I think anyone that has followed me for any length of time probably knows by now I'm hopelessly in love with Tokusatsu, (and particularly Kamen Rider) but as I've delved deeper into some older shows, it is a little mystifying to me how the original KR caught on so well when it's objectively much weaker than some of its contemporaries.
I'm watching Kaiketsu Zubat (bat shit insane, funny) and Robot Detective K (has, like, an actual plot and character arcs) right now and they are both very different kinds of brilliant and far more refined than KR1 in what they did well.
I guess what I'm trying to scrape out of my head is that there's a frustrating creative reality that exists, one hardly specific to Toku, and that is that being the first impression for a media category does far more work for you than almost anything else.