[Annuga]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I don't understand how this is a contrast. How does relentless optimism, protecting smiles and real humanity not relate to guys like Shoutarou, Gentarou, Haruto, Takeru and Sento?

I think they mean with how Godai encapsulates these without being cartoonish, for lack of a better word. He's just a humble down to Earth guy compared to the more eccentric leads you mentioned. Except maybe Takeru, I don't remember Ghost well enough to speak on that

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Annuga

I think they mean with how Godai encapsulates these without being cartoonish, for lack of a better word. He's just a humble down to Earth guy compared to the more eccentric leads you mentioned. Except maybe Takeru, I don't remember Ghost well enough to speak on that

I'd say Takeru can be a little eccentric sometimes. Like how he does certain things the way a normal human would like going to sleep, worrying about being crushed or suffocating in space and then he remembers he's dead.

[GuardianAngel87]

As of now, I am 30 episodes into both Revice and Gavv, five episodes into my revisits of Agito and Kabuto, and I have also watched some of Revice's movies/specials including The Mystery miniseries as well as two of the three Super Den-O movies in between.

[DreamSword]

I've actually started rewatching Agito, in prep for the upcoming movie.

While I've been (mostly) keeping up with the uploads on YouTube, I haven't been watching those specifically. Rather, I've been watching the English dub that got released a few years back.

The dub itself isn't bad. The vocal direction is a bit weird, but I think many of the voices chosen do fit the main cast for the most part. Just, if you're expecting something on the level of quality that the Ultra series dubs we've been getting for the past few years, this is not on that level.

But the main thing is that this rewatch has been proving to be very nostalgic for me, given that Agito was the second season of Kamen Rider I ever saw.

There are a few elements I've come to appreciate a bit more in hindsight(like the surprising level of foreshadowing the early episodes have), but mostly my reaction so far has been "Yeah, this sure is the first act of Agito that I remember." And while I used to be pretty hard on it, now that my reference pools with Rider have grown, I'm just kinda coasting with things as they are right now.

Thankfully, the big element that hasn't changed is just how much I like the G3 Squad in this show. While their dynamic doesn't become a huge standout until later episodes, I still find myself much more engaged whenever any of those characters are on screen, and it makes me happy that the upcoming movie seems to be focused mostly on them. I just hope said film can capture even a little but of the charm seen in the series proper.

[GuardianAngel87]

I am now down to the final 12 episodes of Revice and the final 9 (soon to be 8) episodes of Gavv respectively.

[Locke]

Finished my watch through of Build. Maybe it is exactly because of the length of these shows, but my final thought seems to almost always be "I dunno how I feel, to be honest". And I am once again here to say, I dunno how I feel about Build really, to be honest!

Like, reviewing these shows on a weekly basis, episode by episode, is one thing, but trying to review these seasons as one collective piece, especially with a show like this which goes through specific arcs. It is just quite hard to do, because I feel like any point I make can easily be contradicted, if you zoom in on a part and isolate it out.

Overall, I would say Build is a surprisingly mature story for a toku show, that uses the magic undo button in a beautifully tragic way, as a final bow to send the show off with. I love that it is a show with genuine cause and effect and genuine permanence. Yet, overall, I would say it is also true to say it is a story they've chosen to build around conversation driving weekly cliffhangers, and I mean this in the worst possible way. Generally whenever something becomes too inconvenient for the writers, they’ll just try and reframe past events to suit the status quo as it is right now, hoping you just won’t think about it too hard, and I personally find that kinda insulting.

Like don’t get me wrong, when things actually click into place and get actual proper, genuine, pay off it is usually always extremely satisfying. Which is why it becomes complicated talking about these seasons as one collective thing, because there were spots throughout the show that I would have told you that Build was the best Kamen Rider season ever, and my absolute favourite Rider of all time.

But that isn't the feeling I finished the show with. I would say overall, this show is just sorta alright, even with these crazy highs in mind. Which feels crazy to me even! If I had gone back a few weeks in the past and asked where I landed, I’m not sure I’d have believed myself. But again, that is the difference when talking about these things as one collective, completed thing, not just a series of moments.

I am someone who loves a show which respects the time the audience invested into it, rewarding those who pay close attention to all the little details they are fed. I feel like this show spits on exactly that kind of viewer. What starts as a wonderfully rich and ambitious from the ground up story, soon devolves into a mess of constant retcons, gaslighting you into the idea that the narrative isn’t bumbling all over the place, rather each bumble is actually an intentional duking move. “This is all some sort of cerebral masterwork, we promise!” The show pleads, but I see you for what you really are: an overambitious, overreaching, narrative mess. A show where the writers constantly force themselves into self made corners, and the only way they seem to be able to get out is reversing previously important narrative beats from earlier in the show and pretending that was always the plan. It is like the Lost of Kamen Rider.

It feels an especial shame, because I loved the cast, and felt like they did some serious heavy lifting throughout. It felt like they really empowered their actors to go to special places with their performances during the show's most powerful moments. Build is a genuinely great drama on its own, even outside of its toku bits and pieces, far removed from the screaming at the sky shounen melodrama that punctuates much of the toku space.

I liked that the show wasn’t afraid to kill people off to raise the stakes, in ways that never felt like cheap shock grabs. The problem though is it starts with a pool of villains really too shallow for the length of the show to start with, and then by the half way point with villains being killed off or going through redemption arcs and so on, it did make the back half of the show become a little tedious.

