Do the post Decade Riders suck?

[Lunagel]

I'm seeing a lot of people liking Ghost, which is weird for me, because I think it's honestly the worst KR show of them all. One of these days I'm gonna make an actual questionnaire so we can see the correlation between first watched KR and KR ranking

[takenoko]

Do you think you'd feel that way if you hadn't translated Ghost?

[Catastrophe]

I didn't translate it and I feel like it's the worst.

I think that is a good idea Luna. I also think putting something like 'What was the first series watched as it was airing' is important as well.

I think this discussion and the topic title are different ones though.

[windfall]

Ghost is the worst thing I've ever seen and I watched all of digimon tri.

[BreadToku]

I figured it went without saying that different people have different tastes, and every show regardless of the decade will have it's fans and non-fans.

The only rider show I would outright say I dislike is Kiva, and my favourites (OOO and Build) are all in the latter decade. But even with that in mind, I could point to how the more modern era of rider's even bigger lean towards heavy merchandising than ever before can be really off-putting, Saber and Zero-One being the biggest examples so far and that's not likely to be a trend that will go away any time soon.

[Catastrophe]

The thing is, the merchandise thing has been around for a while. There was a reason they started releasing a tonne of Gaia memories when W was airing.

The thing that annoys me is even having to push a bunch of transformation trinkets before Christmas, some shows actually manage to do it well. I think Build is a good example, partially because they were tied into the story well. Some writers really can't work them in well and it causes the first quarter to become a mess.

[BreadToku]

It's always been a thing, sure, but I honestly feel like the toys stuff has reached a new level of utterly bloated in recent years. There is already a default of a dozen different items and characters at the start now, and throughout the show you've got not only the usual big flow of upgrades and new riders, but so much more incidental or extra stuff relegated to P-Bandai. The times it most bothers me is when they egregiously intrude upon the story, like a lot of Metsubojinrai/Ark stuff, or Kamen Rider Ginga among other things.

[Catastrophe]

Ginga is particularly bad. Inoue wrote that arc and Faiz and Kiva demonstrate he just likes pulling upgrades out of nowhere.

I feel like most things can be traced back to the writer.

[Farr]

I think the main difference for me is that they focused more on the two Episode Plots starting with Den-O, then they did before.
Arc's per se are still about same length, but what happened in the Arc was more one big thing, than small bits like it's in P2, probably one of the Reason's Gaim became more popular, apart from having a good Setup altogether.

But all in all, i'd say it's somewhat equal in yay vs ney, never seen Kuuga or Agito, I can only sum up the ones starting from Ryuki.

P1:
Great: Blade, Den-O
Decent: Kabuto
Enjoyable: Faiz, Hibiki, Kiva
Flawed: Ryuki, Decade

P2:
Great: W, Gaim
Decent: Fourze,
Enjoyable: OOO, Ex-Aid,
Flawed: Wizard, Drive, Ghost

Not sure were to put Build, because it's everything from Decent to flawed, great start, okish till mid, but after that it was just repeating itself 3 times, with no real growth from most of the Characters.
(And I skipped Zi-O and haven't finisched Zero-One yet, so they are missing from the list)

[Catastrophe]

Two episode arcs had been a thing since Kuuga. It's bit of a misconception that Den-O (or W as people tend to think) drove it.

[takenoko]

I think it might be a symptom of something you don't notice when you first get into Rider, but becomes more obvious the more series you get into it

[Catastrophe]

W gets the bad rap for it because Sanjo titled the two episode arcs deliberately because he wanted to them like noir short stories.

But you are correct. Some series are better at having the '2nd' episode of the arc have something that leads into the '1st' of the next. I still think Gaim has the best pacing partially because it doesn't rely on it at all.

[ViRGE]

I didn't translate it and I feel like it's the worst.

I didn't translate Ghost either, and I too feel like it was the worst. Towards the end it felt like they just stopped trying...

[Catastrophe]

I could give you a fairly good summary of what happens in any rider series, even Wizard.

I can't even remember what happened post eyecon arc in Ghost other than something about Deep Connect being involved and the the Gammaizers copying Adels face for some reason.

[Farr]

Two episode arcs had been a thing since Kuuga. It's bit of a misconception that Den-O (or W as people tend to think) drove it.

Huh, interesting, can't really remember them from Blade, Faiz, Ryuki, Kabuto, but it's been a while anyways.
Or they were just better at integrating it into the flow of the Main Story like Gaim did, as well as into Subsequent Episode Plots.

So the more 'chopped' Style started, at least from what I remember with Den-O,
and I mean it's not that I say it's bad per se, but for some Series it works, for some a more fluid writing might have been better.

Another thing that was mentioned earlier is the Fact, that the Show itself becomes more and more Gimmicky, so some Series suffer from it because it just feels like a relay race, that just goes from one Form/Power-up to the next, without really doing much for the Plot except that the Shiny new Toy gets gradually more useless over the course of 3-7 Episodes.

I guess on of the Dissapointments with newer Installments is, that they lost a lot of Darkness/Drama, to make it more Kid friendly.

And not that it's that highly representative, but even the TVN Pool list shows that it's pretty mixed.

From Highest to lowest:
W, Gaim, Blade, Den-O, Fourze, Kabuto, Ryuki, Build, Ex-Aid, OOO, Hibiki, Decade, Kiva, Drive, Wizard, Ghost.

So ultimately, I think it's a mixed bag, from Writer, Toysales, Chopped vs Fluid etc.

And of course, that we know how a good Rider Series could be, because we have great examples, so sometimes we just suffer trough a series, because we know how good it could've been.