Each of the siblings' demons has a major drawback - Kagerou (born out of suppressed resentment) is a psycho, Lovekov (born out of Sakura's weakness) is a liability on the battlefield, and Vice (born out of a traumatic experience) makes Ikki forget things.

It's consistent, just not spelled out.

Probably. Before his development, Ikki was the kind of guy who preferred to ignore inconvenient things instead of taking them seriously, like how he dismissed Vice's warnings about the onsen staff trying to kill him in Episode 8. Even if Vice told him at the start that he would lose his memories, Ikki would just be in denial like, "I'll never lose my memories!" Fortunately, he's a much more sensible person now.

It feels like there was some missing dialogue from Vice in that last scene. Like how does Ikki even know that he's disappearing from those pictures if he doesn't even remember being in those pictures? Sure, it's a shocking twist, but it's so tangential to the more ominous mystery that last episode was hyping. Maybe this is just a catalyst to explore more of Ikki's past, but right now, I feel like Jiiko really was just overreacting. It's in character for Ikki to neglect his own happiness to protect Jiiko's though, since he was a very self-destructive person back then and it's a trait that Yukimi pointed out. However, I don't understand Kimura's explanation of the correlation between soccer strikers and egoists at all. There's a point where these metaphors just start to fall apart.

I feel the same way. To be honest, there's a part of me which has become apathetic towards this show ever since Episode 28. I'm still enjoying it on a surface level, the meta stuff with the VAs was cool, but I've got this bad feeling that soon, I'm going to be disappointed. I hope that Kinoshita can prove me wrong.

Seems more like just aspects of the demons themselves as opposed to being drawbacks that take away from the host. Because if that were the case, Vice's drawback would be being ceaselessly noisy and a now-defunct obsession to eating.

Edit: Altho for Kagerou's case, one can say that Kagerou's drawback is that his existence drained Daiji of any viciousness and was solved through Holy Live.

Jiko's character seem to be ignored entirely in the last episode, that he just seems to be different in the flashback as well as he got reunited with Ikki later, compared to how cold he was in the last episode. In the past, of which Ikki's incident was kinda expected, about standard soccer stuff of him pulling a red card move by sliding and injuring Jiko in the process, thus hospitalizing him and ends his soccer career. But in the flashback Jiko, albeit he mourns his fate by crying outside of Ikki's sight, he was accepting of Ikki's mistake and remorse, and encourages him to keep going instead as their promise. I know that Ikki forgot his promise for now until Subaru resolves it in an extreme way, but it wasn't touched upon regarding Jiko's personality difference here and before. I mean I can speculate about forgetting the promise being the one that sends Jiko to edge rather than Ikki injuring him, or that Jiko played along with Subaru's schemes to get Ikki to remember, but that's not just speculation and won't fix the writing issue here.

Otherwise, I guess his conflict with Jiko is just a setup for a real Ikki plot, about answering his disappearence from the photos. Jiko is just one instance on how he loses his memories. I do think that it'd be an intriguing idea to have Ikki's punishment is something akin to damnatio memoriae (erasing all records of someone's existence), which can be also applied as a form of punishment in real life, but the explanation from Vice is about is about Ikki forgetting his family? Rather than for example, others forgetting Ikki? If it's about Ikki feeling as if he's nonexistent in the world, then it should be about others forgetting Ikki. If everyone still remembers Ikki with him forgetting, then there's still better chance of Ikki reuniting with the family, as the family won't ever leave him of course. If Ikki being the one who forgets and likely would have no way to recover his memories then it'd be may be harder, but let's see later on how Ikki would be alienated from the Igarashis to illustrate him disappearing from the photos.

And regarding the soccer flashback, Vice is again, nice to Ikki like his current character after development despite that it's past, and he's now already an adult. He (ab)used his contract to help him as he apologized for that too. Still contrasting to Vice's portrayal to earlier series where Vice is vicious and selfish, and takes forever for him to half-heartedly apologize to Ikki, unlike that soccer flashback.

The real culprit here, Subaru himself, for him here I'd appreciate his handling better than, for example ep. 23 before about everyone hiding their true feelings and getting condoned. Subaru does explain himself here and his explanation was clear, about using Rafflesia Deadman to resolve things between his pupils, and trying to use safer Deadmans as well, but as Ikki pointed out, he's still doing criminal stuff and has caused damage in the attacks, and Subaru admits he's wrong as well, albeit trying to not run away. So for this one, Subaru is put in the wrong here, while he genuinely cares about his pupils and want to resolve things he's still an extremist in his approach, though Giff also made it worse as Subaru told others with Rafflesia becoming deadlier and more uncontrollable.

