KAMEN RIDER BUILD EPISODES 44 - 45

Why? Well, for two reasons, Recent Past Kamen Rider Die: first, he's not evil, he's insanely misguided; second, because he's about to die. ALL DADS ARE DEAD.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/build/build44.png

That's a little later, though. Before that, we get a mixed bag of an episode that starts off trying to fix idiotic plot points from last episode in a way that frustratingly lowers the stakes, and then pulls it all together for a rousing lesson in teamwork and friendship.

Episode 44, man, I don't know. I'm glad there was a little more reason for Grease and Rogue to dash off for the Faust base, and I'm glad that the team's division is so brief, but it's a dumb way to resolve a dumber problem. Two steps backwards, one step forward, you know? Like, their plan was to break in to the Faust base, get caught, hope they were experimented on instead of just being murdered, hope they could break out before being turned into monsters, then hope they could escape the base entirely without being recaptured/tortured/killed, all without telling any of their powerful friends what they were up to? Am... am I remembering this story correctly? Also, am I the only one who recalls that getting to and from occupied Hokuto used to be a perilous journey? Now I guess you can make a run on your lunch break? Between this plot point and the one where Misora delivers herself into the clutches of Evol(t), I genuinely don't know what the writer was thinking.

Much like the last episode, the final sequence in 44 sort-of redeems it. (Not nearly entirely, though.) After an episode of taking it all on himself, feeling the weight of responsibility, Sento's reminded that Team Build is a team, and together they can defeat Evol(t). And they do! It's all bad-ass teamwork and synchronized finishes! It looks great, one aspect of the show that hasn't lost a step.

But then Buildad shows up, leading into episode 45, and we're back to the ups-and-downs again.

So, yeah, no, Buildad was secretly working against Evol(t) all this time! For ten years! During a prolonged civil war! Where god knows how many people died! And he nearly let his son die at least a half-dozen times! But he's sorry, you guys. ("Pobody's nerfect, Takumi." - Buildad) Just... jesus. Again, it's two steps backward, one step forward. The series is so much worse for doing this dumbass story about an uncharismatic lunatic who neglected his family and imperiled his country in order to save the world. It's nice that there's closure, and the flashback scene where Takumi and his dad share one last moment before the Sky Wall disaster is really sweet. But throwing in Buildad, who's barely mentioned until he's all anyone can talk about until he's secretly on their side until he's dead is just, narratively, incredibly ill-conceived. There's both not enough time spent on it (most of the affection Sento should feel is implied, since his dad only appeared in a handful of dialogue-light flashbacks) and way, way too much time spent on it (just as we should be entering the final phase of Evolt's plan we've got this to deal with this for three episodes and it is so weird but dull that it warps everything around it like a black hole). (Science!)

Also, in case the Buildad stuff wasn't enough to get me riled, then the show turns into Dragonball Z?! I get that the show wants us to fear the effects of Evol(t)'s final form (do not love that monster suit!), but that whole planetary destruction sequence does not feel like it belongs in this comparatively grounded sci-fi superhero war story.

I don't like feeling this way about Kamen Rider Build! The fights are still great, the character scenes are still A+ (that food service scene!), and I care about the characters so much. But the plot, with the Lost Bottles and Buildad and Evol(t) Evolved, is just off the rails in the worst ways. I don't know if the show can recover from this. I don't know!

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I have mixed feelings towards the latter third or so of Build, and, yeah; I would be lying if I said this wasn't part of it. Between this and stuff like Evolt getting emotions punched into him, a lot of this really felt like they were just throwing a lot of different ideas at the wall and none of it is cohesive or feels like they had much of a plan. Shinobu is the cherry on top of that; I guess with a series as good and morally complex and challenging as Build, they really had to balance it out with a super bad super simplistic super dull "Forgive Your Asshole Family Because, Um, Family" arc that just has no place here.

Remember when Mach basically said "I really don't care that you're my dad, you're a treacherous manipulative car crash that hurt so many people and just killed my friend, so I'm going to literally murder you with an axe"? It really, really feels like Toei felt they committed an unforgivable sin by letting Drive's writer get away with too much "sometimes family can be bad" messaging and have been trying to make up for it ever since between Takeru's dad, Zero Specter, those two Ghost episodes in a row dealing with the dad of a minor forgettable character (Ghost done a lot of this, huh?), Fuma, kind of Cronus in Another Ending, and now Shinobu. Like, okay, calm down, we get it; you think family can always be forgiven because family, Toei. I get it, I'll start hating Mach for finding the will to do the right thing in a moment that was deeply hurtful morally and personally to him now, you can stop.



... also, Shinobu used the Phoenix bottle once to immediately escape and in doing so he totally cheated us out of a potentially wicked Tank Phoenix suit. Objectively terrible person.

I always saw the Buildad stuff (love that nickname by the way!) as the show's way of doing something that let Sento act on the fact that he's Takumi in a more direct manner than just "I feel guilty for things I don't remember doing", but uh... yeah...

What I'll say for now is that Build is not a perfect show.

It's shocking to me how much this is the Zero Specter thing again! A father who faked his death and abandoned his family for a decade who reappears to threaten his child is not a thing you can forgive in an eight-second apology! There's so much emotional honesty in this series, so much nuance, and this Buildad plot is insulting in how little thought seemed to go into it. Even thematically, it's such a pale shadow of the "Sento vs Takumi" storyline the show had spent 30+ episodes on! Literally the only thing that worked is that flashback scene at the Mars celebration, and there's no way that's worth all of the time where this plot sucked.

Okay, deep breath. Hold on. To be honest and fair, there is one other thing I thought the Buildad story did right. I really enjoyed the villain using all of the first act suits again, whipping Team Build with, like, NinjaComic and PirateTrain. That's a great concept that was wasted on a shit character.

