigon and mostly having to stay in their card form throughout most of the show, they end up being just kind of OK mascots, with the exception of Hopper1 which is pretty good despite not being anything stand-out.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main writer Keiichi Hasegawa is really great at writing villains. The other main writer Hiroki Uchida did a pretty good job at following the plot-points Hasegawa set up. Secondary writer Akiko Inoue was good at giving Rinne more characterization and also managed to add some good comedic elements.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Chief producer Yousuke Minato, prior to Gotchard was chosen by Omori to be a co-producer for King-Ohger alongside Mochizuki. Omori wanted to stop working for Kamen Rider since he felt he was out of ideas and thus wanted to produce a Super Sentai show, in order to increase the chances for the show to be greenlit, he wanted to work on the pre-production earlier in secret as a trio of producers, Minato would end up developing the countries of Ishabana and Toufu. Ultimately, the show ended up being greenlit under the condition that Omori would work on the show alone from that point onward. The reason for their removal was that Mochizuki had just been demoted due to his work in Revice and that they wanted Minato to produce the next Kamen Rider show.
Toei wanted to make a more lighthearted season of Kamen Rider since the previous season Geats was darker than usual. Then, when King-Ohger ended up being more popular with adults than children, Toei really wanted to emphasize the lighthearted elements even more in order to "bring tokusatsu back to the children", the next Sentai Boonboomger would also fall under this philosophy. Due to this, Toei wanted Minato to be the next producer in order to train the next generation of producers and because he prefers lighthearted shows.
Due to him being a new producer and the fear that this show would also fall into the pitfalls that Revice did, which was made by a relatively new producer, promoted producers Shin-ichiro Shirakura and Hideaki Tsukuda helped with the show pre-production. Shirakura came up with the idea of having cards as a gimmick, that said cards wouldn't be used for an OCG/TCG and for the show to have a school setting. Minato then came up for the cards to feature monsters inspired by Pokémon and Digimon and that there should be 100 or more cards to collect, since they couldn't use that many cards for individual forms. Tsukuda came up with the idea of using 2 cards for each and forms and decided that the show should have an emphasis on alchemy so that the fusion of cards makes sense.
Usually for most Toei tokusatsu the producer comes up with the setting and checks up throughout the show so that the setting is realized properly by the writer, but in this case he barely came up with any of the ideas of the setting, so it's speculated that this is the main reason why alchemy and the school setting are so half-baked in the show. The only idea that we know he came up with was the creation of Rinne and that she should be the secondary rider, so that's probably why writing wise she's the most consistent one in the cast.
Minato would end up choosing Hiroki Uchida as the main writer due to him having worked with him with Kamen Rider Outsiders. Uchida suffers from the same issue as Nobuhiro Mouri, they're good at following ideas from another writer under proper supervision, which is why they most often work as episode writers. However, they don't work well because they're bad at coming up with their own ideas, so when they do they come up with pretty generic stuff. The original plan for Gotchard by Uchida was for Houtaro to be a student with no direction in his life and ultimately finds the chemies imprisoned, due to their state of being trapped in cards he would free them since he sympathized with them due to both being pathetic, this would ultimately create chaos as the chemies become evil in the presence of people with ill-intentions, due to this event being his fault, Houtaro takes responsibility and decides to catch all the chemies while befriending them. It was planned for there to be no main villains besides the demon from the book, instead the show would have consisted on the cast solving cases of the week up to the final arc with barely any plot progression. Ultimately, Toei higher ups thought that this premise was too bland and decided that Keiichi Hasegawa, who had already been chosen to be an episode writer, should be this show's co-writer alongside Uchida. The reason they chose him was because Minato has mostly been an assistant producer for anime up to this point, so since Hasegawa was a writer who had lots of experience with both anime and tokusatsu, they felt that he would be a good fit for the show.
However this decision was made somewhat late into pre-production, so there was some stuff they weren't able to change. Ultimately, Hasegawa would create this show's villains, who ended up being the best aspect of the show and changed how the chemies got released in order for them to make sense with the new villains. However this change made Houtaro's sympathy for the chemies make way less sense which really affected his character for the worse.
Hasegawa prefers writing darker stories but since Minato wanted this show to be more lighthearted, he would suppress most of Hasegawa's ideas in the first quarter and they would have many creative clashes. Ultimately after his ideas and villains ended up being the most well-received aspects of the show, he would end up writing most of the show's story, world-building, and Spanner's character after the first quarter, while Uchida built up on his ideas and focused on writing Houtaro's character (which is probably why Houtaro was the most sloppily written, he also was the one who decided the show's ending). They didn't know on what direction to take Rinne so the producer got Akiko Inoue to be a secondary writer to give Rinne more characterization. After this, from the second quarter onward, the show improves since now it has a proper direction, but the setup is very flawed due to how directionless the first quarter was.
Due to Kamen Rider's main demographic being really young boys and adult otakus, they didn't believe that Majade would sell well, so they wanted her toys to be premium bandai. However the producer thought that in order for her toys to sell better and for her to be more popular she should get her powers in the movie instead of the show, which negatively affected her character.
In order to maximize sales, Minato wanted the movies to relate to the plot, which is why characters like Licht Kugimiya and Daybreak ended up that way.
Prior to the show release, since Majade was going to be premium bandai, Minato had decided that the retail toys that usually go to the secondary should go to Kamen Rider Legend, a mini-series that focused on crossover aspects, and then introduce said Rider into the show proper in order to bring older fans of the franchise into the show. Since these decisions had already been decided prior to Hasegawa taking over for most of the plot, the mini-arc of Legend ended up happening anyway.
The staff had decided that Majade's and Valvarad's final power-ups should happen at the very end so that they feel like they're "the strongest" forms, since they happen too late to lose to a villain. The final power-up Gotchard gets in the final episode was decided at the last minute by Bandai since the transformation item had already opened for pre-orders due to the summer movie.
Some people speculate that the reason for Houtaro's and Rinne's actors being worse than usual is due to Minato having worked mostly on anime, so when doing casting he chose more arbitrarily. Usually casting is done with the main writer and the pilot director, but people speculate due to the phrasing in some interviews that they were both cast when Uchida was the sole writer for the show and he just didn't mind it due to him mostly being an episode writer. Then the villains, and most main characters introduced later had way better actors since they were cast after Hasegawa had joined the project. But these are purely theories since we don't know how early the main duo were cast.
Some leaks indicate that Shirakura was more involved in the show than it initially seemed, but it's unknown what contributions he had aside from the pre-production.
Overall:
The show ranges from average to kinda good. It definitely doesn't do anything too offensive to be considered bad but also doesn't do anything too good to be considered great. Also due to its muddled plot direction, the show comes off bland at times. The show has a lot of cool ideas, but they're not executed that well because of the previously stated problems. The show does improve a lot after the first quarter, but it still feels incomplete overall, has a pretty rushed final arc and has a mixed bag of a finale. Overall, I can only recommend this show if you're really into Kamen Rider or if you're really into the villains of this show after watching the first 3 episodes since they're by far the most consistent aspect of the show. While this show isn't bad or even mediocre, there's just far better Tokusatsu out there, and this show doesn't particularly excel at anything.
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This review may contain spoilers
Mild Spoilers Ahead:
Everything the show did well:>Really likeable hero cast with tons of chemistry that gets properly developed.
