Go-On Macaroni wrote:
As I've said numerous times, the Phantoms were.. ok so, you've seen Wizard, right? You know White Wizard's Eclipse plan? Basically, he needed certain people, people who overcame despair for his plan to work. This meant it could be anyone and he needed them alive, this in turn nerfed the Phantoms where they could attack people but not kill them leading for Haruto to save them every single time. This tended to get really bland if only because it meant everything was rigged for Haruto to win every time, the Phantoms couldn't do anything threatening; I mean, sure, they could make fights for the Riders (because this franchise is built upon effect stuff) but, until White Wizard revealed that he was a diet Shiro Kanzaki, it was a lot of doing for nothing (and even then, it sucked but that's getting into my bias there).
Also, c'mon, someone like Medusa lost a lot of points when her only response to asking Beast if he wants to team up is just "Lololzz, okay!" and it gets dropped. She probably went back to her bowling alley and tallied her high score or something, she didn't care.
The Ganma? Originally, Adonis kept peace in Ganma World but he felt that humans were flawed. For that matter, he wished to fix Human World.. this got warped when Adel took over and used Adonis' ideals as a matter for ~World Domination~. The Ganma conflict with Takeru because of the latter's belief in the potential and strength of humans. You can see early on where they used people like a prodigy composer, a scientist and Takeru connected with them.. this progressed as he tapped into their memories, how his friends brought him back to life, how he connected with his friends to power-up Mugen Damashii.
The Ganma's threat comes partly from how they can posses people and average Joes wouldn't know it (seen during the first arc), how they can bring people back from the dead (as seen in the arc with Yellow Buster's actress) and again, people wouldn't know it. Think how long Igor has taken over that company and no one is aware aside from the mains.
Tl;dr: The Ganma are "more terrifying" because they're allowed to be villains and their motivations are consistent with the show.
Alright, first thing's first. Wizard was 3 years ago so forgive me if I miss out or forgot some details. But here's the thing. True, the White Wizard needed a certain amount of Gates to overcome despair so that his plan could work. But do note that he didn't reveal his plan till the very end and even his close aides (Phoenix, Medusa, Gremlin) had no idea of his true plan. Their goal for the most part of the show was "get more Gates to despair, give birth to more Phantoms). In case you forgot, the White Wizard played a dual role - one of the saviour and one of the destroyer. He became Wiseman to goad the Phantoms to create more of them, and became White Wizard to see to it that some Gates survived.
Meaning? He didn't go like "eh Medusa, hold back on killing those damn humans. Make sure they survive ok? Maybe give 5/10 of your strength." No, he didn't. He told the Phantoms to go make as many Gates despair as possible, and born me some more Phantoms. He didn't tell them to hold punches, cause he knows only those that can survive out of their own will are deserving to the Chosen Gates.
Similarly, he is also counting on Wizard to fail. Because if Wizard succeed, he couldn't get the Gates he wanted. His whole plan boiled down to Wizard failing to save the Gate, and if the Gate give in to despair and die and born new Phantom... well.... plus 1 then! But IF Wizard failed and the Gate overcame despair on his/her own, then voila! I got my Chosen One!
Tl;dr: No, the Phantoms weren't rigged so Wizard did win all the time.
And let's put it this way. The White Wizard conjured the Sabbath which killed lots of people, and while no one died throughout the show it's still undeniable that ALOT of people died giving birth to the Phantoms while in Ghost.... let's see... Takeru died and got revived 3 times...okay. Well his dad's death is permanent but still that's one person vs like hundreds.
And Adel's plan is to create a Perfect World - but what has he done so far that actually leads to that? Sending Ganzaimers to test Takeru one after another.... seems like he's more obsessed with what Takeru can do instead. And Igor.... okay I'm no scientist and correct me if I'm wrong, but what has he done that's even remotely close to world domination or creating a perfect world? He has been doing lots of weird experiments - that, granted, caused lots of problems - but how do those contribute to Adel's ultimate goal?
Compared to Helheim of Gaim, where we see the threat becoming more and more imminent as the plot progressed, or the first Global Freeze in Drive which see the deaths of thousands, or the Sabbath which killed hundreds (or was it thousands?), what Igor was doing is pretty much child's play. I know and understand the amount of threat that Adel and Igor impose on the world should they succeed, but up till now the show's doing a crappy job in illustrating their plans towards that ultimate goal.
And lastly, yah true that the Ganma is terrifying in that they can possess almost anyone and goes undetected, but usually the possessed demonstrates extremities in a certain aspect(s) that's a giveaway. Whereas in Wizard, remember early on there's this police chief who's been hiding undetected for months and it wasn't until he wanted to kill Rinko did he gave the slip.
And Medusa killed the parents of her Gate. And oh Gremlin was already a serial murderer before he became a Phantom. And continued to kill countless woman after. He has zero fucks for finding the Gates. Remind me again who has the Ganma killed?
Another tl;dr: sorry, I just can't see the Ganma possessing a bigger threat than ANY of the other monsters in the KR series.
Go-On Macaroni wrote:Okay so, what I enjoy about Ghost is generally the characters and while not it doesn't work every time, I can get through shows easier if I tend to like the characters (Precure's Max Heart was one example of that, while Smile Precure was a butt because I didn't like any of them). Onari and Akari click with me and it helps that their humor is typically situational rather than "Laugh! Are you laughing?!?" like what Drive and some others pulled. Yurusen's the best and I'm only maybe partly saying that because Aoi Yuuki is awesome (Ok, she's pretty funny in her own right).. I could go on. The casting wasn't too bad this year.
While I'm on it, Alain's arc, I didn't mind too much (though I wonder how I would've felt if we hadn't just got a worse version with Machine Chaser the year prior). He didn't do too much at first but after Saionji died, he went on to staying active and becoming Necrom; a step up from Chaser's "I hate rider!" "I am goo-- reprogram, beep boop, I hate rider!" for 13-ish bland episodes.
Well, whether one likes or dislikes a character is very subjective so I'm going to drop this here. I can list down a 100 reasons on why Ghost's characters sucks and you will come up with 101 reasons on why they're awesome. Similar on reverse; I can tell 100 reasons why Faiz is better and you will give me 101 reasons why Faiz sucks. So I'm going to let this drop here.
Complete. Start Up. 3. 2. 1. Time Out. Reformation.