Kamen Rider Saber Gets SO MUCH FLAK After Eight Episodes?

 

Well, I do usually make the mistake of riding upon other people's opinions and preferences - such was the mistake when I pre-judged Super Sentai from 2013 to 2015. Then again, some people's opinions encourage me to finally SPEAK UP when I feel that a show isn't getting its worth. 

So, the same can be said about Kamen Rider Saber when it's said by Daisuki Toku that Japanese netizens are now expressing unhappiness towards it. What can be seen based on the article are the following complaints:

• Too many Kamen Riders may cause an accident.
• It feels more like a 30-minute toy commercial and the content is shallow.
• The pace is getting too fast to sell more Bandai merchandise that it's boring.
• A lot may happen in the 30-minute airing but it feels empty.
• The fact it's written by Takuro Fukuda contributes to the hate. Kamen Rider Ghost is considered the worst Heisei-era Rider ever. Some worries were proven right.

So, what are my issues? For a guy who actually ended up enjoying of Kamen Rider series from Kamen Rider Kuuga up to Kamen Rider Zero-One - some shows are just flat out bad. It's already known how much I love to call Kamen Rider Decade the "spiritual successor" of Saban's Mashed Rider. Need I mention I also dislike Kamen Rider Hibiki? In my case, I really had that concern when early on with Zero-One when the first few episodes rushed the pace with new forms. Thankfully, it stopped. Fortunately, it was just forms and not new characters. However, Saber is already throwing things at a rapid pace with just EIGHT episodes.

No matter how I really want to bash Kamen Rider Ryuki - I still praise it for not throwing in the merchandise at full decibel. The same can be said for Kamen Rider Gaim which for me is still one of my favorite Heisei Riders. However, we need to consider not just the forms but also the CHARACTERS that have been showing up. We've got a lot of characters happening in just eight episodes which the pacing is WAY TOO FAST. You can think about how new heroes and new villains are showing up way too fast. That's a far cry from how new characters were introduced in Ryuki and Gaim where they had to wait until development happened for a set number of characters. For example, we had to wait for a couple of episodes in Ryuki before the game-changing murderous Takeshi (Kamen Rider Ouja) showed up to further ramp things up. Gaim also had all its moments to slowly shift between Yggdrasil Corporation to the rise of Helheim. But it seems that Saber is already putting everything on hyperdrive.

For one, I think the fans of Kamen Rider showing their disdain might be easily understood in some way. IMHO, it's because Kamen Rider as a franchise is meant to operate with solo heroes and when new characters are introduced - they need to be introduced at a proper pace. I could also mention one reason why I usually preferred mostly older Super Sentai series was the pacing of when new characters and mecha are introduced. Most of them are usually introduced later in the series (though Mirai Sentai Timeranger should've introduced Naoto in the early 20s IMHO) or were rather planned out. In the case of Saber - it seems older fans are complaining because they watch the show for the plot and not for the toys that it'll sell. Sure, much of the innovation is on the toys but producing things too fast or too slow is bad for profits too. If there's too much to choose from then consider quality itself will really slide down due to a lack of quality check. I think that's what happened with Shuriken Sentai Ninninger as to why it had REALLY LOW toy sales. 

Speaking of Ghost being the lowest in the Heisei - right now I can't decide whether or not I'm just having the Kamen Rider Drive hype or is the show that badly implemented? Cool concept, bad implementation is something that happens a lot. Kamen Rider BLACK RX had some cool concepts but implementation was considered lackluster - it only got vindicated because of later shows that were MUCH WORSE such as Saban's Mashed Rider. It looks like Fukuda is now making the same mistake as he did in Ghost. Not to mention, producer Kazuoki Takahashi was also the producer of Ghost too. It looks like they haven't learned their lesson with Ghost yet. But at least Ghost didn't keep adding too many characters way too early. I'm not going to easily drop it yet but as said - haste makes waste. Hopefully, Toei will try to slow down the introduction of characters becasue it could severely backfire with more flak not just Japan but over the world!