Also, yeah, Drive it did right. I thought some of Mach's motivations regarding his dad were weird or difficult to portray consistently (a lot of guilt that manifested in being an asshole to Chase because he's mad that his dad made him a real boy?), that storyline did end great.

Fun fact: aside from Rabbit/Tank, NinninComic is the form Shinobu uses the most. It's even the one he defaults to after losing the Rabbit and Tank bottles.

Get it? Shinobu? Shinobi?

Okay, dammit, now you're making me think of one more thing I liked about this storyline. Stop getting me to let these episodes off of the hook!

One of the threads that was well-executed were the scenes in Build's head, where Sento and Takumi debated how much they should or should not believe/forgive Buildad. There's some good use of their differences to inform their viewpoints. Sento, who remembers up to Buildad's disappearance and the last year, he wants to believe in the man who raised him, the man whose steps he followed in as a scientist. How could that man be this monster? But Takumi, he lived those years of Buildad's absence. He knows what Buildad worked on, his partnership with Evol(t), his culpability in Banjou's circumstances, the betrayal at being abandoned and now lied to. He doesn't see him through a child's forgiving eyes, like Sento. He sees him as a man, and can't forgive the choices he's made. That, you know, that was some good writing. Applied to a storyline that never should've been produced, but still! Good writing.

OH SHIT. That's great!

The shot where Buildad drops out of the ceiling in NinjaComic after Sento blasts Mad Rogue was legit awesome, too. So cool to look at, this show, even in stories that don't work.

Oh I've been waiting for you to get to this. During the stretch of 40 to 45 airing, I distinctly remember the discussion of Build everywhere I went had people talking about how the show felt off or how it has been really slipping, and I was honestly right there with them.

The part I liked most is probably the big fight with Team Build against Evolt in eposode 44. I still think it's ridiculous that he's strong enough to push around all four of them, but the moment where they work together to finish (well, 'finish') him off was spectacular.

The big Dragonball Z fight against the pink alien in 45 was utterly ridiculous to the point of absurdity, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't kinda like it to for that. In the span of a minute, he devastates the city, throwing the riders through buildings and eats an entire alien planet. Then the heroes jump through flames and kick the panel out of him. It's so stupid but also amazing in some way?

Neither of those things are enough to make up for the arc. I honestly like to just pretend 40 to 45 never happened as best as I can, and just mentally fill in any holes from that in some other way.

Also one more thing I felt like saying but isn't specifically about these episodes, Build Genius' debut was a really nice scene but... It kinda sucks? When you look at it's design, you might think it would have the power of all 60 bottles and maybe it'd combine them into new powers but uh, no. All it does is move fast and fight better. RabbitRabbit already had the schtick of moving fast, and it had stretchy limbs! Also doesn't help that it constsntly loses against Black Hole Evol so badly even though it was made to go up against Evol to begin with.

I mean, endings are hard, you know? I feel like you could make a list of the ways every good Kamen Rider series screwed up the pacing somewhere in its final run. I love Fourze, but that show suddenly realized it was a few Zodiarts short of a Horoscope, so they started showing up real fast. Too fast. What used to be a multi-episode story was now, like, "Here's three more Zodiarts, they were in the library, we just missed them until now." That's why I think I'll still be holding OOO as the best series after I finish Build. They never screwed up their pacing! That's insanely hard to do as you try and land a year-long series.

Yeah, Build Genius. Cool suit, the powers are... ill-defined, to be generous. It's like someone took that Arthur C. Clarke quote and went, "Oh, so if I get enough science together it makes magic? Magic powers, that's what big science is? Got it!"

The good news is the Shinobu arc is probably the worst part of Build, which means it's all looking up from here on out! The last few episodes are a significant improvement, in my opinion

Yay!

KAMEN RIDER BUILD MOVIE: BE THE ONE

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There's a core of this movie that works so well. A narrative thread so clear, so pure, that it manages to overcome some of the dumbest story decisions this show has made during its weakest stretch. But, man, do you have to sit through some junk to get to it.

The thing that works, to get to the positive part first this time, is the second half of the film. After avoiding the maybe 300 people still alive in Touto, Build has seen Grease and Rogue captured, the country (including Misora and Sawa) turned against him, and Cross-Z possessed by the villains. He's out of options, out of friends, out of hope. Takumi is telling him that the villain is right, that Build was only created by monsters to cause harm. He's at his lowest. He can't fight back, and he doesn't have anything to fight for. But. Banjou still needs his help. Banjou, his best friend, needs to be saved from the bad guys. That's enough. That is all the reason Sento needs to find it within himself to risk everything and face the villains. There's hope that, with Banjou on his side, maybe they can still turn this thing around. It's great. It centers the story on this friendship and sells it, telling you it's bigger than all the threats aligned against them. It's beautifully done.

It is, unfortunately, possibly the only thing the movie does well.

Imagine my joy, seeing the face of Buildad as this film opens. So great to see him back for this story! He gives a laughably prophetic set of advice to Takumi that stops short of saying, "And make sure to form change into Build Genius when you fight Evolt in a field in ten years with Cross-Z, Grease, and Rogue." The idea of Better Days Buildad as a thing in the movie, I actually liked it. If I blocked out the last five episodes of his story, Sento's dad works great in this movie, as a beacon of selfless belief in humanity and its potential. It's just, if you think about the overall plot of the series for more than one second, it rings totally hollow and makes, like negative sense. It removes sense from the surrounding story elements.

Speaking of nonsensical story elements that fall apart the second you think of the TV show this movie is based on, JESUS, why in the world you'd take one-off villains from the movie (good!), tie them to Evol(t)'s story (tough, but maybe!), and then make them the secret masterminds of everything in the series, even the stuff we watched other people do, I have no earthly idea. It is far, far too late in the story to introduce a higher layer of puppet masters, and it's bonkers to try to do it in a 60-minute summer movie. It takes a story that was already too convoluted and complex, and makes it like a non-comedic version of the end of Clue. How many people were peering over Evol(t)'s shoulder the last ten years, fifty? A hundred?

