HurricaneDragon
Member
Well, I can't say I agree with some/most of the stuff that's been posted already, but here are my main issues with it:
1.) It raises things to be big plot points when it needs them to be big issues, then drops them as soon as they're not relevant to the next story arc. This happened a lot throughout the Yggdrasil arc in which, as soon as one of their big conspiracies was foiled... the reasons behind it just stopped getting brought up. As soon as Yggdrasil no longer had a way to nuke the city to stop the secret of Helheim from getting out, they stopped caring. Look at the most recent episode: Helheim's fruit is all over the place and no one cares. One of the central conflicts of the show (Kouta unknowingly killing a friend) was set off because people without Drivers supposedly cannot control the urge to eat these things. But since that's no longer relevant to the plot, instead we're going to ignore that and focus on how it's from another world and Kouta is turning into a monster and so the only thing he can enjoy eating anymore is that.
2.) The technology really doesn't make sense when you look at it as a whole and, to that end, I feel they missed a lot of opportunities it gave or mishandled what they had with it. In fact, I really think it dropped the ball in regards to the technology, and I've even had a post written up about it that I've gone back and forth on posting for weeks now. Here's some examples of what I would've brought up in that post (that are basically copied from that document!):
- The Kurokage Troopers - The first instance that I felt the show dropped the ball was with these guys. I get that we lost the character who used this suit and they wanted to keep the design around, but at the same time, I feel like there was some wasted potential here. They could have given us a new design for grunt (or "trooper") characters, and losing the Kurokage suit completely would have given the actual Kurokage's death that much more impact. Also, why give your grunts that Lock Seed/"design" over any other one? From an observational standpoint, designing your grunt suits after the Rider that died first, or one of the Riders that wasn't doing particularly well if they were designed prior to that death, doesn't really make much sense.
- Belt inconsistency - It was around this point that I started wondering just what was up with the belts. I don't think they ever really went into detail as far as how they actually worked. Are they preprogrammed before being given to different people with the "Pre-Arms"? For instance, if Kaito had gotten that belt from Yuuya somehow, would he have had the "Gaim" Pre-Arms? When characters get new belts, as has happened a few times, the new belts seem to always have their "original" forms built into them. One would think that might mean the "Pre-Arms" actually form based on the user somehow (especially since the "face" on the belts only appear after transformation, implying they hadn't been set up with that form until that person transformed), yet other times they act as though they were programmed with that form.
- Musou Saber - Why is it only some characters have this and not others? Obviously only the main "Japanese" Riders seem to have it, but it seems odd that only a few Riders have an extra "built in" weapon but others don't. Now, admittedly, Takatora maybe having a special Driver made for him that includes this weapon would make sense, but that doesn't explain why Gaim has one. I would say that maybe they should have tried to come up with alternatives for all of the Riders depending on their "origin," but that might not have been possible. Separating the Riders like this when they should be on equal footing at this point seems a bit odd to me all the same though.
- Not taking advantage of the mechanic - This one is admittedly somewhat minor, and it's not a huge thing, but I do feel as though they've stuck a bit too rigidly to the idea that "X Lock Seed is X Person's" for the most part. For example, Kaito could have realistically picked an Orange, Kiwi, Durian, or any number of things when he was hoarding seeds the way he was, yet somehow he only ever had Banana and Mango to use. While it is absolutely fantastic that we finally have more than two Riders again, I think it would have been nice to see more swapping of Arms in the main series going on.
- Genesis Driver - Speaking of the mechanics, the Genesis Driver has always been strange to me in many respects. We go from a great idea to... this. No, I don't mean the "soda" part, but in that we go from everyone having fun and unique weapons to most of the active Riders (as Kouta eventually gets the equivalent of the Genesis Driver) having not only the same weapon, but the same boring weapon. I think a better way to handle this might have been to make the Sonic Arrow the Energy Riders' equivalent of the Musou Saber, and then give them all their own unique weapon beyond that that could maybe combine with the thing or something.
--- Genesis Core - For some reason, only one of these exists. For some reason, it makes new forms that conveniently look just like Gaim's Arms do. Is it because of the Orange? What would happen if Baron had used it? Why did Gaim only ever use it with Orange? They opened up a whole new world of Arms with this item, then did the bare minimum with it... and still stuck with that blasted Sonic Arrow for the weapon! Yet why? Gaim still had another Lock Seed in the mix, didn't he?