>Top-Tier action that makes good use of the food motif, arguably some of the franchise's best.
>Really interesting monster of the week gimmick where they have to make people happy as part of their plan, the show manages to keep them entertaining for the whole run.
>Slightly better acting than usual Rider seasons.
>Amazing OST, although I wish we could have gotten more insert songs.
>Interesting execution of Kamen Rider's usual theme of loneliness with the main Rider trio and the first Bitter Gavvs.
>Villain cast is mostly entertaining whenever they're actually around.
>Useful female lead that serves as one the main driving forces for the growth of the main trio.
>Very unique setting that uses a drug empire villains really differently from other seasons, making the viewer interested in the story right away.
Everything the show did poorly:
>The second quarter of the show starts pretty slow.
>The Bitter Gavv arc comes out of nowhere and feels unreasonable in the world's setting due to Suga's backstory not being explored enough.
>The Stomach Family dissappear for multiple episodes without explanation in Q2. A lot of the Stomach's final fights feel rushed and the overall villain cast feels underdeveloped.
>Liselle and Jeebh were very poorly utilized and ultimately end up being the worst villains of the show, despite their strong introductions Jeebh remains useless throughout most of the show's run and Liselle's lovecraftian nature and love for weak breakable beings leads nowhere in the show itself in order to shill the post-series V-Cinema. Both felt nerfed in their final fight, while one could argue they were like that due their mental instability it still feels like a forced explanation.
>Blizzard's introduction felt very plot-convenient.
>Hanto barely got any meaningful wins.
>Zomb is underutilized.
>The portal system of Stomach inc. goes mostly unexplored to shill the Summer Movie.
>The Granute World wasn't explored enough.
>Sachika feels kind of disconnected to the main conflict.
>Mediocre last episode aside from the action direction.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main writer Komura is really particular about casting which led to a better actors than usual. Unlike previous shows that had Komura as a chief writer, Kamen Rider isn't team-based which meshes better with Komura's writing style, resulting the main Rider trio be properly developed. This show had a longer pre-production than usual due to it being the first season that needed to accommodate seasons being filmed earlier than usual, this lead to staff being able to create a creative setting. Vice Producer Takijima's quick thinking led to Lakia's arc being good in spite of the original plan for his arc not being done. Sugihara is an really great director and Fujita is an excellent action director, that and the show mostly getting good episode directors led to most of the fights being well done and really memorable.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Orginally Lakia was meant to be an undercover cop infiltrating Stomach inc. and the second quarter was meant to have the cast explore the Granute world, however this plan had to be abandoned due to a lack of budget, this is why the second quarter starts slow being written by other writers. The Stomach were originally meant to perish in the first half of the show, while a new mafia took over in the second half, however chief producer Takebe really liked the actors so instead the Stomachs were kept alive for most of the show's run and the new mafia became the president of the Granute world and his daughter to compensate not being able to explore the government via Lakia being a cop. However despite their life getting extended, their arcs remained the same due to them not being originally planned to live that long, so the Stomachs just dissappear for multiple episodes rather than better building up their arcs, also the main writer Komura is known for having trouble handling big casts so that's also probably part of the reason for the villains getting shafted, even if the main reason is clearly Takebe's change of plans. Takebe comfirmed that Stomachs weren't originally meant to be in the last episode, meaning the final fight was most likely originally meant to be Amazing Gummy's debut, although we don't know for sure. The suddeness of having to rework the plans for the rest of the show might also be the reason for the Bitter Gavvs arc feeling so out of place, but that seems unlikely. This lack of planning feels irresponsible on Takebe's part because this is one of the Kamen Rider seasons with the longest pre-production ever, so you'd think they would have had a more solid plan as to how things should go.
Overall:
I think the themes, direction, action and character arcs of this show were done amazingly which mostly makes up for the disappointing villain cast. Aside from the final episode, I'd say I found every single episode of this show entertaining despite of its flaws and even the last episode isn't bad, just a really by the numbers finale where the villains are at their most disappointing, but the actual story still closes up well enough. I'm really going to miss this show and I hope this new production schedule that Kamen Rider has means the staff will have to plan things more concretely from now on since they won't be able to make as many decisions based on viewers' reactions anymore, since even though that method worked really well during the Heisei era, it feels like newer staffers had been struggling with such tactics during the Reiwa era.
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-Good ranger team and commander overall.
-The pink ranger Momo is extremely likeable and almost all of her focus episodes are really great despite mostly consisting on filler.
-Really great villains overall, especially towards the final arc.
-Really great final arc.
-The villains feel like a force to be reckoned with due to them having already conquered most of the planet prior to the show's start, helps ups the stakes in a unique way compared to other seasons.
-The dynamic of the team being a military corp is done differently enough from other military seasons to stand out.
-Really good action both in mecha and outside.
-Most monsters of the week are entertaining.
Everything the show did bad:
-The transition of the show being one of the darkest Sentai ever made to becoming really goofy isn't smooth and hurts the characters of the main team with the exception of pink. They still manage to be pretty likable overall but the show's tone ends up feeling all over the place due to this change.
-The extra ranger Riki and Dorin aren't that entertaining due to being absent for good chunks of the show and their personalities not being that interesting. That said Riki feels consistently strong throughout the show and at least one can kinda buy his absence from the episodes due him working for Dorin first and being a hero second.
-The side characters that the show introduces later, the wacky scientist Kotaro and the Shida family aren't really that likeable nor that funny.
-The civilization of Pangaea feels underexplored.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
This was the first Super Sentai season to acknowledge Goranger and JAKQ as part of the franchise. Due to this this season was treated as the 20th anniversary of Sentai and the producer Takeyuki Suzuki wanted the team to be soldiers like Goranger. This season just like the previous one Kakuranger brought back Susumu Yoshikawa to co-produce to realize the ambitions they sought out to do.
Some people speculate that the pink ranger Momo was always supposed to have filler episodes prior the show's change of tone, so she was the character least affected by the change. But this is just a rumor.
Reasons for the show's problems:
The staff wanted to realize a hard dark setting to differentiate from previous seasons. But due to the Hanshin Earthquake that occurred prior the show's airing and even more due to the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack that occurred after the airing of the third episode, from episode 9 onward the show adopted a more comedic approach to its tone in order to cheer up the audience.
The high contrast of the show having one of the darkest starts to any Sentai season, the darkest beginning at the time it was airing to becoming whacky and comedic from episode 9 up to the start of the final arc feels really jarring. The new side characters introduced in the middle to light up the tone ultimately weren't that funny due to not being planned. However in spite of these changes the main characters and villains managed to stay likeable from beginning to end.
Overall:
The show's tone is all over the place and there's a few characters introduced later that drag this show down. But overall the show manages to still be great overall with a likeable team of Rangers and villains plus a really cool setting. I recommend this show if you're a Super Sentai fan.
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-Every character from the heroes, to the villains, to the side-characters and even characters of the week are really well written and useful throughout the entire show.
-Great acting from the cast and arguably the best acting in the franchise so far. Barely any character of the show feels like they're bad at acting, at worst they're decent. The only noticeable one is a character introduced in the second half, Prince and even then he's not bad by tokusatsu standards, just worse than the rest of the main cast so the gap in acting feels noticeable but it really isn't a deal breaker.
-Amazing serialized story from start to finish, barely any episode feels like filler.
