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Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Episode 45- "Endless Game!" FINALE Discussion
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09-02-2017, 01:00 AM
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57
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Okay, for real this time:
Hey look, they even referenced the cold open from the first episode without having to shoot the entire narrative in the foot first. Eat s***, Gaim!
I'm a bit late on this one considering I watched the finale a couple days ago at this point, but just to make sure it was still fresh in my head I went ahead and watched it again. Having seen it twice, I can safely say that it's a darn good finale to a darn good show.
While there are admittedly some slightly flimsy elements to the final showdown with Chronus, it can't keep it from being an appropriately exciting climax. Ill-defined internal logic has ALWAYS been a thing in Ex-Aid anyway, from vague Resets that turn back time without actually turning back time, to Emu suddenly willing himself to not go berserk using Full Dragon with the closest thing to an explanation coming way later when Hiiro has similar problems with Taddle Fantasy for all of a couple minutes, to
whatever the heck the Stage Select was
(Woo-hoo, got one last Stage Select nitpick in there!). It's not so much that it DOESN'T make sense. It's just that the show is extremely disinterested in explaining what sense it does make.
What Ex-Aid IS interested in is flashy action, engaging Plot developments, and a fun cast of characters, and that's exactly what we got, right up until the very end. One thing I really appreciated about this episode was how it puts that big action climax right at the start, leaving a larger than usual amount of time devoted simply to "boring", non-action drama. With an entire movie (and then another one with Build, and then another three...) to further wrap things up, you might expect Ex-Aid to skimp a bit on the denouement, but frankly if the show actually did end right here, you wouldn't hear any complaints from me. Emu's speech was great, the characters all got their own satisfying and logical new status quo, right down to Tsukuru, of all people.
It's just wonderful all around. I can't even say much more about it than that. This episode was wonderful. I haven't thought a list out, but I'd imagine if you were to rank all the various Rider finales, this would
unquestionably
be in the top half, and I'm sure you could argue it being in the top three without too much trouble.
--
Now, having said all that, I've still got the series as a whole to reflect on, so let's get to that. It's difficult to know where to start here. I guess the Riders themselves are as good a place as any. How about the villains go first?
Ex-Aid seems to have a pretty popular pair of main baddies. Kuroto "Shin-chan" Dan is a living meme at this point, and I get the impression Masamune was a creepy enough dude for everyone. I must admit I don't hugely care for either of them. Masamune won me over a bit in these last couple episodes through sheer persistence. There were like, 3 or 4 different "final" fights with him. I have to respect that kind of determination. But between his EXTREMELY questionable business practices (I've ranted many a time about how baffling it is KRC got as big as it did), and an almost total lack of motivation or backstory, I just found it hard to take him seriously a lot of the time.
Kuroto went from being a potentially interesting two-faced schemer, to a potentially threatening master planner, to finally becoming everyone's favorite pet sociopath/court jester for the heroes. At no point did he ever truly grab me. I'm not entirely sure why. Part of it is definitely his own lack of motivation or backstory, which was admittedly sort of retroactively, indirectly explained by him having an EVEN MORE NUTS dad (with little motivation or backstory), but still. It also didn't help when he spent an entire quarter of the series with the superpower of
losing constantly
, which would always somehow circle back around into a victory, not just in his literal immortality but in his plans too.
However, even with all my complaints, I have to admit that both characters served their roles in the story well and were definitely bolstered by strong, occasionally scenery-devouring performances on the part of their actors. I absolutely don't begrudge anyone for thinking either of these guys are one of Ex-Aid's best qualities, even if I have a hard time seeing it myself.
Then there's Parad. Obviously the way things ended up playing out he's not exactly a straight bad guy, so I'm using him as a sort of transition. I LOVE Parad. He's easily one of my favorite characters in the whole show. Maybe it's just because he reminds me a lot of Heart from Drive? I love a villain with their own, twisted sense of morality, and while Parad's values were often a little contradictory and/or self-serving, I latched onto him very quickly in a way I just couldn't with the likes of Mr. The Game Master because he actually has clear reasons for being the way he is. He's a video game character with wicked existential angst, a resentment of humans, and an inability to see the world outside of the rules a video game usually plays by. He makes
sense
, and because of that, I guess it shouldn't have been too surprising that Emu was eventually able to talk some sense into him. I wasn't actually expecting it until just before it happened, but redeeming himself the way he did was a pretty logical choice for his arc, and looking back I'm happy they did what they did with Parad.
