Going into this series, I felt kind of bad for the writers. They were being tasked with doing a nostalgia/tribute season, which means that along with all of the requirements from Toei and Bandai for their 22 minute live action belt-brandishing toy commercial, the writers would also be encumbered with the mandate to do a bunch of tribute episodes and nods to past seasons. 49 episodes seems like a lot, but when you strip out the toys, the fights, etc, it's not necessarily a ton of time to work with to tell a serialized, year-long story. And these poor writers then had to split that time with fulfilling Toei's anniversary mandate. So I'm not sure the show ever stood a chance.
Which is not to say that it was all bad from the very start. The show has plenty of sins (and several of us have already counted them up), however it also had its virtues. Even early on, the show's interesting, exotic music was brought to the forefront. And we had the primary and secondary riders right off the bat (and one them had bloody murder in their eyes!). For all the show's faults, I'm not sure the problem is in the setup, but rather the execution. The show never was able to pivot on its premise and deliver both a consistently captivating and a concurrently coherent story.
What dogged the show more than anything else, I feel, is the characters. The best characters in the series were not the main characters, but rather it was the secondary riders. Geiz with his well-founded desire to kill young, naive Sougo, and then the highly charismatic Woz. The former had a really good character arc, and the latter was just fun to watch (though wow, did they ever drop his sole plot thread!).
The problem with this, however, is that these aren't the main characters - the lead of the series. Instead we got Kamen Rider Turnip, who had no personality and the intellect to match his namesake. To be absolutely fair to the writers here, you can't have a character arc if your character is perfect from the start; Sougo had to have flaws. But he was created with the wrong kind of flaws, and that left him largely an uninteresting character right up until the end. All too often, while he had the screen time of the main character, it often felt like the plot of the story itself was happening around and to Sougo, but Sougo wasn't getting to drive things forward in turn. Sougo was too passive of a character, when KR really demands an active lead character.
And the flip side of this coin is that the Big Bad was no better. Schwartz's backstory and plan were such a convoluted mess. And for all the screen time he had (and for as much as his actor seemed to enjoy being the bad guy), he just didn't seem to get very many memorable, defining character moments. In terms of the plot he was pulling all the strings - in a lot of ways Zi-O mirrored Build's flaw of having the heroes dance to the Big Bad's tune for most of the series, just less overtly than Build - but that control wasn't used appropriately to build up Schwartz's character and screen presence.
In the end, if both your hero and your villain suck, how are you supposed to have a good show?
Thankfully, while some critical areas of the show were weak, there were some other places where the show succeeded. I've already mentioned the music (the "serious" BGM track they were using towards the end is an ear worm), and the Another Rider suits were absolutely fantastic. Some were better than others, but Another Double, Another Drive, and Another Zi-O all stand out as being hideous monstrosities; they really did look like nightmare fuel versions of the original riders. I wish other KR series had monster designs that were so inspired. (And I wish Another Decade was as equally inspired; shame it's one of the worst AR designs)
Similarly, while a lot of Zi-O's hero designs were unmemorable (or in Trinity's case, ugly), Zi-O II stands out as a really good suit design. It's not too gaudy, and it just looks powerful.
Which brings us to a tangent: Grand Zi-O. Never in a KR series before have I seen the writers try so hard to avoid using the Rider's ultimate form. Grand Zi-O was spoiled from the beginning, and then the watch got stolen a few times, Grand got beaten down a couple of times, and then more stuff happened such that Sougo couldn't use it. I'm used to most KR series spamming it as a finisher for the last 1-2 months of a show, but Zi-O went in a completely opposite direction. Grand Zi-O was only used a handful of times, and then it only worked in a fraction of those cases. I don't know if this was the writers' idea of controlling power inflation or what, but the end result was that Grand Zi-O was run through the ringer. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of the writer's room to find out the backstory there.
But if there's a saving grace to Grand Zi-O getting neutered, it's that it kept Grand from undermining Oma Zi-O. Within the series Oma is more powerful, and out of the series it's such a better suit design. I'm sure Toei will recycle it at some point, but I kind of wish that the Oma suit had more screen time/more fights. It's the best looking gold-colored Rider suit to date.
Ultimately, up until the finale, I had been sitting on the fence about whether I'd vote Zi-O as a whole a 2 or a 3. The show had flashes of greatness, but it's also been clear for a while now that it wasn't going to achieve it. So instead, it became a question of how well the show would wrap itself up, and ultimately the show didn't do very well there.
takenoko wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2019 11:15 pm
And the comparisons. I feel like the Decade stories were just better written. Yeah, they were AU, but at least it felt like watching a mini episode of the series. Versus in Zi-O where a cameo will show up, maybe he'll help out or maybe he'll do nothing and hand over a Watch. The quality was just all over the place, whereas the Decade stuff felt pretty cohesive.
Like even if Decade was headed toward a nothing ending, at least it felt like the journey meant something. Compare that to Zi-O hitting the Oma Day and it not mattering, or passing us by, or being prevented. Having Oma Zi-O be a threat in the future never felt like an end goal, since he just sat in a chair this whole time and turned out to be not that bad a guy to begin with.
Since everyone is doing Decade comparisons...
For all of its flaws, I still rank Zi-O as a better series than Decade. Decade wasn't without its strengths as well, but the world-building/plot were absolutely non-existent. Or at least, the writers gave up even trying after a point. Instead, it's basically just a series of loosely stitched together fan fics, with Decade as the self-insert character. Which definitely made for some interesting two-parters, and some fun fights (the crab band jam has gone down in history), but it doesn't make up for the lack of a larger plot.
Zi-O at least tried. It didn't do very well, but the writers tried to have a coherent story connecting the start to the end, and everything in between. Which is also why I'm cool with Decade showing up in Zi-O as a supporting character; it was neat that the writers were able to bring him back, and it felt like a bit of an apology for how Decade's series turned out.
PS What was up with Decade initially antagonizing Zi-O? He seemed to be aware of what was really going on, so I still don't get it.
takenoko wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 6:25 pm
Gosh, for a moment it seemed like Sougo and Tsukuyomi were going to have a major twist connection... but that didn't ever come to fruition. So maybe they have no relationship at all, and it's okay for them to fuck?
Sougo and Tsukuyomi's relationship is very weird. It's easily the most platonic we've had between the main character and the female lead in several years, even more so than Emu/Poppy. If anything, it strikes me as being almost maternal; Tsukuyomi comes in and saves Sougo from Geiz, tries to raise him right, has a minor freak out when she realizes her turnip might actually be a monster, and then comes to rely on Sougo as her protector. I still am surprised that they aren't related.
Now Geiz and Tsukuyomi on the other hand were totally sharing that room above the clock shop...
