[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER BUILD EPISODES 48 - 49



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.



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?