But, goddamn, the last twenty minutes nearly make it all work. The friendship of Sento and Banjou is so well-established and vibrant that, once they shake off some stupid, stupid ideas, the climax of the film works great. Their friendship is solidified in one Rider that can't be beat, in a suit that I don't love but it's a movie suit and it works thematically if not aesthetically so I'm not that mad. I just hate how much of the first half doesn't work if you think about it even briefly. Worth watching for the cast and some of the gags (and that instrumental xylophone or whatever version of the theme song), hard to get past the villains and how much you need to forget Buildad and just think of Sento's flashback dad. Complicated feelings about this one!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/build/betheone2.png

oh also Zi-O shows up in the end but I'm not watching that series for a long while so I'm going to pretend it wasn't in this 'cause I don't want to talk about that series yet okay thanks thanks and thanks thanks

The last five episodes and the 'lore' parts of this movie:

It reminds me of how how all of 100 Eyecons' connections to the series only make both the show and the movie itself worse altogether. Be The One is maybe a little easier to see as it's own separate thing, but not by much. But if you do manage to do that, which it sounds like you mostly did, I think it's a decent fun time.

So, the more I think about it, the more I kind-of hate the non-SentoxBanjou story that's being told in Be The One. Not just the lore stuff, which is janky AF, but the actual story-story they're telling.

I think, amongst other things, the producers wanted this to be a story where Sento faces rejection by the average citizens he's sworn to protect, and has to deal with his role in the recent civil war. That, you know, that could be a good movie! It's just not the movie they ended up making.

So much of the engine of this story is that Build and the other Riders are despised by the citizens of Japan for their role in the civil war. Kamen Rider Blood (had to look it up!) specifically and repeatedly tells Sento that the people of Japan really do hate the Riders and think they're traitors, that Blood isn't making them behave this way. Except he is! He clearly is! I don't think Sawa and Misora actually want to destroy Sento, so I'm going to go ahead and say Blood is full of it. He's controlling the populace to turn them against the Riders, I know it, you know it, dogs know it. There's never, to my recollection, been a point in the Build series where Touto, Hokuto, or Seito citizens were shown to be even ambivalent about Riders. They're never feared, they're always adored. We're left to take the villain at his word, despite zero evidence supporting his claim. And Sento, like, entertains it? Maybe agrees with it? Let's it break him down emotionally? It's insane. And then, at the end of the movie, Blood is right?! The country does hate Riders everywhere for some reason that is never explicated? They give us this tiny story about the kid Sento saves, but zero look in to the majority that hates him. Why? Why not tell that story just a little bit?

I don't want to judge the movie they didn't make. That's a sucker's game, and it's easy to spitball good ideas for a story you'll never have to tell. It's just, if they wanted to tell a story about people being against Riders, a) I'd probably like that movie better, and b) there's so many stronger, more continuity-based ways to tell it. Like, what does the average Seito citizen think of enemy combatants like Build or Grease, now that the war is over? Or how does a Touto citizen view a legit traitor like Rogue? I mean, just the previous week a pink alien was punting Riders through buildings, blowing them to hell. I assume folks lived or worked in those buildings, and might have less-than-good feelings about their self-appointed protectors? There are so many smaller, personal stories you could tell about Riders and their wartime activities. I don't get why the movie chose "mind-controlling secret puppet masters who brainwash the country into being rage zombies" as its way in to that concept.

EDITED BECAUSE I THINK I'M LOSING IT: That probably didn't belong as a response to your comment! Sorry! I was just thinking about that aspect of the story for a minute, and it needed to get out of my brain, and it's late and I can't sleep. Sorry!

It's weird, because, yeah, you're right, if I ignore all of the shit they layered on top of the ode to the friendship of Banjou and Sento, it's not that bad! There's some real funny gags in the first 15 minutes, and the final fight is well done. It's just, man, do the producers get in their own way in this one.

I adore Sento and Banjou more than is probably healthy, so honestly? The SentoXBanjou stuff in here was easily enough to pull it through for me and actually make it one of my favourite Rider movies ever, because that's how much I love these guys.


But uh, yeah, hard agree on a lot of that. These villains are, like, the most tropey, stereotypical group of one-off villains you could get. The Puppetmaster Leader, The Other Guy One That Laughs And/Or Is A Knucklehead, The Girl One. Just... deeply uninspired, I get nothing from these guys, and Blood isn't even a good fuckin suit.

I can kind of get past the 'we were behind everything' plot point because to me, it seemed more like they were the ones executing stuff while Evolt was still the planner -- eg Evolt wants Faust Experiment #31 covered up, don't worry dude; I'm here in a position of power, I can do that for you. Just fills in that part of the chain to me when it didn't get much development on the show (though, not like it needed to). Also it kind of helps that after being absent for most of the movie, Evolt essentially says at the end "haha you wanted to do my thing? Fuck you lmao". But... man. These are just bad, forgettable villains. I was going over a list of what major suits Figuarts hadn't made yet, and I completely forgot that Blood even existed to list him. Just, so rubbish.


Also agree with the Cross-ZBuild suit. It shouldn't work. It really, really shouldn't. But through the thematic and emotional connections, it's the best thing ever and I adore it! The fact that it doesn't look like it should work yet is in fact the most powerful thing in Japan is so obvious a metaphor that I don't even feel the need to spell it out. Perfect.


I will say though, I kinda disagree on the whole "Blood says he's not controlling them when he obviously is" bit. I read into it as him more or less awakening negative feelings towards the Riders but sending them into hyperdrive. As you noted, the citizens would have plenty of reasons to harbour some sort of malice towards them -- former enemy combatants, property damage, treachery, just the idea of seeing some super-powered person going around and punching people with for the most part no government or public entity to reign them in. Hell, this almost reads like a follow-up to Build's plan 5 or so episodes ago to declare himself a traitor to Touto's government in order to go after Evolt without declaring war!

