Even when compared with other shows in the sum of its parts, Gaim is still weaker than almost any Heisei show there is.
Please, tell me how Gaim is more poorly-written than Decade.
Or the first half of Blade, especially anything having to do with Garren. Or actually, anything in Blade at all relating to Leangle.
Or Kiva's time-travel self-abortion plot.
I mean, I think Gaim is badly overrated in some respects. But it's absolutely absurd to say it's the worst-written Heisei Rider when the Decade half of Movie Wars 2010 and that Ryuki arc about Scissors dropping a box on the lead character exist. A lot of Heisei Rider is just really stupid on a writing level. Fortunately, most Rider shows don't live or die on writing.
Partially doesn't help that pretty much everything Gaim has done has been execute way better in other Heisei shows.
Urobuchi is a very literate writer, and he's consciously referenced other Rider shows from the beginning of his run on Gaim. He also basically told everybody he was going to do this, and does it constantly in his anime work, too. The big three shows he's referencing are clearly Kuuga, Black, and Ryuki.
What's interesting about what he's doing is that when does return to elements of other Rider shows, the way he uses them has a pointedly different meaning. The Overlords speak an alien language to emphasize their lost humanity, rather than the Grongi doing so in order to show how utterly alien they've become. In Ryuki, people fighting each other is bad because it's sad. In Gaim, it's used to illustrate society's institutional methods of oppression. In Black, the hero's anger and sadness are virtues that help him in battle. In Gaim, anger and sadness are the emotions that might make Kouta into a second Roshuo.
They couldn't even get something as simple as the alien language aspect from Kuuga right.
How did Gaim get it wrong? The cipher Gaim uses is actually much more sophisticated and works better as a conlang than Kuuga's simple substitution cipher.
I've been thinking but, there's kind of a point to the criticism of the whole power-up giving spree for Kouta.
Kouta is basically going along a version of Godai's power-up track from Kuuga, where each power-up represented a fundamental change in Godai's character arc. But where Godai's changes were generally positive steps forward, climaxing in his ability to triumph over Ultimate, Kouta's power-ups actually seem to indicate Kouta's character progressing in a negative, unhealthy direction. Judging from recent show events, this is probably so Urobuchi can riff on the ending of Blade, which is by far the most memorable part of that show.
