Wizard Opinions Thus Far?

[xSHiNOx]

white wizard hasn't done jack **** other than teleportation and explosions. i wouldn't even count him as a 3rd rider. i think of him as Alternative from ryuki

 

[Lynxara]

Yes ryusei’s arc did end, badly but it did end. Ryusei’s actions made to very unlikable, from killing gen for no apparent reason on then impatience, to his random psychotic moments.

Random psychotic...? So what you're saying here is that you didn't pay attention to the storyline, right? And just saw bits and pieces of it? Because that is one hell of a nonsense conclusion to derive from the story in total.

Was the second arc cancer?

No, Cancer was part of the show's second arc. I will refer to it as the Meteor arc, because generally, things done by Meteor move the story beats of that arc along, even when he's not the main character. Even Cancer in that part of the show is only relevant insofar as he has an impact on Meteor's behavior.

I'm thinking of the show's first 14 episodes, which are essentially a story arc detailing the creation of the Kamen Rider Club. The arc culminates in the episodes with Kengo stuck in the Rabbit Hutch on the moon, as those are the episodes where the KRC demonstrates its value to him, and where Kengo finally accepts Gentaro's friendship.

And you know this how? Like I said we still have 16-17 episodes left. Kinda early to make those assumptions isn’t it?

Call it an educated guess. This week Wizard inexplicably added a third writer to its staff rotation, and not a particularly good one (friggin' Daisuke Ishibashi). The next month's worth of credits are revealed, and while we do get a story arc by head writer Tsuyoshi Kida, probably focusing on Gremlin, after that, we get another two-parter by Ishibashi.

It is really unusual and frankly a bad sign for Wizard to be adding a third writer at this stage of the game. Wizard as a series has been very consistent about only having plot points happen in arcs where either Kida is writing or co-writing. Up front, we know that at least three of the upcoming 16-17 episodes are going to be Ishibashi episodes where, chances are, nothing will happen. If Komura has any two-parters in the upcoming episode rotation, chances are nothing will happen in them.

Reasonably speaking, we can probably expect at most six to maybe ten of the upcoming episode arcs to be written by Kida, and therefore relevant to the plot. Given how slowly Kida paces his arcs, I don't see him resolving all of his outstanding plot threads in that amount of time. It's certainly possible, but I think chances are, it won't happen. Of course, being surprised in this regard would be quite pleasant.

So being honorable makes you stupid?

Let's back up a bit. Superhero fiction is an extremely stylized and artificial genre, relying on allegory, metaphor, and dream logic to convey meaning. Put simply, just about every character in most superhero fiction is behaving stupidly by ordinary real world standards. This even applies to really highbrow superhero fiction, like your Watchmen or V for Vendettas, which are full of people doing stuff that is, by real-world standards, utterly idiotic. Chances are your favorite villains, if you stopped to think about it, behave in similarly stupid ways.

The thing is, you don't judge the behavior of fictional characters by real world standards. They aren't people, they're constructs. Everything they do only matters insofar as it fits into the broader context of what the story is trying to accomplish. So, to me, all you're really saying here is that you don't grasp genre as an aspect of storytelling, and to some extent, don't accept the idea that storytelling has any goal that goes beyond simulation. That's not Fourze's problem, it is yours.

If that is the case then yes, stupid villains are not to my liking. Think this for a second, if he did not want to kill fourze because of your reasons, then why did he let the base get destroyed?

Because he was trying to kill Kengo at the time. Killing Kengo was absolutely consistent with his agenda at that part of the story. Anyone else he killed, at that point, probably would've been acceptable collateral damage.

Which still makes him an idiot since just got rid of the hidehout and the not his main problem, fourze.

Well, except Fourze isn't his main problem. Fourze is, in fact, not really a problem for him at all until the final episodes. Fourze does not, at any point until the very ending of the show, actually impede Gamou's operations. Gamou doesn't care about whether or not individual Switchers are beaten, he just wants to gather the Horoscope Switches.

If anything, Fourze's activities make that a bit easier for him to accomplish. By putting Zodiarts under stress, he makes it more likely that their Switches will evolve (as we see with Cancer). For most of the series, Fourze is mostly beneath Gamou's notice. And when Gamou does deign to notice Fourze, he treats him as an asset (if an expendable one). This only changes at the end of the show, when Fourze tries to prevent Gamou from blowing up the school so he can meet the Presenters.

Gamou is honorable in that he doesn't just kill Gentaro for the sake of killing anyone who opposes him or who is a "good guy". Gamou does not enjoy hurting other people for its own sake. He's not a cackling puppy-kicking villain, he's just a guy who wants to hang out with aliens really, really badly. Gamou kills Emoto for betraying him, sure, because Emoto actually was trying to stop him and stood some chance of doing so. Fourze? Well, the KRC doesn't even understand what Gamou's trying to do until the end of the show, so they're hardly in a position to stop it.

