YMMV / Kamen Rider Amazons

• Awesome Music:
  • The first opening, "Armour Zone", not only has the nightmarish music that captures the "wild animal" themes of the series, but also contains lyrics that are both powerful and symbolic.
  • The second opening "Die Set Down" is no slouch either, since its music has the tragic and violent feel that fits with Season 2's themes.
  • The movie theme "EAT KILL ALL" by Project R featuring Taro Kobayashi is also pretty awesome.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The opening credits of the broadcast version. Episode 1 had Haruka and Jin laying next to the female leads, wake up, biting them before fighting each other in a draw. Episode 2 had Omega and Alpha running at each other to fight while showing Haruka and Jin underwater and rising and stare at each other while bleeding Amazon blood. None of those openings make sense of the first two episodes.
• Broken Base:
  • There's a divide between those who agree with Haruka and those that agree with Jin, as well as which one is the hero and which one is the villain.
  • A slightly more meta one has cropped up in the infamous "I hope with Amazons the toothless Kamen Riders can get their fangs back." statement made by Shinichiro Shirakura. Some people agree with him and wish to have a more mature and dark Rider series, while others point out that as a series that is and has always been aimed at children, Kamen Rider as a franchise never had, and doesn't need, the "fangs" he says they've lost.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Amazons has one with fans of Kamen Rider Ghost due to perceptions, true or not, that Ghost‘s budget was leeched for Amazons‘ production leaving Ghost with reduced resources, Captain Ghost disappearing from the series entirely and a less cohesive plot.
  • Fans of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid have this as a more minor case as if there were budget cuts due to Amazons Season 2, Ex-Aid mostly planned around them.
• Fanon Discontinuity: For those who were disappointed at this show's increasing bleakness during season 2 and The Last Judgement, some fans would prefer to stop watching the show altogether after season 1 ends.
• Harsher in Hindsight: For most of season 2, Takaaki Tenjo has little screen time and given the character's status as an Evil Cripple takes a different turn when his actor Takashi Fujiki passed away on September 20th, 2020.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A DEATH BATTLE! fanfic featuring Jin had its hosts discussing how Amazons came to be, with one of them asking if someone just filled the water supply with radiation. If one were to replace "radiation" with "Amazon cells", then it'd be a spot-on description of how Amazons in Season 2 came to be.
  • Quite a few fans thought that Eiji Akaso could've easily been a rider in this series, and were disappointed that the Sequel Hook wasn't him turning into a reboot version of Kamen Rider Stronger or something. Turns out they just weren't looking in the right series.
  • A few years earlier, Toei tried to cater older fans of Super Sentai franchise with Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, which was an Affectionate Parody with lots of funny moments and still relatively lighthearted story (even if it's still darker than mainline Super Sentai series). Three years later, Kamen Rider eventually got this show which also specifically made for older fans, but has exact opposite style and story.
  • Although Yasuko Kobayashi wrote all 26 episodes of the series, she didn't write the Grand Finale movie. The movie is written under her supervision by Yūya Takahashi, who happens to be part of the same club as Kobayashi in writing all episodes of Ex-Aid.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • It has become commonplace to poke fun at the show's constant use of a camera filter to look like it’s constantly cloudy.
  • *insert dramatic reveal* WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA! WHOA WHOA!^note How the second season ED starts, which is admittedly a little more Narmtastic than the guitar intro of the first season ED. Fans have taken to editing it into the end of Kamen Rider episodes with shocking endings, complete with camera filter.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Hundreds of vicious, man-eating monsters are running rampant, some of which can freely assume human form, others can transform suddenly and without warning and even if they were your friend before hand, may not hesitate to eat you. Worse yet, after that? Some of them can still PRETEND to be human to lure in their prey. The scariest part? You won't even know, because the company who's responsible for their existence is covering it up.
  • Season 2 is arguably worse regarding this. The new Amazons aren't Escaped from the Lab, but are rather regular humans who were infected by drinking from water coolers distributed by the Aroma Ozone company. You might not know you're turning into an Amazon until it's too late.
• Seasonal Rot: Among those who actually enjoyed Season 1, Season 2 is seen as a sharp nosedive in quality. Common complaints is the derailing of characterizations, especially Mamoru's Face–Heel Turn, pointlessly making the series grimmer, resolving nothing by the end and ending on a Sequel Hook meant to drum up hype for The Movie.
• Special Effects Failure: The way Tachibana being squeezed is unusually jarring in a rather violent episode where 4C workers are being slaughtered by the rampaging Chihiro's true Amazon form.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Amazon Sigma was built up as a powerful threat and could've been the final villain of season 1, instead he was killed in episode 11. Though to be fair, that was two episodes before the season finale.
  • The Season 2 finale seemed like it would consist of a final siege on 4C and Chihiro directly confronting Tachibana. Every soldier and merc in the building was prepared for a major siege of their main base. Instead, after dealing with some soldiers and New Omega, the Neo Driver stifles Neo's ability to transform into Origin. Then, Iyu's arm acts up, allowing a concerned Neo to be peppered by so much gunfire (despite being strong enough to shrug it off) the two are forced to retreat, making the entire siege ultimately pointless.
    • On the subject of the finale, The final battle against the three Riders that had been built up for five episodes...being relegated to an off-screen event.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: With lots of moral ambiguity, graphic violence, and Tragedy, Amazons is subject to this by Rider fans who are left to wonder what purpose Amazons has in a series primarily meant for children to the point where the reveal of The Movie wasn't met by elation by fans hungry for more of the series but exasperation that it was still going. Not helped at all by the fact that no one makes any real progress after season 1, with everything instead slowly sliding into being worse.
• Tough Act to Follow: Amazons Season 2 was considered to be inferior than the first season due to the increasing darker moments in the show to the point of being too bleak, even by Kamen Rider fans' standards.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Unlike other episodic Kamen Rider series, this series is clearly intended for adult viewers due to violent content. And it shows. Especially Season 2.
• The Woobie:
  • Life has been vicious to poor Mamoru. He's a monster who has to eat a ton of protein everyday so he doesn't go insane, possesses a childlike innocence and fear of the world around him, and you can tell that the last thing he wants is for all his friends to split up. And by the end of the first season, he's given in to the instinct that causes him to crave human flesh, resulting in him ripping off one of his friend's arms for food, and when he realizes what he's done, he doesn't embrace it- he completely breaks down. The poor guy needs a hug...Until Season 2 breaks him down into an utter asshole that decides to cross the line by giving the humans everything they deserve in his eyes.
  • Iyu has it worse. She appeared to have a loving family and her father often sang to her. That is until he transformed into an Amazon, killed and ate her mother and sister, and she was the last to go. After her resurrection, she has no emotion to express and is more of a machine than human. Anyone who knew this immediately sympathizes with her, including the viewer.

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