All of which to say: I feel like Blood's being a politician here. There's teeeechnically a bit of truth behind his words, which you find out at the end; but he's stretching it beyond all credibility and using it to create a meaning and reading that just is not there. He's taken "the citizens don't feel great about you guys and have uncertainties and anxieties about this whole thing" and turned it into "the citizens HATE you and want you OUT and we'd ALL BE BETTER OFF IF YOU'D JUST DIE". So that wasn't bad to me.


Also you didn't talk about the scene where Sento completely fucks himself over because he wanted to take pictures of the cute dogs, so 0/10 for this review I'm afraid

The movie's only vaugely canon to me. The Blood tribe people somehow secretly being responsible for everything that Evolt had done, I ignore. The Sento/Ryuga stuff though, that 100% counts

That's one of the things that makes this movie more frustrating to me, that the SentoXBanjou stuff works so effortlessly, but they just buried it in weirder, confusing storylines. Did they forget what they had in these two? Did they really think that kind of chemistry couldn't carry a 60-minute movie?

"The Girl One In A Skirt Or Shorts" is, I believe, her villain-type on the Wiki. She has an embarrassing amount of company on that page!

Generally fair, and if they'd played that up I'd be more into it. A group of lieutenant aliens who are, like, Boss, you're screwing us over, we're taking over now, that could work for me. It's just, they specifically did a scene where the Blood Tribe (thank you, Wiki) claims that they were the ones to pick Banjou's girlfriend to be monsterized, and, like, no? Why take one of the biggest moments for Banjou in the series, one of his biggest beefs with Evol(t), and give it away? It'd be like if the Blood Tribe told Sento that they were hiding in that parking garage and THEY killed his dad. Like, are they a race they metabolizes acknowledgement or something? Do they need to jump on every achievement of Evol(t)'s?

So true. These two oil-and-water goofs made something unstoppable.

I mean, fair enough. In general, I do like the premise, I just think the execution was muddled (he's amplifying feelings that already exist, except it also makes Sawa and Misora try to kill Sento?) and too binary (I really wish I could've gotten one scene in the movie that was in-between "thank you Build" and "all Kamen Riders must die"). There are legitimate reasons to be suspicious of extra-legal science heroes who ignore borders and destroy property, and it bugged me that the movie went the cackling, controlling villain route when it felt like it was the least-effective way in.

Do you want these write-ups to just be a thousand screencaps of the shit I found hilarious? Because they nearly are! That scene was delightful, and some of that early on-the-run stuff had me really hoping for a "28 Days Later, but the jokey tokusatsu version" that we didn't get.

Also, you could've referenced the rage-filled cheerleaders shouting "Destroy!" in an upbeat, rallying way, and you didn't, so maybe we all need to look inside of ourselves and ask some hard questions.

Struggling to hold myself back from saying yes :p

Yeah, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I would not be disappointed if there's a follow-up movie where Evol(t) just goes, "What? They told you they did all of that stuff? What the hell! That was my best villainy! They didn't do shit but hang out in some office, looking suspicious! I was the one getting out there, manipulating events!"

I mean, okay, but it's mostly going to be a thousand off-topic screencaps of three Wizard Net Movies.

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KAMEN RIDER BUILD EPISODES 46 - 47

Hey, everybody. In case you didn't see, new poster Another Die has started a thread on their run at Masked Rider Kuuga. They were super sweet to reach out to me, and I'm flattered that folks liked my obsessive need to over-analyze Japanese superhero shows enough to want to talk about their own experiences. That is legit something that I'd've never even hoped for, and it feels great that folks are excited to talk about their own Kamen Rider journeys. You all have made me feel unbelievably welcome, so I'd love it if you could check out AD's thread and show that same support to them.

I'll need you to do it on my behalf, because, see, Kuuga is the next show I'm planning on watching. When I saw (a few months back) that Zi-O had a ton of Phase 1 Heisei stuff in it (or at least that's how it looked from frontpage headlines), I knew I'd need to watch all of Phase 1 before I'd do Zi-O. So, currently, my plan is finish Build, then Kuuga through Decade, then Zi-O, then Zero-One, then current, hopefully.

What that means is, while I'd love to be a supportive fan, Another Die is literally talking about episodes I'm going to watch in, like, two weeks. It would maybe actually kill me to read it. So! My loss is your gain! You can head over there, read what's probably a way more thoughtful and concise version of the points I'd make (it can only be more concise and thoughtful), and get it all weeks in advance! I would if I were you. In the meantime, I've got some fun, upbeat episodes of Build to watch and WAIT WHAT

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Dense couple of episodes! Lots to talk about! I'm not crying, you're crying!

It's almost weird to be talking about these episodes in isolation, since this has the pace of a four-part finale. The first part opens with Evol(t) declaring his villainy publicly, hilariously, as he gets way too close to the camera to call out the Riders. It's a nice statement of intent, that the show is (more or less) done with the feints of subterfuge, ready to throw its Riders together until someone wins. It's especially nice that its got some A+ dickery by Evol(t), laying on the blase, semi-distracted terror that's his hallmark. Glad to see he can keep his brand going, even in what might be the last day of Earth.

It's after that scene that these first two parts stumble at all for me. The idea of winning by destroying Evol(t) and Pandora's Box in a combination of Earths... I, what? First, I'll give them that Building A New World is a very thematically appropriate win condition, but I also feel like this is the sort of thing that maybe could've been brought up as goal somewhere in advance of the last 80 minutes of Kamen Rider Build. Seems a bit late in the day! Second, so, they're willingly destroying another Earth and their Earth? To make a new Earth? And that's winning to them? It's destroying Evol(t), but, uh, seems pyrrhic at best. Finally I can't tell if the fact that Banjou doesn't understand the parallel Earths theory despite travelling to a parallel Earth less than a year ago is the writer not wanting to derail the explanation with movie stuff, or a testament to Banjou's idiocy. I want it to be the latter so bad, but no one called him on it, so I'm not sure. Either way, the whole "our new plan is to blow up two Earths to defeat the planet-destroying villain", man, I really hope this show's got a bigger twist up its sleeve. Two Earths is a whole lot of collateral damage, including I guess the whole cast?

