YMMV / Kamen Rider Hibiki

• Awesome Music: For a series that has weaponized sound and musical instruments, it is to be expected to have a lot. Kagayaki, the 1st opening, takes the cake.
• Broken Base: The series as a whole thanks to its Retool after Episode 29. The tone shift being rather massive, fans still criticize it for trying to be a serious rider series when in its earlier days, Hibiki never presented itself as such, while others believed that it was an good retun to a more back-to-basics action series, Kiriya and his rivalry with Asumu adding a new conflict to the series and that its battles and character development make it just as good if not better than it’s first half. Of course, there’s detractors of either halves, saying that the first half was boring and out-of-place in an action series and that they're happy the series went back to more conventional fares with the stakes getting higher or that the second half threw away all uniqueness the season had and turned Hibiki into a generic rider show with needless drama and prioritizing selling toys over telling a story and thus ending up missing the different, more character-driven first half.
• Critical Backlash: A lot of fans’ opinions on the second half of the season. While not entirely perfect, it’s not considered the utter turd that it was made out to be by some of them.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Everything after episode 29 gets hit with this treatment, due to the retool the show went under. It's not uncommon for fans to only recommend the whole show on one's first watch just for the sake of seeing how much it was meddled with, then stopping at episode 29 on subsequent rewatches.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid also has a character by the name of Kiriya (albeit as his first name instead of his last name) but instead of being hated, is one of the more popular Riders in his show.
• Mis-blamed: Many fans will often give Toshiki Inoue the blame for the show’s tone shift in the second half. Thing is, however, the changes were the result of Executive Meddling by one Shinichirō Shirakura (who was involved in producing Agito-Blade, and took over the role of producer at the same time as Inoue took over writing; Shirakura is similarly disliked by Kamen Rider fans, yet strangely, this isn’t one thing he gets blamed for), and if Inoue had refused, they would’ve just gotten someone who would’ve made the changes.
• The Scrappy: Kyosuke Kiriya, who was so despised that when his actor was cast in Kamen Rider Den-O, the Scrappydom passed to his new character before he had even made his debut!
  • HOW much do people hate Kiriya? When he was confirmed as the new Hibiki for Kamen Rider Zi-O, fans weren’t pleased, at least not until it turned out that the story arc was practically being used as an opportunity to finally set him straight.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: What many fans thought of the show following the Retool.
• Tough Act to Follow: Oddly, Hibiki is this not to its direct predecessor, Kamen Rider Blade, but rather, Hibiki itself. This is mainly due to the Retool - the first half of the series is very different from a traditional Kamen Rider series, whereas the second half is more akin to a normal one. While the first half does have people who dislike it because of how different it is, it's seen as the stronger of the two just because of how different it is.

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