Kamen Rider Wizard, Ep 1 - "The Wizard Uses Rings"

Aruphonse said:

Yep, it shows well you lack of knowledge about comics. Under that niceness Peter Parker is a deeply faulty and complicated person, don't forget he was responsible for his uncle's death.

Batman in the 60's was a joke like all the other DC heroes. It wasn't until Marvel started to sell loads that DC got serious and redefined Batman into the dark, brooding hero he is as of today.

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Faulty and flawed, but nice. A character can be faulty and/or flawed without being a dick about it.

Aruphonse said:

That's truly narrow minded. That people behave in not a nice manner doesn't automatically make them evil and the opposite works too. You adore Enter, who almost always behaves in a sort of comedic way but he's still a villain with genocidal plans for the human race.

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A character not being nice does not make them evil. It does demonstrate arrogance and moral apathy - thinking they're somehow above basic respect for others. That's not heroic at all.

I enjoy Enter, and Escape, because they're villains that enjoy evil. You can't write a morally good character that's genocidal. I expect heroes to be nice and villains to be evil. It's kind of in the job description.

Aruphonse said:

Agreed in that Shotaro, Eiji and Gentaro have different personalities, but I would like you elaborated why Haruto is a bad example for kids. I've watched the episode twice and hasn't seen anything censurable about him.

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Arrogance is a very poor trait in a hero. Everything about his voice, posture, etc. shows how cool he thinks he is. I don't like the way he patronized Rinko: all the "Rinko-chan" and trying to get out of jail by hitting on her, especially in Japan where deference to authority is expected. Or the way he tried to give Koyomi the brush-off when he knew she needed more of the ... bots?

On another note, what's that thing in the wallpaper manip?

Why do you think Haruto isn't nice, anyway? I thought he had a one track mind (not interested in anything except if it's something about the Phantoms), but he wasn't really not being nice. It felt more that he was hiding something and keeping it from others because he didn't want to get them involved.

He's definitely not like Tsukasa who is just genuinely self-absorbed. Probably a bit like Tendou, but for me Tendou only enters douchebag territory when he starts doing things that hurt other people intentionally, and Haruto really hasn't come to that point.

Tendou is so exaggerated you can't take him seriously. He makes Kevin Federline look modest. He's so over the top he becomes funny

I felt that Haruto was being deliberately unhelpful (it's not a huge deal for him to send a couple more bots, why question it?) and Rinko didn't like the way he spoke to her. But I can't help feeling I'm biased against him from seeing him used so many times to bash his predecessor. He was a lot better at the end of the episode. I'll give him a little longer.

What ARE the bots called?

I watched the RAW, then I watched it subbed. Both times, I was impressed. My Japanese is still weak, so I only understood about half of it without subtitles, but I enjoyed it even more once I understood it fully. I have to say, this first episode was REALLY good. Very enjoyable.

Personally, I can't get the theme song out of my head. I don't think it's the best one ever, but it's definitely not bad. It does its job and it does it well. At least half of it isn't pseudo-rapping like Fourze's was (and Fourze's theme song was decent, I thought, but I still like Wizard's better).

I also liked how the showed off so many rings, techniques and forms, all in the very first episode. I'm sure he'll have plenty of other forms besides the basic four plus their powered-up versions, but it seems that THIS writer gets how to pace a show with tons of gimmicky things in it, instead of being a Fourze where the gimmicks are spread out so far through the series, that half of the time, you wonder if they even care about the story or if they only care about showing off weird switches.

I'm still cautiously optimistic about Wizard. We don't know how we'll feel about it this time next year, but I certainly think it'll be a good ride (no pun intended. But it's there, and no worse than any of Wizard's puns. I'm SO glad that Saban haven't got ahold of Kamen Rider yet. They already throw the puns into Power Rangers more than Sentai ever had. Imagine if they got ahold of a show that already had plenty for them to work with. Actually, I'd rather not).

lazycoconut said:

What ARE the bots called?

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PlaMonsters, I believe. Garuda, Unicorn and Kraken (and I assume there's going to be a green one as well, eventually ).

Okay, apparently I am the only one here who thought for a moment that Rinko's dad was Jinno from W :laugh:
When I first saw the little picture and the smile on his face, I was like "Wait... wth!?" :sly:

Would have been cool though....

Well... after seeing the episode for the first time, I'm on the fence about this one. More cautiously optimistic than anything else.

The Good:
`This episode goes out of this way to show that it's a different beast than W/OOO/Fourze. I count that a good thing because it really feels like a breath of fresh air that the series desperately needed.

`The comedy was toned way down to the point that it supplemented the plot instead of overruling it. Surprisingly, I found myself chuckling a few times through the episode. That's something that hasn't happened in Rider for a long time.

`The character interactions, though brief, were pretty jazzy and had some nice dynamics to them. It felt good to have some contrasting personalities again.

`The initial plot is... interesting to say the least. I thought it was presented fairly decent. Enough interesting tidbits were presented so that you had a good idea of what was going on, but the plot was complex enough that it leaves room for a lot of revelations and twists and turns. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the whole 'I'll save you from despair' angle, but so long as it doesn't take over the show, I'll be happy.

`Haruto uses the Rings outside of his Wizard form and treats them like easily accessible utilities. It's a nice touch.

`The suit designs were very well done and Wizard definitely had a very cool presence throughout the episode. He had a bit of Decade's 'Cue the music, we're going to get awesome.' vibe to him. I approve.


The Neutral
`The episode was a non-stop thrill ride. Which is nice and all, but I would have liked a bit more character focus. As an opening episode, it did its job... but I'd be hard pressed to say that I cared about any one character at this point. I'm intrigued, but not caring.