Because, you guys, how great is this cast? I knew when I was watching it that the barbeque scene was just a One Last Night thing, a calm before the storm, but it was so much of what's special about this show. These weirdos, the genius and the fighter and the idol and the soldier and the spy and the traitor, they made something really special. I don't know if any ensemble will be as good as the Fourze ensemble, but this cast clicks so well. The humor always has a warmth to it, the camaraderie feels so easy and genuine. They're six people who fell together in the heat of war, forged into a family that would die for each other.

And, yeah, we'll get to that.

After their Last Supper, it's the battle, and I thought what could've been a series of sub-boss battles, warm-ups before Evol(t), was handled with a lot of consideration. There's a thematic thread of sacrifice that runs through the race to the top of the tower, with the emphasis on Rogue (a little) and Grease (A LOT). It's best to land it on them, since they're the ones who've most grown from starkly nationalist characters into Love & Peace Kamen Riders. Rogue has to work with Utsumi to defeat the Hell Bros and hold off Evol(t), putting aside his mistrust and betrayal for the greater good. (Utsumi's sacrifice, I gotta tell you, I'm not sure it works for me. That dude's motivation, it's like, just when I feel like I've got a handle on it, and I get him, there's some new reveal or twist and it's all out the window. Too many betrayals, maybe!) Sento and Banjou have to sacrifice Rogue and Grease, in a way, leaving them behind to confront Evol(t) quicker. It's a kind of interesting failure of Sento's character, letting friends fight alone, letting them fight recklessly, a sort of ruthless efficiency that smacks of Takumi. It's tough to hold on to your principles in the face of annihilation, which is a good place to have his character on the edge of the finale.

But, look. These are Grease and Misora's episodes.

Grease's sacrifice of his need to protect his friends, in favor of protecting the world, it's the culmination of his entire story. There's really nowhere else to go after he defeats the lingering guilt of his friends' deaths by, uh, exploding that guilt with a series of finishing moves. So, thematically, it's appropriate for that evolution of character to resolve itself in his sacrifice, creating the bottle the group needs to end the war.

It's just, my eyes. They might never recover.

I enjoyed these two episodes, but that last couple of minutes wrecked me. Broke me down to parts, never to be rebuilt. A shell of a man types these words, the keyboard slick with tears. I am hollow. I have become sorrow.

It's Grease's story, but it is 100% Misora's scene and the full-cast aftermath. Much like when the show needed to Rider Punch emotions into me back in the 20s, they drop out the music and lessen the dialogue, letting Misora's face and words take you through everything: her humor, to cover the pain; her admission, to plead for the universe's pity; her anguish, that some things are final. Small figures again, and intense close-ups, nothing feels right. Misora's so small and angled heavily, the camera kept away from something we shouldn't have to witness. Silent, as she walks into a group of damaged friends. We're tight in on her mouth, the words silent, a moment that the viewer wouldn't be able to bear, and the show knows it. Screams of rage and sadness, but with no sound, nothing would be enough. Tightly-held fabric and plastic, anything that can feel real, in a situation that has no reality to it. The world is ending, but Grease's death makes the world already feel like it's gone.

And then Hipster Dad saunters into frame, his shit-eating grin, ready to fight when everyone's already destroyed. Fantastic. The perfect ending to a stellar episode, and a great set of episodes to start the finale.

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That "Yo" is the capstone of the episode, really. Everything that comes before is horrible, tearjerking stuff, with Misora and Kazumin's actors selling it perfectly. And then Evolt walks in, and punctures the sombre mood with with a pin.

Also, vis-a-vis the movie, totally agree with everything on the Banjou/Sento stuff and Team Blood (aka Team "That guy in your group project that claims they did the powerpoint when in fact it was everyone but them"), but I feel the plot does say something else about Sento's character. He's always been a self-defeatist, from the Hokuto War arc to the ending, so it makes sense he'd instantly assume they all truly hate him, because it almost seems to be his default. Everything (in Sento's mind) is his fauly, and his philosophy can easily fit in "fighting for people who don't even like you, because of love and peace" rather than something more like Grease and Rogue's "fighting for your country and it's citizens". Idk, maybe I'm saying nonsense, and it is a stupid flaw of the film, but I can see some insight into his personality from it.

I mean, it's a good point, that Sento's weird need to take responsibility for every bad thing that happened since the Sky Wall Disaster would allow him to think that the country hates him, and all Riders by association. It's just, that's the sort of character trait (caring how the country viewed him) that I don't really recall the show exhibiting much, outwardly, and it never seemed as personally damaging to Sento as the more direct attacks against his friends and/or Takumi's pre-Sento decisions. Like a lot of movie choices (and not just this movie!), it's a big idea that's given so little establishment. It's rushed, and the story suffers for it. I'm not sure why so few of the movies seem to understand how much story they can tell during their runtimes.

I guess it plays into Sento's ideal of fighting for Love and Peace contrasting with what his fight actually seems to be bringing people (or, at least, what Blood has them brainwashed into being). It's not perfect, and I'm not the biggest fan of the movie, but it's something. More cohesive than True Ending, at least.

It's funny you'd bring up True Ending, since I feel like True Ending and Be The One have the same fundamental problem, where there's this emotional core that the movie delivers so well (Kamen Rider Deadbeat Dad in True Ending, SentoXBanjou in Be The One), that if the movie would just focus on that and get out of its own way, there'd be less to complain about. (Well, Kamen Rider Deadbeat Dad's motivation is still frustrating, but his story ends so well!)

