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Same here man. I watched the first like seven or eight episodes, before my source gave out, and I just couldn't get into it for several reasons. One of them being I kept comparing it to Gaim. Yeah, I thought the same thing about Gou when I saw a later episode. I was surprised, but more so as to why there wasn't an explanation as to why he wasn't affected by the memory alteration.



Really? It's calmed down? I found some of it generally funny, but others just insanely cheap. That or my co-captian has had more on me than I thought. xd

I did like the darker, more serious tone that some of the later episodes after Drive had acquired Type Tridoron. It definitely gave the series some much needed appeal, but I just thought it might was a little too late since I had quit religiously watching every episode by that time.



Personally, I liked Fourze's powers as a concept and theme, but I did think it was little too gimmickly and the character drove me crazy at times, but that's a different story. xd

Drive's car theme hasn't felt gimmicky or a marketing ploy so much as it seems to miss the point slightly what a Kamen Rider should be about. It goes back to what you said about his Rider Machine being a car for Pete's sake! It just seemed to miss the point a little.

Call me a purist, but whatever. Some of the characters are genially interesting with the villains and especially Chase's backstory, but it just seems like the mark was missed a little as there's no overall lesson or message that a series like Gaim, Den-O or Kabuto had. Then again or I'm just a fanboy.

2 words friends. TYPE TRIDRON. The world is good and glorious again.

I know exactly what you mean, man. It looks like it has the potential to be the best Rider summer movie yet.

I'm surprised you think it started out bad. I loved it from the start and have thought it only got better.

I feel like that is a common thing to all Kamen Rider of the past few years. The initial images come out and a lot of people cringe, then go off on how ugly it is or how they hate these elements in the design. Then footage comes out, episodes, and as it goes on people warm up to the design a bit more (most the time). For me this is certainly the case. Every new rider looks ridiculous in design, but then I find bits of it that work or in the flow of action it looks decent. Drive is the only one I can think of where it failed to eventually impress me though. Each new form looked more poorly designed than the last too.

I dislike a number of things with Fourze personally, but some bits weren't horrible. The switch concept is one of the main things which made me stick with it. I liked the idea and the module approach. The belt, while bulky and ridiculous, was kind of cool and fit the theme well.
Nothing sold me on Drive's stuff however. As I mentioned, each form looked worse than the last (while I was watching) and I wasn't a fan of the cars. In use anyways. My friend I was watching it with, before we both decided we had better things to do with our time, and myself laughed anytime they came on screen since they would typically knock around the monster before going over to Drive. The laughter wasn't from a "that is silly and amusing" standpoint, but more that they seemed to handle the monsters better than the main hero of the series did most the time which felt pathetic. It wasn't even the level of the Zecters coming out to hit or annoy an enemy before flying over, but more like "these tiny toy cars are better than the main hero" to us.

I have to agree with the detective/cop angle as well. I thought it might be an interesting approach, but in the episodes I watched of Drive it just felt like a way to shoehorn in the large roster of unneeded comic relief characters honestly. I didn't get the detective vibe much at all other than when they threw in that he'd suddenly piece together something, which just fell flat for me.

Personally, I'm glad it is time to pass the torch to Ghost and I hope it can hold up better. This is the first and only Kamen Rider series I started to watch and then dropped. I have my dislikes of bits of other rider shows, but they all managed to do something which kept me interested in some way or form, or make me go "wow that is a nice idea. Very creative approach." I mean the most interesting character, Chase, ended up going the exact route I predicted when he first was showing up with his bop-it gun.

I apologize for my own rant, but seeing your post made me want to chime in on Drive one more time.