-It being the most serialized Sentai show so far, even managing to be more serialized than Dairanger, Gekiranger and Kyoryuger makes the show feel distinct from the other seasons from the franchise.
-Fantastic soundtrack.
-Tons of subtle foreshadowing makes the show really rewatchable.
-Fantastic world-building, ambitious fantasy setting where every country feels unique.
-Both the hero team and the main villains are filled with charisma.
-The show never has a considerable drop on writing quality.
-Ambitious high-stakes finale.
-Jeramie is arguably the franchise best extra ranger, due to how well his dynamics are with the rest fo the cast, it never feels like it fractured their dynamic or that he takes too much screen-time
-The mech fights are consistently amazing and among the franchise's best.
-The monsters of the week in the first half are really great consistently.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show's fights have a severe overuse of slow-motion, resulting in the opposite effect and removing most of the weight of the fights while also making the good choreography hard to appreciate.
-Despite the mecha battles being amazing, the they barely use them in the second half.
-While the crossover mini-arc with Kyoryuger is really great, Kyoryuger's lore actually intertwines with this show's plot and it has heavy spoilers for that show so it means that a portion of the show would be hard to appreciate if you haven't seen Kyoryuger prior.
-While the CGI backgrounds are mostly good, especially for tokusatsu standards it still can be really distracting at times, specially during some fights.
-While Rita is a really likeable character overall she gets considerably shafted compared to the rest of the rangers and her backstory isn't properly explained.
-While the main antagonist is extremely charismatic, most of his decisions being mostly dependant on what's fun for him isn't really a thing for everyone and might come off as cheap writing for some.
-The people of Shugodom can come off as too trusting and kinda dumb at times.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
This show was a massive passion project by producer Omori and main writer Minato Takano. He was out of ideas for Rider shows and really wanted to go back to doing Sentai, so in order to secure his position as the next producer in spite of producer Shirakura 5-year plan for Sentai, he started pre-production in secret alongside producers Mochizuki and Yousuke Minato. Having the manpower of 3 producers with barely any restrictions and more time than your usual mainline Toei tokusatsu production made it so that the show could have more high-quality CGI and a better thought out setting. While Toei's condition for greenliting the project was the removal of producers Mochizuki and Minato, their set-up was already done and main writer Takano knew how to develop their ideas + Omori who was the main creative source remained.
The staff opted for actor hiring strategy that the franchise has had since Kiramager of hiring more slightly more experienced actors than usual.
The show's main director Kazuya Kamihoriuchi is among Toei's best and made the emotional scenes and the Mecha fights really stand out + also he helped with a lot of the creative output after the show's timeskip.
The show made use of Toei's new led room which also led it into it being greenlit. This made it so that could properly create their ambitious fantasy setting.
Main writer is really good at character writing and really cares about lore.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Producer Kazuya Kamihoriuchi tried too hard with the action resulting in a severe use of slowmo and cycling back to being kinda bad.
Despite the CGI being better than most Toei tokusatsu shows due to having more time, it still isn't that much more time, so the CGI is still very flawed.
Overall:
Easily one of the best Sentai shows, it just barely has any big flaws besides being better enjoyed if you've watched Kyoryuger prior. Arguably has the best characters, acting and world-building in the franchise. High recommend, specially if you're into the storytelling style of Shounen anime/manga. I could only see someone not liking the show if they find the CGI too distracting to enjoy the plot or if the characters don't really jive with you in the first few episodes of the show.
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-The two main riders, Haruto and Nitou are constantly charismatic and pretty funny.
-Gremlin is a really memorable villain.
-Phoenix was a pretty entertaining villain.
-Action is consistently amazing.
-Some episodes can be really funny and endearing.
-Final arc cam be kind of interesting due to the reasoning behind the antagonist actions and the arc of the mages.
-The rings add very varied moveset of abilities for Wizard.
-Pretty good finale.
-The crossover epilogue is entertaining.
-The acting is overall pretty good.
Everything the show did bad:
-Nobody in the hero sidecast is compelling. Rinko and Shunpei while initially likeable, they barely get to actually do anything and their character arcs stay at a stalemate. Shigeru is never given enough of character or barely any semblance of a backstory. The 3 mages are an interesting concept, particularly Mayu backstory but all of this happens so late in the show that it feels really rushed and poorly executed. The donut shop are just gags characters. The only character that was given something was Koyomi, and even then she's mostly a plot device than an actual character.
-The Phantom are among the most boring villains in the franchise. They barely have anything interesting going on which makes the episodes feel pretty boring. This wouldn't be much of an issue if the sidecast had strong personalities to compensate but they really don't. And since most of the show is filler, them being boring monsters make the show generally feel like a drag.
-When the show finally moves the plot forward in the final arc, it's extremely rushed and tries to do too much at once making it feel really messy.
-Wiseman plan to achieve his goal is too conveluted.
-Medusa's reasoning for following Wiseman is kind of dumb.
-Despite Haruto and Nitou being likeable they barely get any proper backstory or character arc. They are just interesting enough to bring life into the show and have a great dynamic but they aren't a particularly amazing set of characters.
-Comedy can be very hit or miss.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Director Nakazawa wanted to go all out in order cheer people up due to the earthquake and make you want to watch the show continously. The characters that secondary writer Komura focused were really entertaining.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Main writer Tsuyoshi Kida had scheduling issues which resulted in him barely writing or supervising the script. Producer Utsunomiya had secondary writer Junko Komura run the show on automatic without actually progressing the plot since he expected Kida to be back on time. On top of this Komura without supervision tends to only focus on a few characters, thus she only really focused on Haruto, Nitou and Gremlin. While this caused Gremlin to be a fantastic villain, everyone else got sidelined (It's unclear how many of Gremlin's ideas were made by Komura or were part of Kida's story draft but seemingly it was the latter?). Ultimately Komura ended up writing so much of the show that she's occasionally credited as Wizard main writer. Ultimately since Kido wasn't supervising we couldn't get that supposed "lovecraftian nature" he wanted to portray in the phantoms. The show would ultimately get extended but this happened so late the already rushed final arc was already in motion, which is why the finale ended up being a crossover.
Overall:
This is the most consistently boring show in the Kamen Rider franchise. And one cannot give it the benefit of being average due to even the story being rushed and conveluted in the final arc. I can only recommend this show if you REALLY like Haruto and Nitou, and if you REALLY like the action. If you like both enough, you can probably tank through the show while having a good time, but otherwise it will be an average watch at best and a bad one at worst for most people.
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This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-The show first half is really great overall. Most characters are likable during that period, and the general tone and atmosphere feels great.
-Episode 42 was amazing.
-Pretty good finale.
-Daiji's actor is great and has excellent delivery for his scenes.
-Lovekov is a pretty loveable mascot.
-The action in the first half, excluding the CGI forms, is really well done and different from other shows as it feels like controlled chaos.
-The music in the first half is among the franchise's most unique.
-The first quarter of the show has more budget than usual.
Everything the show did bad:
-The mysteries and character arcs setup in the show's first half get resolved either boringly or just straight up bad.
-By the end of the show barely any character remains likeable and the ones that do aren't really anything impressive, just 'good'.
-The main protagonist Ikki is a very boring character overall, and his partner Vice doesn't really feel like a co-protagonist and just feels like a mascot. Their character arc is only interesting in the finale. Ikki in the beginning is busybody type character and has good detective skills but by the second half he stops doing any of this for the most part, while letting his siblings resolve their own problems is unique it barely gives him a chance to develop character.