--- What are the fruits? Where did they come from? - Early on, it's implied the Energy Lock Seeds are, as I recall, creations of Ryoma - meaning they wouldn't be able to be found in the forest, as they were products of his science. However, when Gaim uses Kiwami Arms, these fruits are still called to him for some reason, implying that they are "natural" too, which doesn't make sense.
--- General Inconsistency - Let's look at some of the first Energy Riders. We had the initial four, all of whom had a new kind of Pre-Arms and a brand new type of Arms on top of that. Zangetsu even got a new Pre-Arms altogether. Gaim, just be using an Energy Lock Seed, gets his Pre-Arms altered and through mixing the two, gets a new Arms as well. On the other hand, Baron's Energy Arms, despite using an Energy Belt, uses his original Pre-Arms, and Shin Kurokage is the same damn suit every other Kurokage is.
All in all, I think it's been a bit messy. While I really do love the mechanic and think Gaim's designs, fruit and all, are fantastic, they really just dropped the ball in some respects here, and it was done a little too much for me. Maybe those things are minor for some of you guys, but that's the kind of thing I like, so yeah.
3.) Speaking of missed opportunities, while I love that we finally had a large cast of Riders again, a good deal of them just weren't used to the fullest. Oren, for example, has this huge gap between his first few introductory episodes (I have to blame the Energy Riders coming so soon after it) and the ones of the past few weeks in which this fairly threatening adult character is essentially reduced to a role not unlike Team Rocket. His and later Jounouchi's role as "annoyance" and "comic relief" got dragged out for too long - and I actually have no problem with comic relief or, for the most part, Gaim's use of it in general. It's with these characters, who were reduced to nothing but comic relief, that I have to feel aggravated, because they had so much potential - Oren in particular, which we've seen a whole lot of in these past few episodes. He's taken on Malika despite supposedly being outclassed, fought off Inves swarms, and even built a bomb. Imagine if they had taken more advantage of that (while still keeping him as affably fabulous as ever) earlier on?
Though I will say that I think his "crush" on Zangetsu was something we couldn't avoid - I almost have to wonder if one of the reason Oren even exists at all was to eventually be the one to point out that Zangetsu was being impersonated when he did, since literally no one else had really paid any attention to him. That's another story though.
Then, as I've brought up in the episode 45 thread, there's Minato. She is probably the biggest disappointment. Not because she died, because everyone is dying pretty much, but because of everything she did to that point. The other three energy Riders, even Zangetsu (who I will get to in a moment), all served fairly worthwhile purposes. Malika... didn't. She was just there and her big motive was literally just to serve the strongest and most charismatic guy left standing. At least Sid was the Lock Seed dealer and an antagonist, Ryouma was the brains behind so much, and Takatora had his role (which I am about to elaborate on).
In fact, I think one thing Gaim actually did that was pretty interesting was using a lot of its Riders as characters and focusing on that rather than focusing on them as Riders, and this is especially true for the three other Energy Riders, in my opinion. Even with their limited appearances as Sigurd and Duke, Sid and Ryouma made undeniable impacts on the story. Takatora may not have been the most important Rider outside of his few menacing appearances (at least when Takatora was behind the wheels), but Takatora the human was definitely a strong presence in the story, especially early on. Even now, as a hallucination, the character is/was still playing a role. Perhaps that's not the kind of thing a lot of people like seeing since it means the suit "assigned" to him is going to waste (in a way, I agree), but I actually think that's pretty interesting.
... On the other hand, returning to my point, Minato has nothing like that going for her. If she had been cut out of the story completely, other than in some fight scenes, very little would change. On the other hand, with the exception of maybe Jounouchi (though he at least still had some importance in the early part of the story), you really can't just erase any of the other characters without needing to change some things to compensate for that. Malika really added nothing, and that's a shame, because she had a whole lot of potential.
4.) Kouta not having had a monster suit for the past however many episodes.
They could still use Kiwami in the same way Eiji switched between his Greeed form and PuToTyra for a while, but c'mon guys.
5.) It had too many episodes shoved in that didn't matter. I'll give the ToQ/Gaim crossover a pass because it was awesome and I'm hoping we see crossovers like that every year from now on, but then you had Kikaider taking up a week, an episode for the movie that didn't really add anything, and so on. The show will still probably be tight even with having "lost" those episodes, but still.
Despite this wall of text, I'd still give the show an 8.5/10. Maybe even a 9/10 if the ending is good enough. It's not perfect and there were times when I was incredibly frustrated with it, but it's definitely the best thing Toei's done with the franchise in a long time (like pre-Kiva "long" time, at the very least), in my humble opinion.