Poppy... actually didn't end up doing much AS a Rider, but, hey, she's still a main character, and I wanna talk about her. Especially since she represents a pretty big 180 for me. It's not like I
dis
liked her at first, but I was kind of shocked how much I came around to her in the back half on the series. Once the fact that she was a Bugster started being relevant to the show (they casually dropped the information as a
joke
during the Christmas special), she quickly became a genuinely interesting character with her own motivations outside of those of the main heroes, culminating in making a big sacrifice that saves the day all by herself. Poppy's cool! I don't how else to put it. You just don't usually get this level of agency from a supporting character in Kamen Rider. I mean, I still love Onari, but when did he ever do anything that impactful?
Moving right along, we have Kiriya. He's
Kiriya
. Duh.
As for the main trio (yes, trio. Sorry Kiriya, but being dead for 22 episodes is a great way to become the "plus one" of the group), we have Taiga and Hiiro. I'm talking about them both at once because there's a lot of overlap and in many ways they're also a package deal. Two rather stock character archetypes that quickly developed the nuance needed to make them legitimately engaging instead of unlikable losers. Taiga backed up his edgy loner persona with a level of genuine skill and intelligence that was often downplayed enough you might not notice it. Bandai didn't forget to give him one last form, he just didn't need one. Hiiro, similarly, compensated for being a emotionally detached prick by having actual, justifiable reasons for acting that way thanks to his profession, and by having a strong moral compass underneath all that. Only his angst over his dead girlfriend could get to him to do anything sketchy, and even then he's doing it out of a desire to make amends for being a crappy boyfriend. It takes real talent to have your most selfish acts still somehow be sort of selfless.
And then there's Emu. Emu has it
rough
. For weeks now I've been considering if I wanted to have a compilation of all the screenshots I've taken of him getting violently beaten up over the year to send off the series (I decided I'm eating enough page space as it is), but it's more than just that. On top of the borderline perverse amount of times writers have had him get stabbed, bruised, and occasionally just plain killed, he's also had to deal with a main bad guy who basically dictated his whole life for him from the shadows, and a head writer who frequently dictated he not be the star of the show that's named after him. All this is to say, I wouldn't blame you for thinking Emu was one of the least interesting parts of his own show. He reminds me a lot of Kenzaki in Blade. Not just in personality but in how he can easily get lost in the explosion of charisma that is the rest of the cast. And like Kenzaki, I find this a darn shame, because Emu is also a very solid lead who holds the show together even when you don't think he is. A lot of this is thanks to "M", who it's important to note was never
literally
Parad, outside of episode 19. All he did was make parts of Emu that are always there more pronounced. The result is someone with a little more emotional range than your average Rider protagonist. He's as kind and gentle as they come, yet is also extremely headstrong, confident, and not above lying to people to achieve a greater good. The way in which he redeems Parad illustrates all of this perfectly. Simultaneously shockingly cruel AND surprisingly merciful. That unique brand of duality is what elevates Emu so much in my eyes. He's someone who can both hate the guts of the bad guy he's fighting, and yet, upon beating them, simply make a heartfelt request that they work to atone for what they've done. Emu was always all about three things. Fighting fate, the value of human life, and making people smile. I suppose it's not hard to achieve this when your motivations are essentially a combination of Blade, Ryuki, and Kuuga thrown into a blender, but Emu is honestly one of the most saintly Riders out there, and in spite of this he avoids the usual pitfalls of being "boring" the way someone like Takeru is. He's a hugely underrated character and while it ended up being a VERY tight race at the end, I think Emu
juuuuusssssttt
manages to pull ahead as my favorite Rider in Ex-Aid now that all is said and done.
About fighting fate though. I've got a rant I've been saving up for months now. Back before Ex-Aid started, I was under the impression "changing fate" was going to be something of a theme for the show, but I have to say, it's totally skin-deep. I never thought I'd (almost) miss Gaim's confused ravings on the subject, but because Ex-Aid never really defines what exactly fate IS, the whole thing is left meaningless. As far as I can tell, by Ex-Aid's logic, I'm changing my fate of being hungry with my own hands every time I eat breakfast in the morning. Hardly a profound message, but hey, at least it's applicable to everyday life. The word is nothing more than part of a catchphrase that Emu says to sound cool. Even more bizarrely, the show doesn't pay much attention to gift-wrapped opportunities when characters actually ARE fighting against something predetermined, rather than something that could totally go either way. Parad's entire goal is for Bugsters to transcend their role as mere game characters, and he personally even rejects his status as a villain towards the end, yet outside of mirroring that aforementioned catchphrase once or twice, little is done to connect this to any sort of larger, underlying theme of the show.