It suffers from exactly the same skirmish and run holding patterns that plagued the first half or so of Kamen Rider Drive. You gotta have Build fight someone every week so they can sell toys, but when the half a dozen remaining villains all are still required for long stretches of remaining narrative, these fights cannot ever have meaningful conclusions, and so you are just going through the motions.

One of the main ways they try to address this is through extreme shounen power scaling problems. I mean in the most technical of senses, sure, it is kind of an explanation to explain why the same characters are colliding every week, but trade wins and losses, and always find some way to escape at the end but it is just weird to have action scenes like this in a show full of cause and effect, and choice and consequence. If you're a named villain, you're basically immune from this show's themes entirely and I think that is truly awful writing.

And it is an especial shame too, cause I think the action in this show is largely great! Older Rider shows can feel a little dated with a heavier focus on dudes just doing roundhouse kicks and flips, and modern Rider shows can often suffer from the opposite issue, drowning their shows in razzle dazzle, to the point where there is barely any real action, it is just dudes standing still flinging CG bullshit at each other. Build is about as close to a perfect meeting in the middle as I’ve found in the Rider space and it is honestly just pretty wonderful.


On a purely practical level, I do think a lot of its scale, ambitions and ideas completely buckled the budget, and even within the toku space, some budgetary corners seem to have been cut here. That said, there is very clear artistic intent that I think drags this show out of the muck, even as the budget groans and strains. Inspired choreography, imaginative uses of the various varieties of power sets here and just a very handsomely constructed show, you probably aren’t going to find much better action within the Rider space, but it is let down by the writing and context that is packed in around it.

So yeah, overall, for me, Build was at its absolute apex when it reigned in the scale, and honed in on exploring each character’s individual sins, and what lengths our characters will go to achieve atonement, if not out and out forgiveness. And for me, Build is at its absolute worst as it pulls yet another twist out of its ass it never intends to pay off. At times I loved it. At others I wanted to rip my hair out in frustration. But I have to say, I did think the ending was pretty perfect in the context of this messy show. So there is that.

[Mesnick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

I am someone who loves a show which respects the time the audience invested into it, rewarding those who pay close attention to all the little details they are fed. I feel like this show spits on exactly that kind of viewer. What starts as a wonderfully rich and ambitious from the ground up story, soon devolves into a mess of constant retcons, gaslighting you into the idea that the narrative isn?t bumbling all over the place, rather each bumble is actually an intentional duking move. ?This is all some sort of cerebral masterwork, we promise!? The show pleads, but I see you for what you really are: an overambitious, overreaching, narrative mess. A show where the writers constantly force themselves into self made corners, and the only way they seem to be able to get out is reversing previously important narrative beats from earlier in the show and pretending that was always the plan. It is like the Lost of Kamen Rider.

I think that Build's story has been orchestrated by its main villain for a long time. Evolt has created a long-term plan that should lead him to his goal, but the problem is that the plan took too long, and he became bored along the way. So, unlike other manipulative characters, he actively engages in combat, even when there's no reason to. And, of course, this ruins the plan, but at first, Evolt doesn't care because he doesn't see enemies as a threat. And, ironically, he created Sento himself. Evolt is like a pagan god who could and should be above mortals, but begins to actively interact with them and, ultimately, loses to them. So I don't think the show is falling apart outright. Although I won't argue with the fact that the writers love to add crazy twists out of nowhere.

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

I think that Build's story has been orchestrated by its main villain for a long time. Evolt has created a long-term plan that should lead him to his goal, but the problem is that the plan took too long, and he became bored along the way. So, unlike other manipulative characters, he actively engages in combat, even when there's no reason to. And, of course, this ruins the plan, but at first, Evolt doesn't care because he doesn't see enemies as a threat. And, ironically, he created Sento himself. Evolt is like a pagan god who could and should be above mortals, but begins to actively interact with them and, ultimately, loses to them. So I don't think the show is falling apart outright. Although I won't argue with the fact that the writers love to add crazy twists out of nowhere.

I wrote a big piece about Evolt and took it out, because I talked about how he is the Aizen problem, but I dunno if kids these days know about Aizen, but I also don't want to talk down to anybody in case you do remember Bleach at the height of its powers.

Effectively TLDR of the point I was trying to make was that Evolt is one of the biggest problems of Build as a whole. Even ignoring how boring it is that they fight him and exclusively him for like 20 straight episodes basically at the end.

The show loses all of its agency when the villain claims he is behind every single event in the show, and it is always just as planned, even if it relies on events he realistically could not have ever had any meaningful control over or relies on him doing stuff that has no fail safes to backfire, and so is he some cerebral mastermind who meticulously plans everything or not? Because the whole he got bored of it all along the way explanation doesn't hold for me, because it flipflops backwards and forwards been "just as planned" and random chaos happening and then he says "just as planned".

Like the best part of the entire show for me is when you discover the truth behind the bottles, and the idea that the very man Evolt is possessing has been trolling him the entire time, absolutely pulling Evolt's trousers down and making him look like a total loser. This probably should dismantle a character like Evolt, but to me, it is actually the only time where Evolt as a character has any actual dimension to them whatsoever. A person who can never lose, and is always a thousand steps ahead, is boring. At least to me.

That begins his downward spiral arc, where it looks like he is gonna crash out high on human emotion and get replaced by a new Aizen villain, and it actually got me really excited for the direction of the show, but then most of this is forgotten about in the final stretch and Evolt is back to saying "just as planned" at every event again and it loses me again.