1.) It raises things to be big plot points when it needs them to be big issues, then drops them as soon as they're not relevant to the next story arc. This happened a lot throughout the Yggdrasil arc in which, as soon as one of their big conspiracies was foiled... the reasons behind it just stopped getting brought up. As soon as Yggdrasil no longer had a way to nuke the city to stop the secret of Helheim from getting out, they stopped caring. Look at the most recent episode: Helheim's fruit is all over the place and no one cares. One of the central conflicts of the show (Kouta unknowingly killing a friend) was set off because people without Drivers supposedly cannot control the urge to eat these things. But since that's no longer relevant to the plot, instead we're going to ignore that and focus on how it's from another world and Kouta is turning into a monster and so the only thing he can enjoy eating anymore is that.
2.) The technology really doesn't make sense when you look at it as a whole and, to that end, I feel they missed a lot of opportunities it gave or mishandled what they had with it. In fact, I really think it dropped the ball in regards to the technology, and I've even had a post written up about it that I've gone back and forth on posting for weeks now. Here's some examples of what I would've brought up in that post (that are basically copied from that document!):
- The Kurokage Troopers - The first instance that I felt the show dropped the ball was with these guys. I get that we lost the character who used this suit and they wanted to keep the design around, but at the same time, I feel like there was some wasted potential here. They could have given us a new design for grunt (or "trooper") characters, and losing the Kurokage suit completely would have given the actual Kurokage's death that much more impact. Also, why give your grunts that Lock Seed/"design" over any other one? From an observational standpoint, designing your grunt suits after the Rider that died first, or one of the Riders that wasn't doing particularly well if they were designed prior to that death, doesn't really make much sense.
- Belt inconsistency - It was around this point that I started wondering just what was up with the belts. I don't think they ever really went into detail as far as how they actually worked. Are they preprogrammed before being given to different people with the "Pre-Arms"? For instance, if Kaito had gotten that belt from Yuuya somehow, would he have had the "Gaim" Pre-Arms? When characters get new belts, as has happened a few times, the new belts seem to always have their "original" forms built into them. One would think that might mean the "Pre-Arms" actually form based on the user somehow (especially since the "face" on the belts only appear after transformation, implying they hadn't been set up with that form until that person transformed), yet other times they act as though they were programmed with that form.
- Musou Saber - Why is it only some characters have this and not others? Obviously only the main "Japanese" Riders seem to have it, but it seems odd that only a few Riders have an extra "built in" weapon but others don't. Now, admittedly, Takatora maybe having a special Driver made for him that includes this weapon would make sense, but that doesn't explain why Gaim has one. I would say that maybe they should have tried to come up with alternatives for all of the Riders depending on their "origin," but that might not have been possible. Separating the Riders like this when they should be on equal footing at this point seems a bit odd to me all the same though.
- Not taking advantage of the mechanic - This one is admittedly somewhat minor, and it's not a huge thing, but I do feel as though they've stuck a bit too rigidly to the idea that "X Lock Seed is X Person's" for the most part. For example, Kaito could have realistically picked an Orange, Kiwi, Durian, or any number of things when he was hoarding seeds the way he was, yet somehow he only ever had Banana and Mango to use. While it is absolutely fantastic that we finally have more than two Riders again, I think it would have been nice to see more swapping of Arms in the main series going on.
- Genesis Driver - Speaking of the mechanics, the Genesis Driver has always been strange to me in many respects. We go from a great idea to... this. No, I don't mean the "soda" part, but in that we go from everyone having fun and unique weapons to most of the active Riders (as Kouta eventually gets the equivalent of the Genesis Driver) having not only the same weapon, but the same boring weapon. I think a better way to handle this might have been to make the Sonic Arrow the Energy Riders' equivalent of the Musou Saber, and then give them all their own unique weapon beyond that that could maybe combine with the thing or something.
--- Genesis Core - For some reason, only one of these exists. For some reason, it makes new forms that conveniently look just like Gaim's Arms do. Is it because of the Orange? What would happen if Baron had used it? Why did Gaim only ever use it with Orange? They opened up a whole new world of Arms with this item, then did the bare minimum with it... and still stuck with that blasted Sonic Arrow for the weapon! Yet why? Gaim still had another Lock Seed in the mix, didn't he?
