What does the fanbase in general think of Kamen Rider Blade?

goldlantern said:

I think he meant "Gemini". Close enough, right? But in the move's defense, it makes the Rider kick a shellgame. Guess which direction the pain's coming from!

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Close enough indeed. I'm bad with names. You might have noticed I called the cast "Garren", "the comic relief character", and "the chick".

Black Fang said:

Decade was when I thought Rider should give up the card motif. You did it twice. Move on.

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Yeah, especially considering they did it three times.


As for the racism, well, if you think that racists don't believe they hate what they do for perfectly good reasons...the world has some harsh lessons.

Kotaro (Is that his name? I still don't know) was really viciously racist against Hajime even as he watched him be selfless and heroic over and over again. And considering how many times he had helped out Kotaro's family in particular, it's all the more unappealing. His treatment of Hajime around his sister was like watching an old southern grandpa's reaction to hearing his daughter was dating a "darky".

Glamador said:

As for the racism, well, if you think that racists don't believe they hate what they do for perfectly good reasons...the world has some harsh lessons.

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In all fairness, Hajime doesn't exactly make it easy for people to like him. If you want people to treat you fairly, don't be a jerk to them for no reason, like he was in the early episodes. In fact the only person he was nice to was Amane, and that brat was the least deserving of any warm feelings. No wonder she grew up to be a moon-worshiping witch. >>

Glamador said:

His treatment of Hajime around his sister was like watching an old southern grandpa's reaction to hearing his daughter was dating a "darky".

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Well that's a cliched stereotypical example if I ever heard one. And one I never came close to imagining when I watched the show.

In fact, given the whole nature of the Kamen Rider 'character', why exactly would you be complaining so much about this one instance among many in the franchise of the unappreciated hero?

Nobody said hangups had to be rational. This thread is polling people for their feelings about Blade. One of my feelings is that the supposed lighthearted character made me really uncomfortable with his racism.

It's not that a hero is being underappreciated, it's that a guy is being disturbingly racist. It puts me off.

He... wasn't really "racist." At all, in fact. The guy was a legitimately different species, one that had the ultimate end goal of wiping out all other species on the planet so they could win their game and so theirs could rule. While Hajime himself may not have been of that mindset, it's not exactly racism if he's just the exception to the rule - and the guy did get over the issues he had with Hajime eventually.

It's not like "if every [adjective] person you've ever met is like this, that doesn't mean they all are" situation - they all WERE that thing, that thing being, in this case, monsters bent on ruling over all other species. It was in Hajime's blood and that's why the ending was what it was. He would have had to fight until the end had Kenzaki not done what he had, because despite his feelings, it was still who and what he was. Kotaro's (was that his name?) wariness was perfectly understandable and it was really just self-preservation - a form of survival, which was one of the show's running themes.

If Hajime had been, say, like Kenzaki the whole time, it would have been one thing, but keep in mind he didn't exactly act nice about even his unquestionably good actions. It makes it easy for someone who doubts to question his motives, especially when family is concerned, when Hajime was only ever nice to the little kid and was otherwise, for the most part, pretty standoffish and even antagonistic at times.

Chipping in my two cents on the matter, when I first finished Kamen Rider Blade I immediately brought the first episode up and watched the whole series all over again, that's how much I loved it. Was the pacing in the early parts of the show off? Oh you better believe it, though I see people say the pacing was slow and I simply do not understand, the problem wasn't that nothing was happening, the problem was that everything was happening all at once and nothing would settle down and be given the chance to breathe so the audience could process what was going on and figure out what it meant. But after that, and aside from the for me painfully unfunny two-parter with Hajime's identical double, the series was gold for me, and the ending was simply one of the best I've ever seen in anything ever.

And the episode where Kenzaki gains his King Form is one of the greatest displays of what it means to be a Kamen Rider in the entire franchise.

It's interesting to see how many comments agree with me, but how few votes do.

Well I didn't really like Blade, maybe even more than Decade. Most of the actors in the series were bad, the characters themselves weren't that much better either, especially the secondary characters, I kind of started liking some of the characters in the middle and end of the series, but for the most part the series was kind of a pain to sit through.

The cinematography, was also something I didn't really like in this series, it was just plain bad. For example the camera angles would change back and forth during fights in very bad way, like the people holding the cameras didn't know what the hell they were doing, not that the shows that came before it were perfect in that department, but at least they had a certain quality. Also the fights in Blade weren't that well executed

Next I found this series very boring, which is why it was a pain to sit through most of the time, it starts becoming more interesting in later episodes, but not enough for me to call it a good series, I really just like certain episodes towards the end and the ost and opening were good, I can at least give this series that.

The characters I liked were: Hajime(a bit), Tachibana(when he's useful to the plot) and the main character(just a bit).

I also liked the whole Hajime joker story and find the whole Leangle story semi interesting.