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Also... I'm sorry but I can't find Mayu sexy. Her legs are way too skinny and her voice has a odd quality to it that gives me the creep.
Get out of here! Just get out!!.....You still think Medusa is hot right?

You know...this whole series was just filler with some plot points randomly thrown in conveniently during conversation between characters.
Isn't that the story to all our lives....
 
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Also... I'm sorry but I can't find Mayu sexy. Her legs are way too skinny and her voice has a odd quality to it that gives me the creep.

Blasphemy! Mayu has the most perfect pair of legs ever. I can stare at them all day and night. If I was a genetic engineer I'd make clones of her and populate the world with her genes. :buttrock: Ahem back to the topic..

The Good

- Great action choreography. Since the first fight the choreography has been great. The CGI is pretty damn good too.

- The premise. It keeps you guessing in the early going with the purpose of the Sabbath, who or what is Koyomi, and who is Wiseman.

- Designs. I love most of the Wizard and Phantom designs. Phoenix has one of the best designs for villain ever (that's why I bought the figuart of it recently) I also love designs for White Wizard, Infinity, and Flame style and will be getting figuarts for them as well.

- The Cast. Especially Haruto, Koyomi, Rinko (sigh), Mayu (double sigh), the donut duo, and Wajima, and Fueki.

- Letting Koyomi stayed dead. Letting Nitoh be without powers. Giving everybody a nice ending in the Epilogue.

The Bad

- The neglect of Koyomi, the central character. In hindsight they should not have hired an actress who's only working part time. Her absence really hurt the plot when the true motive of Fueki was revealed. I would've shed a few manly tears when she passed away, instead I was indifferent.

- Too many phantoms in the early going. Since the Phantom was revealed as merely a tool to find the real Wizards, all those eps featuring Phantoms wrecking havoc seemed pretty hollow now, since there's nothing the phantoms could have done to ensure victory and it all looked like bunch of filler eps. It'd be nice to advance the plot, explain Haruto and Koyomi's background a bit more, and give some prominence to Wiseman instead of having him do nothing for 30+ eps.

- Shunpei. Such an unnecessary character. Should have made a cameo or be the gate in one of the eps and be done with him.

The Ugly

- Shunpei's hideously colored clothes and stockings. Yuck!!
 
Minato Ascending
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Jan 4, 2011
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Like many of you had said, Kamen Rider Wizard is one gigantic missed opportunity that was filled with potential early on. We never had a pure magic-based Rider before, so this has a very interesting concept. The cast and the supporting cast (except for Shunpei) seemed promising as well. And the tag-team of Phoenix and Medusa (with Wiseman lurking in the background) made the villains actually cool and provided good enemies for Wizard. All seemed well, but as the show drags on, numerous problems began to surface.

The Phantoms were random and really provided no substance beyond the fact that they are Gates; Koyomi hardly got developed, which became a major problem later on when the main plot actually revolved around her and her relationship with Haruto; and Fueki's plot took too long to get going, and made the series appear to be drifting without direction for quite some time, with only Sora providing any apparent tie to the main plot, etc.

I think one can argue that the show really culminated in ep. 50, and once Fueki and Koyomi's stories were resolved there was just the fight against Gremlin and a long epilogue. The plots have already panned out and no more surprises left in the story. But then again, there weren't that many plots to resolve and many people saw the ending happen the way it turned out to be.

Wizard was a straight-forward series, and it won't have been a problem if they had executed it perfectly, but sadly there were blunders along the way. I won't say that Wizard is a bad series; in fact, it is slightly above average, but it could've been so much, much more.
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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Sounds a lot like a certain Sentai series that has a "love-hate relationship" with the HJU fandom (which was also produced by the same head producer that produced Kamen Rider Wizard).

At this point, this is why I kind of let Kida off the hook a little bit for Wizard's writing flaws b/c some of the writing flaws of this show does follow the same pattern of that "specific Sentai series" that Utsunomiya was also the head producer of

Do you mean Gokaiger, which people love to ***** and whine about and make out that they could have written so much better? :rolleyes2: The difference being that Wizard didn't change to accommodate a lot of appearances from people who wanted to return after the earthquake/tsunami, it didn't have to do stuff last-minute to fit around their schedules, it couldn't even get around Makoto Okunaka's!

I do blame Kida for stuff like dreadful writing of Beast. I don't care whether or not he wanted to write for Beast - it's his job, now grow a pair and do it! Junko Komura did a much better job with the character, so there's no excuse.
 
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Lurker
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I complained about Fourze overusing the concept of friendship, but in retrospective they were subtly in comparison to how Wizard hammered "hope" down.

Hope is good and is nice that you keep true to your theme, but come one at least tone it down every other scene. :laugh:
 
Disappear into light!!
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Feb 12, 2011
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Talking about comparisons to Hibiki, Hibiki had a really strong head producer in Takatera Shigenori, who was considered a celebrity brought in to salvage Kamen Rider after Blade's all time low sales record back then. Takatera had a really strong and clear vision of what he wanted the Hibiki to be. It was his show, and the writers are just writing the scripts and dialogue of the show. Kida had said in an interview before Wizard started on how much his scripts are influenced and dictated by producer Takatera, and one of the things Utsunomiya promised him with Wizard is more freedom to write the story that he wants with his own vision.