Also, how is letting kids fight your battles honorable?

Because these aren't really Gamou's battles. The only battle in the early parts of the show that is really Gamou's is when he needs to take down Emoto, and he does that himself quite efficiently. Remember, Gamou otherwise doesn't give a **** about anything a Zodiart does with their switch, until it evolves into a Horoscope Switch. If the Zodiart does or doesn't want to kill Fourze, that's immaterial to him.

Still, did they ever explain why they couldn’t use them for that purpose? They never said he couldn’t. Again, this is an example of bad plot, not explain how things work.

Actually, no, this is an example of good writing, in that a plot point was shown and not told. If the Switches were of any use to Gamou, then he would've gone after them, right? Or at least expressed some desire to get hold of them. Except he never does so. The intelligent viewer can conclude from Gamou's behavior that, therefore, they probably weren't useful to him. What you want the show to do, just stop to exposit every little thing, would make it worse in every conceivable fashion.

Though they did it again with the crew stuck at the m-bus, no explanation to what they are doing. Fell bad for people who liked them since they never got closure to what happened to them.

The M-Bus thing does border on being a pretty hilarious plot hole. We do know what happened to the folks up there, I believe Emoto says he rescued them off-camera before he died. So, technically it's not, it's just... it's kind of lame? On the other hand, those characters had clearly finished their parts in the story, so there'd be no actual upshot to letting us see them again. My feeling there is that the show easily could've, and maybe should've, just said those characters died. I can see why the creators wouldn't for tone reasons, but given that we already knew Emoto was a killer, I don't think it would've actually darkened things up that much.

How do you know no version would satisfy me?

Because you're acting outraged by the very idea of a villain like Gamou. You seem to be seriously mad that the bad guy wasn't trying to kill the hero constantly, just... uh, because, I guess? And Gamou's behavior is so key to what Fourze is saying as a story that I just can't see how anyone could possibly get it without getting Gamou.

You could maybe like something called Fourze that had completely different themes and a completely different villain still called Gamou, but was ultimately a completely different story. As for the story that Fourze actually was? That's probably the best that could be reasonably done with that type of story, and those sorts of storytelling goals. So if you didn't care for that show, chances are you'd just never care for that story, period.

And that doesn't make you a bad person or anything. Sometimes people just don't have any use for a particular type of story, due to personal taste or life experience. I think it's good to admit when that's the case, or otherwise you end up in a situation where you're beating your head against a wall, howling for fiction to be something it never wanted to be and certainly wasn't trying to be.

I did really want to like fourze.

So? That doesn't mean you'd have any use for the narrative. I want to like everything I watch, but sometimes a story rubs me the wrong way, or I don't agree with its priorities. That's not the end of the world, it's just a sign of when I need to move on.

Wizard is not perfect by any means, but fourze is not even sub-par.

What does that even mean? Sub-par in what way? You've criticized the plot, but you've also proven that you didn't really pay attention to it or think about it. So what was sub-par about it? Okay, you didn't like the characters, but that's clearly a matter of personal taste. Surely you'd concede that makes no sense as an objective criticism.

So what else is left? Did you think the dialogue was bad, the pacing poor? Did you dislike the themes? Did you have a problem with the show's themes or tone? Can you prove the show failed at any goal it set for itself, or do you think the show just aimed too low? What is Wizard doing better that Fourze was also trying to do?

Also, the whole thing with he Presenters felt all M. Night-ish to me.

Yes, not Kubrick. Not at all...

Also, Wizard has talent too, you know. The creator of Gokaiger and the creator of the first half of hibiki did this write it. Talent isn't fact, it's an opinion.

Utsunomiya did not create Gokaiger, he produced it. A lot of the basic concepts were clearly handed down by Bandai/Toei, and a lot of the characters very obviously developed in conjunction with the show's head writer, Naruhisa Arakawa. But honestly, why try to argue Utsunomiya has talent based on Gokaiger? Why not go for Shinkenger, which was a far more significant series?

Tsuyoshi Kida was so not the creator of the first half of Hibiki. That "honor" goes to Shigenori Takatera and Shinji Ooishi. Kida was, at the time, a fill-in writer who either co-wrote with Ooishi, or did a handful of story arcs himself. He was the equivalent to Komura or Ishibashi on Wizard, an assistant to the head writer. Kida has gone on record as stating that he disliked working with Takatera, anyway, because Takatera didn't want to work with his ideas. So it's very doubtful that Hibiki's first half reflects anything significant about Kida's creativity at all.