-Daiji is the worst part of the first arc because his rivalry with Ikki feels repetitive, that isn't much of an issue and he remains pretty likeable during the first half but after he obtains his upgrade Holy Live his character just keeps getting worse. Most of his actions in the second half stem from fear of the main antagonist but said antagonist doesn't come off powerful enough which makes most of his decisions feel nonsensical. Also the rest of the cast are jerks to him for seemingly no reason.
-Sakura is really likeable before becoming a rider, but once she does she becomes a brat. This would be fine since they're clearly setting up her developming maturity after being smug and in the first arc they manage to make some interesting things with this. However the show despite her barely winning any battles and being a smug brat who has yet to know her place, almost every character sucks her off as if she's somehow amazing. When it's time to resolve her arc it happens mostly off-screen which feels like a cop-out.
-The main antagonist Giff is only likeable when he was a statue. Once he becomes a proper monster he loses all of his personality and his actual plan is really dumb.
-Julio and Aguilera become joke characters with barely any direction after episode 18.
-Most of George character arc in the second half feels forced and contradictory to his personality in the first half.
-Hiromi, Genta, Bu-san, Kagero and Olteca remain the most likeable characters because they remain mostly absent in the second half where the show went bad and you bet that when they appear later in the second half the show tries its best to ruin them.
-The action degrades heavily in the second half for several reasons. There's barely any new enemies and they mostly spend fighting Veil and Giffdemos, the new riders introduced barely have any character at all so they don't have an interesting moveset and the powers the main cast get from their upgrades feel detached from the initial themes.
-For the second half of the show they mostly use more generic sounding action music or old tracks from the first half. All new tracks that are actually unique get barely used.
-The eviction plot-line gets forgotten.
-The shot in the opening of the main protagonist in a flaming school never happens in the show, it's the only time that I can think of in the franchise were the show opening seeminly hinting at a plot point goes nowhere.
-One of the worst final arcs in the franchise.
-The show is worse on a re-watch since now you know that the mysteries and set up aren't actually building up to anything.
-Weird anti-vaccine message episode.
-The show does a poor job at making the main antagonist Giff feel powerful or even menacing.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Producer Mochizuki has ton of interesting ideas, good set of directors.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Producer Mochizuki puts all of his good ideas in the first quarter which makes it feel kinda cluttered and also makes him go overbudget. After the first quarter he pretty much gives the main writer complete freedom. Keep in mind this is the same strategy he used in his previous show Kyuranger which resulted in him being demoted, he was promoted again and given a second chance since it have been a long time since that show, but this shows he pretty much didn't learn anything, which resulted in him getting demoted again inmediately after the show ended.
The writer who gave complete freedom, Hanta Kinoshita, didn't really care for any of Mochizuki's ideas nor actually likes Kamen Rider, he's more of marvel comic fans. After the first quarter he pretty much retconned everything Mochizuki and director Shibasaki had set up without any actual planning. He publicly admitted that he didn't have anything planned for the main protagonist duo nor the deadmans past episode 18 and had nothing planned for Daiji past episode 27. His only focus pretty much was Sakura and Weekend. All of these decisions made him ruin the show's second half with the exception of episode 42. It legimetely seems that he was angry that his idea of a female protagonist was rejected and that Hiromi, a character that was supposed to die in the first episode before the script being changed because the staff liked the actor, ended up being more popular than Sakura and Vice. Kinoshita also inserted his own political views into the show. The writer just generally comes off as petty.
Besides that, the character Hikaru who had barely done anything suddenly changing and becoming prominent in the second half despite having no personality, is heavily speculated to have happened due to him being from a profilic agency and that the staff was forced to give him more screen time.
Due to Sakura being so poorly written and her arc being resolved off-screen despite the writer's insistance that she's his favorite character one has to assume that something that we're not aware of happened in production.
Overall:
If you care about consistency this will most likely be an average show due to the first half being really great and the second being really bad. If you care about writing quality this is easily one of the franchise's worst. One cannot really get a feel for the characters and story by watching the first 3 episodes due to how much the show changes. I honestly cannot really recommend this show when the tokusatsu genre has other much better titles.
Personally since my biggest draw to shows are characters, this is the worst Rider show I've seen so far. In Wizard Haruto, Nitou and Gremlin at least were really likeable. In Ghost Alain was amazing, only the 2 dudes from the temple were boring, and Chikara and Adel were really bad, but otherwise the cast was enjoyable. Zi-O had Woz being really fun, and while the character writing was heavily inconsistent they at least were entertaining and had some interesting concepts done well. Revice really has none of that going for it.
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Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-Really interesting setting that the show uses the its upmost potential for the most part.
-The majority of the cast is really likeable.
-The rivalries between Kouta and Kaito is entertaining and both develop in interesting ways.
-The show manages to create really interesting thing with the fruit theme and connect it to the world-building in a significant manner.
-Cool action overall.
-The story develops in really interesting ways.
-Natural progression of stakes, which makes the threats in the second half feel legitimate.
-The final fight in episode 46 is amazing.
-Great finale.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show doesn't tell us Kaito's backstory despite him being the second most important character in the show. It's instead left to the Kamen Rider Baron Gaiden. This really hurts some of the show's emotional weight.
-The crossover specials hurt the show's pacing, but this is barely an issue if you're binge watching the show.
-While overall likeable, it felt that the show could have done more interesting things with Sid, Yoko and the side characters from the dance teams.
-Takatora is unable to fight for a big chunk of the show.
-I don't know how true this is since I've haven't seen the anime in question, but I've seen a lot of people say that this show's main writer is ripping his previous work Madoka Magica off, which makes the show feels less original. But I've seen the same people say that Gaim's better due to having 40+ episodes to develop its characters rather than 12 episodes + a movie.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main producer Naomi Takebe wanted to make a show that felt more similar to the dark atmosphere of early Heisei seasons of Kamen Rider. She chose Gen Urobochi as main writer after being recommend by voice actor Tomokazu Sugita who she had previously worked with during Kiva. It had been decided that the show would take the Kuuga approach of making the threat something that kids at time were scared of, during Kuuga it was serial killers, during Gaim it was the 2011 earthquake, due to the threat being decided to be a force of nature since the beginning, Bandai came up with the fruit motif to make it standout.
Takebe gave mostly complete creative freedom to Urobochi which lead to the story being planned out from the very beginning rather than just having a roadmap and build the story as the show goes on. This allowed the show to have better foreshadowing and barely change anything during its run.
Reasons for the show's problems:
There were very few changes to the script and not all of these were bad. Among the "good/neutral" changes are: Sigurd and Knuckle as both characters were originally not planned to transform, Baron obtaining lemon energy as originally wasn't supposed to have any other forms past mango, the teams were originally supposed to be delinquents but was changed into dance teams in order to contrast the dark tone. Among the "negative" chnages were: the removal of Kaito's backstory so that the show has better pacing which resulted into it being moved to the V-Cinema, the filler crossover episodes and the epilogue finale which wasn't planned as the staff wasn't sure of the show would have 46 or 47 episodes so Urobochi ended up only planning for 46 which resulted in the last episode feeling weirder. There's also some unspecified changes to Kaito's and Mitsuzane's characters but its unknown what these were and if they were for the better or for worse.
