Cegarth
This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:
-Really likeable cast of characters overall, both in the hero and villain side.
-Really great action throughout the whole show.
-The fast pacing makes every episode feel important. It never feels like there's a filler episode or an episode that feels like a waste. Manages to properly develop the cast and expand the world in spite of said fast pacing.
-Cool world-building.
-Consistently great mysteries and reveals, almost every episode leaves you wanting more and see what happens next.
-Good story overall.
-Really unique soundtrack that stands out from other tokusatsu.
-Entertaining monsters of the week in the first quarter.
Everything the show did bad:
-The secondary rider Hiiro is pretty unlikeable from episodes 34 to 38 (and arguably ruins his character) and is the only time in the show where there's a considerable drop in writing quality, but even then it's really just the Hiiro stuff that's bad during this period, everything else is still great.
-Nico can feel like "too much of a brat" at times.
-Due to the show's fast pacing there's barely any downtime for the characters to interact and have slice of life moments.
-Taiga's backstory isn't properly shown and it's left to a Blu-ray spin-off which cheapens some of the emotional weight of his scenes.
-Despite Poppy being a really likeable character overall and arguably one of the best main girls in the franchise, she sucks as a rider as the show barely gives any reason for her to not transform. Her not transforming feels especially weird since she's canonically one of the strongest riders in the show for a while.
-The show revives too many characters to take the stakes seriously and this can make the writing feel cheap. However it's not that bad of an issue since the revived character actually serve a purpose in the show and doesn't feel like they're reviving them for the sake of it, these characters manage to be properly developed after their revival. So it's a more a divisive aspect rather than a straight up problem.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main producer Omori wanted to have video games as a main motif for Kamen Rider since Drive but was rejected back then. However this time he was able to convince Toei that the video game motif would do well due to the popularity of Yokai Watch at the time with children. In order to bring more realistic stakes he came up with the idea of the show having a medical motif too, due to the irony that the portrayal of life in video games was the exact opposite of a medical setting which would make for an interesting story.
Main writer Yuya Takahashi excels at making fast-paced stories and Omori created a perfect constantly changing setting to exploit his writing style as much as possible. Both of them and main director Shojiro Nakazawa were inspired by wrestling and thought making the riders lose and seem pathetic initially in order to build them up getting stronger and becoming more likeable.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Main writer Takahashi didn't know on what direction to Take Hiiro's character which led to his actions in the final arc.
Both Omori and Takahashi wanted to write the specials and movies in away that coordinated with their release so that they could relate them to the episodes of the show, and also to improve the pacing of the show. But due to this stuff like Taiga's backstory ended up being relegated to the Blu-ray special.
The popularity of certain characters led to their revivals, however these were at least made with enough anticipation that these characters were written with enough purpose.
Overall:
This show's is a great time overall but whether you love the show or not will hugely depend on how lenient you are on character revivals and how much you enjoy the cast. I still would recommend this show to any Kamen Rider fan or if you're into modern shounen anime/manga.
-Really likeable cast of characters overall, both in the hero and villain side.
-Really great action throughout the whole show.
-The fast pacing makes every episode feel important. It never feels like there's a filler episode or an episode that feels like a waste. Manages to properly develop the cast and expand the world in spite of said fast pacing.
-Cool world-building.
-Consistently great mysteries and reveals, almost every episode leaves you wanting more and see what happens next.
-Good story overall.
-Really unique soundtrack that stands out from other tokusatsu.
-Entertaining monsters of the week in the first quarter.
Everything the show did bad:
-The secondary rider Hiiro is pretty unlikeable from episodes 34 to 38 (and arguably ruins his character) and is the only time in the show where there's a considerable drop in writing quality, but even then it's really just the Hiiro stuff that's bad during this period, everything else is still great.
-Nico can feel like "too much of a brat" at times.
-Due to the show's fast pacing there's barely any downtime for the characters to interact and have slice of life moments.
-Taiga's backstory isn't properly shown and it's left to a Blu-ray spin-off which cheapens some of the emotional weight of his scenes.
-Despite Poppy being a really likeable character overall and arguably one of the best main girls in the franchise, she sucks as a rider as the show barely gives any reason for her to not transform. Her not transforming feels especially weird since she's canonically one of the strongest riders in the show for a while.
-The show revives too many characters to take the stakes seriously and this can make the writing feel cheap. However it's not that bad of an issue since the revived character actually serve a purpose in the show and doesn't feel like they're reviving them for the sake of it, these characters manage to be properly developed after their revival. So it's a more a divisive aspect rather than a straight up problem.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main producer Omori wanted to have video games as a main motif for Kamen Rider since Drive but was rejected back then. However this time he was able to convince Toei that the video game motif would do well due to the popularity of Yokai Watch at the time with children. In order to bring more realistic stakes he came up with the idea of the show having a medical motif too, due to the irony that the portrayal of life in video games was the exact opposite of a medical setting which would make for an interesting story.
Main writer Yuya Takahashi excels at making fast-paced stories and Omori created a perfect constantly changing setting to exploit his writing style as much as possible. Both of them and main director Shojiro Nakazawa were inspired by wrestling and thought making the riders lose and seem pathetic initially in order to build them up getting stronger and becoming more likeable.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Main writer Takahashi didn't know on what direction to Take Hiiro's character which led to his actions in the final arc.
Both Omori and Takahashi wanted to write the specials and movies in away that coordinated with their release so that they could relate them to the episodes of the show, and also to improve the pacing of the show. But due to this stuff like Taiga's backstory ended up being relegated to the Blu-ray special.
The popularity of certain characters led to their revivals, however these were at least made with enough anticipation that these characters were written with enough purpose.
Overall:
This show's is a great time overall but whether you love the show or not will hugely depend on how lenient you are on character revivals and how much you enjoy the cast. I still would recommend this show to any Kamen Rider fan or if you're into modern shounen anime/manga.
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