Odin is basically Shiro's way of making sure he could win the War and gain the wish to bring Yui back to life. He does technically forfeit, mostly due to Yui's resistance causing mirrors, and thus Odin to sort of fall apart. So Odin pretty much forfeits as he's dying.

I could almost support a reading of the "reset" that suggests it isn't literally what happens, but rather, it's Ren's fantasy of what happens after he dies/makes his wish -- or even, perhaps, a vision of some sort of afterlife.

But if we're going the literal route, which I do find more convincing...

I think the show painted the Rider War thing as a traumatic experience that broke everyone who participated. Like, pretty much the only development any of the "good" characters underwent was negative -- they struggled with succumbing to distrust, cynicism, and their baser natures. Freeing them of the curse of the Rider War allows their lives to revert to an undeniably better, more hopeful, and more virtuous status quo. A status quo they most certainly earned through seemingly endless physical and emotional torment... even if they don't remember it (although, the show seems to imply that they do remember their connections with each other, on some vague, instinctual/ephemeral, "why-do-I-feel-like-I-know-you?" sort of level).

Without the supernatural interference from Mirror World and the ensuing Rider War, actual nature can resume its course. Kitaoka will die of cancer, sure, but at least he'll go with dignity rather than with wish-fueled desperation. Asakura will remain safely behind bars for his crimes -- instead of breaking out, killing more people, and then committing suicide by cop -- as it always should have been. Shinji can live his carefree and happy-go-lucky life, and Ren can be with his girlfriend. The reset world is how things should be (and, actually, I don't necessarily see it as a happy ending -- it's a very neutral ending, in that, life will still go on for all of them, for better and worse. I mean, characters we've grown to love are doomed to die, or never become friends. That doesn't feel entirely happy to me).

I can see how one might think hitting the reset button invalidates the characters' experiences and makes the show a waste of time... but only if that person fails to understand the show's message. Namely, that The Rider War -- and war in general, probably -- is better off being deleted from the human experience, as it leads to nothing but irredeemable destruction and misery. The show wants to leave us with the notion that conflict for conflict's sake deserves to be erased from existence, and everyone is better off without it.

Maybe it would have been more satisfying if the writers had left the specifics to our imaginations and just faded to black, instead of giving us the details of the reset world. Personally, I don't know how the show fully articulates its themes without showing how the characters' lives are inarguably better without the influence of The Rider War. Obviously, YMMV.

have you guys watching suzumiya haruhi episode of "endless eight.
Ordin is basically haruhi who wants to make sure that he got to save Yui by resetting the world if he failed.
The series is good in a sense that Kanzaki and Yui finally reconcile and decided to end the rider war, and resetting the world once more to fix things up.

I absolutely hated the way the series ended and the whole plot point of the original Kanzaki dying and being the cause for the whole war when I first watched it, but I've grown to appreciate the message that the story gives in going with that ending. If they had decided to just fade to black, then I think that would actually piss off fans even more because it leaves us with a feeling of emptiness. By having a conspicuous ending, the fans who would prefer to just have everything fade to black can at least still imagine/treat the series as having that ending instead.

Wasn't the alternate ending, the movie("Episode Final")?

From what I remember, Yui convinced Shiro to end the war, thus enabling Ren to get the killing blow on Odin. Ren's wish was for Eri to fully recover from the injuries sustained by Darkwing(from when he first merged into the "real(not Mirror)" world). However Ren died from injuries sustained while fighting Odin.

I found the ending to be incredibly sad and I found it hard to predict. Shinji dying was not expected at all. I usually expect the bad ass anti-hero rider to die with a compelling death. That happened later but that usually happens INSTEAD of the main rider dying.

In some way I thought the ending was fitting because time was reset. Mainly because the war itself happened in an altered timeline of Shiro's making. So while Yui convinced him to end the war, technically the war still did happen but the timeline was "fixed", if that makes sense.

What I thought was cool too was that towards the end, we find that Ren does really care about Shinji and that he actually wanted Shinji to live, ultimately. I think it's an indirect admission that he actually wanted Shinji to win the war, as much as he wanted to save Eri.