There's a lot of theory as to the make of a good story, but generally people agree that you need at least two things: An interesting plot, and compelling characters. The makeup of either can vary. You can have a vast and expansive plot, or you can have something small. You can have fifty thousand characters each with their own time in the limelight, or you can have five. Either way, once you've got plot and characters, the rest is just gravy.
Kamen Rider OOO fulfills about half of this.
The tone of OOO is suitable for an epic right from the start. Eiji is a homeless man with simple desires who wanders the world. One day, however, he's drug into a conflict against ancient sealed monsters called Greeed that feed off people's strongest desires. The man that drug him into the conflict, and now who Eiji is forced to work with, is a barely-pieced-together Greeed named Ankh that couldn't care less about the collateral damage of the conflict as long as he gets his way, dammit.
A theme about people's desires and a conflict that has lasted from ages ago is a glorious beginning, and leaves you hanging for more. Unfortunately, the majority of the plot is crammed into the first and final chunk of episodes, and everything in between is...well, it's there, but it's bare-string at best. It consistently feels like that there were things that the writing team genuinely wanted to do, but they kept putting it off.
Does that mean it's all dull? Not at all. The plot is only half of things, after all. Every single major character, sans perhaps the glassy-eyed has-super-strength-for-no-explained-reason-at-all Hina, have a myriad of complexities and interesting quirks about them. The strongest parts of the show are not when it's trying to stumble about the plot, but rather when the characters are bouncing back and forth off of each other. Even after so long of watching the characters sulk, fight, and snark with each other, though, sometimes you just want them to do something story-related to get back to the plot—and OOO just barely provides on that end.
It's funny that Kamen Rider OOO is a series that deals with desire. Ever since the beginning, it tried to reach high...but unfortunately never quite made it. While it has enough character-based shenanigans to entertain for a good while, such things can only go so far.
Much to be Desired
There's a lot of theory as to the make of a good story, but generally people agree that you need at least two things: An interesting plot, and compelling characters. The makeup of either can vary. You can have a vast and expansive plot, or you can have something small. You can have fifty thousand characters each with their own time in the limelight, or you can have five. Either way, once you've got plot and characters, the rest is just gravy.
Kamen Rider OOO fulfills about half of this.
The tone of OOO is suitable for an epic right from the start. Eiji is a homeless man with simple desires who wanders the world. One day, however, he's drug into a conflict against ancient sealed monsters called Greeed that feed off people's strongest desires. The man that drug him into the conflict, and now who Eiji is forced to work with, is a barely-pieced-together Greeed named Ankh that couldn't care less about the collateral damage of the conflict as long as he gets his way, dammit.
A theme about people's desires and a conflict that has lasted from ages ago is a glorious beginning, and leaves you hanging for more. Unfortunately, the majority of the plot is crammed into the first and final chunk of episodes, and everything in between is...well, it's there, but it's bare-string at best. It consistently feels like that there were things that the writing team genuinely wanted to do, but they kept putting it off.
Does that mean it's all dull? Not at all. The plot is only half of things, after all. Every single major character, sans perhaps the glassy-eyed has-super-strength-for-no-explained-reason-at-all Hina, have a myriad of complexities and interesting quirks about them. The strongest parts of the show are not when it's trying to stumble about the plot, but rather when the characters are bouncing back and forth off of each other. Even after so long of watching the characters sulk, fight, and snark with each other, though, sometimes you just want them to do something story-related to get back to the plot—and OOO just barely provides on that end.
It's funny that Kamen Rider OOO is a series that deals with desire. Ever since the beginning, it tried to reach high...but unfortunately never quite made it. While it has enough character-based shenanigans to entertain for a good while, such things can only go so far.