Is Kamen Rider Hibiki worth watching?

[Bryd0]

At least you owe yourself to watch this clip. I know its from Decade, but it just shows how awesome Hibiki's musical theme is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap_CRESxNFE

Oh yeah, I remember that vividly. Even though I never liked Decade.

Its good. A good unique Kamen Rider show that has good themes of maturity and growing up, unique style and excellent characters.

Just make sure you watch it until episode 29 and promptly stop right there.

I suppose that's when the staff changes occurred, right? And, is it a risk to watch it after Episode 29, despite what Khaiden said? :disappoin

 

[Toku Prime]

I suppose that's when the staff changes occurred, right? And, is it a risk to watch it after Episode 29, despite what Khaiden said? :disappoin

Well the two staffs worked side by side on a few episodes during the 20s in order to smooth the handover, but 29 onwards in generally considere to be just the new team.

There are 5 basic changes that occur:
1. They go into serious money-saving mode. A lot of the mountainous filming locations that looked gorgeous but are much more expensive and difficult to film in got ditched in favour of filming in the city as usual. A lot of the Onis' CG attacks like breathing fire are never used again. It became clear that the final battle was going to require lots of expensive CGI, so they just skip it and give you a "one year later" distant finale (although you do see them battling that monster in the movie).

2. Hibiki himself is pushed more to the front ahead of the other Oni characters, buys a motorbike and gets some upgrade forms so that Bandai had some more traditional Rider toys to sell.

3. Inoue is now the head writer, and is basically just riding the thing to the end for a paycheck, so he's pulling out all his old tropes rather than attempting to follow the story the previous team had started or do anything new. So the series just suddenly pulls a sharp turn and heads off in another, much more "generic early-Heisei" direction to the one it had previously been building to.

4. You get a "rival" character (aka a soap opera style bully in the Hojo/Kusaka mold) introduced that a lot of people feel completely derailed Asumu's character and was generally quite the Mary Sue. The Japanese fandom hated the character so much that when the actor returned a couple of years later to play Kamen Rider Zeronos the producers got flooded with complaints demanding that he be fired.

5. They ditch the single word text cards that had been sprinkled throughout the previous episodes, drop the closing credits and change the opening ones.

I think there are two reasons for the "it gets worse after episode 28" reputation. First is that the actors have publically said how much they disliked the way things were run after the changes, including lots of tales along the lines of "well we turned up to film the last battle and we've nothing to do because they're re-writing the script on the fly". Second is that the switch in styles is so quick and so different that you can't help but feel like the show just got blindsided. I have seen a couple of people sticking up for the later part of the show though, so not everyone thinks it's horrible. If you love Inoue's style you might prefer it. Otherwise just sit back and watch the car crash :laugh:

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

I suppose that's when the staff changes occurred, right? And, is it a risk to watch it after Episode 29, despite what Khaiden said? :disappoin

Don't listen to anyone who tells you to stop watching. If you started something, be sure to finish. Second half is very diffirent in both good and bad ways, but it's still worth watching.

 

[Captain Shark]

I suppose that's when the staff changes occurred, right?

Yes, but episodes 30 and 31 are decent on their own. 32 onward though....

You get a "rival" character (aka a soap opera style bully in the Hojo/Kusaka mold) introduced that a lot of people feel completely derailed Asumu's character and was generally quite the Mary Sue.

Not only that but he just disappeared after the late 30s.

It became clear that the final battle was going to require lots of expensive CGI, so they just skip it and give you a "one year later" distant finale

The amount of epic fail in that still irks me.

 

[CannibalS]

Also, its Inoue on his writing auto-mode , and if you cannot stand Inoue's at his apathetic (which unfortunately happens quite often when given productions he doesn't really like), Hibiki is going to be pretty insufferable.

 

[KamenRiderUNDERGROUND]

My personal experience:

I watched Ryuki and Blade (my first two series) and was totally engrossed with both of them. I seriously missed Blade after it finished and watching Hibiki was just a put off to me. By the end of Ep 16 (I think it was Todoroki's debut) I just stopped KR and didn't watch until Kabuto started.

Then I think a couple of years ago I was on this run of watching all Heisei series that I've yet to watch, starting with Kuuga chronologically. Got to Hibiki, watched it, but somehow I coincidentally stopped at Ep 16 again (too busy, not interested enough).:laugh: Then I ended up jumping to Kiva.

 

[Scissors]

The only good thing that came out of the writer change was Shuki's and Zanki's focus episodes.

The main problem with the change was that Inoue went against the entire message that the original writers had set up.

The original message was: You don't have to be like everyone else. Follow your dreams.
Then after the writer change, the message became: Dreams are for kids! Get to work!

Not to mention Inoue's sexism, which ended up destroying one of the main characters.

 

[Kamen Rider IXA]

The main problem with the change was that Inoue went against the entire message that the original writers had set up.

The original message was: You don't have to be like everyone else. Follow your dreams.
Then after the writer change, the message became: Dreams are for kids! Get to work!

"Follow your dreams" was EXACTLY the message in the second half. Both Akira and Asemu didn't become Oni, so they could do things they wanted to do.

 

[CannibalS]

"Follow your dreams" was EXACTLY the message in the second half. Both Akira and Asemu didn't become Oni, so they could do things they wanted to do.

The former's reason of not becoming Oni is full-bullshit, though

 

[Oblivion]

I think Khaiden and Toku Prime have said pretty much all there is to say about the series, the rest you just have to watch it yourself and feel free to discuss it here like I'd did when I finally got to watching Hibiki. I absolutely loved the first half, it was sweet, and I felt sad when I had to part with the first half.

But I gotta agree with Cannibal, Asumu not wanting to be an Oni in the ending is absolute bullcrap and one of the biggest reason why I hate the second half.