ToQGAF 2014 | Hanamichi! The Next Stop Is Imagination's Stage!

Finally watching Kamen Rider Kabuto for the first time. 14 episodes in and I'm completely in love. I really enjoy Gaim, but this show really seems like what Gaim would like to be. A great use of multiple riders, a pretty damn consistent dark tone and some really great secret sinister organization plot. It's killing on almost every front. The only things I don't really dig 100% are Kabuto's character (his hilariously stoic nature doesn't work perfectly for me) and food shop girl (she's annoyingly depressive), but otherwise amazing. If it keeps this up the whole way, easily in my Top 3 for Rider shows.
 
Kabuto's main problem is an inconsistent tone, that starts around Drake's debut and just gets worse from there. Most people also seem to dislike the answers to the mysteries that you'll get later.
 
Edag Plata said:
I think when I first watched Kabuto, it was like, episode 30 on the dot where I was like "What the hell happened to this show?"
Click to expand...

Remember the
Red Shoes System
?

Yeah, neither did the writers.

Or better yet, remember when the writers never bothered to explain where the
Hopper Zecters
came from?

Kabuto started so good then fell apart so hard.
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Remember the
Red Shoes System
?

Yeah, neither did the writers.
Click to expand...

The
Red Shoes System is mentioned several times up to the final arc as proof that Riku betrayed Zect. It's not a dropped plot element at all. It just isn't activated more than once, which makes perfect sense. The thing takes more than 30 episodes to be activated once, why would it suddenly start being activated more often now that the protagonists know about it and would want to avoid triggering it again?

Or better yet, remember when the writers never bothered to explain where the
Hopper Zecters
came from?
Click to expand...

There's a scene where
Mishima accuses Riku of doing it behind their backs. Riku denies, but it's obvious Mishima is meant to be correct. That's confirmed outside of the show itself too. But, really, I don't get why people feel they needed some long exposition. The real problem with the Hoppers is that they basically do nothing relevant.
 
yami4ct said:
Finally watching Kamen Rider Kabuto for the first time. 14 episodes in and I'm completely in love. I really enjoy Gaim, but this show really seems like what Gaim would like to be. A great use of multiple riders, a pretty damn consistent dark tone and some really great secret sinister organization plot. It's killing on almost every front. The only things I don't really dig 100% are Kabuto's character (his hilariously stoic nature doesn't work perfectly for me) and food shop girl (she's annoyingly depressive), but otherwise amazing. If it keeps this up the whole way, easily in my Top 3 for Rider shows.
Click to expand...

The mishandling of all those elements so early made me drop the show. Want to finish it though, Kabuto and TheBee suits are amazing.

MHWilliams said:
Gaim is getting one last Rider: Kamen Rider Jam.

Portrayed by Gaku Sano's twin brother.
Click to expand...

I don't know what looks worse, the suit or seeing Not!Kazuraba with that hair side by side with Actual Kazutaba.
 
NeonZ said:
The
Red Shoes System is mentioned several times up to the final arc as proof that Riku betrayed Zect. It's not a dropped plot element at all. It just isn't activated more than once, which makes perfect sense. The thing takes more than 30 episodes to be activated once, why would it suddenly start being activated more often now that the protagonists know about it and would want to avoid triggering it again?



There's a scene where
Mishima accuses Riku of doing it behind their backs. Riku denies, but it's obvious Mishima is meant to be correct. That's confirmed outside of the show itself too. But, really, I don't get why people feel they needed some long exposition. The real problem with the Hoppers is that they basically do nothing relevant.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on that last point.
I think Kabuto explained most of the incidents in the show in the end, but I must admit that the brevity of the last third of the show left a bad taste in my mouth; lots of things just came to a halt once they served their main purpose. I really enjoyed the slower pace of the earlier episodes. But it was better for things to end the way they did than it would be to have a longer stretch of episodes crash into an even shorter climax.
 
Edag Plata said:
I think when I first watched Kabuto, it was like, episode 30 on the dot where I was like "What the hell happened to this show?"
Click to expand...

kabuto_zmizer.JPG
 
Seraphis Cain said:
Kabuto's equivalent of the Boron Booster.
Click to expand...