TL;DR Fourze was no better than wizard, and I can easily imagine a "better" version of it. Also, Wizard has talent too, just talent that some people dislike, just like some people disliked Fourze's talent.

Man, I'm sorry, but "guy who wrote Gurren-Lagann" is very obviously in a whole different creative league than "guy who wrote Den-O stage shows because he sucked up to Shirakura after the Hibiki Screwjob." There are more ideas and creativity in the average Fourze two-parter than there have been in Wizard's whole story arcs. Yeah, Fourze's not perfect, but on the other hand, it was at least a show where you might see something new. Wizard is not just dealing entirely with threadbare hand-me-down ideas, it's usually handling them more poorly than whoever had them last.

For instance, Gentaro is corny as all hell.

If you honestly think this, then by definition, you have a problem with Fourze's basic concepts. Fourze was pretty clearly setting out to be camp and corny from day one.

Other stories have done the "I want everyone to like me" character and pulled it off way better.

Or... they were using it to tell a completely different type of story, and it was a type of story that you liked better.

The suit design is another problem. People can argue with me about plot all day--Wizard's suit design is in a completely different stratosphere than Fourze's.

I dunno. Fourze's design is pretty creative and makes a lot of sense given its story concept. Wizard's is... well, it's more evidence that Utsunomiya has a massive boner for heroes in long coats. The main positive thing about Wizard's costume is that it represents a big step forward in certain details of materials engineering. They can now make the long coat flow more convincingly, and the jewel-cut pieces are extremely convincing (except for Infinity Style, which honestly to me just kinda looks like shitty Changerion). So... yeah, now Utsunomiya can do the one thing he always does more convincingly. Hooray!

Maybe plot (or character, since the only characters I really like are the ones from the first two episodes) isn't Wizard's strong point--but everything else is.

Exactly how much is left in a show like this when you excise plot and character? There's setting, which Wizard hasn't bothered to develop at all; theme, but Wizard's are all pointedly generic; and tone, which in Wizard is hugely inconsistent. Given the medium, there's also the fight scenes, I guess? I'll give you that Wizard has pretty good fight scenes. I can't think of anything else about the show I'd praise, except maybe some of the casting choices. The guy who plays Haruto is seriously wasted on some of the material he's being given.

 

[Ice Ixa]

white wizard hasn't done jack **** other than teleportation and explosions. i wouldn't even count him as a 3rd rider. i think of him as Alternative from ryuki

I've read (here or Rangerboard) that on the official site that he's not even called a "Kamen Rider", but being unable to understand Japanese, I have no idea if that's true or not.

 

[BoukenSilver83]

white wizard hasn't done jack **** other than teleportation and explosions. i wouldn't even count him as a 3rd rider. i think of him as Alternative from ryuki

you dont think mayu will be the white wizard?

 

[xSHiNOx]

she could be the apprentice of the white wizard but i wouldn't say she is the white wizard (you know them time travel stuff as in white wizard has always been mayu all along. it was her that went into the past to get her past self to become the white wizard or some BS like that)

 

[FreedomR8G6B1]

Hmmm...

Haruto / Wizard - Gives me a bit of a Hibiki / Kabuto Vibe. Uber powerful, in a Kabuto sort of way; while not fighting, he's laid back as Hibiki, yet always aware. I agree with Keith, the suit is a bit too "alright".

Kosuke / Beast - Michael Nixon mentioned it already, he's Date without the good parts. Not saying he's bad, but at the same time he's not Kagami / Gatack either. What made Date / Birth appealing is that, although Birth and OOO were "rivals" with different goals, they did their best to get along and eventually did. There was no "Bitchass Masato" moments, Kosuke had his goals but didn't mind helping Wizard. The thing that probably made Beast rub people the wrong way is that they made him a bit too cheerful, in a ShinkenGold/GokaiSilver sort of way. Its just not working for him. Perhaps, putting a time limit on his life, if he lost the belt would make it a bit for dramatic either his Phantom is eating him within or something like that.

Shunpei - ...hmmm...HE'S MAKING THE KEITARO THE LAUNDRY GUY FROM FAIZ AND KOTARO THE MILK GUY FROM BLADE LOOK UBER AWESOME!!! AT LEAST THEY DID SOMETHING...DO SOMETHING!!!!:shakefist

Rinko - She reminds me of the Officer Yashiro from Decade's Kuuga and Agito with the personalities merged together. After goofing off the first few episodes, she's starting to get into that persona. While not Ichijou or the SAUL Team, she has potential of being another good cop sidekick to the rider.

Wiseman, Medusa, and the Phantoms - They're okay villains but compared to the ones from the last few seasons. I'm just not feeling it from them at the moment. I wish they kept Pheonix a bit longer, but Gremlin seems he's might betray Wiseman. I get that Sandaru, from Hurricanger, vibe from him.

