Ex-Aid I actually give way to a little. It's still a problem, sure; but Ex-Aid manages to spin it to its advantage by making it its aesthetic. It just owns the idea of Emu getting a new gashat every 2 seconds by making everything flashy and over-the-top and ridiculous in my opinion; everything's so wild and bizarre that, sure, new power-ups everywhere actually kinda works! Have Kuroto develop a second Gear Gashat Dual basically minutes before Hiiro gets another new power-up essentially rendering that action stupidly pointless, why not? This whole season is dumb, let's just completely f*ck around!


... it fits significantly less for a series like Build, where despite a lot of levity and many comedic moments; is at its core a series set in a dark dystopian alternate universe where corrupt politicians turned a country-splitting tragedy into an ideology of hate so that weapons industries have an angle to create wars they can profiteer off of all the while some snake bastard in the background is deadset on mentally torturing our main characters in cruel and unnecessary ways!

You know doing a count on who actually finished a Final Boss in what form... we only really have 5 (Den-O, Fourze, Wizard, Ghost, Ex-Aid) of our 20 Riders that did that? And even then I'd say there were special enough circumstances as to why they ended it in their base forms. 6 if you really want to count Build switching from RabbitDragon to RabbitTank at the last second for some weird reason other than they didn't want to use the CG for any longer than they had to.

But that's only like 25% out 100%

Then you've got cases like the previously mentioned RabbitDragon, alongside OOO (Unless you count Tajador but that's a whole other discussion) and Oma Zi-O as cases where the Final Form doesn't finish it but a different/stronger form takes it's place.

And then you've got every other single Rider who finishes it in their Final Forms from what I'm recalling. It's definitely more common for base forms to finish the job in the later half of Heisei, but it's not a standard.

With Zero One's new form, especially with the dual insert gimmick and the progrise key gimmick that matches what Thouser's overall design gimmick was, it could be something that we see the two working together on.

As for whether or not it is the new form, I think it comes down to whether or not Isu becomes a sort of on-board AI for the fighting or if she directly links to him during the process. In the series that has an intregal side character to the plot such as W and Drive, has the characters joining up as 1 rider. If that happens, then this will be the final form. There is some minor evidence to suggest this, as the unfolded section mimics the Satellite Zea a bit, which has been another key component to the series. If it isn't, then I expect this to be 1 component of the final form.

From a toy perspective, it feels a bit of a waste to have 1 dual product needed to do your grand finale. To compare it with something, look at Ex-Aid, Gaim, and Build's final form. All of them had some extra slot/gimmick that became core to their later upgrades/forms.

Looking at the timing of the show, it doesn't give them much time, as this upgrade will probably have to be introduced by episode 38 if it is not the final form. That way, they will roughly have 6 to 8 episodes to try and show off the form before moving onto the final form, which would have the inserted piece and a newer progrise key that comes from Isu besides her personal progrise key.

I don't know, I feel like it fits just as well in Build. The fact that each side is having to constantly make stronger, more powerful suits because the other sides are doing the exact same, just to hold an ever-fleeting advantage so they can survive, with Stalk egging them on because he finds it incredibly amusing, and also because he's on top the entire time.

There is that to it, but I don't feel it works half the time. Genius and Sparkling feel completely superfluous while you absolutely could have cut out half the fullbottles and lost nothing of value.

the unfortunate problems of power scaling in tokusatsu lol even the final form technecally gets devalued if ya count the movie even moreee stronger...er forms. ive only gotten into japanese toku like last year an even i totally understand this problem.
no wonder showa riders hate the new kids XD

Not really because those forms usually are only "Movie Exclusive"

The next time they appear somewhere else and they transform into their Final Forms. It'll be into the one from their respective series.

I've been thinking this through on and off today, and I disagree. Not with the Fullbottles, there are a tonne of those, but with Sparkling and Genius.

You need Sparkling to make Grease hit hard. RabbitTank jobs on and off to NightRogue and BloodStalk throughout the first arc, but at the end comes Sparkling, a representation of Sento freeing himself fron Isurugi, of gaining new power from his own creation, rather than that of the Smash... and then Grease comes along and his new power up gets trashed on almost instantly. That slap-in-the-face just wouldn't hit so hard (in hindsight) with only the base form or variations upon it, you need something in the middle to make Grease seem insurmountable so when Blood Stalk shows up offering him just a little trigger to make himself stronger, to help stop Banjou doping himself on Sclash-Steroids, he takes it. Because he already tried his own work, and it didn't cut it.

Note - I think my appreciation for Sparkling just jumped 1000% writing that.

I don't have as much to say about Genius, other than it works nicely as both a metaphorical and obvious culmination of eveything Sento's got, plus it looks good. There's probably something in my head about how it also ties in with him finally starting to work with his past, rather than against it, given the arc it directly comes off (plus otherwise people would just be complaining that Evol is too weak because his double upgrades don't work against a bouncy stick boy).

If you really wanna talk about superfluous forms, how about Great Cross-Z? Because as much as I love that design, it shows up for five minutes and is then never seen again.

Anyway, I'm done derailing the Zero-One thread. Zero-Two looked a little weird to me at first, but I think it was just the "#2 pose" looking kinda goofy. The other scans make it look fine, certainly an unusual final form but new era, new design philosophy. Still not as good as Shining Assault Hopper.

oh true true but i ment from a power scaling perspective like say super tatoba
or cross build or joker extreme but since the canon of rider movies are weird anyway ehh lol
good point tho, forgot about that factor

Depends on the director. Sakamoto used movie exclusive forms for a final form line up in Ultimatum. Same goes to Hidenori Ishida in Wizard's crossover finale. Shibasaki has also used past movie forms in his movies, although he has never done a final form line up.

That said, based on recent movies, it seems like Kamihoriuchi and Ryuta Tasaki don't care for movie forms (Osamu Kaneda also didn't care for them, but at least he isn't directing anymore).