My Current Thoughts On Kamen Rider Series Part Three

Alright this one will actually have an easy theme to work with. I am focusing on the three shows after Kamen Rider Double, but I will go in order of Wizard, Fourze, and OOO. There is a very special reason why I am going to save OOO for last. I will admit I know the flak I got for loving Wizard when it was originally airing. Now as you can clearly see, I still have Wizard in the background because one I am lazy, but the other reason is that this background was made by a friend of mine so I will probably keep it because of that. For Kamen Rider Wizard, out of the three I will be mentioning this is still my personal favorite. I can easily agree that one of the other shows is stronger and that is the difference of a favorite and knowing when something is just better. Again that is all opinionated and if you feel your favorites are the best masterpieces around, you have the freedom to say that. For me as a critic, I need to know my personal favorites because it helps find out who I am and then just knowing what is simply a more well put together program is important for analyzing. Then both of these are important for when you want to recommend shows to other people. So let us actually get to the topic of Wizard and why it is still my personal favorite out of the shows that came after Double.

Kamen Rider Wizard

Why does Kamen Rider Wizard stand out to me as a person? One thing is that I may not be big on magic based heroes, I do love it when they are done with jewelry, weapons, and summons. A great example of this would be M.A.R not the best show, but it was fun to watch what different types of powers and magical weapons there were. In terms of designs, Wizard stands out with the jewel concepts and I love the use of black to make the other colors stand out. For the beginning of the action, I was a big fan of the action, Wizard had a great style of fighting and I will admit, when he got more powers some of those fights did lower in quality. There were some bad uses of CGI and there were good ones as well. I still enjoy the reveal of Water Dragon and the use of the Dragon summon fighting against the Phantoms inside others. I feel the Phantom concept was stronger than the Worms because of how they complete erase a person and will still have their memories which makes them extremely dangerous because of how they can interact with others. The story of how things simply went out of control because of one man's ambition is cliche I will admit that, but in the end the main story was not the focus of the show. Now that is a flaw in itself and it is hard to ignore. To me though, Wizard did have a strong focus on their filler episodes because of the concept of hope and despair. Haruto was helping out others to find their hope and while Haruto did hold onto his to become Wizard, he still needed to find some answers on his own. I find the show to be extremely helpful in regards to facing your despair and sometimes it does require a helping hand. Kamen Rider Beast while his story was simple, I can say his process of becoming a selfless person was fun, encouraging, and bit of a learning experience to how people can change. I even enjoy his motif of being a stage magician which inspired me to create a rider with the same motif, Trickster. No one in the cast actually bugged me and while some characters were wasted like the Mages, it was still a fun concept and had moments still. So with Kamen Rider Wizard it does hit many personal spots for me and it made it special for me to watch and I still remember many of the episodes and moments the show had. If it did focus a bit more on some story points we would probably have a bigger focus on the Mages and the White Mage, but in the end I am still happy to what Wizard was. So for my personal thoughts, Wizard still comes off as an A, but I will admit the show is a bit more of a B or B-

I still keep my opinions about Sora/Gremlin.

