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the more i'm watching this the more i'm loving it

i really love the different feel to this rider series, probably because Inoue hasn't tainted his hands on it yet. (and hopefully ever)

i love the half-boiled detective/comedy theme, and how ryu is the only hard-boiled investigator hahahah.

i can't wait to see Weather. i saw the preview last week and he looks like he has a Fuujin motif, wind bag and all. it looks so nice

Episodes 25-6 had humor in them, but it was more of character focus/development on Akiko. SInce her character is as half-boiled as Shotaro's, humor had to come into play. Twenty-five just introduced the backstory, twenty-six was where the real "meat" of it was.

Anyways, I will agree, to an extent, that the humor can seem strained. However I will say that its motif is a half-boiled detective one. It's bound to have its hit or miss moments. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Sometimes, I've thought it might be Saeko.

ninja

jesman: 26 did end up being far better than 25 but it made me want the whole storyline to be one episode. They didn't need to draw out the doll stuff as much as they did even if its meant to develop Akiko a little, since it didn't do it that greatly and it was more fluff than was needed. It helped the back story to 26, but I think a lot of it could have been explained in a shorter time. The only real redeeming thing to me was that they did have a bit more forwardness to the overall plot, but then I'd rather have had that in another episode and had 25 not feel like one big filler episode.

As far as her being half-boiled... she only showed signs of that this episode and one other that comes to mind. Usually she doesn't feel boiled at all, just a raw egg going rotten a bit. Then again, shes the character I dislike the most in this show and brings everything down a bit so I might just be more hateful towards episodes around her.

The half-boiled detective motif I think might pass off better if it focused a bit more on that area. There is detective work but it doesn't seem to me anything like a detective show, even half-boiled. Maybe if it tried to focus a bit more on that then "what random two-part episode can we write to fill in till we get to the overall plot again?" I could enjoy it. It feels otherwise just like they have a skin over the story and it could be any other show I'm watching, not Kamen Rider which previous series I couldn't wait for a new episode to get released and subtitled.


DrunkenStyle: I see the series that way because I enjoy action and the ideas behind Kamen Rider and other Tokusatsu. This series was great looking at first because of how they had the concept of W and the way the show was feeling. As it progressed more though, its been losing that charm to me. The devices aren't used that great, the forms don't really have as much oomph behind them where they could have some more to it, the new rider isn't much of a rider, and while some bad guys have been good a number of them have had boring battles.

Den-O had much more charm to me. I enjoyed the humor between the characters and while I didn't care for Ryotaro I enjoyed the action in the show and the ideas behind it. Near the end it kind of lost itself to me, but I still enjoyed it even to when they beat the series like a dead horse. This one however, there isn't that sort of draw to me. Everything in it just seemed to flow better to me and was more entertaining to watch and follow.

Thinking about it, this show is kind of the opposite to me. While I think Shotaro is a good character, the rest of the series kind of droops down and will probably only really pick up for me near the end. Den-o I didn't like Ryotaro, but the rest of the show carried above him and while the ending was a little flat the rest of the show was entertaining to me.

I do compare it to other ones a slight bit, but then it is a Kamen Rider so it should be held up with the other shows and compared at least a little. If it wants to go away from a lot of what made other Kamen Riders what they are, then maybe they shouldn't be making it a Kamen Rider, but a new genre of hero show. I'm not saying it has to be dark or exactly like other series, but if they want to add in more comedy than action and designs like Accel then they should be making this something new and outside of Kamen Rider.

I know that Den-O and Kabuto had filler, any show does. The thing with Den-O's two part system was that it wasn't an all the time, almost forced thing and for the majority of the beginning they are introducing new characters and forms. Kabutos filler to me was Drake. A lot of what was around that character felt a bit boring and without it the series probably would have came off better to me. But both shows managed to keep me entertained in between. Double has had the problem of drawing out stuff to make this two-episode style of telling one story, while the main point of everything seemed to just daze off into various sub-plots.

I don't mind running gags if done right. I like the half-boiled angle of Shotaro and Phillip going too into his investigating of random facts. They just try too many things with this one and a lot of it focuses on things that just aren't funny to me like Akiko.

I will admit, Double has been pulling me back in with the recent episodes. Isaka is an interesting bad guy and battles with him are entertaining. The character and his actions draw me in and want me to see more of what happens to the story because of it. Phillip evolving like a pokemon is an interesting story as well, more so than Shroud at this point since she's confirmed to me who she is.

Beyond the humor, my main problem with this show is that it just lacks oomph behind it. The comedy I do like isn't used much, the bad guys are kind of boring aside from how Isaka's mixing it up, the detective motif is easily seen through with how they lead things which ruins detective shows for me, but worst of all is lack of action. For example, the Maximum Drive of LunarMetal was almost like they thought of it last minute. It had no real oomph behind the idea and it felt more like they could have just used LunarTrigger to do the same attack, just without it looking like a destructo disc that Krillin would use.