My Current Thoughts On Kamen Rider Series Part Two

Now we are back here again, talking about my current thoughts on the Kamen Rider franchise. Now the last time I discussed about the rider shows I really love strongly to this day. Double, Kuuga, and Black. I feel these three shows show great strengths of the eras they were part of. Now I am missing the original era and I know Black is Showa as well, but I feel Black shows new light of the Showa era while the originals had their own thing. Again I will be watching some of these originals, I have seen Amazon and will be watching the original series, V3, and Stronger. Now I am going to change focus on shows I do not think lightly of. I will be honest I have been getting some negative vibes just in my overall life so I feel talking about some in my eyes are bad shows can help me out. There is ton of material to talk about with these shows so let us get straight to it.

Kamen Rider Ryuki

Now even back then I considered Ryuki an average show and there is still a good amount of things that I actually really like in this show. One of them being everyone's favorite psychopath, Kamen Rider Ouja. He was a straight up murderer and even though the show tried to give him a backstory and it was silly, I just end up loving this character for being a murderer. I even like the aspect he brought to the Rider War. The riders were not dying so the war was going on for too long, so the man who started it puts a murderer in the battlefield because he knows bodies will drop because of the murderer. Then there is Kamen Rider Zolda as well who I got to appreciate a bit more from recently playing the Ace Attorney series and talking with my fellow Toku Warrior, Zolda. Zolda was an attorney who would win a case regardless if it was right or not, he just did it for the glory, fame, and riches. Again with Ouja I personally like how he stays true to himself, but this time I can actually respect him as a person. I even like the bond he shared with his assistant Goro. Overall I feel these two characters are good reasons that make the show a bit more tolerable than some others I will be talking about here. There are still minor characters I like as well like Imperer and Taiga, but they were not big focuses compared to others. Now there are some problems with this show, first there is the ending which I will not spoil, but it is a cop out regardless. I hate endings that just ruin absolutely every aspect of the show. I did like Ryuki what it had to do with death, but the ending just ruins that aspect. Now onto the main characters themselves, I do not hate fully, but they can get annoying to me. Shinji does have some arrogance to him even if he is trying to do good, but that leads to a whole other question of what is good or bad that I will not dive into. Renn is then a bit too all over the place. At some points he can be the cool cold lonely solider which I do like, but then out of nowhere he will be hot headed like Shinji and even hold himself back because he has not yet fully committed to what he is doing. Even though he is fighting for a pretty noble purpose in his regards. Then when these two bicker it just stalls the show! Even if the show stalls itself, the actual story is bland with barely any surprises. Then the other problem with Ryuki were some of the effects, I know this is a low budget show during the early 2000's, but they did get lazy and just went to the special effects which look laughable at times. Now there are good moments in terms of effects, designs, and suit action too. I really do like Zolda and his Mirror Monster with their onslaught of the possibly biggest bullet storm around. I really enjoy Imperer's finisher with the use of his herd of mirror monsters. Taiga's has those cool claws and even drags people all over the ground with them. Now bad effects that I get a laugh from is Ouja's CGI body doing the kicks in midair and Gai hopping onto his monster for his finisher. Again I will still say the show is mostly an average one as it did have a good idea putting the Battle Royale concept with Kamen Rider, but I do think the amount of riders should have been less and not just having some for a movie! Then the actual main plot is thin and the closer you get to the end of the show it really starts to fall apart.

