So let's look at Gai's plan for this last competition round:
Step 1: Ally with a human supremacist politician whom you must know to be shady and corrupted otherwise ZAIA wouldn't use him.
Step 2: Set up a televised debate and count on the opposing side's Humagear's fucking genocide switch being flipped causing him to go from being a little bit aggressive to full on destroy all of humanity mode in seconds. Because if this hadn't happened the politician's only defence is to scream fake news like a Trumpian goon.
Step 3: While cameras are rolling, ensure the media are more wowed by a live advertisement of the Raidriser than to actually do their job and ask important questions.
Step 4: (the tried and tested method) Continue to rely on Aruto being a consistently ineffective opponent like he has been over the course of last four previous rounds. Aruto gets on my nerves mainly because Thouser's shenanigans always work on him, and Aruto never wisens up to any of it.
The above is basically a good distillation of what is wrong with this arc. Shit just happens in Gai's favour, often doesn't make sense, and the main hero is caught off guard every single time.
Imagine how much more compelling everything would be if Gai wasn't such a smug, unlikable jackass able to freely break every law under the sun and never be seriously challenged for it. A Gai who can still be an antagonistic figure but actually written well could easily leave the viewers in a real dilemma. Of course you want to support the protagonist because he's the hero and his message is hopeful and inspiring, but what if this more affable less-of-an-asshole Gai truly has a point and isn't wrong about the sheer dangers of unpredictable AI development, programming going rogue and lethal, and the endemic effects on the job market.
Cannot wait for this arc to end and a new one to start. And on a more positive note, Kiramager's alright so far. I'm not much of a Sentai guy but out of boredom I checked out the first few episodes and there's a certain goofy and endearing charm to it. Granted, I don't think it's anything to write home about and it's such a shame that the franchise has been on such a downward slope that it hasn't been able to truly freshen things up meaningfully without Bandai and Toei freaking out over increasingly lower toy sales earnings and ratings respectively.