The reason why Ryugen, Zangetsu and Gridon appear in the beginning narration of the fight of Baron and Gaim despite not making that much sense is because the scene was added by the director Ryuta Tasaki despite not being in the script.
Overall:
The show's amazing overall, outside of not properly explaining Kaito's backstory, the show doesn't have any big notable issues and manages to be one of the most entertaining and interesting seasons in the franchise. Highly recommend to any tokusatsu fan, if you're into other works by Gen Urobochi or into survival shows.
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-Big One/Banba is a really likeable character.
-Some cool spy action here and there.
-A few cool monster of the week.
-Really cool aesthetics.
Everything the show did bad:
-The team just comes off as generic most of the time, the initial commander too.
-The lack of proper main villain generals is disappointing due to the main antagonist duo being pretty boring.
-The majority of monsters of the week are pretty forgettable.
-As likeable Banba is, he is not likeable enough to make the show enjoyable and alongside him comes Tamasaburou who I never was able to find funny, but this might be a personal issue.
-The show overexploits the "film-reversal" technique of the original Kamen Rider show, which removes most of the impacts from the fights.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Due to the show's low rating they brought veteran actor Hiroshi Miyauchi who had played previously played Aoranger Kamen Rider V3 to increase the ratings, and ultimately ended up being the best character of the show.
Reasons for the show's problems:
In order to differentiate as much as possible from the previous work Goranger, they tried to make the show have a much darker tone, however the staff didn't know how to properly do that and ultimately ended up with both the heroes and villains feeling boring and hardly ever entertaining. There was supposed to be a time travel plotline but ended up being scrapped due to feeling too detached from the setting, this resulted in the villains not having any direction. The show then was cancelled due to bad reception and had a whole quarter removed.
Overall:
This show just doesn't have enough going for it. Having one likeable character doesn't really fix all the other issues or suddenly makes the rest of the cast suddenly entertaining. The show's just very bland overall and I can only recommend it if you REALLY like Big One and even then he gets introduced on episode 23. This is the worst Super Sentai out of the ones I've seen so far.
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Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-Really likeable cast from both the hero and villain side.
-The red ranger Yamato is among the best protagonists in the Sentai franchise.
-The red ranger Yamato and the extra hero Misao are better actors and voice actors than your usual Sentai. Naoki Kunishima and especially Masaki Nakao did a fantastic job. Heck, Yamato is easily a top 3 red ranger in terms of acting ability.
-Kubar had a great character arc.
-Yamato's character arc is really well done and makes one feel emotional.
-The show does a proper job at making the main antagonist Genis feel menacing and allmighty.
-The extra hero Misao is among the most unique rangers this franchise's ever had. He manages to be hilarious, menacing, cool and pathetic really well somehow. The actor does great job at making you buy that he's a schizophreniac with PTSD. (Personally he also has some of the best catchphrases in the franchise)
-Most of the monsters of the weeks are entertaining.
-Yamato, Misao and Bard have cool fighting styles.
-Really great final arc and finale for the most part.
-Really great soundtrack.
Everything the show did bad:
-Yamato and Misao definetly get more focus than the rest. It also feels like the team dotes a bit too much on Yamato which at times makes their dynamic feel more like Yamato and his pets rather than a proper team. But at least the don't get super sidelined like the other Junko Komura shows and manage to be properly developed for the most part.
-The villains in the show feel too disconnected from the show's world and the team's goal despite it attempts to reconcile both in the final arc, which makes the world-building feel cheap for most of the show.
-The villain Banglay especially feels too disconnected despite being really entertaining overall. He's also doesn't get any backstory which make his powers being so overpowered feel like cheap writing.
-Kubar is the only villain to get a really great character arc, the rest while great overall feel kinda sidelined. Naria not getting any backstory feels disappointing.
-Bard's actions don't feel justified enough.
-The action from the zyuman members of the teams is usually lacking due to them having a pretty boring utilization of their animal powers. Their instincts awakening powers are especially disappointing since they basically devolve to CGI blast effects rather than using their powers in an interesting way.
-The mechs Doubutsu Gattai ZyuohKing and Doubutsu Dai Gattai Wild ZyuohKing have pretty boring fighting styles.
-Mario feels kind of underutilized.
-The Gokaiger crossover mini-arc is just kind of allright.
-Zyuland feels largely unexplored, which wouldn't be much of an issue if Bard's backstory didn't make you question so much about them.
-It kind of feels like they Zyuman members of the team could have gotten a few more flashbacks.
-The green ranger Tusk has a considerably worse actor than everybody else, however this is really only an issue for the first arc, after that he improves enough to not be distracting. That said, as likeable the character is, he's still the worst member of the team due to the main writer being kinda bad at writing straight-man characters.
-After Misao joins it feels like team uncharacteristically forget their goal. Granted Sentai shows becoming more fillery/comedic during summer break which usually coincides with the extra hero introduction is a somewhat common trope in the franchise but since saving the world from evil monsters is secondary to them finding a way home, this issue is especially noticeable.
-The red ranger knowing how to fight despite being a zoologist. Granted a lot of tokusatsu shows have the characters suddenly knowing how to fight when they transform and it's mostly a nitpick in those shows. However when the other zyumans are trained guards yet they treat Yamato as their strongest member even before he gets his upgrade or even his form changes and have him fight alone a lot of times in the show, this kind of becomes an issue.
-The show overplays Misao's depression/insecurity jokes and since the middle mostly focuses on him and its the portion of the show with the most filler, it could make the show's middle feel really draggy for some people. I personally didn't mind this because I found Misao's jokes hilarious like 95% of the time but I know that not everybody will feel that way.
-While aesthetics are a really subjective thing, I feel there's really no excuse for the rangers suits being this simple in this season since only the red and the extra hero get form changes and instinct awakening doesn't change the suits much. ToQger at least had the excuse that all members had 5 suits.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main writer Junko Komura is really great at handpicking great actors. She exceeds at absurdist comedy which is why a character like Misao worked so well.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Junko Komura is kind of bad at handling multiple characters at once (which makes it ironic that she was chosen as main writer for Super Sentai 3 times) so she gave more focus to Yamato and Misao than the rest of the cast. Having said that, out of the show's I've seen written by her, this is the best she has handled characters, as the rest did get development and focus, it's just that the 2 before mentioned characters got more. She's laso kinda bad at connecting the main villains to the heroes which resulted in them feeling really disconnected from the plot.
Producer Utsunomiya requested for the plot to move slower in the show's middle which could have affected some plot points like Zyuland. There's also a rumor(?) that he requested the villains and monsters to be done safe to attract viewers since the previous Sentai season, Ninninger was received so poorly.
Overall:
A big chunk of your enjoyment will depend on how much you like this show's extra ranger which is why I feel most people would rank this show with a 7. But it's still a great time overall still and would recommend if you're a Sentai fan, just be prepared for the plot to kind of go in a standstill during the middle.
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-By the end of the show every main character besides Sabella and Durandal is likeable.
-From the second quarter onward the show has consistently amazing battle choreography. The show really gives each character a really distinct and nuanced swordsmanship.
-One of the best final arcs/quarters of the franchise.
-The final main antagonist is entertaining and the reasoning behind his actions make sense.
-Really great lore and world-building.
-Slightly better acting than usual Rider shows.
-The bubbles aesthetic the show uses to portray the fantasy setting looks great.