Alternately, yeah, maybe it's better to try too many things and fumble a bit than try to do too little and just be forgettable. I don't think I'll ever forget the Kamen Rider movie where civilians threw themselves out of helicopters to try to kill a superhero.

KAMEN RIDER BUILD EPISODES 48 - 49

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Wrapping up Build as a series, man, it's hard. It's a very hard thing for them to do. I'm going to go ahead and say that I liked this ending, but I didn't love it.

Some of it is that I felt like the New World thing, I don't know how much the show set it up? Thematically, I feel like the idea of Build building a new world for his friends, a world where everyone's back and everyone's happy, Love & Peace, that's a fitting end to Build as a series. All the sacrifices matter but still get rolled back, it's a better version of everyone, it's very sweet and sends the series off on a high note. But the way the mechanics of the resolution don't 100% make sense (Do the people of Earth B not get a vote in this?), the way a lot of this feels so last-minute, it's not a great look. The nuts and bolts feel so thrown together, introducing a bunch of new complications to an already frustratingly complicated final arc. (I honestly don't think I ever understood what the Lost Bottles deal was. I was just, like, "Okay, the villain has to collect ten more things now, got it.")

Also, a big chunk of the finale hinges on the people of Japan supporting the Riders, and how big a deal that is after the civil war, and I'm still not sure that storyline played out as well as intended. The biggest drawback, to me, is that we never really saw the average citizen interact with the Riders with anger, or suspicion, or trepidation, or anything. Team Build was in hiding for one reason or another since basically episode 2, which meant that any other wider interactions were left to be inferred. Occasionally there'd be some news coverage of Build being hunted by the Seito military, or a mention that people don't trust Riders, but we never viscerally experienced any of that. For a plot point that would turn out to be so integral to the conclusion, it's weird how much of it was left to the edges.

Most of the rest of it is good-to-great, though. Rogue's sacrifice, while not as heart-rending as Grease's, still had a very heroic quality to it, giving that version of Gentoku a nice capper. (That shot where Gentoku dies and the shadow is Rogue! You guys!) The fights looked really good, and while there's not any one bad-ass moment that jumps out to me, the choreography never felt too hectic, or difficult to follow. Evol(t) is fantastic throughout, just being a massive dick to the Riders, and humanity in general. Misora, as always, nails the emotional connection with Sento, making you feel the cost of his decisions. Sawa... was present?

None of that was really what the finale was about, though. I mean, it couldn't be. The show wasn't about any of that. It was about Sento and Banjou.

I'm not sure any Kamen Rider show I've seen has done a friendship like Build did. Even W, the most clear antecedent to Build, I'm not sure I felt the partnership like I did with Sento and Banjou. They were two people forced into collaboration by the machinations of villainy, who made each other better, made each other heroes, and who together, literally together as one person, created a better world for everyone. It's a little corny to put your final But Why Heroism moment on something like "the real Best Match was the friends we made along the way", but it's absolutely what I wanted out of the end of Build. I wanted something that demonstrated that this series understood how important that friendship was to the show's success. The final moments, as Sento resigns himself to a perfect world that won't include him or his friendship with Banjou, and then Banjou walks up, perplexed by everything (naturally), and they ride off to start recording the intros to the Kamen Rider Build TV show, it's perfect. It's perfect. I love a lot of the characters on this show, and I'm glad they'll get to have more adventures in the future, but I needed Sento and Banjou to be alright in the end.

Kamen Rider Build was a pretty fun series. I thought at first it would be genius (those first dozen episodes!), and though they made some hazardous choices (Endless war! Buildad! So many Mars flashbacks and reveals!), I think the series as a whole fairly sparkled. The cast was flawless, the emotions of the story always felt honest and earned, but the Evol(t) megaplot was so convoluted, and I don't know how much the boots-on-the-ground war stories ended up mattering in the last third. It's a very good series, and I've had a fun time watching it and thinking about it.

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NEXT UP - All of the Build miscellany I didn't hit yet: The Rogue episodes, the Best Matches thing, Henshin Lesson, and can I watch New World Cross-Z if I don't watch Heisei Generations Forever?

Yeah, New World has nothing to do with Heisei Generations Forever. In fact it's a pretty big thing with fan reaction that HGF2 seems to hover in this very weird continuity of its own that doesn't seem to connect to anything.

So yeah, you can go ahead and watch Cross-Z New World, and the Grease New World BluRay just came out too and is getting subbed soon; so I guess this is a great time. ... even if New World isn't very good


Either way, wow, was looking forward to this one. Build's ending is a very controversial one, and even as someone who loves Build more than any other Rider bar OOO... I will have to say that it's despite that ending. There's a lot of things about it that I like, pretty much you've already gone over it; Rogue's death, SentoXBanjou, the thematics of creating a new world... but how they get there is so, so important, and it was done just so awfully here that I can't help but headcanon my own ending and rewrites.

In general Build is a series I feel falls off hard in the last third and I've got a lot of problems with that, but as I said; second favourite rider. Still adore it, still love so much of what it did, and you've gone a long way in reminding me just what it is I did like about it. Great thread!

Thanks for letting me talking about this show! Like all of you, I'm sure, I have a lot of thoughts about Kamen Riders and their shows, and it's necessary for my mental health (and the health of my IRL friendships) to have a spot to get those thoughts out with folks that share an appreciation for motorcycle-riding superheroes.

For Build, hmm, yeah, that ending. Gaim had a similar thing for me, where I'd look at the ending arc and think back to the beginning arc and go, "Why did I need to know all of those things that are completely irrelevant now?" And I liked the beginning arc for Build! The apocalyptic battle against Evol(t) just feels a world away (sorry) from the Warring States stuff in the first two-thirds of Build. It's too big, too divorced from the motivations the characters previously had. Like, just bringing the Sky Wall down would've felt like a huge ending to me. A whole new world is maybe too grandiose? But it's so happy for everyone I can't be too mad at it? I don't know. Endings like this, I feel like I gotta let it sit with me for a minute.

