I had always assumed we would watch Episode Final and 13 Riders (bad as they are).

I love Episode Final; it's one of my favorite pre-Double movies. It's a cool ending to the Ryuki story, it fleshes out some of Kanzaki's plan more, and it has Miho (I freaking love Miho). Add in the Agito cameos and it's all great fun.

The Agito cameos are fun, but I absolutely hate Miho/Femme. The fact that she got the killing strike on Ouja is utterly ridiculous. The only thing that movie did right was let Ryuki and Knight go out fighting together .

I watched them mainly because I wanted to see all of Ryuki. I prefer the way the TV series ended.

Final had good production value, it was nice seeing a higher budget in use for filming and less CG. I did like how Shirou's plan was a lot less vague.

I actually liked Femme, not just because she was hot. As for killing strike...well...if it weren't for Ryuga and Dragblacker showing up to kick Ouja's ass and kill his 3 contract monsters... I think Femme would've died a lot earlier.

In 41-45 I loved seeing Magna Giga finally do some damage against not only Asakura but Toujo. It was also great to see Asakura kick the crap out of Toujo. Both were bad guys but still, it was like karma coming to Toujo.

I'm surprised Goro didn't end up hooking up with Megumi too. That one episode where they seemed evenly match alluded to them falling for each other.

I was sad to see Tiger die, but new it was coming. I kept holding my breath worried each time he showed up could be his last, but glad he made it as far as he did. I liked that he was able to go out that way, and actually made me a bit teary on seeing how it played out. Pretty much became one of my favorite Rider characters after his story ended. Next is that damn ending.

But, he was a killer who only made friends and loved ones to eliminate them and make him more 'heroic' from those loses. He's a terrible person and character. Sad to see him die? Hell no. I celebrated Tigers' death, he didn't deserve to go out doing something positive. He should've been killed the same way all of the other awful riders on the show went out; Ouja :D

I don't think Toujo intentionally made friends just to kill them. I think he legitimately cared for his allies, he just had a really skewed understanding of his mentor's motto, due in no small part to him being pretty mentally unstable. He just took the "a hero sacrifices those he cares about" part too literally, seeing it as a requirement for heroism rather than a component of it. I always think that one of the more darkly humorous parts of these episodes is when Imperor helps him out and says something along the lines of "hey, we're friends, right?" You can practically hear the switch in Toujo's head flick over to the "gotta kill you" setting. :lol

In a lot of ways I think Toujo is probably the most tragic character in Ryuki and certainly the most psychologically fascinating. He means well, he just has such a totally wrong outlook on the world that he just keeps doing bad things that he thinks are for the greater good.

And perhaps he did care for them, it just doesn't change the fact that he saw them as raw experience. "We're friends, if you die I become stronger." And yes it is hilarious when Imperor wants them to be friends because you really can see the gears turning. Tiger immediately starts thinking about how this will make him more "heroic".

Toujo is tragic in that he has no true concept of what being a rider in the Ryuki-verse means. Nor does he understand what real ethics and heroism are. He may think that he means well but he has such a disconnect with reality and other humans that his credibility as a 'hero' is destroyed. I understand the irony of his death, that he finally performed his first heroic act, in the process of dying. But it doesn't change my view that he was horrible.

The most tragic character is really Shinji in my opinion. But I'll save that for nexts weeks discussion since it involves spoilers from the final episodes.

My favorite thing about Episode Final is that it gave us Ryuga, but I'll get more into that when the time is right.

It's true that Toujo legitimately cared for Kagawa and perhaps Nakamura. After he killed Kagawa it was pretty obvious that something was wrong with him mentally.

At some point he stopped trying to do everything right and wanted to just do whatever it took to be a hero. I saw his death as a karmic death; he spent a few episodes taking lives to be a hero, and ironically it was giving his own life that ended up being the most heroic action of all. I didn't see it as redemption for him so much as it teaching him a lesson. Also with the karma, I saw it as punishment as well, like "oh now you're a hero but...you're also...DEAD".