About the final fight with Rafflesia Deadman, I think that Revice's fight is done better here, than his debut fighting Olteca as Anomalocaris Deadman. So his element powers make sense now, his ability in Jack Revice was only the preview, Revice retrained that and is used to a greater effect here than previously as Jack Revice, namely to buff Holy Live a bunch of times. His finisher here is also one of the better ones to make use of the element paintings as a tornado that surrounds the enemy, so much power would be gathered, though a bit disappointing that Revice didn't go through all the marks. Probably quite clear that Olteca as Anomalocaris Deadman was far from the best of what Giff can do if a Phase 1 seems to take more effort to beat here.

I'm kinda glad that Aguilera, although leaving Deadmans, she's still not tamed in the slightest. While she had gotten tons of sympathy for her condition before, she was still never a good person yet, and her instance of 'helping' the Igarashis was still about her goal of bringing forth of Giff in the world by taking Giff ViStamp. She's still as bitchy, bratty, and haughty as ever in interacting with others. The preview is about her lashing out for some reason (with Tamaki still speculating about her actions, likely about time he's not used as mere comic relief punching bag...). And as a fellow 'militaristic' organization and martial artist, yeah, gotta show off the capabilities and actions of Weekend's members too, like Hikaru here trying to protect Sakura, other than just monologuing in their HQ. About time, after nonending persuasion of inviting Sakura. Comedic bit for Sakura getting caught in the illusion and have her fighting Amahiko instead.

He's very much wrong but Giff did make it worse, Subaru did try to use what he hears the safest Deadman to control, but as any Riders fighting here pointed out, Rafflesia is a Phase 1, yet takes much more than the Riders' base form. Of course that's a risk for using threats even when they're told as the least dangerous. But I guess it's pointless to question a villain's (of anti-villain kind) decision of why he did things like that, it's meant to be wrong and not emulated anyway.

Ikki and Sougo are 2 of the protagonists that is about how hugely oblivious they're. Though regarding the onsen one, I think it's heavily influenced by Ikki's hatred towards Vice, which was quite justified in how shady and untrustworthy he is before, to not let Vice scheme things. He would want nothing but to have Vice gone from his side, regardless if his character was to ignore inconvenient things or such, as he listened more to Daiji at ep. 4.... when it was presumed that Daiji would betray Ikki and started his own schemes based on envy.

I think it's about how it's quite known that to succeed in competitive field like sports (or even anything), you have to be egotistic and is only focused and concerned on yourself and how to make yourself better.... of which this obviously can be used to condone toxic acts in sports from someone who is successful, being seen as something necessary to reach the top by others or only being seen as fiercely competitive... Regarding soccer strikers, it's probably about how if you aren't egoist, you may throw the game to let others win so they won't upset or something (can apply in anything other than soccer), but if you're an egoist, then you'd try hard to win the game regardless if others feel upset of losing or such. This is probably conveyed badly though if this is another teaching lesson, in game, there's nothing wrong about trying to win and beating the competition, as long as the play is fair, you'd still nice player by that.

They're both egoists as well, except Sougo's more open about it with his grand ambition of becoming a king while Ikki presents himself more modestly as someone who's just a busybody. Despite their obliviousness, they've also proven to be very observant when they're in the zone, like Ikki seeing through Kudo's and Chigusa's bluffs and Sougo effortlessly manipulating everybody. Interestingly, Zi-O and Vice have the same black/pink color scheme.

Ikki did start to trust Vice a little in Episode 4 though, when he conceded that he wasn't showing enough love to Daiji. But he should've gave Vice more chance to prove his reformed character. I think another reason for Ikki's selective obliviousness was his desire to prioritize his family's happiness above all else, even if that meant pretending everything was okay when it definitely wasn't. Ironically, devils like Vice and Kagerou ended up being the most objective about Ikki's flaws.

That's certainly a better explanation than the one Kimura gave us. So I guess Ikki's ego is the reason why he attempted that dangerous tackle, without considering how it might affect Jiiko in that critical moment, as part of having an ego is the confidence to take risks? There's also a parallel to Olteca here, with both Ikki and Olteca being guilty of breaking promises, although Ikki can be forgiven since Vice made him forget about it. Jiiko, who's apparently also an egoist, admits he was wrong for pressuring Ikki to make that promise, since he was forcing his own burden on to Ikki which caused him to lose his love for soccer. Egoists are very hard on themselves.

I'm really going to be watching these episodes in batches, huh?

Anyway, nice pair of episodes with some great moments and fight scenes! However, like a lot of people here, I do think they could have done a better job with explaining the photo thing. Cause, I love the idea of the hero becoming more of a monster the more he fights (Gaim, anyone?) but it does feel like they just said, "Oh yeah, we have to bring up this plot thread."

I was definitely reminded of the Wizard arc about the soccer thing, but also upon seeing George's temptation with the Demons Driver, I can't help but think, "The wearer of the belt, the wearer of the belt~" (Points to anyone who gets this). And Vail's demon form looks like red Vice, who wants to bet Akaishi and Vail will become a dual Rider like Revice in the future?

I'm getting some serious premonitions about Ikki's spotlighting...

Because next Episode: Sakura falls into the pit every female Rider falls in! Way to go next episode spoilers!