Good to know that I can watch New World, sad to hear it may not be great. Oh no!

I will put in a tentative recommendation for the Build Final Stage here. As a stage show it's a bit goofy and a bit of a retread, it's not a must-watch by any means, probably isn't canon, but...if you want some more of that good Build humor and character interactions I think it's a worthwhile watch. Without going into it with too many expectations, I think it felt like a very genuine and fun Build story.

The show didn't, but Generations Final (comfirmed within the show to be canon) did. In fact, the villain had a similar idea. And Zi-Oh confirmed that, yes, the world they merged with was indeed the world of the other Kamen Riders.

Man, I'm getting some serious deja vu here!

Granted, I don't think anything either of us is saying there is something you wouldn't hear from most people who watched Build, but still, for a second there I thought I traveled back in time or something.

Oh, and before I forget, my misgivings toward the final arc were why I wrote this about a month ago:

That didn't elicit an "oh no!" from you, so I guess I did an okay job playing coy. :p

Oh! I didn't know Build had a stage show! I don't have that in my leftovers folder, so it looks like I'll have to track it down. I've only seen the Gaim stage show (I just grabbed the Ex-Aid one to watch after Build) and I thought it was pretty charming for what it was trying to do. I kind-of like the more kid-friendly, "let's put on a show" pluckiness of it. Thanks for the heads-up!

I sort-of assumed they ended up on Earth Ichigo. It would be so weird to take the one Rider show (that I've seen) that explicitly takes place on a separate Earth, and then end them up on a different separate Earth. Not putting it past anyone, but it seems like a waste of a move.

Ha ha, oh, man! On the one hand, I'm glad I'm not reading these shows wrong, seeing stuff that isn't there and missing the obvious. On the other hand, maybe I'm just the living embodiment of "please read the rest of the thread before posting", talking about things everyone else figured out a year ago? Weird!

I'm glad to see that the ending of Build largely worked for you, though. There were definitely a few minutes during some of the fights where I was like, "Is... is this a little dull? Should this be doing more for me?" But then it all got a pretty sweet bow on it, and I left happy. It's a fun show that definitely did more right than wrong.

That's hilarious! No, you didn't tip your hand, it was well-done. I think the most upset I got at the last four episodes was when Sento lays out his Earth C plan, and I'm, like, "Wasn't that Bikaiser's plan? From a year ago? That you teamed up with a half-dozen Riders AND THE GREATEST SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER OF ALL TIME to defeat? Is no one going to bring that up?"

I've really enjoyed your written thoughts on this whole show. Even when our opinions don't line up, it was always fun to see you articulate how you felt about or what you took away from every few episodes.

Grease and Rogue both had powerful exits, but while I think I found myself thinking 'this is taking a while' during Grease and Misora's scene at one point, I was totally blown away by Rogue's last stand. The broken helmet, that shadow, the music as he flashbacks through his entire journey as a character from the start. So good.

I don't have anything else to say about anything that hasn't already said a hundred times by others or even myself. I will just add that even though everybody believed the merging of the worlds would allow Build to have a neat segue into crossing over with Zi-O, it actually really didn't do that at all, but I'll let you see for yourself when you get there.

If you haven't found it already, I believe Final Stage was subbed by Genmcorp.

Aw, thanks! Yeah, I also enjoy seeing other people's views on stuff I like. It's rarely going to change my mind (I don't think you can make people feel differently about art?), but it's always cool to see what connects or doesn't connect with people.

I mean, it was good. I guess I just liked the, the vulnerability, for lack of a better word, of the Grease exit. It had this inevitability to it, from him using the Blizzard Knuckle to henshin into Blizzard Grease (nice suit btw, I don't think I mentioned that, loved that the Crows' emblems were on one shoulder pad, great touch) all the way up to his slow dissolve. It was a scene that just ached, I thought. Rogue's death was a different speed: rousing, forceful, high-impact. I think it's that the Heroic Death is one that's more in the natural language of a Kamen Rider show, while the Mournful Death is one the show had to stretch a bit for. I respect the effort, you know? But, no, yeah, Rogue's death was still aces.

Oh no!

Yep! Found it. I, so, I'm not sure if this a thing that's supposed to be unspoken on the boards, I don't know what the policy is, mods can let me know if this is restricted, but I usually hit two sites when I'm prepping for a show. I usually hit Nyaa for the series (I like the OZC subs better, I think that's OverTime?), and TV-Nihon for the movies and ancillary stuff. TV-Nihon didn't have the Build stage show in their batch files, so I went to get it at Nyaa tonight.

You know what my dream is? For Toei to do a streaming service for English-language audiences. I don't even know what the upper limit would be that I'd pay to have an official way to watch Kamen Rider. This hunting and gathering that we have to do, it's no way to live. We are human beings and we deserve respect.

Glad to see Gentoku's sacrifice getting the recognition is deserves, beardo did a good job. And maybe it's my background as a Sci-Fi dork, and I'm a lot willing to go with complicated timey wimey bollocks than the average viewer, but I definitely felt the end arc was an uptick from the Daddy Kasturagi plot. Maybe it's the fact it managed to fit so much character stuff in there too, but I felt like the show ended on a high.

Can't believe you didn't mention the best scene from the finale. Sento, fully ready to go fly Evol into the dimension scar thing (and, once again, probably kill himself doing it, whoops), tries to say bye to Banjou. And Banjou, genius that he is, his best mate in all the world, clocks him dead. Because Sento figured this all out. He built this new world, and he deserves this new world of Love and Peace far more than Banjou does; some dolt who punched the right thing hard enough. It's just the final moment of character development for him - we've come so far from the Banjou who did everything purely for self-gain. Especially when the rest of the episode has him bottled up so the focus can (rightly so, he *is* the main character) be on Sento and Brad Stark.