Kamen Rider Fourze

I have to say that with some great talks with my fellow Toku Warriors, mostly Janitor Joker. It did give me a bigger appreciation of this show. For Zolda, he extremely loves this show and when I first saw it, I did enjoy it. Now these days I am still rather mixed, but I see it in a better light than I originally did. It is hard for a show to do multiple characters that effect a story and that is probably one of Fourze's biggest achievements. The Kamen Rider Club was full of colorful characters and all had their own importance and even crucial story moments. For many the whole friendship angle can be beaten to death and while Fourze does follow it, the show performs the concept to where things feel nice and warm. By that I mean that the show can surprisingly be strong in showing how friends our made even if these people are completely different. Gentaro who dresses like a punk is actually the nicest person around and he makes a unique group of friends. We got the jock, the cheerleader, the goth, the spaz, the genius, the talented one who first starts out like a bully, and then someone who hides his pain. It really collects a lot of tropes and it has been done before and yet Fourze still has a nice smell to it. It felt natural for the most part in regards to friendship and it does not stop there are many others that Gentaro befriends, even teachers! Now something similar to Wizard, I did enjoy the concept of Fourze's weapons as well. Some were a bit silly and were not even weapons and yet some can be used for different purposes. My personal favorite is the Pen Switch because it was bizarre idea for a weapon and I wished it was used more. I can admit though some were just tossed out. The show did experiment around with them though as one of my favorite moments is when Fourze is just boarding along with with his claw. Cosmic States really holds up to be one of the best final forms around in terms of design and powers. Now one thing that did hurt the show was the villains. I am not talking about the Gamou and his loyal men, Libra, Virgo, and Leo. The rest of the Zodiarts were a bit lackluster though. When Cancer first came into the show, I enjoyed the hell out of him. The fun did not last long though and he was taken out by one of the most ridiculous forms and attacks in Kamen Rider history. Scorpio was good as well and had a good twist on who that actually was, but again when you keep moving on, you soon just forget about it though. Other Zodiarts were then just used for MOTW and while were still good, it would be more amusing if they were bigger villains in the end. The switch use got mixed up a bit in variety which was good and Meteor still had some awesome fights even if his character did just kind of stopped after his story was resolved. At least they still have Ryusei some funny moments and a girlfriend that all the fans want! So overall Fourze and Wizard do have similarities, but Fourze did have a more concrete story. So it is around the B+ area.

Kamen Rider OOO

I remember when I first watched OOO and I can still see my initial thoughts on the show. I praised it pretty well back then and there is Maki who I put as my favorite villain. I have to take back both of these claims. First I have a bone to pick with OOO in regards to what it did to Kamen Rider. We all remember Foundation X from Double. Riku Sanjo wanted to make the new Shocker and while Fourze did bring them back, sadly OOO easily caused a problem of not using Foundation X. There was even a connection in Kamen Rider Double where the foundation was researching the medals. What do we get in place of them, Kougami. While I love the guy's voice, what is reall his purpose in the show? That is pretty much what OOO is, what is the point? Eiji was a traveler and because of his past he did start to have desires, we learned that, then it takes like how many episodes for it to come to fruition? Eiji has a character was quite questionable as well because he is just watered down Godai and I can't believe I put this guy in my favorite characters list before! The Greeed were weak as villains and I still keep true to that. They got heavily ignored when Maki became the big villain and to be honest it is pointless as well. Literally it could have been anyone else who had interest in the Greeed. Then there was Maki's backstory with his sister and I remember originally liking that, but in the end that does not really connect to much. Things just happen in OOO and it just feels cluttered and messy. The whole concept of OOO was poorly handled as literally medals are thrown to the camera because you need to buy these things! The designs for OOO were messy when it was random combos and I will admit I personally like the random combos more though. The use of their powers had to be thought out, but even the writers gave up and just focused on the main combos. I still like most of the main combos as well, but some got overused and others were only ignored for budget reasons. The show just feels poorly planned because I do like the first Gatakiriba fight, but after that this form is so underused. At least the movie did something silly yet cool with that form. We even have Hina and her only connection to the story is because of Ankh using her brother's body and that was just by chance. I will say that I did heavily enjoy both Gotou and Date. Both Kamen Rider Briths were simply fun to watch for me. Gotou was a hero in progress and Date was the hero already that got to teach Gotou. It is Torodoki and Zanki again and while those two were better in the categories of, effective fighters, better development, and better weapons. Still Date was extremely fun as a character and gave the show the best humorous moments. I just feel bad for Birth in the end though, they just never stand a chance in any battle and yet Gotou could take down like three Greeeds when he first became Birth in the show. Then their is Ankh, I still like him and him becoming a threat later on was not shocking, but still fun in the end. Ankh slowly become more humane was enjoyable because meanwhile other Greeeds were just being... dumb. I can believe that Gamou was dumb and yet everyone else was not smart as well. The show's pacing is horrid, most of the fights were forgettable, the concept of OOO's powers are poorly handled, most of the characters are just boring, and yet it sold well. If you want to see how OOO could have been done well, just watch episode three and four of Kamen Rider Double.

Now do not get me started about OOO during the War movies!