I think I know what you mean by Late August of 2019 and actually, I had my own theories of what that was leading to.... Until I turned out to be completely wrong. Everything made a lot less sense to me, but at least you were able to find something to work with.

I plan on starting my third watch of W at some point as well, although I doubt I'll have enough time to catch up before Die watches the Movie War. Besides, my current objective is to start and finish Blade before he reaches the Day of Oma. I also plan to rewatch the Shinobi arc on January 1st 2022.

Whether people got something out of it or not, in the end, the show was just a result of marketing so that Toei and Bandai can postpone Kamen Rider W to start airing in fall and avoid major toy sale conflicts with super sentai as of 2009.

Every Kamen Rider show made after Kuuga is the result of marketing, though

But they weren't created to stall time. Decade pretty much was. That was my bad, should have been more specific.

Still, they could’ve found some way to do so without screwing over the show’s storyline especially its endgame arc.

They should have but didn't cause the show was last minute from beginning to end last I checked. And this was evident I think especially after all the Heisei rider reimaginings were visited.

"Apollo Geist really wanted to get married..." This arc in a nutshell.

The Rider War was a great concept for the finale, along with the Journey being more important than the destination which fits Decade so well. And yet, this whole final arc left me thinking "where does it go from here?"

And then DiEnd shot Decade. The End (Or should I say, DI-END!).

Funny enough, I saw the All Riders Vs. Dai-Shocker after this, and then the Movie Wars, just because I really wanted to see how it ended. With how things were progressing, I almost thought they'd pull off the old It Was All A Dream nonsense (which I'm honestly glad they didn't do), but this ending just feels... empty? Nothing feels like it's completely resolved, or any big farewells, it just ends.

Now I do like how (Real) Blade and Kiva appeared as different entities than the ones Decade met, but I feel like this arc was just buildup and more buildup, and then the producers said "That's all, folks!"

And for real though, the Apollo Geist plot was just sooo dumb, it would have been better to make him just flat out take Natsumi and her grandfather hostage and declare he's making a public execution or something, because gosh darn, it's like he didn't want to waste the cake, so he was willing nab any young maiden off the street. Heck, I thought Narutaki pleading for the heroes to defeat Dai-Shocker would have made a great turning point in the show and his character, buuut...

Also, since the Hyper Battle DVD was mentioned, I haven't seen it either, nor had I even knew he had one.

For those who don't know and are curious, the only real differences between the original and specials cuts come at the start of episode 30, and the end of episode 31.

In the original cut of episode 30, Natsumi doesn't say much during her dream sequence, and Narutaki appears to taunt her about how she could've stopped the Rider War from happening. Then when the trio go outside, Natsumi thinks to herself about how she still has faith in Tsukasa. The special version recuts it to where Natsumi narrates her thoughts throughout the dream sequence, cuts out Nautaki's' appearance, and has her talking to herself out loud as she wakes up. She later then says how she wants to protect Tsukasa no matter what.

As for episode 31, the original cut ends with Kivala reviving Onodera and turning him into Dark Kuuga, and then a unique fight sequence between Decade and the rest of the Riders breaks out, ending with Diend appearing and shooting Decade. Roll credits. The special edition changes it to where Kenzaki's' Henshin is completely cut out and Ultimate Kuuga just appears on his own before transitioning into the War sequence we saw at the start of the show. Everyone dies, the end.

I'm not gonna go back and check, but I'm pretty sure I was one of the only people defending Wataru's appearance in Episode 1. I liked it for the way it used a recognizable Rider -- dude was literally the main Kamen Rider a week earlier! -- as a way of communicating what Kamen Riders As A Concept were passing down to Tsukasa. It sort of needed to be the previous Rider, for that metaphorical baton-passing to work. I was okay with it. I didn't really see it as Wataru.

Here, it's like the show wants to have its Guest Star cake and eat it, too. There's almost no way it can be the Kenzaki we knew in the Blade TV series (him being on Rider War World means that his Earth is now getting destroyed by the Sealing Stone; more importantly, he's just massively out of character and a huge dick), but the show clearly is using the actor to get you to go REAL BLADE and connect the dots between Blade's ending and Decade's. It's making connections and ruining connections simultaneously, and it's way harder to defend.

Hilarious! Thanks!

I mentioned this to Zatyme on Discord, but I saw the Decade movie when I was watching W for the first time, and nothing from that "trailer" looked familiar to me. I was like, how did I forget this much of the movie?!

It is incredibly weird for a series whose mandate seemed to be Celebrate Heisei, to then spend the last few minutes of their finale making the Heisei Riders seem like homicidal creeps.

https://c.tenor.com/DXZVgqq3ORsAAAAC...-dodgeball.gif

Yeah, it... they honestly didn't even need to do a lot in this final story? They didn't exactly have a convoluted series of plot points like Den-O, or some impossible scenario like Blade. With Dai-Shocker's introduction, you even have a villain who can be cathartically defeated by Team Decade And Friends! They'd done most of the heavy lifting to square away the various character relationships by Episode 29, you only have to close out the Disappearing Worlds stuff. Two episodes should be plenty! Why did they work so hard to avoid actually ending their story?!

Yeah, just jokes. I really did like the cast for this series. They deserved better!

I sort of enjoyed Apollo Geist's role in this story? He just wants his powers back and to be a big theatrical villain. Dude's motivation is super-clear, which is something that's in short supply for this two-parter. Once he got his powers back (via Fangire Wedding, which is a really smart decision in the script), he really wanted to kill Decade, so he kidnapped Natsumi and creepily threatened to marry her after killing her friends. It's... like, it's INSANE, but it's legibly insane. Everything he does feels like the decision-making process of a Showa villain. Not really any complaints about Apollo Geist in this one from me.

Blade's ending has recently been on my mind a lot recently for how perfect it is and how it's maybe one of my favourite Kamen Rider things ever even without the rest of the series surrounding it (which is amazing Kamen Rider itself but for, uh, completely different reasons); so Kenzaki's appearance here... I've never liked it but I REALLY don't like it here. It's like the exact opposite of everything Blade stood for and while "Kenzaki would NEVER do that" might sound like I'm putting a character on a pedestal... well... Kenzaki would NEVER do that!!

It's instead easier for me to read into him not as Kenzaki specifically, but as an expression of the attitudes of the worlds in general towards Tsukasa at this point. Decade is to begin with an extremely non-literal series so that works as part of that; and it makes sense of the drama and what they're really going for here; with Kenzaki's actor probably just being the easiest or one of the easiest ones to get back at the time -- they probably just figured they wanted a past Heisei Rider to come back for this role who wasn't Wataru, and Takayuki was down for it.