White Mage - I'm getting deja vu...or should I say a "Tachibana" moment again.

Mayu - I really hope she doesn't kill Medusa, then again you never know. Or at least, she and her "sister" die together dramatically.

Doughnut Food Truck Crew - Ever since the show's debut, I got the impression he/she/it...was Haruto's Guardian Angel for some awkward reason, but that's just me. As for the shop's silent worker, you know how the Silent Ones could be. Not since the Fuuto Irregulars have I been intrigued.

Kizaki - I like the Section Zero Agent, I do hope that "Long" does reappear in the future. It's like No-Men, but makes more sense.

 

[Sage Shinigami]

If you honestly think this, then by definition, you have a problem with Fourze's basic concepts. Fourze was pretty clearly setting out to be camp and corny from day one.

I dunno. I get everybody else. And a lot of people would argue that a show that has "friendship" at its center is inherently camp/corny. It's specifically Gentaro, who grates the nerves. Shun is not only a stereotypical jock, he's a stereotypical *American* jock, and while I disliked him at first (because the story wanted that), the guy grew on me (same reason). Same with Miu, JK, and the rest--it's honestly just Gentaro who bugs me in a similar way that Shunpei does, only he has the agency that comes with being a main character so its not quite as bad.

Or... they were using it to tell a completely different type of story, and it was a type of story that you liked better.

Depends on what type of story you think it's telling. I'm at a disadvantage in that I didn't actually finish Fourze (got to about the same place we're at with Wizard now) so I can't concretely say where they went at the end, but from the opening episodes and the ones I saw afterwards, I'm thinking it was a story about friendship. I've seen characters in similar series that had similar themes and I'd say I liked their mains better.

I dunno. Fourze's design is pretty creative and makes a lot of sense given its story concept. Wizard's is... well, it's more evidence that Utsunomiya has a massive boner for heroes in long coats. The main positive thing about Wizard's costume is that it represents a big step forward in certain details of materials engineering. They can now make the long coat flow more convincingly, and the jewel-cut pieces are extremely convincing (except for Infinity Style, which honestly to me just kinda looks like shitty Changerion). So... yeah, now Utsunomiya can do the one thing he always does more convincingly. Hooray!

Really? What about Fourze's story concept necessitated things like drills on legs. Or, worse--using said drill for anything other than a finisher?

Exactly how much is left in a show like this when you excise plot and character? There's setting, which Wizard hasn't bothered to develop at all; theme, but Wizard's are all pointedly generic; and tone, which in Wizard is hugely inconsistent. Given the medium, there's also the fight scenes, I guess? I'll give you that Wizard has pretty good fight scenes. I can't think of anything else about the show I'd praise, except maybe some of the casting choices. The guy who plays Haruto is seriously wasted on some of the material he's being given.

Arguably what you're pointing out go more towards story than anything else. With the exception of All-Dragon and the "tassels" on Beast Hyper, I would say the suit design is pretty neat for both the monsters and Wizard himself. And, as mentioned, yes the fight scenes, which look a lot less clumsy than any thing involving non-Meteor Fourze.

 

[lazycoconut]

I've read (here or Rangerboard) that on the official site that he's not even called a "Kamen Rider", but being unable to understand Japanese, I have no idea if that's true or not.

Tackle and Riderman aren't called Kamen Riders either but are still considered part of the official complet. I guess whether or not White Wizard counts will just be one of those things that fans argue about forever, same as Sentai fans argue about whether X-1 Mask was the first "real" Sixth ...

 

[Hanamichi Rider]

The thing about Wizard is that it's different. If I speak a little more mature here and think seriously, its in no way great. Its not Kuuga, or W, or Blade, or any of the massive fan-supported favorites. It can actually be viewed as fairly bad compared to a lot of Rider series. It may not even be memorable. We could have another Kiva on our hands. It may be bad, but it at least tries new things, like with White Wizard, Mayu, etc. Do we all like these? Evidently not.

And if you look at another series, say Fourze, it does so much more with it's bright, happy characters and everything else that made people love it. It seems like the newer members like wizard more than Fourze, and the older veterans seem to prefer fourze. (at least on this thread) Hell, if you look at it from a certain viewpoint, it can be said that the majority dislikes Wizard entirely.

But do I like it more than Fourze? Heck, yeah.

Reasoning? It strikes me more. I care about the characters, and just because it wasnt written by some famous writer doesnt automatically make it worse than other series.

There's plenty of good and bad in Wizard, but it strikes a much better chord with me than Fourze did. (And I liked Fourze a lot)

Even if I'm the only one, I will remember and rewatch this series for years to come.

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

I believe Fourze was just seen as good fun while airing and when we then got the production notes after it ended the understanding changed.