The Bad
`I'm hoping that they tone down the form-span in the future. Wizard had some great fight scenes going and then the clunky belt mechanics came perilously close to breaking up the flow of the fight. I know they've got to sell the belt and all, but a little less display of it wouldn't hurt.

I did like the belt sounds, though. If you're going to have the belt talk, then you might as well go the whole hog and have it be a large ham. It was a whole lot less in-your-face than Fourze's belt was, so I'm fine with it talking up a storm.

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As far as the whole is-Haruto-nice-or-not/is-he-a-good-role-model issue goes. I fail to see the problem. Haruto strikes me as... a real person, unlike Eiji and Gentaro's one-dimensional schtick. So he's a bit distant from others and confident and his own abilities, how does that disqualify him from being a hero?

I actually found his confidence rather refreshing. It makes sense, to me, that if you're going to don a colorful costume and circumvent the law to bring down crime rates that you'd have to believe yourself to be better at, or more necessary to, crime-fighting than the official authorities are. You'd have to believe that you're justified in bypassing authority (or that authorities are useless) to save people. Haruto seems to embody that a bit more than most superheroes.

His distance towards Rinko could also be chalked up to plain old caution. The bull phantom did target her in the warehouse, Haruto implies that he knew she was a Gate when he's sitting in jail, and Haruto did promise to save her from despair (foreshadowing his final fight of the episode). It seems to me that he was being deliberately unhelpful in order to try and dissuade her from handling the issue and making a target of herself. If she was a Gate and she did get herself involved in the Phantom battles, then she would have been putting herself at great risk.

Just my $.02.

I think this proves that the audience would actually tune it in if they are interested

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I think this proves that huge street posters work great.


On an unrelated account, translating a 22 minute episode actually doesn't take a lof of time and there is certainly no correlation between how much a release takes to make and how good it is. If your players don't support Advanced Substation Alpha subtitles which have been the norm for years, step it up, not OT's fault.

Having watched the first episode with subs now, I - liiiiike it? Yes. I was apprehensive about Wizard because I'm a big Fourze fan (and Fourze was deeply, deeply flawed in about eight or nine different ways, but it's one of my favourite series anyway), and time will tell how Wizard measures up to it for me, but I liked this first episode.

The fight scenes are very good, the plot seems interesting, the suit designs are all good, I think Haruto is great (I don't really see how he's much like Tsukasa, tbh - Tsukasa was overwhelmingly arrogant, essentially a more likeable version of Tendou, whereas Haruto just seems more playful and cocky than anything), I really like Rinko, and I think the two of them interact well. We've not seen enough of the others for me to form an opinion on.

My one bugbear is the belt voice. Not that it's hammy, but there's just so much of it. It feels like it never stops talking, it makes the OOO and Fourze belts look practically taciturn. Which is problematic, because it really breaks up the flow of the fight if we're stopping to listen to a sword inform us of its desire to shake hands.


As far as the contention that a character who is good must also be nice - somebody clearly hasn't read any Pratchett. Nice is not the same as good, or vice versa, and you can be a good person without being a nice person.

Moreover, by god, it would get dull if all of our Kamen Rider heroes were incredibly nice people - that idea seems to me to be nearly identical to the irritating fanboy idea that all Kamen Rider shows must be grimdark an Miller-esque, just on the other extreme of the scale, and it's stupid, frankly, and wrong-headed. I wouldn't want all our heroes to be jerky, and frankly if another Tendou never showed up again it would be too soon, but the Harutos and Takumis have their place.

Also, it presumes that the first duty of children's television is to teach them how to act, not to form a compelling narrative, which is frankly just insulting to children; and it presumes that children are too dim to see someone who's acting in a manner they shouldn't emulate, and realise that they shouldn't emulate them, which is even more insulting to them. They're children, not idiots.

lazycoconut said:

I felt that Haruto was being deliberately unhelpful (it's not a huge deal for him to send a couple more bots, why question it?) and Rinko didn't like the way he spoke to her. But I can't help feeling I'm biased against him from seeing him used so many times to bash his predecessor. He was a lot better at the end of the episode. I'll give him a little longer.

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Haruto argued that creating and/or sending more PlaMonsters would tire his magic reserves. It's kind of understandable since he's just fought a Phantom and a bunch of Ghouls and he was probably expecting to fight Minotauros again soon. Even Koyomi agreed with him, but both realized that in the end it would be better to send the PlaMonsters anyways.

Actually Rinko was the one who acted jerkish towards Haruto, she arrested him without any other reason than she wanted more information about the Phantoms. Still, Haruto answered all her questions in jail even when it's obvious he didn't want her to get too involved because it would endanger her (well, she was already in danger, but Haruto can't feel Gates). Also, it's clear he could have escaped in any moment if he wanted, even mocking Rinko in the process, yet he didn't and even waited in the jail after Rinko left. If you think about it, Haruto acted pretty cool headed considering how Rinko behaved towards him.

You shouldn't judge Haruto because he's been used against Gentaro by internet trolls. You should judge Haruto for what he is in the series, not factoring what happens outside it.

A couple of thoughts of my own:

- Much like friendship was pivotal in Fourze, hope could be an important theme in Wizard. Lack of hope brings Phantoms, Haruto clenched to his hope to survive the sacrifice and now he must become the world's last hope... I believe it's going to become a recurrent theme.

- The White Wizard has an awesome design and I hope he will appear more through the series. Not as the secondary Rider, but at least see him in action at least once.

- KILL KYUBEY