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Batchiriminā! Here we go then people. Yes, there's still one episode to go, but the main story has now ended so here's a place for you to scream in agony or ecstasy for the 17th Heisei Rider series, Kamen Rider Ghost!

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From start to finish, this series fail to hook me...yes, I tried watching it from start to finish, but I prefer to washing dishes than watching this...

Why?

Oh, I dunno. The actors don't deliver interesting performances. The camera hoggings are irritating. The science stuff are just...inept. The mythical stuff is not barely there. Maybe this will really start the decline of adult viewer of Kamen Rider....
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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Maybe this will really start the decline of adult viewer of Kamen Rider....

Toei cut Ghost's budget to finance Amazons, a Kamen Rider series aimed at adults. It is getting another series next year, a big fan event in November, and they will probably continue to make other online streaming shows like it after it ends (to compete with Tsuburaya who are now introducing an "adult" Ultraman.) Gaim, Drive, and now Ex-Aid all deliberately court a periphery demographic: who watches Urobuchi anime? Who remembers 70s-80s cop dramas, or what games were popular in the 90s? Not young children. So, no, I don't think Toei is ignoring adult viewers or that they are likely to stop watching any time soon.

I do find it very telling that your measure of quality for a Kamen Rider series is how much adults like it, despite its being aimed at and marketed to 6-8 year old children.
 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! SUBARASHI!!!!
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My list of best to worst: (I have yet to watch Hibiki and Den-O in full)

Gaim
W
Drive
Ryuki
OOO
Blade
Kabuto
Kuuga
Kiva
Wizard
Fourze
Agito
555
.
.
.
.
.
Ghost

And Decade falls into another category.

Here's the actual rant about the problems of the 'final' episode:

- The final boss only appears for 1 episode? It's so rushed it's unbelievable.
- Seriously Great Eyeser is just a re-paint/re-mold of Extremer, poor effort.
- This giant destructive lazer-beam thing is destroying the city, and then it can't even sustain ONE hit! So anticlimatic. Don't get me started on how Takeru just lies on the floor despairing instead of trying, hears his mother's voice, stands up and starts his out-of-nowhere-way-too-optimistic monologuing before transforming.
- Makoto and Alan: "Takeru fight for us we believe in you (but we won't transform and help we'll just stand and stare)"
- Akari starts praying, for god sake girl HIDE SOMEWHERE.
- Ok the final bit of the fight wasn't too bad, I still don't like the characterisations of the 15 eyecons (voiced by the same person nonetheless)

Overall the whole series was way too rushed with ineffective emotional scenes, in fact I've just finished watching the Ghost X Ichigo movie, the pacing there was much more better (although the first 15/20 minutes wasn't too appealing) and they should have strived for that instead.
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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Why am I not surprised that Drive and Gaim are so high on your list? Most of the harshest criticism from Ghost seems to come from fans of those shows. Some of it is to do with petty "rivalry" between shows but generally, Ghost is a break from the last two years' trend of deliberately courting an older audience (that looks set to continue with Ex-Aid) and I suspect a lot of people don't welcome that. No matter how much some may try to deny that they expect Kamen Rider to be for adults, or dress it up with "Good media for children SHOULD appeal to adults!" - yeah, you're not fooling anyone.

I put most of my thoughts in the ep 48 thread so I'll sum them up:

Good: It's very gentle, with some very good messages for children. Love the suits and aesthetic of the show and a lot of the concepts. Also interesting in that it explores spiritual themes that aren't addressed in a lot of other Kamen Rider, and explores death in more depth than any other Heisei series. I much prefer this style of Kamen Rider than one that's trying too hard to be like a J-drama. Akari was a refreshing change from several years of female leads who primarily served as love interests and/or emotional support. Found the actors of Alan and Onari very good.

Bad: Lots of apathy from the production side: notably the long absence of the head writer and cutting its budget to fund Amazons. This, as we see, had a very detrimental effect on the show. Also felt that the more talented members of the cast were often wasted, and many characters were so under-used (Javert, Gyro, Kanon) they probably should have been cut. I don't believe that the show is "unrealistic" or "too optimistic" but have seen some criticism of Takeru saying that all parents love their children (in contrast to Drive's Banno arc); think a more general moral about how family are the people that love us would have been a better one.

I find Fourze a good comparison here - it was written by three people, all of whom had different takes on the characters. Nakashima gave Gentaro slightly more depth, and made Yuuki intelligent as well as perky; she was able to serve as a bridge between Gentaro and Kengo. Sanjo tended to write the characters as more cartoonish and more like caricatures, as well as introducing random subplots that went nowhere since none of the other two writers picked them up (e.g. his attempt to set up a Gentaro/Miu/Shun love triangle.) Hasegawa was somewhere in between. Now imagine if Nakashima had vanished for half the show, left the other two to write the rest with varying levels of consistency between it, and then had to come back and make an attempt to somehow tie it all together. All the while the show is running on a reduced budget because most of the money was channeled into funding a show to pander to an outside demographic. And before anyone comes in with "well, that's a GOOD use of money, Amazons was so much better!!!" - Of course the show that has comparatively more attention and money invested into it is gonna look better.
 