Kamen Rider Faiz

Faiz is pretty much this heavily ambitious show, but in the end it becomes a punching bag for us fellow Toku Warriors. I know my friend Janitor Joker really loves to talk about Faiz, he easily will take jabs at it, but he can admit the show was trying to do something. I will not lie I can see these aspects as well. Kiba was an amazing character until a certain part of the show which is pretty much near the end. The whole aspects of the Orphnochs and how they wanted to be the dominant race was a great idea. There were different aspects shown with these creatures. There was Kiba and his group which did not want to be part of the murder spree, there was the organization wanting their goal to work and will get rid of traitors who do not help them, and then there is just monsters. I personally love it when there is like this other faction having fights with the heroes and themselves, it just makes things a bit surprising. Then there is Kaixa, again usually the biggest punching bag of the entire show, but I personally like this character a great amount. He has a struggle with trusting others and when things are not getting done in his eyes, he will do it himself and he ends up making things move along in mostly bad ways. Now for the hero and his allies... yea they are all annoying in their own ways. Takumi I find to be to distant only for the sole fact of hiding plot points, but I do like the idea of his struggle. Mari is a bitch and that is all I have to say and I am sorry for the language, but I had to. Then there is Keitaro... he is useless all around. I hate his guts, I hate his comedy, I even hate his love story which really got insane in that crazy book! Now some other problems with the show are the villains and the lack of explanations all around! There is also the terrible ending which I think is a reoccurring theme for these three shows. Smart Brain is well confusing... the belts which they made make no sense since they are being made by Smart Brain which is secretly an Orphnoch group. Why would they make belts that could end up being used by humans? Wasn't the sole purpose of the belts to be for their leader? Which brings me up to the leader of the Orphnochs... what a lazy and quick way to reveal a final villain. To be honest having the Dragon Orphnoch as the final villain would have been better, I don't like this guy because he just does nothing except be threatening on the battlefield, but at least he was this constant threat in battle. The King just appears and he is just powerful, deal with it. The final nail on the coffin for me though is the constant use of all of the rider belts! You think IXA and Thebee had it bad, you have not seen Faiz. Belts are just passed around to everyone. It just just a gimmick in the end for the show and it got annoying. This is even the first rider show that really just threw around new powers like they were just toys. Again the show did feel gimmicky all around, but the aspects and ideas are good, it is just the execution that ruins them. I do not even like the majority of fights, but I can say when they used CGI effects it was better than Ryuki, but it did use them a bit too much. For designs I pretty much like Kaixa and Horse Orphnoch the most. Overall Faiz is an ambitious mess.

Kamen Rider Kabuto

Kamen Rider Kabuto is so the 50/50 series for me. I can actually like it to a high degree at times, but then I start to think differently because of seeing something I missed or remembering something. I go back and forth on this show, but I feel that this stays true at least to me, that Kabuto is the most over rated rider show. Now I can see why people can like this and it really fully depends on how you feel about the characters. Tendou is arrogant to the point where Shiji is jealous of him. I do remember even back then I said he had his share of struggles, but to be honest it does not last long. Tendou is just this perfect heaven boy and it really gets annoying. Then there is the lack of explanations for about everything and I thought Faiz was bad with this. Things will just happen in Kabuto and the reason for the most part is, deal with it Tendou walks the path of heaven. With the other characters then... yea they are not much better than Tendou. Kagami is not the worst, but he can be annoying and to be honest I liked him when he was Thebee. Personally he should just have stayed as Thebee since in the end Thebee is just thrown away so why even make more rider systems if you are going to ignore one. I feel bad for Thebee, he is one of the worst treated riders. The user for Thebee just end up getting new systems and the last guy just uses it for reasons and did not keep it for reasons untold. The whole conflict with Thebee users is just ends with the Hoppers and yea... I still hate these guys. They add nothing at all to the show! Kamen Rider Drake is underused as well, but he also does not serve much story purposes if any at all to begin with. Gatack is just around because Kagami needs a rider system now even though he had Thebee, but Thebee went to someone else who ends up not using it as well... Dark Kabuto is just Dark Kabuto and again barely serves any true purpose, you will literally say "Hi Dark Kabuto, bye Dark Kabuto" many times. I will say the only rider I liked in the show is Sasword and it does matter if you like his comedy and I do for the most part. I like his relationship with his butler and his story actually has some importance since it connects to the Worm. He is also one of the few characters that at least tried to teach Kabuto something. I say tried because Tendou is just Tendou no matter what. ZECT is even more confusing than Smart Brain because there is never any real reasons for why they do things! Why use the Zecters, why create so many, why try to capture people who use them, but not for the company, and why even bother to try anything since their track record is the worst. So with all of that said, at least I like the fights. I like the whole Clock Up aspect and there were even other Worms that had better versions of that. How the backgrounds would slowly move was nice and you can tell the budget was used up for this purpose. Other than that... there is not much saving the show. So as of right now I am not a fan of Kabuto, but who knows I could change my mind again because I go back and forth with this, but at least the show is not the movie because the hell with that movie!

How much do I hate this movie? Maybe a review could be needed...

Since I mentioned some of my fellow comrades here is the overall blog page. (http://tokuwarriors.blogspot.com/)

Now for the Twitter Accounts

Janitor Joker (https://twitter.com/JanitorJoker)

Samuel Speight (https://twitter.com/GekiZolda)