I mean, the real best part is when Sento's all ready to be alone in the new world, being all melancholy and stuff, and then Banjou walks in out of nowhere, not understanding any of it. I may have shed a few tears.

As for the other stuff, watch the Prime Rogue special pls. Final Stage is good, I watched it myself a few weeks back, it's definitely feels a little more childish (and nonsensical), but it has the heart of the show. Heisei Generations Forever... that's a little more oof. It has some good, it has some bad, I'm not the biggest fan.

Oh, for sure. It's so much more of what was good about the series. Some of my complaint isn't exactly the lack of scientific explanation (this is still a TV show about how a series of tiny bottles grant magic powers when put in a special belt) as it is a weird hand-wave of ethical concerns and complications. Sento's like, "We're going to pull another Earth out of a black hole and combine it with our Earth, and I don't know what'll happen afterwards except Evol(t) will be dead," and the whole cast is like, "Sounds good, I guess." Even for Kamen Rider Build, Sento is saying insane things, and no one's really reacting to it. Weird choice!

No, that was good. You're right. I felt like it had more to do with Banjou realizing that, as he had some of Evol(t)'s DNA, the new world might be at risk if he stayed on it, so he'd have to leave with Evol(t). But, man, I like your read, too. I like that it ties into Banjou's later "you were our hero" speech, where Sento had sacrificed so much to save everyone so many times, he should have this small reward of survival. That's very sweet. I like it.

I'm gonna unspoiler that, since I already referenced it. That part was great! I could've been okay with Sento being the lone survivor, essentially, the only one who remembered the struggles and triumphs and friendships and family of the last 49 episodes, but NOPE here's Banjou, and the show gets the best ending it could have. It's great. It's great like Ankh showing back up in the winter movie, where Eiji is just destroyed by his good luck, and Ankh's just, "You got fat." Here, you've got reconciled Sento and freaked-out Banjou, and it's just the right reunion energy.

Prime Rogue I did a week or so ago, I think just before Be The One, and it was fun. Not as bizarre or emotional as Kuma Grease, but a lot of funny stuff with Gentoku and Misora. Final Stage is maybe the last Build thing I'll watch, after New World and the other short films. HGF, that's going to wait until Zi-O, which is going to have to wait for the first ten Heisei series, soooo... a year? Maybe?

Yeah, I can see that, and it's definitely something. I suppose it was all explained by whatever notes they had on file about the White panel that we never got to read.

Oh, there's definitely some of the "I'm part Evolt, I gotta die too", given even Banjou figured it out (and I could write lots of words about whether or not Sento figured it, and what exactly that means), but I just love the friendship moment it gives them.

I censored it because it ruined the energy I had going into the the above point :P

So what are you doing next, if not Zi-O?

I would enjoy reading those words!

It was going to be Zi-O, then I saw a bunch of casting announcements for the back-half of Zi-O's season and it's wall-to-wall Phase 1 Heisei guys. So, it looks like I'm going to need to watch all 10 of those series before I watch Zi-O. (Not have to, no one's making me, but need to. If I just went into Zi-O there'd be this part of my brain going, "Remember Dr. Pac-Man? And how you didn't get nearly enough of the references when all you'd watched was Ex-Aid?") Masked Rider Kuuga is next for me, but I'm probably going to do the Ex-Aid stage show right before, since I just learned that existed a few weeks ago.

Happy to see you enjoyed Build overall. It's my favorite Rider series, though admittedly I've only watched about 5, so there might be a better one I haven't watched yet. The ending worked for me, the change from government conspiracy to civil war to battle against an alien abomination felt better paced watching it week to week. I loved how it both gave things a happy ending, with everyone back to life, while still making their sacrifices count, with the all but Sento and Ryuga not remembering anything, though I appreciated the little hint that Misora still found Sento strangely familiar. Also, I definitely recommend watching the stage show. It's really fun, and fits well into canon.

I wonder sometimes if I'm more forgiving because I blew through this series, or less forgiving. I think it's maybe both? In the micro, I'm willing to say "those were fun scenes, there's a lot of good here, even if it's not all working", while in the macro I found myself saying "this plot, this storyline, I don't think it's working, despite some fun scenes".

The pacing, that change up from small Touto stories to bigger Japan stories to epic universe stories, felt problematic to me in retrospect. So much of the core starting narrative feels resolved in episode 22, and the "Banjou is a fugitive" arc into the Hokuto War arc felt really fluid and like a natural consequence of the characters' actions. After 22, the Seito War arc into the Evol(t) arc, it frequently felt both repetitive, with the Seito War, and like it was losing the characters in the spectacle and shocking reveals. Nothing that ruined the show for me, but the back half felt way more top-down plotted (things happening to the characters) and way less bottom-up plotted (things happening because of the characters).

The scene where Misora is trying to remember Sento is one of the most Build things to happen in that finale. It moves from:

-Sadness, as Misora doesn't really know Sento, one of her dearest friends
-Hope, as Misora feels that connection, somehow
-Joy, that look on Sento's face that maybe there's still a place for him in this new world
-Humor, because HA HA it's just that he looks like the frontman for Lynks
-Respect, because goddamn, did they really just cap off a hugely dramatic moment with a joke callback to an episode from almost a year ago?

It's cool that this series is one of your favorites! There's a bunch of franchise high-points in it, and judging from the recent poll, you're not alone in your enjoyment of it. If you don't mind my asking, which other series have you watched?

Taro Satou was apparently a big bomb meme in Japan, so that's their reference to that. As well as the Utsumi cane thing. It's like if Ex-Aid turned Dan Kuroto into a comedy god because the fandom liked him or something.