Ghost is a fascinating watch, to say the least.
The main criteria in judging this series for me is how intentional or non-intentional the whole structure of this season was for its creators.
Ghost is probably the most uniquely constructed Rider series since Hibiki, since most of its plot and characters go through their character development in… some pretty strange ways.
Takeru’s “hero journey” don’t really have anything to do with other plot stuff if you think about it, but surprisingly it works in a grand scheme of things and affects other characters in a very subtle way. Same can be said with Specter’s storyline. After his initial arc, he mostly serves as a foil for other characters, but at same time it doesn’t really feels that he’s useless or unimportant. …Actually, I think Spectre may just be the very first Rider-“macguffin” in the show’s history. At least for the middle of the season.
Alan’s arc is absolutely fantastic and really the highlights the plot’s complexity of this season. It might just be the best arc any character had in the show, since… probably Faiz-Blade days. Or at least among the best. He sadly kinda “just there” for the good chunk of the series, after his development is over, and he really could have used an upgrade or another form to keep up with other Riders.
By the way, plot is REALLY good. Despite pretty shitty editing (especially in the middle of the season) and quite a lot of pretty mediocre acting, I honestly was pretty much engaged for the entire season and wanted to know where Ghost would go next. And he managed to go through A LOT. I can’t remember any Rider series (except for Gaim, of course) to be that heavily serialized. Fillers always had portions of an ongoing story, which led to the big “episode events” at the end/start of each arc, so everything had a proper build-up. Hell, even fights usually had something going for them, since pretty much everything had its proper power-level, i.e. after a couple of fight Ghost learns which of his forms are effective against which Specter’s forms (main hero is actually learning, holy ****. I just realized they don’t really do it that other in Kamen Rider) or that Gammaizers can be destroyed SPECIFIALLY in Deep Specter/Mugen forms (or did they drop that in the final episodes? I think Necrom managed to kill a few Gammaizers). These details here and there are really neat and help to be more invested in characters and their fights.
Ghost also had a relatively small number of characters, which helped a lot to give them proper attention… for the most part. I really felt like all Riders, Akari, Onari, Emperor, Adel, Igor and even Gyro were fleshed out enough really good… but the rest of the characters really could have used more time and/or development. Especially Kanon, Edith, Javel, Alia and Yurusen. They all were quite interesting, but sadly lacked quite a lot development.
What I really dislike is this whole timer thing. It honestly felt they had no idea what to do with Takeru’s time limit, since he died THREE TIMES over the course of this season. I didn’t really mind his “death-and then-booster upgrade from daddy” thing (but I think it could have been executed better), but going through almost EXACT plot point for the Mugen is a bit too much for me.
This whole thing with dying and coming back to life was a mess from start to finish.
Another thing I really didn’t like was all that deal with the “15 Heroic Eyecones”. Yes, I like Tomokazu Seki, he’s a really talented voice actor etc., but he just ruined them all. I never could take these guys seriously, mostly because they sound like they're acting in a parody of Kamen Rider. Would it be so hard to hire additional voice actors? Make them like Engines in Go-Ongers or something?
It's also evident that they really had budget problems. Most of Gammaizers didn’t even get their own forms.
But then again… it is kinda original, that Ghost doesn’t go through defeating EVERY Gammaizer, before they start uniting and/or trying different tactics. It honestly feels like the villains are learning from experience.
So as I said: I don't know if most of this intentional on the writers' part or just a lucky coincidence, but at least the final result is interesting.
Sadly, the finale feels lacklustre and rushed, despite all EVA/FMA references. Mostly, because bad guys went through almost the exact same plan twice.
I could go on about things I like or dislike about this season, but I think, despite all problems, Ghost is absolutely worth a try, because for me good stuff is really good.
I feel like that if not for Gaim, Ghost would be the best Neo-Heisei season. If nothing else, for the heavy serialization and Alan’s character arc.
Did they fix that or did the show stay that way the entire time?
Editing was a legit problem throughout the entire series, but it had gotten better near the end, because all characters were more or less in one place, so there was no need for that much editing.