-The show's exceeds at slice of life/human drama elements which really make you care for the cast and results in really emotional moments.
-Really great fantasy soundtrack.
Everything the show did bad:
-One of the worst first arcs/quarters in the franchise. The beginning tries to do too much for its runtime, which is made worse because the episodes has less content than an usual rider show due to having: an ending theme, stock transformations and longer recaps. This makes the show feel cluttered and it affects the action as it occasionally cuts earlier. Other aspect that makes the action worse during this arc is that the protagonist who gets most of the screentime mostly relies on bad-looking CGI magic rather than actual swordsmanship like the other riders.
On top of all of these issues said arc is incomplete due to not being able to film properly thanks to covid, so in order to get the full picture of the show, one must watch the Swordsmen Chronicles spin-off alongside the arc to enjoy the show better. Because if one doesn't watch the spin-off: Kento's actions seems dumber, one won't understand Buster and Slash relationship, why Slash wasn't being able to fight goes unexplained, Rintaro's character's inconsistent in the first arc, Rintaro would be the only one of the main quartet who doesn't have any relation to books and Rintaro actions later in the show lack weight.
The only consistent good thing in the first arc are its slice of life elements which are really well done and make pretty much every major character likeable in the beginning with the exception of Touma who's really generic and Ren who remains a jerk.
However after episode 15 the show improves drastically as it starts having better pacing, Touma starts getting an actual character and gets tons of development, Yuri who's one of the show's best characters gets introduced and Touma goes trough a training arc and learns how to use proper swordsmanship which does wonders for the choreography.
-Ren remains unlikeable until the final arc because we aren't told his backstory until then. However it felt like there wasn't any actual reason to withhold his backstory for so long.
-Sabella and Durandal remain kinda unlikeable for the whole show (which is weird considering they are really likeable in all of the show's spin-offs and specials, some of which aired during the show).
-A lot of times it feels like the cast forgets that Sophia exists which feels out of character.
-While all the main villains are entertaining, it feels like a lot of them die just when they were getting interesting.
-The monster of the week aspect in the first half is kinda hit or miss.
-Episodes 34~38 where the movie villain Falchion gets introduced into the show, return to the hectic pacing and weird editing of the first arc. (If you're worried about watching the short movie, it's just a fight and Bacht's backstory isn't actually explained, you can go into this show without watching and the show summarizes it pretty well anyway).
-It felt like the show could have further explored Ren, Yuri and Bacht backstories.
-The mix and match power mechanics are underutilized.
-Despite the final main antagonist being entetaing, having a cool fighting style and their whole rationale making sense. It's extremely difficult to take him seriously due to the actor overplaying his villain voice in the final arc.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Producer Kazuhiro Takahashi is great at coming up with unique concepts. Main writer Fukuda is excellent at writing human drama and making you care for the characters, he's also a really great lorist. A lot of episodes are written by Keiichi Hasegawa who knows who to up the stakes and make characters likeable. The Reiwa strategy to storyboard fights continues to do wonders for the action.
Reasons for the show flaws:
The show originally had a darker, more interesting premise where Touma was vagabond who trained by himself to be a swordsman ever since he was a kid in order to save Luna, as he opposes both Sword of Logos and the megido but ultimately learns how to work alongside the organization, with a tone closer to Kamen Rider Kabuto. However due to Covid, Toei requested that shows of the super hero time segment of that year to be more light in order to cheer people up.
Covid made it so that the show couldn't have characters of the week in the beginning so to compensate the producer made Kamen Rider Kenzan, Buster and Slash appear earlier, how the show still needs to shill toys so he replaced what would have been Saber's alternate weapons with their transformation devices. This meant that the characters would be introduced earlier making the show feel bloated while also not being able to do a proper introduction since they need to add a new form for Saber the same episode they are introduced.
Since it was possible that Saber could enter a hiatus like Zero-One, the producer impromptuly came up with the character Tassel, a narrator that would do longer recaps so that people don't feel lost in the plot. Originally the v.a. who voiced the transformation device was supposed to be the narrator.
The producer shoehorned a combo mechanic and a dragon motif instead of being just books/arthurian legend like it was initially supposed to due to OOO and Agito's anniversary respectively.
The producer barely allowed main writer Fukuda to actually write episodes and he basically mostly served as the show's lorist and the writer for the Kento and Ren focus episodes. This wasn't that bad since secondary writer Hasegawa is great, but Fukuda writing more episodes could have resulted in the show feeling more unique.
Overall:
If you care more about a show being consistent then this show will probably be a 6/10, if you value acting, writing and direction overall then it would probably be a 7. This show definitely does more good than bad and after the initial bad arc improves drastically and ends up with one of the best final arcs in Kamen Rider. However having to stomach the first 15 episodes + having to watch the Swordman Chronicles alongside it is a big turn-off, especially since it's not like the show's perfect after episode 15 as it has quite a lot of nitpicks plus episodes 34~38 have a similar feel to the first arc. But at the very least it's mostly an enjoyable time, personally really like the themes and characters which is why I'm giving it an 8 and as of 2024 it's the Reiwa rider show with the best plot so far.
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-Most of the cast is consistently likeable.
-The action is consistently amazing and some of the franchise's best.
-The case of the week each focusing on a different humagear helps the world-building and makes it feel more a alive and concise.
-The concept behind the main antagonist is really interesting and of the franchise most unique, which also leads to one of the most 'different' final arcs in this franchise.
-First quarter of the show is consistently really great.
-Amazing soundtrack.
-Izu is one of the best main girls the franchise ever had.
-Interesting depiction of A.I. when compared to other attempts in media.
-One of the best final fights in the franchise.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show's second arc is kind of mediocre. While the humagears are mostly still enjoyable and everything relating to the character Fuwa is well done and really interesting, the arc's main antagonist Gai Amatsu is really bad and the new monster of the week introduced the raiders are very hit or miss.
Essentially the show tries to play off Gai as this evil mastermind but barely any of his plans are actually intelligent and generally makes the cast feels dumber than they actually are. The raiders are mostly made to be completely unlikeable which feels like a step down from the first arc. Also the show shifts from cases of the week to two-parters which would work if they were actually doing something interesting with this format, but for the most part it just slows down the pacing for the worse since it's mostly doing this for the raiders.
-The one time a humagear of the week is seemingly legitimately evil (which also happens in the second arc) it's barely actually explained or acknowledged by the hero cast which comes of as weird and hypocritical to the show's message.
-Gai Amatsu's main goal is pretty boring.
-There's a character redemption during the third arc that feels really cheap, especially because it happens the episode after we're shown the character is even more irredeemable than it originally seemed.
-Yua Yaiba not having backstory hurts her character and makes here less interesting than most of the cast despite not being a bad character overall.
-The show lacks slice of life scenes to further the cast relationships and show more of their interactions.
-Plot points like Aruto's father and grandfather, while not overly necessary for the plot, they are relegated to the movie Reiwa First Generation. And even then, it doesn't properly explains some of his grandpa's actions. (Highly recommend watching the movie if you liked the show, it's really great).
-Characters like Naki, Raiden and Jun get heavily shafted. Granted this was mostly due to covid reducing the episode count.
-The show has a lot of dropped plot-points due to the covid rewrite. This forces one to watch the Project Thouser special in order to get all the answers, which makes the show feel incomplete, at least one can watch them after the show with little issue without breaking the show's pacing.