Having said all that, it's not really a problem. Ex-Aid was never really about fate anyway. It isn't necessarily about anything, to the extent of all the recent Rider shows that have a simple, glaringly obvious one word central theme, but if I had say it had one, it'd be "death", and it handles this one
significantly
better than it handles fate. The show about doctors trying to save lives that deliberately plays up how "lives" in a video game come far cheaper. It's an intriguing parallel that justifies a premise that might otherwise seem pretty arbitrary. One thing I also found very interesting about the way the last stretch of the show played out was the decision to let EVERYONE, ambiguously (everyone who died to KRC) or otherwise (Kiriya and Shin-chan), have a second shot at life. This may seem SERIOUSLY hypocritical of Ex-Aid at first, but I think this is far more well thought out than it appears.
I always like to say that Ghost was about "life", and the crux of that was the notion that people never truly die. They don't carry on as literal ghosts, mind you, but through their actions, their beliefs, and their connections with those around them, they continue to leave an impact. To get this message across, Ghost naturally had to focus on death as well, between power-ups based on historical figures and even, *gasp*, killing off some characters for real. Ex-Aid flips all of that completely on its head. Rather than show how precious life is by emphasizing how it can be eternal, it emphasizes how
fragile
it is. There may be a legacy left behind, sure, but when a person is gone, they're
gone
, and they can't just be replaced. Which is where the Doctor Riders come in. A doctor's job is to fight tooth and nail to stave off that inevitable end. In that sense, maybe this is what the show actually meant by "changing fate"? At any rate, where Ghost showed that death was not the end, Ex-Aid instead shows that death is not something you should lie down and accept when given the choice. And I think that's why it was important to leave the door open for the victims of the Game Virus. Because, simply put, Life Is Beautiful.
If that makes any sense? I'm kind of out of my depth here. Kids' shows about spandex men punching people usually don't require me to get pseudo-philosophical.
Anyway, that's... probably not even close to it, but I better start to wrap this thing up all the same. Ex-Aid was a hell of a ride. It knocked my expectations out of the park if you consider how worried I was this would turn out to be another Gaim for me. It's a show I
respect
even more than I like, thanks to the very clear heart put in, as well as the general sense of creative weirdness about the whole thing. The suits that were awesome and you know it. The crazy special effects for the attacks. The
constant
momentum of the Plot. It's nuts. I also
like
the show a whole lot though. I'm not too good at picking favorites so I can't tell where Ex-Aid fits on a top 10 or anything, but I was made genuinely, lastingly sad for a solid couple days after realizing I'd just watched the
last
episode. I think part of that is how unique an experience this show has been. This is the first time I've ever posted in
every
episode thread
every
week (and I can be quite verbose, too!), which is a level of engagement with the fandom I've never really had, even if it's just on this (relatively) tiny forum. We couldn't have asked for a better "water cooler talk" type show, for one, but nonetheless, and if you'll forgive me being a bit sugary, I'd just like to thank everyone for all the interesting discussions and opinions and whatnot. I know this is a pretty trite thing to say, but it really is a great crowd on this site, and I was happy to share such an awesome show with some awesome people.
And, with
all of that
finally out of the way, I can finally say, once and for all...
I'll miss you Ex-Aid, I swear, but we've got the the TV size verision of Be The One now and I'm in the "listen to the new theme song on loop for hours" phase of being between Rider shows, which is to say, I'm finally hyped. Build looks cool, and if it can provide half the entertainment Ex-Aid did week after week, it'll have done a good job. See you all in a couple days* for episode 1, where hopefully I won't have
quite
this much to say.
*Well I mean, if I post somewhere else you'll see me again sooner but I'm strictly talking about- oh you get the idea!
__________________
誰かの笑顔のためだろ?
Last edited by Fish Sandwich; 09-02-2017 at
01:11 AM
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