[Dr Kain]

SPOILERS INCLUDED:

Anyway, so yes, I spent Wed-Friday watching Ryuki and I still love the show. However, the fact that there are only 10 riders in the show really drives me crazy since Shiro just randomly has the ability to break his own rules of the Rider Battle. The fact that he can claim that Knight and Odin were the last two and ignore Zolda and Ouja is annoying as hell. I personally think it would have made sense for Ryuga to be the final rider since Shinji had just kicked the bucket and they could have had Ren start stalling on fighting Ryuga, reflecting on his relationship with Shinji throughout the entire series. That would have been far better instead of just Ren getting his butt kicked and then Shiro gets mad and destroys everything, and Odin just stops and tells Knight he won. However, the worst offender is the reset button. Back when I first saw the show in 2003 I thought it was a pretty good ending, but then I realzed years later that is the Japanese way of copping out an ending. There are way too many series that did it, like Wolf's Rain, Big O, My-Hime, Rahxephon, Evangelion, etc. I hate that. You go through this entire series, see characters change, characters die, you feel for those characters, you cheer for some of those character deaths, and then they just reset the freaking world on you, making everything you watch invalid.

Like I said, I still love the show despite its faults, but I'd say it is probably a little higher in regard for my favorite series than it used to be.