Victim of the Week - W, OOO, Fourze and Wizard

[Black Fang]

The "Victim of the Week" formula started with Den-O but really took off with the post-Decade shows. Many people have now gotten sick of it, especially with the way Wizard has done it.

But how exactly do these shows compare to each other in terms of focusing on the person who either is or may become a supervillain? Is Wizard's problem merely that our heroes are spending their time on someone that no one cares about who only might become a Phantom, sometimes based on flimsy reasoning? With W through Fourze, often the person was already the monster or created it. And most of the time they were used to develop the cast themselves. Is that it, or is there more?

 

[NeonZ]

I think the main problem with Wizard's take on the formula is that it went about it in the most generic way possible. The formula in Wizard had more presence than in any other show, and Wizard had the least relevant additions to the formula.

In W, the monster and the victim were often connected directly - and some cases actually had no guest victim aside from the monster itself, like the Triceratops Dopant story.

In OOO, the monster came from the person itself, and, sometimes, the source of the monster had little importance, which yet again allowed more variation on the flow of the episodes.

Fourze was closer to the Wizard model, sticking strictly to victim and monster focus, but there were still some big differences. The victim of the week, about half of the time, was a recurring character, often even main cast members, rather than a one shot guest, and the guest victims often had personal connections to the Zodiarts, like in W.

Wizard took the formula and applied it in the blandest way possible. The victim and the monster were separate, unrelated characters besides a couple of exceptions, and the victim was always a guest character between the first three episodes and the mage arc near the ending of the show. It basically just ticked boxes to execute the formula without really attempting to add any kind of variety to its take on the concept.

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

It's about the involvement of the Victim and the monster.

The Dopants was all personal grudges empowered by the Gaia Memory, so you had a more human relation to it.

The Yummies was of the same type, based off the victim himself or someone close to the victim.

The Zodiarts returned to the Dopant style. Personal grudges (Same producer and pretty much the same writers as Nakashima wrote a single W arc).

The Phantoms tried mixing this with the old style of pure monsters and a random victim, so we didn't get the same monster and victim relation we had prior to and there was less drive behind it. There wasn't anything to get behind the victim and the relation he had to the monster was completely irrelevant.

So to sum it up, the first three did it in a fine way because there was a relationship between at least two of the three elements (Monster, Victim and Rider).

In W we often had a client (Often related to the monster or victim) coming to the detective agency getting the Rider involved.
In OOO we often had a monster created from a greedy person (Loose definition) which related to that.
In Fourze we often had a student having a grudge over something related to other students or the school. Creating a relation between either Victim and Monster, or Monster and Rider since the Kamen Rider Club protected the school as well.
In Wizard we don't really get any of these two elements together. Monster needs to do things to random civilian who happens to be a Gate who happens to worry about something who then happens to be in the same area as Haruto and co. when the Phantom strikes the first time.

The fact Gaim is killing the two parter system means we don't need the relation between the Monster and Victim to be as forceful as it's been prior since the monster isn't meant to stick around for very long. (I call surviving 2 - 3 battles with the Rider very long).

 

[Black Fang]

What if, instead of focusing on Gates that could become Phantoms, Wizard had focused on the Phantoms themselves? In other words, something like what Phoenix, Medusa and Gremlin had, but applied to everyone. We could still have the empathy/"human" factor without focusing everything on the monster's prey. And it would be even more poignant when our heroes are forced to kill them.

Of course this would mean certain things would need rewriting, but it could work. Phantoms could be looking to harvest mana from people and, as a side effect, those who despair could turn into Phantoms themselves. In some ways the Phantoms were like the Unknowns in Agito; the difference being the Unknowns were much more successful and the audience could be made to sympathize with the victims despite them having barely any screentime.

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

The Unknown was successful because their goal was clearcut. "Kill someone with the potential to becoming an Agito" and they could actually all tell who that target was. And the victim was never the main focus because they just went after someone else if they were prevented in killing their current target.

Everything was about Hikawa finding out how to find the next target. Ryo trying to cope with being Gills and Shouichi being Shouichi.

But the Gate thing would probably have been miles better if the Phantoms could make anyone else a Phantom and only had personal targets and not just "Random guy off the street".

 

[RossoEagleBurst]

Basically every Wizard's plot prior to the last arc is just using different characters, you can even make your own:
http://www.wordblanks.com/mad-libs/science-fiction/wizard-lib

 

[Tokuboy]

W's approach was that it showed that sometimes, the monster was the biggest victim of all (like the Triceratops arc) and that the victims rarely detracted from the experience (I think the most annoying "client" was the guy who competed in the singing contest).

OOO's Yummies were born from human desire, so they could use it to show that desire, while a neutral aspect in itself, could be used for good or evil. And there's even a twist once the purple Medals come into play, since human hosts were no longer necessary to generate them, allowing the focus on the Greed's battles.

Fourze plays off of W's dynamic, but has the high school factor to ramp things up. The students, who as teenagers aren't the least stable of people, are guinea pigs, and the administration are the mad scientists. And you got the feeling of escalation from the Horoscopes, though I agree that should have been paced better.

Now with Wizard... the Gate often feels extraneous to the plot, usually exists to give Rinko and Shunpei something to do while Haruto and Nitou beat the Phantom up until he escapes, and we've never seen a Phantom succeed. There's no sense of escalation; Wizard's upgrades feel superfluous. The one Phantom we do see somewhat succeeding is the one Wiseman had chained up because his power didn't help create Phantoms/wizards.

 

[FreedomR8G6B1]

I'm waiting for the concept of unwilling humans who are force transformed into to monsters and know that they're hurting others and want the rider to kill them.

Errr...wasn't Inazuman like that?