Do the post Decade Riders suck?

[Layton13]

I'd say it's the better of the two Heisei eras. There is one show in Neo that I dislike, and it has a stellar four-season run that just knocks it out of the park from W to Wizard. And even shows that I had more problems with, like Build and Ghost I ultimately ended up not minding that much and enjoying my time with them.

Compared to 4 series in the original run that I came off of with a negative or just absolute disinterest.

For me, it feels like Neo Heisei builds on what previous series brought to the table and expanding on it while still bringing something fresh each year, while the original run was far more scatterbrained.

It's a very consistent time for Rider, only kinda shaken up through Giam, and for me, that was only for the worse.

[FishFaceL]

I actually prefer Post Decade Heisei over Pre-Decade Heisei. The only Neo Heisei seasons I outright disliked were Ghost and Zi-O whereas out of the first 10 Heisei seasons Kuuga, Ryuki and Blade are probably the only 3 I'd really consider good. I personally feel like the post Decade seasons tend to be more straight forward while many of the early heisei seasons put too much focus on creating mysteries and not nearly enough on acutally resolving them. Also I'm not super into heavy melo-drama so the fact that Inoue was the main writer for 3 1/2 shows didn't really help either.

[bluegreen]

I would put the dividing line earlier than Decade. For me, the quality started going downhill at Den-O, which is the first one where it seemed to me the focus became selling as many cheap plastic toys as possible rather than producing entertainment. Not that the toys weren't always a factor, but that's the tipping point for me where it became blatant.


Personally, I have enjoyed 2 or 3 more recent shows, but I don't think the quality of those lives up to Agito or Blade. Whether that can be traced back to specific writers, or flawed concepts, or corporate mandates, I couldn't say. But then I seem to have different tastes than many of the people on here, which is why I stopped engaging a long time ago. I love Hibiki and I found Gaim boring with too many characters I just didn't care about. Saber seems to be falling into that same hole.

All I really want is a good concept, good writing, decent acting (I recognize these are not experienced actors), and less pastels PLEASE. I would like a season where the costume/change is more organic rather than technological, but I suspect those days are gone.

[Hero99]

I've only watched post Decade shows so I'm incredibly biased, but I don't think they're bad. I enjoyed the ones I watched so far, the only exception being most of Wizard. I actually didn't know that people kind of hate these seasons lol. I watch Kamen Rider because it's just fun to watch, even the 'bad' like Wizard and what we've seen of Saber so far were pretty enjoyable to watch. I haven't gotten to Ghost yet so I don't know if my statement will stay true.

[Catastrophe]

You can't really comment if you haven't actually watched any of the pre-Decade ones yet. That is literally the whole point of the discussion.

The other thing is time is more kind and less kind to different series. I really believe that people that watch something as it airs will have a different opinion than someone who watches it later. Kabuto it a big example. It's a bit of a let down in the last 3rd, so on a solo viewing it doesn't stand out that much, yet following whatever Hibiki was supposed to be, it was a cool back to basics kind of rider series.

[kevinlafriday]

My only takeaway from all these KR series i watched is that good writing needs to be the first priority.

What's "good enough" or "the best" for me can be vague. But I would still say it with 100% certainty that i'd always hate KR Ghost and (so far) KR Saber.
I remember commenting several months ago that Kiramager would be a stupid show that I'd give up watching (since I'm not so into sentai anyway).
Boy oh boy, now I'm enjoying Kiramager MUCH more than I do Saber.

[Catastrophe]

Kiramager's head writer is Naruhisa Arakawa. He's been head writer for Abaranger, Dekaranger, Gokaiger and Akibaranger. Oh, and Kuuga.

It's insane how well you can predict how a show is going to end up based on who is penning it.

[takenoko]

Funny, same here. I didn't think Kiramager would be bad per se, but wasn't expecting much from it. Now, I can't heap enough praise for how much I'm enjoying that series

[joan_kurisu]

my personal fave Neo Heisei Riders:
-W
-OOO
-Wizard

the others are just average to me and my least fave would definitely be Ex-Aid for the sole reason that I really hate his design and colors. Ex-Aid's color is just weird to me and his design is like a bad combo of Decade + Meteor.

[erikhol]

While there’s certainly a tone shift away from more horror elements of older heisei riders, I certainly wouldn’t say any of them are bad. Yes, more kid elements are emphasized a lot more, and maybe it’s wishful thinking that we might ever get back to more horror elements. But just because the tone is different doesn’t mean the same passion and intensity isn’t there for these modern shows. Gaim reached new heights for me in terms of character growth and world building.

I actually just finished a big first time binge watch of Zero One. That show has a lot of bright colorful characters and powers, with a relatable stumbling but kind protagonist— but even from the outset the series was posing challenging questions about AI and rights and consciousness. So I’d say don’t always let the kid elements fool you — there’s often deeper elements even in modern KR series.

And I know Saber is getting a lot of hate. But it reminded me of how I initially disliked Toqger. It wasn’t until episode 3 of that series that things suddenly clicked, and it ended up becoming one of my ultra top favorite Sentai series. The same feeling, even though still a little foggy where I am right with ep 4, I feel like with the right mind set saber has great potential. I’m loving the show so far, and look forward to more. Is it more kid friendly, almost to an extreme? Yes; but that also feels like it’s deliberate. Like these are suppose to be cookie cutter heroic characters in a vague tale - allowing for improvisation in the world building and probably some solid character growth as the story progresses.