Sounds about right.

As for the series, I love Kabuto (it's the series that got me in KR in the first place), but there were some real plot issues...and it certainly didn't help that Hiyori's actress got sick, which lead to a major plot rewrite.

Speaking of the PS2 game, I finally decided to replay it via emulation (surprised I got it working stable), I forgot how fun it was albeit the A.I. being cheap at times and throws being overpowered.

I do wish that Hiro Mizushima would return to make an appearance, a cameo, or even voice a game at some point, but hey, guess being an author is better for him. I also wish that Yusuke Yamamoto (Tsurugi) would pop-up as well.
 
Kabuto want pretty disappointing overall if you expect payoff on the plot side of things. If you just go along for the ride, there are some great character moments, but by the end everybody's actions basically feel arbitrary to fit the plot. The Black Knife/White Knife two-parter is a thing of beauty, though.

Also, I am loving the Drive mercy and am going to have to find a way to diminish my hope to reasonable levels.
 
ReiGun said:
Teh best part was how they didn't even have a proper introduction for the Zect Mizer. They just used it once like they had it forever, then never spoke of it again.
Click to expand...

Huh? Kabuto is shown receiving it from Zect before using it for the first time.

It's the second time it's used that he just pops up with another one and then throws it away, but it was when he was working for Zect, so it's not that odd if he received a second one off screen.
 
When I went into Kabuto, I knew that after the halfway point, the show just shrivels up. It's a show that I enjoyed for the characters, and not the story.

...And yeah... Inoue (or was it Shoji Yonemura?) can't be bothered to write about toys to save his life.
 
NeonZ said:
Huh? Kabuto is shown receiving it from Zect before using it for the first time.

It's the second time it's used that he just pops up with another one and then throws it away, but it was when he was working for Zect, so it's not that odd if he received a second one off screen.
Click to expand...

I...completely forgot this happened. I just remembered him suddenly having it and me being all "the fuck is that thing?"
 
ToQger 26 one-word impressions:

Meh.

I think in 3 or so months when the next Sentai is revealed and later broadcast, I'll have total amnesia regarding ToQger (that is, until the versus movie comes out).

Say what you will about Go-Busters, but like it or hate it, there were some genuinely good characters there. Not to mention, it had Enter who kept things interesting (and made some of the duller episodes easier to watch).
 
Up to Faiz 15 now. Man this series has some great characterization. Its not often I see so much attention placed on the enemies. The orphenoch blur the line between good and bad...its filled with broken people trying to find a purpose and struggling to decide whether they are the monsters or mankind is. They are all characters you can empathize with and even take the sides of. Hope to see more villains of this nature that ride the line and go back and forth blurring the role of what makes you a good guy or a villain in Drive.

Faiz is really kickass.
 
javadoze said:
...And yeah... Inoue (or was it Shoji Yonemura?) can't be bothered to write about toys to save his life.
Click to expand...

It's both. Inoue wrote quite a few Kabuto episodes (basically every episode where Drake's actor appears on screen, aside from a couple of early ones right after his introduction and the final one), but Yonemura was the main writer. Inoue completely disregards the toys, but Yonemura is just plain inconsistent. Stuff like the Perfect Zecter or the last battle power ups in his crossover movies often seem to pop up out of nowhere, but the Hyper Zecter had a big build up. Yonemura also was one of the few Decade writers that had Onodera often transforming into Kuuga. In Kiva and OOO, Yonemura also sometimes was thrown as a secondary writer for some toy introduction episodes (like Dogabaki in Kiva) and then Inoue proceeded to completely ignore them afterwards in Kiva.
 
shaowebb said:
Up to Faiz 15 now. Man this series has some great characterization. Its not often I see so much attention placed on the enemies. The orphenoch blur the line between good and bad...its filled with broken people trying to find a purpose and struggling to decide whether they are the monsters or mankind is. They are all characters you can empathize with and even take the sides of. Hope to see more villains of this nature that ride the line and go back and forth blurring the role of what makes you a good guy or a villain in Drive.

Faiz is really kickass.
Click to expand...

