KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Catastrophe »

I took a while to warm up to Nitou as well. After a while though, it was kind of refreshing to see him.

I do like how we have a serious main rider and a goofy secondary Rider, something that has been the other way around for the last few series (Date->Gotou not withstanding).
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Galada »

The series as a whole was, to me, not bad, but not awesome either.

At the start, Wizard was full of promises to me. A darker Rider, with lots of magic, rituals, awesome designs, deeper storylines, lots of mysteries, and as the time passed, what I saw were disapointments behind disapointments. There were some cool stuff in the middle, but for me, it could be so much better. The plot was really repetitive and slow, some decisions were weird and when it finally got the hang of the things, the solutons were boring and not climatic at all, and the ending was forced and had no impact. The majority of the actors felt kinda bad in their roles, most of the time they were underacting or overacting a lot. The characters weren't strong enough for me either. But the transformations, the fights (most of it), the spells, the music, all of that was pretty great, which makes Wizard an at least average Kamen Rider, but... I dunno, W, OOO, Fourze, the last shows had so much to offer besides these cools things that makes them more than just more seasons of Kamen Riders that I wanted Wizard to have these kinds of things too. I'm relieved that is not as bad as some Riders I've watched, but I'll not have illusions and say that was another awesome Rider. Wizard was... good, to say the least.

I hope Gaim will be at least better than Wizard.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by TheLastTatlFan »

You can bank on Gaim either being better than Wizard of a Faiz-level mess. And since it's head writer wrote Madoka, it's probably going to be the former.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Kogashi »

The only thing one can bank on, going from one Rider series to another, is that the series will either be better or worse than the previous one, or roughly the same, and even that all depends on who you ask.

Overall I enjoyed Wizard. It wasn't my favorite Rider series I've seen, plenty of issues with the writing and some of the acting, but it was still nice. Nowhere near my least favorite Rider series, so congrats and damn you Ryuki, another year of being my most loathed Rider series :)

But really, while some of the deliveries did seem a bit wooden (though it's hard to really tell since it's a different language), I rather enjoyed the subtle touchings in Haruto's acting. Especially with his interactions with Nitou near the beginning.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by dekamaster »

I'm kinda upset that despite some of the stuff said most of it was never followed up on.
Like medusa saying. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a mage for a mage." Since they didn't bring in their own wizard to fight haruto, she didn't know Nitou was about to show up and she didn't know that fueki was wiseman so it makes no sense that she'd just suddenly say that.
Meanwhile we have basically everybody going on about haruto's new powers bringing him closer to despair yet it nothing comes fromt hat either and then Gremlin blurting out that he's curious what will happen since all four of the magic stones evolved into a dragon form with the answer being absolutely nothing.

that being said I still enjoyed watching the show and look forward to seeing Gaim.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by OOOKaiser »

Kogashi wrote:The only thing one can bank on, going from one Rider series to another, is that the series will either be better or worse than the previous one, or roughly the same, and even that all depends on who you ask.
For me, W was awesome, OOO had a hard time to follow up but it finished off decent, Fourze was just plain bad, as for Wizard the ending was okay but it did a little better than Fourze.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by [kuronogantzryu] »

I really expected this series to be centered around the "gang" concept, kinda like Fourze (I loved Fourze). By introducing the supporting characters as potential throwaway characters, it created more of an impact when the character actually came back and stuck around. They had a reason to.

As I have said before:
[kuronogantzryu] wrote:I liked that Haruto was rather optimistic and a bit quirky sometimes. The other characters were introduced really well and had their own charm to them so I actually cared about them. About halfway into the series is where they lost me. The characters just became boring and repetitive, especially the supporting. They seemed to lose their reason for being a part of Haruto's crew and were really just becoming an annoyance. A few characters/moments garnered my interest but the series just didn't capture my attention as much as it did in the beginning.
My favorite character/moment was the introduction of Mayu and her relationship with Misa / Medusa. (At the time) I totally thought she was gonna be the "My love can make you human again!" character and that she would have a supporting role in the series kinda like Rinko. Instead, they did her 2-arc storyline and she disappeared until whatever EP she reappeared in. What a great character to waste.

I really dislike Sora because he seemed to be in that "random quirky antagonist that has his own twisted goal" cliché (Phoenix kinda fits this too but at least he was a challenge to Haruto. I don't care how smart Sora is or how much of a fight he gave Haruto, he's just a fucking pest). His annoying high-pitched laugh and that "bright" personality are just as bad.

Nitou is kinda the typical annoying second Rider but later on towards the end of the series, he actually comes into his own. He becomes a decent supporting character and not another Shunpei. I'm glad they finally addressed his mayo habit at the end.

The series just felt like one big ol' mashup of most of the previous Kamen Rider series with a wizard theme in it. Overall, I really liked the first third of the series and my fondness for the series gradually decreased as I watched the rest of the series.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Karoum »

Everyone pretty much summed up my feelings about Wizard.

The opening of the 1st episode had my hopes up and I hoped we could get some W caliber rider.

Disappointed!

