[SPOILERS... for those of you waiting for subs]
Before I start, I want to apologise to both seiji982 and Adrian Watts.
Save for a brief cameo in the recent DCD film, episode #27 was my first real exposure to W. as a character. As such, I was expecting the series to be somewhat unique, given the central concept… and yet everything on show was sadly familiar.
Of the central characters, only Shotaro and Philip are worth mentioning, both of whom come across as youthful yet believable characters, at least given what we’ve seen in previous Rider shows, however, because I am of an ill temperament, I am indeed going to mention that I found both Akiko and Ryu to be characters coloured by differing shades of idiocy.
Akiko seems to be a throwback to Abaranger‘s Emiri, whilst Terui Ryu/Kamen Rider Accel owns one of the worst Rider suit designs since last year’s DCD Complete Form. Not only does the suit design seem utterly at variance with the style of the show, the actor is also utterly inappropriate for the character he is attempting to pray.
What does impress about the series however is stuntman Takaiwa Seiji, who portrays W. as being very reminiscent of BLACK in his movements. This is probably the most you’re going to get out of the show to remind you of previous entries in the franchise as the rest of it seems seriously rooted in attempting to capture a younger audience more familiar with sentai.
The series is more aggressively marketed at a younger audience than previous iterations. In fact, despite the number of toys that have appeared in the Heisei era shows, W. marks a decisive upping of the ante regarding Bandai’s sales campaign for 2010.
Somewhat guiltily, I will admit that I wouldn’t have watched this episode if it wasn’t for the presence of a certain guest actress. I don’t feel bad about that and I’ll even probably watch episode #28 but I find it a bit of a push to say that this is due to anything but slavish dedication to supporting an actress I’ve been following since Hurricanger. I’m not sure I could stomach watching a whole series, not even for AKB48′s Kasai Tomomi and Itano Tomomi.
There just isn’t enough here to make it feel like a cohesive whole. A lot of work seems to have gone into establishing the style of the world but the story fails to seem to do justice to that effort.
I honestly can’t think of anything else to say about the show.
To make up for this, here’s a picture of the aforementioned AKB48 girls in a photo that implies more potential action than the events of this episode:
"Love ♥ Wars"