-Despite the pretty amazing final arc and final fight, the finale kind of turns Aruto into an hypocrite and makes the hunagears feel more negative than positive which makes it feel like the show ended on a whimper. The sequel movie RealxTime kind of fixes this but it sucks that one has to watch a movie in order to get a proper emotional closure for the show.
-After Fuwa's character arc is resolved in the second arc, he kind of gets relegated to comedy character that doesn't have much to do with the actual plot. I personally didn't mind this because he remained enjoyable from start to finish and kept having cool moments, plus I didn't feel these moments erased all his character development. But I've seem some people finding issue with this so felt like pointing it out.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
In order to differentiate the Reiwa era from Heisei, from this point onward the franchise decided to storyboard its fights which did wonders for the action. Producer Omori wanted to make a more unique world which led to the idea of the Humagears. Main writer Yuya Takahashi excels and making a fast paced show which led to an amazing first quarter. Due to covid-19 causing a hiatus and reducing the episode count, main producer Omori gave main writer Yuya Takahashi complete creative freedom for the final arc, which resulted in one of the most interesting and different ones of the franchise and made the main antagonist more unique.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Due to this being a milestone show, Omori decided to take fan feedback in order to make the show better but this pretty much caused most of the show's issues. First Metsubojinrai was only supposed to have 2 members but since a lot of people theorized that it had 4, he forced the creation of new two members, this really helped Fuwa's character arc.
The second change was that since the humagear of the week had such a positive feedback, he came up with the idea to delay the 'Hiden Manufacture' plot-line which would have been the start of the second arc and make it happen in the third arc. This was so that the show wouldn't have such a massive change of status quo so quickly, in order to realize this he came with the idea of a job competition arc and have new humagears appear alongside the raiders, however but him and Takahashi struggled to make this idea interesting which led to the problems with the second arc.
After said arc there was a lot of negative feedback for one of the show's villains, this resulted in Omori requesting a redemption however for some reason the staff decided to keep most of his evil deeds in the third arc which made this redemption make less sense, also the redemption itself was sloppily written. This redemption was originally supposed to have negative connotations, however covid-19 ended up reducing the episode count which led to the final arc being rewritten and said plot point being dropped which made the redemption feel even cheaper. The rewritten final arc only focused on the most important characters which led to the two members of Metsubojinrai being shafted and also leaving bunch of plot points open and forcing a rewrite for the part two of Project Thouser in order to close them. The hypocritical ending apparently was always planned from. The beginning for some reason, so the virus delaying RealxTime actually helped the movie be even better. Also Yua Yaiba backstory was cut for unspecified reasons, I assume for pacing reasons it was moved from the 3rd arc to the final but then was removed when the covid rewrite. I've seen some people argue that it was because it was too dark, but even post-earthquake OOO was darker so I doubt that, either way her backstory ended up being included in the Zero-One Others spin-off.
Also just a general flaw of Takahashi's writing is that he tends to run out of ideas for the secondary rider and due to his breakneck-paced style of writing his characters don't get enough downtime to have proper slice of life moments.
Overall:
The show is an enjoyable show overall but very heavily flawed. While the first and last quarter are mostly amazing, the show's middle drags a lot, the ending does a lot of harm to the main protagonist character and the show overall feels incomplete due to Project Thouser being necessary to close off the plot points and RealxTime to get proper emotional closure. That said the show has ton of interesting ideas and a mostly likeable cast which leads to most of the show being fun. Also Project Thouser, Reiwa First Generation and RealxTime are good specials so if you liked the characters and concepts it's pretty much a must-watch and builds upon the show's ideas. Just, under no circumstances, watch the Zero-One Others duology, as it ruins the RealxTime ending, has surprisingly poor direction and action and the AIMS one is generally considered to be one of the worst movies in the franchise. The show probably deserves a lower rating like 6 but I liked its concepts enough to give it a 7.
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This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-Every character in the hero cast is likeable and useful.
-Villains are menacing and feel like a real threat.
-Consistently amazing action and stunts.
-Properly ups the stakes with each following arc.
-Solid world-building.
-Great balance between a light cop J-Drama, slice of life, tokusatsu action and horror from lovecraftian-like serial killers.
-One of the best final fights in the franchise.
-One of the best power systems in the franchise. Godai has all his powers from the beginning but doesn't know how to use them due to getting them with no context, having him to practice his powers and his friends to decipher glyphs explaining the lore and the powers of the arcle to properly know how to use them
-The world has a more 'real' feel than other rider shows.
-The cops manage to continously feel useful and keep up with Kuuga despite him being the only one with transformation powers.
-The cop partner relationship of Ichijou and Godai is really well done.
-Has good re-watch value due to the main villains having a different language.
-Better acting than most rider shows.
Everything the show did bad:
Honestly most of these are nitpicks.
-Due to wanting to make a lovecraftian villain that the viewer cannot properly understand, the main villain feels kind of plain as most of the destruction he causes happens off-screen and doesn't get a proper character. But despite this flaws he feels properly menacing.
-The shift from normal J-drama stuff to hardcore murder done by tribal monsters can be jarring at times. Especially in the Jean/Enokida episodes.
-The CGI feels really dated, but it is used sparingly and honestly CGI pretty much always looks bad on Toei's mainline toku with the exception of Hibiki, kinda King-Ohger and seemingly the upcoming rider show Gavv?
-The show being shot differently from any Toei toku which can feel alienating for toku fans but it's not really a bad thing just different.
-Having multiple scenes where you don't know what the characters are saying can be tiring for some viewers.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Kamen Rider creator before passing on wanted to make this show unlike any that preceded it. Ishinomori production recommended producer Shigenori Takatera to do so as well. This along a bunch of other factors resulted in this unique setting. Takatera and director Ishida really wanted actor Joe Odagiri to be Kuuga, and went with a more J-drama approach to its direction since it was what he preferred. Producer Takatera ideas often clashed with Takeyuki Suzuki's ideas but they ultimately managed to have a good balance of both. There's more factors but it would be to many to list, but overall Kuuga had a way different approach to previous shows and slightly more budget than usual which lead to the show being as great as it was.
Reasons for the show flaws:
The main writer Arakawa wanted to keep the details of the main antagonist vague in order to make him creepier, he succeeded in making him menacing but makes him a more boring antagonist when compared to other villains in the franchise.
Overall:
While not my personal favorite, I feel that this is objectively the closest to a perfect rider show. It just doesn't have any big issues. I would recommend the show to pretty much any Toku fan or even a cop drama fan that has never watched tokusatsu, since it's pretty much a cop drama with superpowers. I could only see people not enjoying this show if they really despise a genki-type protagonist and the flow of a cop dramas.
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-Really cool action overall that feels very 'raw'.
-Prior the final episode, the majority of the cast is entertaining.
-Pretty good plot and setting overall.
-The rivalry between Kotaro and Nobuhiko is entertaining overall.
-Really cool world-building.
-With the exclusion of the final episode, the show manages to be consistently entertaining.
Everything the show did bad:
-One of the worst finales this franchise has ever had. The last 10 minutes of the show somehow manages to ruin most of the cast, especially Aoi and ruins most of the set-up the show had done up to that point. The finale comes off as the characters just being really dumb and out of character suddenly to make the finally unnecessarily bleak. This personally made the show feel like a waste of time in spite of me really enjoying the show prior those last 10 minutes or so.
