too many episodes in kamen rider/sentai

[BoukenSilver83]

the way i see it with gobusters is that after gobuster king debuts, if the ratings go downhill then i know it has to do with the toys but if the ratings go up then it has nothing to do with toys. since the red buster's new weapon is coming out next week as toy plus the gobuster raioh debut im expecting the gobuster ratings will fly since kids will have another combo to create for that episode plus red buster's new weapon.

right now with this kr wizard that episode rating went down since there was nothing new, but since his dragon wizard ring is coming out as toy along with next week's episode debut, the ratings should go up on that too.

 

[Switchblade]

It's true that it isn't fair to judge Showa era series against Heisei ones. But there is an objective measure of what's considered "filler". And Black (the only Showa era I've seen enough of so far to judge) is rife with it.

And it is indeed true that just as it settles into formula it chucks a curveball and changes the formula significantly. But that is precisely 1 episode in every set of 5-10. After the changes it settles right back into a NEW formula, with that change present.

That doesn't make the following episodes any LESS filler. It just means that instead of being a series made of one filler arc, it's made of many smaller ones. As was said earlier, if you cut out all those episodes you'd be left with maybe 12 that actually tell a story. It would be different if the characters grew in some way from episode to episode, but ALL growth is put on hold between those 12 or so episodes.

I can't say if that structure is similar for other Showa era series, but as I have Amazon downloaded and ready for viewing I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

Black is very much a transitional series. It kind of straddles the line between the highly episodic Showa series and the more serialized Heisei ones. As a result is has this kind of awkward format where it wants to tell an ongoing story, but keeps getting sidetracked with "Kotaro helps save a kid and/or his parents from Gorgom" episodes.