Kinda gotta blame wizard/Gaim for that, in a way. what with them shifting the production schedules farther back thus allowing the early-show super form in. 'Least Mach got good use out of Deadheat so it remained relevant in the show if drive didn't use it much. But I agree too many forms in a show certainly isn't good if they aren't managed well, and Drive certainly struggled with that more than other Riku Sanjou-penned series with how bad the toyetic-ness has been getting.Catastrophe wrote:But it's more tolerable than what we have now.
The other thing that pisses me off is Drive and Dead Heat. Now they have a mandate for introducing a new form before the powerful form that happens before the final form, further relegating any previous transformations to nothing.
As for what's going on With Toei...I got asked this on Tumblr, and it's probably the compounding of a lot of errors that have gone back years, and I'd Likely date it beginning to hit critical mass back when Shinichiro Shirakura became the head of Production and planning in 2012.
Toei, Historically, has been trying the same things over and over again after a notable blip of success for decades, their work a cycle of decline after a big success only to crash, burn, and have something pull them out of the fire. But they often don't understand WHY a given series worked, so just DO more of everything in that success--even the bad stuff--but lacking the nuance to them which people liked. Thus, their repeats of past work all end up coming off as more...well, juvenile and unappealing with how they mess up. This isn't a new thing either, it's just...we've seen it all before done better, and in less irritating ways.
Using the spring movie events as an exemplar, All of the Taisen films are derivative of "All Riders Vs Daishocker", shown by how they structure them pretty much the same every time. And (with exception Z) fail to validate their conflicts as their justifications for them are in stark defiance of what they have the characters within them do, or what is possible/been done within the setting.
"Fast-paced introduction to everything including forms/riders/trinkets worked for W/OOO/Fourze/Gaim, why not keep up that pace?" Is likely also part of the logic for continuing it for ghost/Ex-aid along this repetition commonality; forgetting the form/trinket was either often not the focus, or a more minor point of an episode over story/character. And the fact that Gaim DID feel as if it's early-side was rushed to meet the december event deadline. Drive I feel an exception as most of it's trinkets it didn't dwell upon, but I can understand an opposing view like Catastrophe's about Deadheat as it did still have issues on that.
And If kyuranger's showing anything with it's recent episodes, it's that the series is likely trying to rip off Gokaiger. But it's failing because 1: it's rushing/heavily compressing the story so none of the points feel valid, and 2: Lucky is (making it 3 out of the last 4 shows that have done this, Likely inspired by Daigo) An annoying idiot that steals the show--both figuratively and literally--from his cast members who desperately need that focus. So if you don't like his brand of Hero that's always going to be in your face, you're out of luck.
I mean, I'm dropping Kyuranger because of how offended I was with Lucky telling Raptor it's okay for her to go and kill herself to achieve a dream of fighting alongside everyone, even though he was already told they can't FIX her if she gets damaged and everyone else is more concerned for Her wellbeing. That is seriously not how you handle such a storypoint.
Even all of you that are praising Amazons as the only good thing right now? It's heavily derivative of Ryuki (and to a lesser extent 555) in it's character and story structure with a resident evil paintjob. If you like those things it's probably clicking for you, but it's why I personally Don't as It's lacking the nuances and individuals that made me tolerate or like them. And a Ryuki-like series? We just had it, that was GAIM.
Then again, Shinichiro Shirakura appears to hate Gaim if his interviews are any indication.
With respect to the writers? A Lot of the senior ones have been alienated so they left to work on other stuff (Riku Sanjou fits here), drained dry of their capability to write well (Toshiki Inoue) or overworked severely (Yasuko Kobayashi). Newer ones commonly lack the talent to develop their stories as they have no-one experienced and successful to guide them; Shoji Yonemura a perfect example of this one as he had some stunning earlier work (His lupin OVA's, for some Sh15uya), but after Kabuto devolved into garbage. Coupled with Producer/Executive/Toyetic mandates and discourse, it's not surprising those still around end up writing something people don't like when they're not capable of what's being asked.
Not helped that Parental and censorship watchdogs have been severely on their ass as well. An Interview Gen Urobuchi gave in 2015 revealed that Toei is very easily influenced by negative reception from those groups. Urobuchi cited Fourze as an example of their impact; revealing it's treated like a black sheep because Parents who didn't even watch the show had it out for Gentarou simply for him looking like a Teenage gangster with his hairstyle; ignoring his actual character and the point of him looking like that was to subvert that stereotype. Thus, they've been getting into a cycle of 'to appease the masses we've got to write down to the lowest common denominator'.
But by doing that, they've made their content less interesting as everyone else is producing things more unique, stylized or with a Twist to it that hasn't quite been seen before.
The cinematography has also been dropping as well, so not even that is being seen as a merit-able appeal to the genre much right now; we've been seeing more and more curbstomp battles the last couple years instead of even exchanges that eventually lead to one side winning, thus feel cheaper; people going straight to finishing moves instead of using them to conclude a battle, a lot of it has been very sloppy. But that again may just tie to bleeding their talent dry only with the directors.
I know that a lot of the spectacle of Amazons' fights is just the gore, much of the combat unappealingly choreographed with how much it's been greyed-out, and focused on overwhelming power blows with little elegance; making the 'serious threat' of the show be little more than cannon fodder. Shown most explicitly with Amazon Omega ramming an Amazon with his bike so it explodes in gore...but is hitting it at a velocity that I personally have survived being hit by with no bruising. You really should not be presenting your monster faction as so weak they die from things normal humans can shrug off.
A point previously brought up that I'd agree with is the webisodes and extra video content; Before the story HAD to be self-contained. Now main story points needed to understand it are being spun off into supplementary material, and the show otherwise excludes context to those. And if you need supplementary material to understand the story and characterization within it, you're failing as a story-teller. Ex-aid entirely messed up the 'Saki is Kagami's motivator as a Doctor and Rider' thing by her getting less than 2 minutes of focus for such an essential plot point, now you've got to see Snipe episode zero for the full context that SHOULD have been part of the main show. And we're seeing this again with kyuranger; Spada and raptor having a more personal thing? Only seen in the web Transformation guides as the focus on Lucky lost them any chance to explore that.
...kind of went a bit stream of consciousness here, sorry.