-The character played by the ex-rapper of ALI Jua feels really out place despite being a kinda likeable character overall. His overall personality feels like it doesn't fit with the show's tone and his actions don't really make much sense considering his backstory.
-Some of the political elements of the show feel kind of out of place at times and kind of disconnected from the show's messages.
-Some characters feel unnecessarily scummy at times due to their lack of backstory.
-While the cast is indeed likeable overall prior to the finale, they really aren't anything that amazing or stand-out.
There isn't enough info on the production to know why the show ended this way. There's rumors that Amazon Prime, the platform on which this show was released, requested the political elements in the show and that the weird ending was done as a sequel hook. But all of this info is unconfirmed and currently there's no way to know.
Overall:
I could see people giving this show a 6 or even a 7 due to the show being enjoyable for the most part but I just don't feel right recommending this show due its horrible finale, especially when there are far better tokusatsu and action horror shows out there. I can only recommend this if you're really starving for an action horror show since that aspect is done particularly well in this show or if you're a Kamen Rider completionist, just be prepared for an awful finale.
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This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:-Really likeable cast overall.
-Consistently amazing action and battle choreography, arguably the franchise's best.
-Great jazzy soundtrack.
-Really interesting twists and plot developments.
-Most the side Riders that only last one arc manage to be memorable and likeable.
-Aside from the main antagonist, while not really impressive the villains in the show all manage to be pretty memorable and likeable.
-Great final episode.
-The show has a lot of style to its direction.
-The gimmick of having the Riders participate in games makes every two-parter and battle really memorable and different from other tokusatsu.
-Extremely good use of form changes.
Everything the show did bad:
-Girori and Ace's characters and acting feel kind of inconsistent at times.
-The show's writing quality drops in the second half. In the third quarter Keiwa barely gets to do anything and Neon does some really dumb decisions. In the last quarter the conclusion to both characters' arcs start and finish there, while their arcs make sense and were properly set up and foreshadowed in the first half, they happen so fast which makes their emotional weight lacking. The second half is also lacking due to the show having one of the most generic and forgettable main antagonist in the franchise.
-Despite the rest of the villains being individually likeable, there's too many of them around simultaneously to be properly developed.
-While Michinaga is a likeable character overall, the show tries to paint him as an anti-hero which doesn't really work since there was no way for him to know the truth behind his actions.
-The cast barely critizes Neon for her actions in the second quarter which makes a lot of the aspects of said arc feel like filler.
-The show feels overly critical of Keiwa's way of thinking. While he's extreme and naive, due to the nature of the deaths of the people he wants to revive it feels like there's hardly anything wrong with his goal, it's just his actions in the second half that's a problem. Yet even prior Keiwa's wrongdoings the show treats him like a punching bag and as if his goal is too naive despite making sense which makes Ace feels like an hypocrite at times.
-Hallelujah Win feels heavily sidelined.
-The world of the supporters/sponsors doesn't get explored enough and it's mostly just left to the 4 Aces movie.
-While not strictly necessary for the plot, a considerable amount of Hallelujah Win's and Niram's character development and world-building is left to the Kamen Rider PunkJack special.
-Tsumuri feels underdeveloped.
-The Riders motif feel pretty boring and basic compared to other seasons.
-The show has artificial humans as a plot point, which isn't a bad thing but since the 3 Takahashi Rider shows aired so close to each other it makes this plot point feel repetitive if you're watching the seasons in order.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Main writer Yuya Takahashi learned from his past mistakes and actually did think the secondary rider character arc and gave the characters downtime for them to interact while still keeping his fast-paced style of writing. He made a really interesting setting.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Takahashi wanted to make too many villains simultaneously which made it so the villain cast isn't properly developed.
The staff didn't properly tell Ace and Girori's actors how their characters were supposed to be because they were afraid they would spoils plot points, so their characters are kind of inconsistent.
The show's toy manufacturer Bandai changed the show's second half for the worse due to delaying the cast upgrades. This resulted in Keiwa and Neon not getting much to do in the third quarter and their arcs concluding really fast without having proper weight. This also resulted in Hallelujah Win not being able to transform into Punkjack since they repainted his suit for Neon's arc but said repaint ultimately ended up being used in the final quarter rather than the third, making it so they weren't able to repaint it back on time. This rewrite also force them to change who the main antagonist was supposed to be, which resulted in the impromptu boring antagonist Suel.
Overall:
The show is the most 7/10 show in the franchise which makes it an excellent show for a beginner to Kamen Rider I guess. It's just great and interesting enough to get you watching but it has enough flaws to keep it from being a really great show so it will get you excited for other shows in the franchise. Overall pretty great show but not really a stand-out one.
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-Extremely likeable team and sidecast.
-Besides the main antagonist and kinda Yodonna, the villains in this show are consistently really great.
-The monsters of the week are really entertaining.
-Cool stylish fights on ground and decent mecha fights.
-The team tends to find pretty creative solutions to most problems.
-It feels like the show got the most use out of the team's powers.
-The rivalry between Juuru and Garza is well done.
-Great soundtrack that sounds pretty different from other tokus.
-The dynamic of the team having to balance being heroes and their professional life is really well done.
-Show gets the core of what Sentai is right, where the biggest obstacles should be resolved by learning how to be proper team.
-The progression of the team relationship feels natural.
-The focus of the team feels pretty balanced. The red ranger Juuru definitely has a bit more focus than the rest and blue a bit less than the rest, but for the most part every member, including the extra sixth ranger, gets proper development and no member feels like it was super shafted.
-The show manages to be pretty funny while having proper stakes.
-Slightly better acting than usual sentai.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show is a 'safe' Sentai show if that make sense. It doesn't do anything THAT unique, but it does enough as to not feel generic.
-Main antagonist, while it has an interesting backstory, feels properly powerful/menacing and has a cool final fight, ends up feeling kind of boring overall and gets heavily overshadowed by Garza.
-Yodonna while overall likeable feels very one-note.
-The vehicle partners of the team besides Fire are just kind of all right and not all that interesting.
-The Gekiranger crossover two-parter special is just kind of allright.
-Red Ranger Juuru's catchphrase can be kind of annoying at first but it gets dialed down pretty quickly luckily.
Reasons for the show strenghts:
Due to Sentai having continuous lacking sales since Ninninger, old promoted producers that aren't actually supposed to be producing these shows decided to step in to help. This resulted in Tsukuda producing Kiramager and Shirakura producing Zenkaiger and Donbrothers. Tsukuda wanted to make a 'safe' Sentai show, however unlike the producer duo in Ryusoulger, Tsukuda has a proper understanding on how to make a show like this. Main writer Naruhisa Arakawa is excellent at writing likeable characters and progressing the characters' powers while also making a concise world-building.
Reasons for the show flaws:
Due to being safe it doesn't come up as a super unique show and keeps it from being a top-tier show. That said it's easily the best 'safe' Sentai show I've seen so far.
Overall:
Would highly recommend this show as someone's first Sentai, as it kinda gives a general idea of the vibes this shows tend to have while also just being a really solid show. It being safe definitely drags it down a bit, but just 'a bit', it's otherwise a really great time. Reminder that if you're going to watch this show to watch the episode 0 before starting. It isn't strictly necessary for the plot but it helps set up the show's setting.
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