I’ve mentioned countless times on this blog my near endless love for this series from Japan. Great action, great suit design, fantastic music and characters. I’m focusing on the suits again, this time on purely the final forms of the series. More specifically, the main rider’s final forms. Consider this a part 1 of the list, since I’m going over ALL of them. #18-#9 is in this part.
#18 – Decade Complete
Lord this suit makes me queasy just looking at it. Who honestly thought card pauldrons were a good idea? I mean, the series was beyond awful, but the original Decade suit looked passable at least. Who thought draining all the color out of it, and adding those beyond ridiculous pauldrons was a good idea? This is why you don’t drink and design. At least later series got back on the ball of designing these final forms with SOME thought to them.
#17 – Faiz Blaster
Now, to the non-Kamen Rider fan, this suit might not look so bad to you. But to the fan, it looks awful. It’s basically a red recolor of the original Faiz suit with a new backpack, and an admittedly sweet gun. To be honest, the only thing saving this from the bottom of the list is the gun. I mean, what can you say about something like this? Next number.
#16 – Armed Hibiki
Once again, a recolor of a previous suit the rider had. But instead of it being a recolor of his base form, let’s recolor his previous form but with a bit more armor! If there’s one thing I hate in the KR series the most, its when they recolor entire suits. Seriously, it’s very distracting how obvious it is sometimes. Unless you’re Kamen Rider Genm you have no excuse. Next.
#15 – Shining Agito
Yet another recolor, but at least this one has an excuse. His previous form, Burning Agito, could only truly unleash its power in the sunlight, and when it does it brings forth this form. While extremely basic, it still has a decent enough design to work. The silver and red compliment each other, but man the suit needs more to it to make it stand out among the main rider’s other suits. At least the secondary characters got forms that look better.
#14 – Ryuki Survive
If it wasnt for the chest piece that juts out way more than the picture shows, I would have placed this one higher. The Ryuki suits were fairly boring looking, with the exception of Knight. But when both Ryuki and Knight gain their survive forms, the colors overtake their body, from boring shades of grays and dull blues and reds (red in Ryuki’s case), to bright shades of their respective colors. Ryuki also gets some nice gold trim on his body, making his features pop out even more, alongside gaining antenna. But like I said, his Rob Liefeld chest makes this thing kind of… dumb looking sometimes to say the least.
#13 – Hyper Kabuto
Basically, take the inital Kabuto suit, and take off his armor, and gives him a nice split open chest, larger horn, and fins on his arms and legs? Yeah, sounds like a decent enough final form. Despite me really disliking how over powered his form is (LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN.), the suit works decent enough since there really wasn’t much to work with in this era for a bug themed final form. Nowadays theyd think of a lot more bells and whistles to add the suit. Anyway, decent looking suit. Next number
#12 – Drive Type Tridoron
Here’s when I start really liking the suit design. Initially, I didn’t care much for Type Tridoron, or most of Drive’s forms for that matter. But thinking about it some more, I find this suit really fitting. Considering Drive’s initial form was based on his own car already, it makes sense to go all the way for his final form. It’s powers, involving mixing the Shift Cars’ powers to make move combinations is really cool, and the fact that “Mr Belt” takes over sometimes and changes to his personality (with the suit actor matching said personality) is also amazing. It’s a sort of return to form for Rider suits, going for a more basic look instead of being bright and flashy. A nice change of pace.
#11 – PuToTyra OOO
Oh if you live in a Spanish speaking country how unfortunate of a name this thing has. With the combination of the 3 dinosaur Core Medals (Pteradactyl, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus), we get OOO’s PuToTyra form. It’s a very divisive form, with me personally liking it but still preferring his previous form (TaJaDor) to be his final. This thing also had the dumbest arc ever in the series, and was really not worth using. But that was the intended purpose, to not want to use it even in emergencies. The suit itself is a rare breed of purple colored riders. Even nowadays I’d argue we need more of them. The detailing on the suit is nice too, with the emblem now being an armor piece as opposed to painted on. The boots are now dino claws as opposed to shoes as well. It really feels like a monster has been unleashed on the battlefield.
#10 – Den-O Liner
Ending off part 1 of the list, we have Den-O’s arguably final form. Some say it’s Climax form, but Climax would be below Decade Complete on this list if that were the case. Seriously that suit looked awful. This suit, is very sleek, and blends the different colors really well. And yes, that ridiculous thing he’s holding is his sword. A sword with faces. Make of that what you will. Anyway, the suit is really colorful, yet blends them together so well you almost don’t notice they have 8 different colors on the suit alone. The fact that even at Den-O’s strongest form, the main character is still an unbelievably meek and shy person is beyond hilarious, considering this form can destroy buildings just by punching hard enough. Den-O’s notfor everyone, but we can all agree at least this suit looks better than Den-O Climax.
Part 2 coming soon.