TV-Nihon

Masato I thought was an excellent villain and his death is very cathartic for the Monster he is. He is very easy to hate (to not even get into Groteque flowers), and that's what they were going for...Though I shall never refer to him as 'kusaka' due to my attachment to another character with that surname.
KRT Can go to hell for what it tried to retcon with him and Kiba, though sadly that's not even that film's biggest sin. Thank you Yongou netmovies for in turn throwing that all out and correcting things.
I still enjoyed 555 as I ended up viewing it through the lens of it being a metaphor for depression and mental illness. I loved the costumes, I really empathized with Takumi, and liked the greater thematic narrative set around him of the 'Reconstruction of what it means to be a hero' his story endeavored to be, alongside his aborted bromance with Kiba. It's too bad the show regularly dropped it's story threads and backpedaled on development so few of them were properly resolved, and it has a TON of story problems (the timeline for the maintenance workers imprisonment, in example) alongside this being probably the most Inoue of Inoue series with his tropes.
...What happened to Yuka at the end, with the detective from-out-of-nowhere coming into things to lead to her demise...that still really pisses me off.
Recommended, but with caveats that it's not a pleasant experience.

Oh, I didn't know people didn't like the 555 retcons in Rider Taisen. I guess it's been a while. But Yongou is great, I loved that and wish more toku had such good writing.

takenoko wrote:Oh, I didn't know people didn't like the 555 retcons in Rider Taisen. I guess it's been a while. But Yongou is great, I loved that and wish more toku had such good writing.

It had been awhile since I saw 555 when I watched Taisen, but I felt like that recton was too out of nowhere. Takumi didn't like Masato, but did at times put up with him. Everything about how Taisen tried saying Takumi felt about his death just felt wrong and forced.
If they had used Kiba instead, it would've been perfect. He was a character Takumi actually bonded with, and whose death he more likely regretted. I haven't seen Yongou yet.