So based on the state of affairs of this series thus far, I wasn't coming into the finale with high expectations. The show's been a mess for a while, and the finale would probably continue that. Still, I was underwhelmed by the finale. In fact I'm surprised by just how much it underwhelmed me.
I'll skip the absurdly long write-up since BreadToku is killing it, but somehow this finale was the perfect culmination of bad writing, bad pacing, and failing to properly utilize the tools at their disposal. For example, while I was hoping we'd get some kind of grand fight with KR Tsukuyomi, I figured it was unlikely. Then Toei went and underdelivered even those expectations by actively avoiding
any kind of fight. Like, what was even the purpose of KR Tsukuyomi? In the end, it's not even good fan service.
The finale arc has been too packed for everything the writers have been trying to do. And that came to a head here, where not only is there not any time to try to wrap up any remaining dangling plot threads, but then precious time is siphoned off by ridiculous twists. When has Tsukuyomi
ever been the backstabbing type? It feels like a twist merely for the sake of being a twist. And then there's killing her and Geiz; to the credit(?) of the writers, I didn't see that coming, despite the fact that killing off the secondary Riders has become some kind of perverse Toei tradition. But now it's overdone and unsatisfying. Killing off Riders just to bring them back 10 minutes later has become a cheap way of shocking the audience. With better writing, it could have been made to feel more impactful and necessary, but then that goes for a lot of things in this series. If nothing else, Geiz getting killed should have taken place in an earlier episode.
On the plus side, the action was good. Grand Zi-O has officially become a joke (I'll expand on this for the series discussion), but after 49 episodes we finally got to see Oma Zi-O curb stomp some bad guys, and that was very satisfying. Zi-O (the Rider) never really got to have too many curb stomp battles, so the few that are in the series have been fun to watch. Meanwhile, I'm just going to ignore how using Oma Zi-O's power didn't make Sougo an evil tyrant, since the writers seemingly have too.
The scene between Sougo and his uncle was also sweet. Toei telegraphed the fixed watches a little
too hard (and actually, they did a worse job of explaining them being broken in the first place), but none the less, it's an emotionally resonant moment.
I can't say the same about the reset world, however; that was decidedly
unresonant. Besides being a damn near carbon copy of Build's finale, it basically undoes the entire damn series. And while the purpose of the series is to entertain (and sell toys) - in other words, it's the journey rather than the destination - undoing everything comes off as a bit of a slap in the face to anyone that got invested in the series. Resets
can be made to work, but Zi-O didn't come close to making it work here. Some AU version of the crew is alive and well, but most of the characters we've been watching for the last year are still dead.
Ultimately I score this episode a 2/5. The cast and crew clearly made an effort here, but in the end they couldn't properly tie things up into the satisfying finale the Heisei era deserved.
In the meantime, thank you once again to the hard working TV-N crew for another season of KR. You're the real heroes of this story!
takenoko wrote: ↑Sat Aug 24, 2019 11:22 pm
Geiz is coming back next April? Fuck that. This show has already shown that it's boring to tears without the nostalgia factor. I don't want to work on that
I get why Toei has to put these epilogue movies so far after the end of the series - they need to come after the holiday team-up movie - but it doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to care about Zi-O 8 months down the line. Not that I especially care
now, but even with a good series, that's too much of an ask.
In the meantime, I'm not sure whether the enigmatic trailer is a good thing or not. Geiz is probably the most interesting character of the show; but the trailer says so little that it's hard to get a bead on where all of that is even going.
Lunagel wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:53 am
Way to completely underuse that Rider who you only revealed at the end of last episode. FFS I think Aqua got more screen time than Rider Tsukuyomi and IT'S NOT EVEN HIS FUCKING SERIES
Aaaaand the female Rider curse claims another victim. Toei, I know you're a bunch of girl-hating assholes but you could at least pretend to make an effort occasionally.
Yeah I'm gonna die mad about this. But not that mad cause I honestly didn't care that much about this series. And frankly, it looks like the writers didn't really either.
Honest to goodness, sometimes it feels like Toei's writers are doing the absolute bare minimum with female riders. It's as if an executive ordered them to include a female rider, so they dutifully include one. But they do so in the most half-assed way possible, to the point that it's practically malicious compliance. As someone pointed out last week, the SFX for Tsukuyomi have actually been in the belt since the very beginning (i.e. this was decided on easily 14 months ago), and it amounts to not even a minute of footage.
It's always going to be a franchise aimed at boys first. But Toei's ability to consistently leave the female riders half-baked (at best) is on a whole other level.
