But I'm still unsure how this counters my initial statement -- that "I think non-fans are more inclined to like the designs because they have no preconceived expectations. Whereas fanboys have nothing but preconceived expectations and are known to react violently to all elements that don't perfectly conform."
I didn't really want to address your statement head-on because... well, I find it stupid. And not even an interesting kind of stupid, just kind of tiresome. It's more self-hating nerd ad-hominem about how our opinions are **** until a "normal" person validates them. I was sick of hearing this canard trotted out to defend someone's taste a decade ago, it's not worth anyone's time.
So I thought I might make the thread more interesting by writing a rebuttal that side-stepped the grossness of your argument. I thought it'd be interesting to point out an objection to the design that has nothing to do with preconceived notions and everything to do with concern for the show's basic quality. Because your argument wasn't equipped to deal with the notion that someone who knew what they were talking about was capable of having a point.
I will say this, though: how much sense does it make to condemn the opinions of "fans," when the whole point of Rider has always been, "How can we surprise people this year?" If you are a long-time Rider fan then, by definition,
you like being surprised. Gaim's designs are nowhere near as weird as stuff Shotaro Ishinomori did, like Shin, Stronger, Amazon, and J. If anything, Gaim's look is dull and crass compared to what Ishinomori could crank out like clockwork. Saying Gaim is good because it surprises someone who isn't already into Rider is, to me, like saying, "Hey, but somebody with no context and no standard of comparison thinks these designs are pretty good!" And why the
hell would anyone care about that?
It might rock your world to learn that I have a standing weekly date to watch Gaim with a friend who -- other than a few episodes of Kiva that we watched together -- has never watched a full Kamen Rider series in his life.
I don't think you could really say anything that would so much as tilt my world, but whatever. Look, everyone starts with Rider somewhere that appeals to them, for whatever reason, and they may enjoy the show quite a lot despite elements that, upon a closer look, were really quite ill-advised and incompetent. I mean, I'll put it this way: a lot of the stuff Shougo said about ZO is absolutely true, but ZO was still one of the first things I saw and I really, really liked it at the time. I'm still fond of it now. And I still think J is kind of stupid, even though now I can see it's not necessarily a badly-made project. It's no sin to enjoy something that isn't perfectly conceived for whatever reason. It is a sin, I think, to swear that things you like are perfectly conceived simply because you like them.
but the point is, the designs were, at the very least, inviting enough not to turn him off (and he won't shut up about how awesome he thinks Ryugen looks -- I'm thinking a FiguArts Birthday present will be in order... provided the character doesn't end up being insufferably lame when he debuts).
Except you haven't made that point at all. Your friend, if he exists, because someone arguing via anecdote online can always just be making **** up, might have bad taste and like all sorts of things most people would view as gauche or gaudy (like Ryugen, ba-dum-ching!). And Kiva is actually a huge offender in terms of badly-conceived costumes having a very big impact on the quality of the show, so what you're actually saying to me here is that you and your friend are indifferent to visual quality and just want to like what you like.
Which I'd be happy to agree with, if you weren't trying to spin your position as somehow inherently more valuable than other positions that stem from other viewpoints.
The jangly, segmented armor is meant to mimic a cape -- and the shoulder pads and headpiece are reminiscent of medieval royals' formal accoutrements.
Gaim and his forms are explicitly supposed to be samurai.
Baron and his forms are meant to mimic European medieval knights. Pineapple Arms's design lines are probably meant to evoke heavy samurai armor. Other users have posted images of this in other threads, so I won't take the time to do it over again. But this armor used a draped construction that was flexible, and that you might mistake for a cape, and you might mistake the evocation of a larger helmet for a crown. Pineapple Arms is IMO kind of bad in part because its supposed to be one solid, hard piece, which has obvious problems given the design lines of the historical thing it's evoking. From a certain POV, your argument inclines toward Pineapple Arms being a design botch, since it's easy to misunderstand what it's even supposed to be. Granted, it is entirely possible you're just not familiar with what the design is meant to actually look like.