Enjoy, I too enjoyed Faiz. It's the first Heisei series I seriously watched from start to finish. Sometimes I even wished Kamen Rider to return to using 30fps "j-drama" steady camera of whatever it is called.

NeonZ said:
It's both. Inoue wrote quite a few Kabuto episodes (basically every episode where Drake's actor appears on screen, aside from a couple of early ones right after his introduction), but Yonemura was the main writer. Inoue completely disregards the toys, but Yonemura is just plain inconsistent.

Stuff like the Perfect Zecter or the last battle power ups in his crossover movies often seem to pop up out of nowhere, but the Hyper Zecter had a big build up. Yonemura also was one of the few Decade writers that had Onodera often transforming into Kuuga.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. The lack of Kuuga usage as a second Rider in Decade is a crime.
 
Also doesn't help in Kabuto that even though it was a multi-rider show, it barely helped the concept when the main character basically has a weapon that
steals away all of the zecters
.
 
javadoze said:
Also doesn't help in Kabuto that even though it was a multi-rider show, it barely helped the concept when the main character basically has a weapon that
steals away all of the zecters
.
Click to expand...

That happened in Kabuto because the Zecters of the secondary Riders weren't moving well, so they tried to make a new merchandising, focused on Kabuto, with repainted old parts. There's a reason we went almost a decade without series with a large number of Riders again after Kabuto.
 
Did the gadget toys (W's gadget animals, OOO's candroids, etc) sell well? Because we don't see them again in Drive. Gaim I understand they have a lot to sell already.
 
Super Megaforce 10

I think this episode had the most original footage of any Megaforce episode yet (maybe Neo Saban?), it even had an original story that wasn't directly taken from Gokaiger. Too bad it focused on freakin' Tensou. Seriously, what's the point of him? Oh right, Alpha 5 nostalgia... and to be like Datas. But no, Datas actually had a use.
I wonder how much of the season's budget was spent on Tensou's CGI. Maybe that's why it's the "most expensive Power Rangers season"

*sighs* Dairanger again. You know, Dairanger has had more appearances this season than MMPR (not counting White), In Space, Lightspeed Rescue, and Time Force. That is just awful.

I don't even think the Legend War will be good.

In fact, I went back and checked each Legendary Morph to see what's been used. This counts team morphs and individual ones. Plus, the show is half-way done and this is a representation of what's been seen.

"New Powers/Prism": 2
"New Powers/Blitz": 1
MMPR: 2
"New Powers/Squadron": 3
Alien Rangers: 1
Zeo: 2
Turbo: 0 (will probably change as next week adapts the Carranger tribute episode)
In Space: 1
Lost Galaxy: 2
Lightspeed Rescue: 0 (unknown if any will happen)
Time Force: 1
Wild Force: 4
Ninja Storm: 2
Dino Thunder: 3
SPD: 3
Mystic Force: 2
Operation Overdrive: 2
Jungle Fury: 3
RPM: 3
Samurai: 3
 
vareon said:
Did the gadget toys (W's gadget animals, OOO's candroids, etc) sell well? Because we don't see them again in Drive. Gaim I understand they have a lot to sell already.
Click to expand...

I know Double's toys sold like crazy as well as OOO, Fourze, and Wizard (slightly less or so, but still successful). I'm guessing the crazy amount of lockseeds plus the vehicles probably more than make up for it.

Yeah, I've heard multi-Rider shows' toylines (or at least Kabuto) don't tend to sell well mostly because everyone would buy the main and secondary rider toys and not care about anyone else. (Then again, since Gaim has one to two standard drivers for everyone, I don't know if this would apply to that as well.)
 
I wonder if kids who bought Micchy-related toys, for a reason or another, are made fun of or became really depressed when their hero/main hero buddy/"dude that will become a stronger friend later" becomes the most evil character in the series.
 
Gaim's
time travel antics seemed to me like Butcher trying to tie his story up; he didn't know how it was going to end when he first wrote Ghost Mai, so he corrected it by having her words be messed up so that they would fit the ending he came up with.

Anyway....

ToQ 27

That's a terrible Super mode, it looks so cheap.

Gaim 44

Everything moving smoothly till the end. Also, first promo for Drive aired! Looks ok.
 
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