Still hopeful for an internet themed rider after Gaim!
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by meljta »

I think that the series was good, only that it lacked a bit of intrigue, some things were too obvious
Let us hope that gaim will not more of the same and will be more entrancing
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Glutinus »

OK, so there it is, Wizard is over. I thought it won't happen. The last 10 episodes were so long !

Everything begin very well. Love the first episode. Loved the concept. Love Rinko and hate Shunpei. I've got thrills when the WizardDriver sing and screaming onomatopoeias for each transformation. I love the episode in which Nitou arrive (haven't guessed at all he was the KR companion), and all the Dragon henshins, especially the first fight with Drago Time.

And then, we all knew that the twist won't be this surprising. Everybody was waiting for it. There was little surprise, but a lot of bad surprise. Finally what buried the show for me was Kamen Rider Mage, it was perfectly ridiculous. And then everything went down, Medusa becoming weaker and weaker, and Gremlin more and more disturbing. Well I decided not to watch them again, even to watch good episodes (the end of Yugo / first Flame : Dragon transformation ; Drago Time...)

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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by DrowningFishy »

I do not know, maybe I am spoiled having watched past Kamen Rider and have come to expect to much. Yes, I know, companies are trying to appeal to a younger audience to make money but-seriously. When did plot development become something that wasn't required. The ending was just to rushed, and underwritten. To be honest I could see that one coming when the female wizard came out looking like a spiky pile of -. Wizard got good, then fizzled and it seems like lack of focus on one story line. It still was IMHO better then Decade.

Nitou was suprising though. I started hating off absolutly hating his charater (and some how eating more kewpie mayo then normal; nono how that happened). Some where along the way he became amusing and in my opinion I think he had a better finial fight then Wizard did.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by AxemYellow »

I came into this series with high expectations. I found Fourze to be somewhat of a disappointment (especially after the spectacular OOO) and was hoping for something better. Unfortunately, to my surprise this series made Fourze seem like a masterpiece. Seriously, I've seen all of the Heisei KR and Wizard is definitely the worst.

One major problem is that this show is just way too episodic. My favourite KR series (and TV shows in general) may have a monster of the day, but often have that as just background for the continuing plot. Wizard does the reverse and the individual episodes dominate, with the main plot all but forgotten for a good part of he series (seriously, this show could have been half as long if they just concentrated on the main story). This could have been good if the individual Gates were interesting and had good stories, but really they weren't that well developed and other shows (such as Den-O) did a much better job of this.

Another problem is the tone of the series. I have noticed that the KR series have gotten lighter and lighter in tone over the years, with recent series even being physically brighter. The music didn't help either with Wizard. The story WAS good, but it wasn't executed well, and what should have been a dark series given the nature of the phantoms came off as light and fluffy with no real menace or threat.

My favourite part of Kamen Rider, as opposed to say Sentai, is the (sometimes large) well developed supporting cast. That just plainly doesn't exist in Wizard. While there are many cast members here, very few are developed at all, and the ones that are developed are not developed very much, even the lead characters. Shunpei and Rinko both started off well and had great potential, but turned into jokes as the series progressed. (btw Rinko is one of the worst cops I've seen in toku)

Wow, this reflection really came off negative. It's just that this series had a lot of potential, but very little of it was realized. It had a great concept, good costumes, what could have been good characters (I'm now glad they killed off Phoenix early since his character never got boring), but failed to use it well.

I hope Gaim is better; it seems to have a good concept, but we'll have too see how it turns out.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by [kuronogantzryu] »

DrowningFishy wrote:It still was IMHO better then Decade.
Could you explain why? At least Decade had a reason for being bad. Wizard is a standalone story and it couldn't even deliver what it set up.
DrowningFishy wrote:Some where along the way [Nitou] became amusing and in my opinion I think he had a better final fight then Wizard did.
Yah. I was dissapointed how Wizard's fight, while "emotional" and climactic, was really just another "fight of the EP" as compared to Nitou's game-breaker fight.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by Joosche »

I enjoyed this series until episode 31. After that nothing else mattered. But I finished anyway. Nitou was the Rider for me this season. I just watched to see him in action.
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Re: KR Wizard Complete Series Discussion

Post by DrowningFishy »

"At least Decade had a reason for being bad."

Gokaiger made that reason mute; they could have made Decade awesome if they didn't veer so AU. However when I say "IMHO it was better then Decade" it means I can just bear watching it. I am disappointed Gremlin didn't turn out more. Usually the harder fights go to the ones who are scheming.

One thing Wizard suffered from was transparent plot with a little thinking you can figure out. Even W, as much as I loved it, was transparent. You could figure out who Phillip was pretty quickly and you know that he was X_X. Same with White Wizard it was pretty easy to figure out his relation to Wiseman. Two shady characters you catching glimpses of; not to hard to figure out. But WTF with the daughter issues?

Switching gears.

When Nitou was fighting the only thing in the back of my mind that was lurking is that he was lucky this wasn't an older KR. I think if this carried the darker theme of KR Nitou wouldn't have been so lucky to still be breathing. Wizard, yeah you are right it was a fight of the ep. An horrible fight of an ep. The emotional finial battle didn't belong to the main character-which was weird.
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