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A Comparison of Naruhisa Arakawa, Toshiki Inoue and Yasuko Kobayashi as Writers

Well I'd like to compare these three writers whose works I usually like though they had their bad moments too.  Nobody's perfect but let's examine them shall we?  Pictures are credit to Shougo B'Stard of Them's Fightin' Words.  Here's what I thought about these notable writers and their ups and downs with Kamen Rider:


Okay one has to admit he did more Super Sentai than Kamen Rider but he should always be credited and remembered for the guy who brought the well done new era of Kamen Rider writing in Kamen Rider Kuuga.  Yup Kamen Rider Kuuga is a template of how Heisei Riders are... two episode arcs, lots of drama and mysteries but sadly later series seem to ignore the stuff this guy introduced with his writing of Kuuga that made Kuuga a huge success after the long hiatus of Kamen Rider having another TV series (the last was Black RX which I still enjoy but it's not as good to me anymore).  Just made me think this guy should be a J-Drama writer if he's not doing Tokusatsu since he has the self-discipline and well-crafted humor in the later years as a writer or two he should be writing Kamen Rider again.  So yeah, Kuuga explored a more realistic approach of Kamen Riders and with Shigenori Takatera, they both manage to polish whatever concepts were left behind by Black and Black RX into the first masterpiece of his, Kuuga and that was the start of his better writing.  Yeah, I had my issues with Kuuga's final episode but hey, it's the first work right, we all learn what we can and in fairness, sometimes you need to write an epilogue to wrap things up XD.  Pretty much, much of Kuuga was a result of careful planning and it was really memorable for me due to how interesting the backstory of Kuuga's powers were (yup it reminds me of Amazon's concepts) and the Grongi I'd dare say really are pure nightmare fuel.  Too bad he hasn't done any more Kamen Rider headwriting jobs because by now, he's already learned a couple of stuff on what to do and what not to do in writing.  For me, I'll want him to write another Kamen Rider season which is lighter and softer (because he really was able to pull it off post-Kuuga) or maybe back to darker and edgier to see him outdo his success that was the success of Kuuga.  He did write two episodes of W but that's just it sad to say.


Toshiki Inoue.  While Arakawa has the "fun stuff" in Tokusatsu (while Kamen Rider Kuuga was pretty dark in itself but later Arakawa works bordered on the well-planned lighter and softer), it seems Inoue was fond of darker and edgier stuff but later dabbled with humor to try something new.  But yeah, I've had my issues with this guy like Chojin Sentai Jetman was a great series with memorable characters but the way he killed Gai Yuki was well for me not the way I'd kill a Toku hero.  His first work was Agito taking what Arakawa left behind and taking the good parts of Kuuga and added his own flavor.  Pretty much, I thought that Agito was his passable finale and nobody gets killed off so randomly.  However my problem with him started with Faiz when things got too depressing and characters got rather boring, nothing there cheers me up at all.  You'll admit though this guy knows conflict in stories and does a good job at them, in fact Faiz's positives for me were the conflict though the plot tends to run around in circles and the ending was pretty bad considering the Orphnoch King is revealed to survive and it was a plot dangler ending.  For Ryuki, he was involved in a lot of episodes and he wrote the better alternate ending which had a pretty dangling finale with Ryuki and Knight defeating the remnants of the Mirror World.  So yeah, he took over Hibiki (which I'm currently watching) and some say it was for the better.  For Kiva it's a like it or not season for me I like Kiva and Agito as his best works except for Kiva, it felt like he was watching Danny Phantom and Castlevania while he wrote it.  Kiva was where he attempts comedy and there were some scenes in Kiva I admit were forced comedy but the intention of Kiva was to be lighter and softer.. and even the finale of Kiva was the most screwed up of all considering why in the world Nago marries Megumi all of a sudden?  That's like Sam Manson marrying Dash in Danny Phantom!  So yeah, I was thinking it's best he stays as a secondary writer now though his worst episode work in my opinion was Gokaiger 28- why in the world are you so cruel to Gai Ikari?!


Yasuko Kobayashi is also pretty notable for me.  Yup, she has had a fair share of headwriting tasks with Sentai and Kamen Rider in contrast to Arakawa who only did one Kamen Rider series (Toei should get him to write the next season) and Toshiki Inoue only did one Sentai headwriting job with Jetman.  You might consider she wrote Fantasy Leader's favorite Sentai Gingaman while Timeranger and Shinkenger are popular shows.  Yup Kobayashi does tend to shift between darker themes to lighter themes and may screw up like she did with Gobusters imo.  With Kamen Rider, I have to admit Ryuki had interesting stuff but why the STUPID reset button ending?  Considering she worked with Toshiki Inoue (as a secondary writer) a couple of times I guess that's what made her write that reset button that made the Riders forget their adventures compared to Spielban where even if a reset button was hit, character development was not thrown out of the window yet Ryuki remained popular to its audience XD.  For Den-O I thought she had interesting concepts but working with Shirakura, that show imo felt was pretty messy maybe because I don't like time paradox themes as I used to but that show in fairness was popular to kids.  For Kamen Rider OOO I'd say it's my favorite Kamen Rider work of hers considering that even if it's pretty silly but she got the whole lighter and softer theme right, good dialogue and memorable characters and a good finale in contrast to what she did with Ryuki's ending.  But I'd like to say she seems to be in-between Arakawa and Inoue though I'd like to see her do a tandem writing with Arakawa as well.

This is just my two cents and opinion, feel free to disagree with me but avoid posting bad comments okay?

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