[Kiwami]

*Rant incoming*

Nope. Sorry, nothing, not a single thing in this episode worked for me. The drama was crap, Takeru’s sudden change of character was gone as fast as it arrived and felt fake as shit, and the whole thing was an incredibly horrible setup for just another new form. Which looks awful IMO and is the same old "All Powers Combined" kinda deal. Yawn.

The combination of the Eyecons should've been special, but it wasn’t. Takeru gets moody (which is understandable but still absolutely out of character, in a bad way) all his Eyecons fly away, five minutes later they're like "Nah the kid's good" fly back and that's it. What the hell. Also: Every Eyecon Takeru never used agrees with this? Because the others say so? No, because lazy writing. He also didn’t had a lesson from all of his own Eyecons yet, so the whole "Go into the Eyecon and learn from the heroes"-thing was for nothing? Wasn't that supposed to be so that Takeru learns from the heroes so he can unite them? Or what?

And the characters don’t work. At all. Kanon for example: You just witnessed your brother getting killed because Takeru the idiot didn’t want to intervene, next thing after he goes "Grateful" is that you smile at him and just accept that he will somehow get your brother back? No! You get angry, you scream at the idiot for letting your brother die. I realize Kanon probably knows that her brother’s body is still alive in the Ganma world, and to be fair Takeru has a track record for getting her brother back, but still: No human reacts like this! They even have her faint when it happens and next up she’s still all like "Nah its fine", WTF. That’s probably why I can’t take Takeru’s sudden extreme character change for real, because every other character feels like a puppet that always dances in the same way. Takeru had some good development immediately after he died for the first time, that felt natural, this didn’t.

Also the obligatory "Punch a depressive/cowardly character in the face"-scene every other Rider show has for some reason. Why?

I also hate how every character is always right where he needs to be. It’s a television trope for sure, but come on; this show does it so badly. Every time any character just finds the character they need to find right away or after running around screaming "Takeru!” Makoto! Kanon! Alain!" for 30 seconds. Or the freakin' mailman (who is the real hero of this show by the way) saw someone walk around somewhere and just casually goes back to Takeru’s place to tell everyone. I know that every Rider show does this to some extend, but with Ghost it's just so in your face that it annoys me.

Ignoring shitty story and character development, there surely is some cool action to behold in this episode, right? Nope. Specter and Necrom get their asses kicked; Houdini is back for more horrible CGI- and "Fly away!"-action, Grateful does nothing other than spitting out annoying sounds like a machine gun and Rider kicks Javel. I get that they can’t show off what the form can do at the end of an episode – no wait, they can. Kiwami Arms did it. Type Tridoron did it too. So yeah, they could’ve done it, they just chose not to.

Thumbs down, horrible episode, this show needs to get its shit together. Or be over already.