Kamen Rider Kabuto

[Ivanhobe]

Personally i have never understood why so many people seem to hate Tendou Souji as a character, i mean yes, HE is a self absorved jerk with and unbearable ego, but he always does what is best for everyone. This creates a rather interesting contrast with Kagami; he is kind natured guy who wants to do good, but wanting to do good and doing what needs to be done are two different things, and that is why i love Tendo, you can hate his actions, but you can´t deny that he is doing what´s best for everyone.

As for the show itself, i liked it a lot, but it always gave me an extremely dissjointed feel, so rather than feeling like one good/bad show it felt like a bunch of good and not-so-good parts mixed together.

When it comes to Shouji Yonomemura as a writer, i don´t think he is as bad as most people make him out to be.

In my opinion, Yonomemura is a talented writer, but it just so happens that he is not a succesful one; every project he works on ends up being something where there was some heavy interference from the producers, or something that is never truly finished for some reason. Admitedly some of this is his fault, he does write complicated premises that very rarely are resolved in a satisfactory way, but i feel like i have never seen a project of his were he truly is allowed to do what he wants. Kabuto, Let´s Go Kamen Rider and Super Hero Taisen where all anniversary shows that some heavy expectations riding on them, so i would like to see him tackle a smaller project where such a pressure doesn´t exist.

As i said, i do like his writing style and the stories he comes up with, its just that i would like to see one of them finished.

 

[Matrix]

It has been soooooo long since I too watched Kabuto. I actually grew fond of the series, and yes Tendou is a frustrating character to watch, but it was the characters and development outside of Tendou that I grew fond of watching.

 

[Ice Ixa]

Personally, the thing I hated the most out of Tendou was that he NEVER LOST. He struggled in what, 3 fights in the entire series? I can put up with his attitude, but not his invincibility.

 

[Vitor]

I can put up with his attitude, but not his invincibility.

You can't snuff out the sun you fool.......

 

[Scissors]

My problem with Tendou was that he was a hypocrite. I liked him in the beginning because he seemed like a voice of reason, and as poster mentioned, he knew what he had to do to help others.
During the episodes where it is revealed SPOILERS [HIDE]Hiyori was a worm[/HIDE], I first thought "Oh that's clever. Now Tendou will be facing the same dilemma as the people he has looked down on, and this is how he is gonna become softer"

But nope. Tendou did not learn a single thing. He basically said "Well. This is about me and my family, so its different"
At THAT point, I started to hate him.
Imagine in Ryuki if Shinji had said "I can kill others, but its wrong if you do it" Its basically the same thing.

I just wanted ONE minute of Tendou actually saying "I was wrong"
But no, the viewers had to swallow the fact that "What Tendou did was wrong and selfish, but you have to deal with it, because he is the main hero"

 

[Shogun_Master]

I don't remember ever really hating Tendou- except when he would never shut up about his grandmother, but every Kamen Rider hero has something, so...

But, I do admit, he never resonated with me like Kagami, Daisuke & Hiyori did.

 

[NeonZ]

I first thought "Oh that's clever. Now Tendou will be facing the same dilemma as the people he has looked down on, and this is how he is gonna become softer"

But nope. Tendou did not learn a single thing. He basically said "Well. This is about me and my family, so its different"
At THAT point, I started to hate him.

It's not the same situation.

Spoiler

Hiyori was a Native, not a standard Worm.

The show never tried to push forward that all Natives should be killed, but it did keep that line towards standard worms. Look at Tadokoro, for example. He was a Native with no personal ties to Tendo and received pretty much the same treatment as Hiyori.

 

[KingRanger]

It's crap. There is nothing good about it other than Gattack.

 

[Lynxara]

But I have a feeling that Yonemura got impatient and wanted to throw in as much action and eye-candy as possible.

I'm not sure Yonemura is to blame so much as the toy sales. Kabuto was the third year in a row where Rider's toy sales were way below expectations. Usually how a show's toy sales are trending will be pretty apparent around the end of the show's first quarter, which is when any adjustments made to goose the toy line sales show up.

All it takes to explain Kabuto's crazy-go-nuts in the third quarter is the assumption that the second quarter's worth of stuff didn't move any better than the first. The show started trying to do tons of fights to increase its little boy appeal, and downplaying a plot that was probably too complicated for the way that timeslot was trending in the first place.

What's funny is that Kabuto himself was a really popular Rider, so the only explanation for the soft toy line is people not wanting to buy any of the secondary Rider stuff. And, honestly, can you blame them? To a little kid, everybody who's not Kabuto in that show is gonna come off like a total chump.

I figure the stupid Yonemura who writes endless dumb fights and empty, meaningless crossover scripts does so only when Toei is paying him to do that. I've seen him write perfectly competently, and even really well, on other franchises where crossovers and endless toy sales aren't really the order of the day.

Personally, the thing I hated the most out of Tendou was that he NEVER LOST. He struggled in what, 3 fights in the entire series? I can put up with his attitude, but not his invincibility.

You know, something interesting about Kabuto is that if you go back and watch the first episode, invincible Tendou clearly does not exist yet as a story conceit. He struggles in his first battle, and there's a moment of internal monologue where he expresses, only to himself, uncertainty about what he's about to do. It gives the impression of someone who's trained and trained his entire life for an event, but is still intimidated by the thought of doing it for real.

Flashes of humanity like that for Tendou all but disappear after the first quarter. Sometimes I wonder if the super-invincible Tendou of later in the series is the result of the toy sales issues. Perhaps it's the writers trying to hype up the most popular character in a bid for kid appeal that, really, just sabotaged the rest of their Rider cast. LOOK THIS GUY IS INVINCIBLE BUY HIS TOY PLEASE is a ploy that sometimes works in kids' merchandising shows that aren't going well.

 

[Sage Shinigami]

Personally, the thing I hated the most out of Tendou was that he NEVER LOST. He struggled in what, 3 fights in the entire series? I can put up with his attitude, but not his invincibility.

I'll go ahead and be the weirdo. I thought his invincibility justified his attitude. I can put up with your **** talking if you really are THAT GOOD. If he wasn't he would've been fucking insufferable. If he fought like Shinji but still had the attitude, I wouldn't have been able to hear anything they said over my rampant screaming of "DUDE SHUT THE **** UP YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT THIS." (Basically, I'm saying I always wanted to like Vegeta but he lost too much, lol.)

At a certain point it DID get comical: Tendou's battle with Drake over who could get the most girls was almost like a parody of the character, but I have to say it just made me like the guy more.

So yeah. Kabuto pretty much had the opposite effect on me. It's been forever since I watched the series, but Kabuto was my entry point into Kamen Rider. But the show itself is impossible to like because while I loved the main character, no one can claim the story made any kind of sense, whatsoever. Anything resembling a plot pretty much falls entirely apart right after Tendou and Kagami explore that base or whatever around episode 25? 26?

Does anyone know why that is, and if there was a different plan for the story before it went stupid? There are so many things that should've paid off but never did, like that Zabee tattoo, and Kabuto being referred to as the god of the Sun while Gattack was the god of Battle or whatever. Personally I always thought Zabee was kind of a "false god" and was actually cursed, which is why everyone that used it eventually failed in some major way. (The Hopper twins were forever cursed to walk in the darkness, and the only reason Kagami was freed was because he was killed.)