All I’m I guess I’m trying to get across is that the times are different, more kid friendly seems to be in. But like Toqger before it, don’t always look at that as a bad thing. It’s simply different tastes each season

[pika2000]

I like them. At least they are trying to make the series and the movies more connected and consistent, unlike the pre-Decade where it was all over the place. Also, they learned a thing or two by keeping the actors in contact to appear a year or two later for fan service, something that Decade screwed up.

More connected and consistent never worked for Kuuga up to Kiva. It's rather maximum creativity in storytelling intentionally, so that writers like Inoue Toshiki could write something very provoking on Faiz or Arakawa Naruhisa could write something very humor to human hearts on Kuuga. Toei made a smart move by not interfering with writers' best ideas. Never ever think about taking per-cautious for future crossover continuity to limit the creativity of the writers. It's the only way the Heisei Rider trend survived until now.

I never minded the pre-decade riders at all. My number one favorite of all rider series remains Kuuga, with Agito second. But it is annoying in those times where they have movies that are completely different timeline (Blade, Faiz, etc). It just breaks any development done in the series. And of course, they decided to do Decade. If they hadn't seen the need to do those things, then I don't mind each season of riders being standalone. But if they wanted to do team up movies and anniversary riders, then better ensure there are some consistencies and connections with the series' stories so at least things can make sense. And imo they did a good job on that in neo-heisei, especially for Zi-O. I like fan services that have efforts behind it.

Of course, ideally I'd rather each series to be just standalone, so each can develop to its fullest. I dislike disjointed irrelevant movies/specials (Ryuki is notorious for this). Thus Kuuga and Agito remain to be my top 2 riders.

Let's see what they will do for Reiwa era. I actually like Zero One, and thought it was a great start for the new era. But I couldn't watch saber at all. I got lost with Build mid-way, but with Saber, I'm already lost from the get go. Add on the piling up of riders. Might as well do a "super sentai"

[WannaFantaMan]

I actually liked at least half of the post Decade series quite a bit. The strong ones are pretty obvious with W and Gaim being the best (Gaim in particular is BY FAR my favorite! It started out so light hearted BUT HOLY SHIT DID IT GET SO DARK SO FAST xD) IMO. While most people will probably hate me for this, I REALLY loved Zi-O and Drive. Drive took a risk by using a car motif and I think it paid of rather well in the end (when Mach first showed up GOD I wanted to sucker punch him into oblivion but then right as I was about to call it quits, he got better.....only to be annoying again when his sister was worried about Chase and he thought she wanted to bang him [which she CLEARLY didn't] and then he got better again after Chase joined) and it was one of the funnier series in recent memory. The reason I like Zi-O hasn't from when when I posted on the series end thread. It was basically Zi-O's story while also being Decade Season 2 at the same time and more Tsukasa is NEVER a bad thing. While Ex-Aid and Build aren't my favorites, I still liked them enough to see them through to the end (Ex-Aid mainly due to the bromance between Emu and literally all the other Riders...mostly with Parado OTL) and I wasn't disappointed. As for OOO I was really into it up until the PuToTyra combo got introduced, then it started to get really stale for me and I really don't know why. Tried to watch Fourze and got to the point where Elec States showed up then I got bored with it. Didn't even make it to episode 10 of Wizard if I remember correctly which is weird cause I liked the concept. I managed to do what I did with OOO with Ghost and towards the end I just lost interest completely. Speaking of OOO, I didn't even make it ten minutes into episode six before I went, "Nope, this is too boring and too lame."

[takenoko]

That's a good point, let's see, for me:

Good Heisei:
Kuuga
Agito
Ryuki
Blade
Kabuto
Den-O
Decade

Bad Heisei:
555
Hibiki
Kiva

And even with the bad ones, I understand why 555 is cool, Hibiki is a neat experiment into jdorama, and Kiva has Otoya

Good Neo Heisei:
W
OOO
Fourze
Gaim
Drive

Mixed bag Neo Heisei:
Wizard
Zi-O

Bad Neo Heisei:
Ghost
Ex-Aid
Build

It might just be the bad writing for Wizard, Ghost, Ex-Aid, and Build drags Neo down for me?

I think the only episodes in Wizard that truly stood out are 26-27, 40-41. It's a subplot with potential that ultimately doesn't go anywhere, but was a cool idea while it lasted

[Bomyne]

Not going to make a long post, but I saw this on the blog and I was like "WHAT?!".

Except for Fourze, I really loved W to Zi-O. They were all amazing. Admittedly on different levels of amazing. I think Ghost, Ex-Aid, and Drive were better than the others, but I still loved all of them. Except Fourze. Sorry, Fourze.

If you're counting Reiwa, then I also loved Zero-One but I'm just not really jiving with Saber.

Why didn't I like Fourze? Well, the suits, weapons, and drivers were cool... but I just didn't really like many of the characters, and I feel like it just took on a whole "highschool drama" type thing that I just did not enjoy.

Unfortunately, that is about all you can get out of me with my thumping headache. I'm sorry.

[Catastrophe]

It's such a subjective argument. People have different tastes.

It's probably easier to say what the absolutely terrible shows are. It's more difficult to come to a consensus on what the excellent ones are.