--- What are the fruits? Where did they come from? - Early on, it's implied the Energy Lock Seeds are, as I recall, creations of Ryoma - meaning they wouldn't be able to be found in the forest, as they were products of his science. However, when Gaim uses Kiwami Arms, these fruits are still called to him for some reason, implying that they are "natural" too, which doesn't make sense.
--- General Inconsistency - Let's look at some of the first Energy Riders. We had the initial four, all of whom had a new kind of Pre-Arms and a brand new type of Arms on top of that. Zangetsu even got a new Pre-Arms altogether. Gaim, just be using an Energy Lock Seed, gets his Pre-Arms altered and through mixing the two, gets a new Arms as well. On the other hand, Baron's Energy Arms, despite using an Energy Belt, uses his original Pre-Arms, and Shin Kurokage is the same damn suit every other Kurokage is.
All in all, I think it's been a bit messy. While I really do love the mechanic and think Gaim's designs, fruit and all, are fantastic, they really just dropped the ball in some respects here, and it was done a little too much for me. Maybe those things are minor for some of you guys, but that's the kind of thing I like, so yeah.
3.) Speaking of missed opportunities, while I love that we finally had a large cast of Riders again, a good deal of them just weren't used to the fullest. Oren, for example, has this huge gap between his first few introductory episodes (I have to blame the Energy Riders coming so soon after it) and the ones of the past few weeks in which this fairly threatening adult character is essentially reduced to a role not unlike Team Rocket. His and later Jounouchi's role as "annoyance" and "comic relief" got dragged out for too long - and I actually have no problem with comic relief or, for the most part, Gaim's use of it in general. It's with these characters, who were reduced to nothing but comic relief, that I have to feel aggravated, because they had so much potential - Oren in particular, which we've seen a whole lot of in these past few episodes. He's taken on Malika despite supposedly being outclassed, fought off Inves swarms, and even built a bomb. Imagine if they had taken more advantage of that (while still keeping him as affably fabulous as ever) earlier on?
Though I will say that I think his "crush" on Zangetsu was something we couldn't avoid - I almost have to wonder if one of the reason Oren even exists at all was to eventually be the one to point out that Zangetsu was being impersonated when he did, since literally no one else had really paid any attention to him. That's another story though.
Then, as I've brought up in the episode 45 thread, there's Minato. She is probably the biggest disappointment. Not because she died, because everyone is dying pretty much, but because of everything she did to that point. The other three energy Riders, even Zangetsu (who I will get to in a moment), all served fairly worthwhile purposes. Malika... didn't. She was just there and her big motive was literally just to serve the strongest and most charismatic guy left standing. At least Sid was the Lock Seed dealer and an antagonist, Ryouma was the brains behind so much, and Takatora had his role (which I am about to elaborate on).
In fact, I think one thing Gaim actually did that was pretty interesting was using a lot of its Riders as characters and focusing on that rather than focusing on them as Riders, and this is especially true for the three other Energy Riders, in my opinion. Even with their limited appearances as Sigurd and Duke, Sid and Ryouma made undeniable impacts on the story. Takatora may not have been the most important Rider outside of his few menacing appearances (at least when Takatora was behind the wheels), but Takatora the human was definitely a strong presence in the story, especially early on. Even now, as a hallucination, the character is/was still playing a role. Perhaps that's not the kind of thing a lot of people like seeing since it means the suit "assigned" to him is going to waste (in a way, I agree), but I actually think that's pretty interesting.
... On the other hand, returning to my point, Minato has nothing like that going for her. If she had been cut out of the story completely, other than in some fight scenes, very little would change. On the other hand, with the exception of maybe Jounouchi (though he at least still had some importance in the early part of the story), you really can't just erase any of the other characters without needing to change some things to compensate for that. Malika really added nothing, and that's a shame, because she had a whole lot of potential.
4.) Kouta not having had a monster suit for the past however many episodes.
They could still use Kiwami in the same way Eiji switched between his Greeed form and PuToTyra for a while, but c'mon guys. 5.) It had too many episodes shoved in that didn't matter. I'll give the ToQ/Gaim crossover a pass because it was awesome and I'm hoping we see crossovers like that every year from now on, but then you had Kikaider taking up a week, an episode for the movie that didn't really add anything, and so on. The show will still probably be tight even with having "lost" those episodes, but still.
Despite this wall of text, I'd still give the show an 8.5/10. Maybe even a 9/10 if the ending is good enough. It's not perfect and there were times when I was incredibly frustrated with it, but it's definitely the best thing Toei's done with the franchise in a long time (like pre-Kiva "long" time, at the very least), in my humble opinion.