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Why am I not surprised that Drive and Gaim are so high on your list? Most of the harshest criticism from Ghost seems to come from fans of those shows. Some of it is to do with petty "rivalry" between shows but generally, Ghost is a break from the last two years' trend of deliberately courting an older audience (that looks set to continue with Ex-Aid) and I suspect a lot of people don't welcome that. No matter how much some may try to deny that they expect Kamen Rider to be for adults, or dress it up with "Good media for children SHOULD appeal to adults!" - yeah, you're not fooling anyone.

What's wrong with liking Gaim and Drive? You're having a lot grudge with the two shows. For one thing there isn't a 'petty rivalry' between shows. Drive wasn't even adult-oriented but it managed to find a nice balance.

My problem with Ghost isn't about adult or children oriented, the whole delivery was just terrible, simple as that. You can deliver the "good messages" in a much better fashion. but it wasn't persuasive at all.
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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What's wrong with liking Gaim and Drive? You're having a lot grudge with the two shows. For one thing there isn't a 'petty rivalry' between shows. Drive wasn't even adult-oriented but it managed to find a nice balance.

My problem with Ghost isn't about adult or children oriented, the whole delivery was just terrible, simple as that. You can deliver the "good messages" in a much better fashion. but it wasn't persuasive at all.

For the most part I liked Gaim (though not Drive.) But I think that for better or worse, 99% of English-speaking fans watching Kamen Rider currently are teens or adults and thus expect, whether or not they are conscious of it, that the show should/will appeal to teens and adults. Gaim and Drive are notable that in tone and use of certain elements, they made much more effort to appeal to teens/adults than most other recent Rider shows. (I'm not talking about anything being gritty or "dark" etc. It's like I said before: Who watches Urobuchi anime, and who remembers 70s-80s cop dramas? Not young children.) Ghost is a break in that pattern and is much more tailored to the show's primary target audience of 6-8 year olds. I think this accounts for a lot of the hostility towards it, especially since Ex-Aid looks set to return to the Gaim/Drive approach (the kids in the audience won't remember 90s video games either) and we got the adult-targeted Amazons this year.

I also think that teen/adult viewers are likely to be much more cynical and see Ghost's themes and messages as "too optimistic", "unrealistic", etc. The kind of criticism that shows like ToQger, Goseiger and Fourze get in that respect. You may argue that Ghost isn't a good series even for children (though I would disagree) and that's fair enough. But I think there is a lot of resentment towards it on account of it being a more child-friendly series after two years of "adult appeal"
 
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The thing about Ghost is that I actually really liked the first 20ish parts of the show. It was a nice change in pace for Kamen Rider show, it had some of the best pacing for 2 parters, and there was some intrigue with some of the things in the earlier parts. Plus, I can buy the morals........ But then Grateful's episode happened....

Freaking slashing the budget with the majority of Ghost's monster designs probably would explain why we're stuck with the lamest set of villains ever. I couldn't get into the morals because the characters of the day just didn't do it for me. Though, the Ganmizers might have something to do with the mediocrity as well.

Also, Makoto and everyone else sucks.
 
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Ghost in a nutshell is the opposite of Drive for me where I liked the first 20 or so episodes of Ghost and hated the Drive's first 20. Everything Drive did wrong, Ghost did right. I liked Takeru more then Shinnosuke, the supporting cast was way better than Drive's and used better too, and the pacing and mystery was surprisingly good for having to introduce like 15+ forms and side riders. But after Necrom's arc and it went downhill, especially when they kept recycling monsters. The plot didn't drag, it completely halted and scenes started to feel redundant.
 
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Toei cut Ghost's budget to finance Amazons, a Kamen Rider series aimed at adults. It is getting another series next year, a big fan event in November, and they will probably continue to make other online streaming shows like it after it ends (to compete with Tsuburaya who are now introducing an "adult" Ultraman.) Gaim, Drive, and now Ex-Aid all deliberately court a periphery demographic: who watches Urobuchi anime? Who remembers 70s-80s cop dramas, or what games were popular in the 90s? Not young children. So, no, I don't think Toei is ignoring adult viewers or that they are likely to stop watching any time soon.

I do find it very telling that your measure of quality for a Kamen Rider series is how much adults like it, despite its being aimed at and marketed to 6-8 year old children.

I know that Kamen Rider series are for children, but you can't tell that when watching Kuuga to Hibiki. There are still hooks there for the adult viewers. Starting from Kabuto, it's gearing more and more toward children. Sure there are still hooks for adults.

But starting from Fourze, feels like they're ramping up their efforts to try eliminating adult viewers from their target demographics....

I don't mind being too optimistic either. Heck, I am trying to write a fantasy novel that is full of optimism. It's just that Ghost just doesn't have enough hooks to sustain me.

Or maybe my totkusatsus is being channeled to watch Amazons.

Heck, I don't even care about Zyuohger anymore. Maybe once Ghost is over and Ex-Aid is another dud I'll start watching Zyuohger and GARO retsuden.

But to think of it, the american TV Series are coming back, and maybe I won't even care about the japanese shows anymore. Gotham, Supergirl, Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Killjoys, Agents of Shield. Oh my!
 
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