Zi-O: A pretty faithful continuation, right down to mentioning the way
Hibiki's Oni approached their Makamou-fighting calling as a job. (Seriously, the show treated it very mundanely for the first 60% of the season before the retool, almost like an exterminator business.) Kyousuke (a character added after the show was retooled to make it less boring) shows signs of his old arrogance and condescension. It's no surprise to me that he washed out; the show basically ended with him beating out the previous teenage lead to be Hibiki's successor, but I never felt he really deserved it, and it seems like
Zi-O's writers agree with me. Although his Oni form in the
Hibiki finale was the same costume he has now, a white variant of Hibiki's design.
Todoroki still has his guitar and his stock guitar-riff music, but he's gotten more serious; he used to be an earnest rookie stumbling over himself in his enthusiasm. And one other thing has changed: In
Hibiki, the Oni form was not armor but a transformation of the body that destroyed the wearer's clothes, so when they changed back they were naked. (I wondered why they didn't strip before transforming -- it would've saved them a lot of money on new clothes.) There were a few exceptions to this, with Oni retaining their clothes on changing back, but I think they were mostly in the out-of-canon summer movie and the alternate World of Hibiki in
Decade -- maybe it happened once in the show proper.
How appropriate that Sougo's birthday corresponds the "birth" of the Reiwa era. And Woz's arc here was revealing. I never thought about it before, but celebrating/rejoicing is pretty much his whole deal, isn't it?
Getting to see the Kuuga Armor in show was nice, a good way to see out the last Super Hero Time of the Heisei Era.
Yeah, I guess, since
Kuuga was the first Heisei series. I didn't really get a very good look at it, though, except in one or two shots.
Ryuu: Nice to see Asuna finally getting a bit of characterization, though only in one scene. The new villain Wiseru has a clever trick, using hypnotized children as his shields. (But what's with the "showtime" line? Who does he think he is, Kamen Rider Wizard?)
I like the "ground-level" camera angles on the Minusaur and KishiRyuuOh. That did a nice job of making them feel gigantic and dangerous. Some clever fight choreography too. And that Fortress Mode seems like it might be a callback to
Zyuranger, where the Megazord had an initial "tank" mode from which it changed into its humanoid mode.
Lupinranger and Patranger cast individually doing the Que Bon dance
Looks like Asahi Itou (Kairi) is wearing a blond wig. He's probably changed his hairstyle since the show ended. He looks like Harpo Marx.