...yeah...that didn't go very well, didn't it? That was probably one of things the show needed to bring out the best of its cool concepts and themes; a strong head producer with a clear vision of the show and the story, not just simply making it pretty and stylish, but giving the story a clear direction and focus. As it is, Wizard is simply quite a bland show, which is ridiculous given its numerous interesting themes and ideas.

Koyomi's story and mystery is written quite well, but lacked any emotional weight and attachment that it should have due to Koyomi doing nothing for 30-plus episodes. The fact that the only flashback footage that they can use for the emotional scene in ep 50 is like, from episode 5 kinda sums up the problem.

The story and theme of Nitou is so promising, and it makes me mad how badly they executed it. The story could've gain so much tension and weight if only they showed his suffering and inner conflict over having to survive on "evil" or die. It would be a stark contrast to his outward happy-go-lucky attitude and make a point of it as him hiding his pain instead of simply "nice guy Rider because people like nice guy Riders". Also, I think the actor is a really good performer, but he's just given **** to work with. In the few moments he got, he did great with them.

Shunpei...is pointless and a waste of space. A character like him is maybe good for 2-3 episodes, not as a constant presence in the show.

This is not even going into the lack of mythology, lore and world-building a show with magic themes needed to be endearing and memorable. Any attempts at world-building in the show is honestly half-hearted at best with Wajima as "ring-maker", Beast as an ancient magus, the history of the Sabbath etc. World-building and mythology is one of the best strengths of Magiranger, another magic based show and also Hibiki.

The best thing about the show for me is its lead and the actor playing him. Shiraishi Shunya used every opportunity he got to show how good he can act and make Haruto a good and lovable protagonist to a hero show. Ultimately, both his talents and Haruto's character potential were wasted by the writing but I think what we got is still a good Rider protagonist.

I still like the show, but it's sad thinking about how good it could've been. Instead it's just...okay. At least it's better than Kiva, which is just bad or Kabuto, which was a train wreck(I still enjoy the good parts of them, though, like with Wizard). Edit: Oops, forgot to mention Decade >_< . Yeah, that one was definitely worse.
 
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When The Fruit Of Life Corrupts Men
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while the plot i feel was stronger than Fourze,
I really want to argue with you on this one, but you're for the most part correct. Fourze was, in essence, just a rehashed version of Double's plot. Still, that didn't make it a bad show, at least to me

As someone who gets emotionally attached to things easily, I'd gotta say the ending had so much potential to be a strong one
I deeply respected them keeping the permeating feeling of melancholy through the title sequence, but it was immediately lost when they cut to "Doughnut Tranny" (/m/'s term since she doesn't really have a name) and her co-worker.

I felt like the ending was overall the most powerful. Seriously, there were some parts of it where I wanted to cry

You're reviewing it before the team-up special episodes AND THE MOVIE?! Insanity! Heresy!

They don't count, so why bother? It's just more tacked on fluff that we have to sift through

Dragon was shrugged off very early.
Chimera's need for Mana was made irrelevant fast.
Nitou had near zero plot outside feeding Chimera and jobbing.
The villains were incompetent on new levels of stupidity.

One of the things that irked me the most is that it had all these different elements from other rider shows that it borrowed and it couldn't use ANY of them correctly.

But it wasn't relevant to Nitou as a character.
Nothing in the show (plot wise) was relevant to anyone. The show had the potential to be dark, darker than any current Post-Decade (because people don't like "Neo Heisei" for some reason) show ought to be. I mean look at the reveal of Sora being a serial killer, a lot more of that could have been explored, but it wasn't and was just occasionally referenced like in the ending
 
Just an Internet User Passing Thru
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Do you mean Gokaiger, which people love to ***** and whine about and make out that they could have written so much better? :rolleyes2: The difference being that Wizard didn't change to accommodate a lot of appearances from people who wanted to return after the earthquake/tsunami, it didn't have to do stuff last-minute to fit around their schedules, it couldn't even get around Makoto Okunaka's!

I do blame Kida for stuff like dreadful writing of Beast. I don't care whether or not he wanted to write for Beast - it's his job, now grow a pair and do it! Junko Komura did a much better job with the character, so there's no excuse.

That's another great example...........but I was referring to a specific Sentai that YOU "use to hate," which Utsunomiya produced before Gokaiger and Wizard :169:

That being said, I do see your point about Beast. The way Beast was portrayed in the "Kida-written episodes" clearly displays how Kida was dis-interested with having him around the show, let alone having a "Bandai-forced" secondary Rider around the show.

Despite that, I still give Utsunomiya most of the blame here for Wizard's lackluster execution. Utsunomiya clearly favors having toku shows where the protagonist hero(es) are "god-modded" and flashy while making the villians be utterly incompetent from beginning to end.
 
CRETINS! ALL OF THEM!
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I wonder what it would look like if the concept behind Beast had been applied to a main rider instead...
 
"Training."
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Also...sometimes if the characters said "hope" one more time in their lines I would've hit something.

Seriously I get that its the central theme but I didn't need to be reminded everytime the characters talked.

:laugh: :redface2:
 
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