[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Aw geez, I wasn't trying to make you feel like you have to apologize...

It's just... I don't know, I guess I just personally thought Sawada's plotline played out in a really clever and interesting way, especially with them planting that seed well before it becomes apparent it was kind of always commenting on Takumi's arc, and I really loved how it comes together in the end and leads into the completion of the holy trinity of quotable Takkun speeches. This is an episode I really like, so it's maybe disappointing to see you not feeling it so much yourself. I have a track record of buying into these villain "redemption" stories easier than I think you do, which is probably part of it, and I understand your point about Mari (although on the other hand, she does admit she understands now he's not the same person anymore when confronting him about the reunion in the previous episode, which I don't think is a minor moment), but...

Like I said, I don't know. I guess we'll always have Adel.

Hey, here's the one where I apologize for making people uncomfortable by apologizing before! I hope I didn't come off as offended or thin-skinned. I get that these episodes can mean a lot to people, and as I said on my first day on these boards, that last thing I ever want to do is be unfair about a show. I try to be open to what a show is trying to say, and judge it on its own merits, and I was concerned that I wasn't doing that. As always, it is very cool with me if folks don't agree with what I'm saying! That's fun to read and respond to!

I guess my final thoughts on Sawada are that I liked him as a villain, but I wasn't able to find the sympathy the show wanted me to discover at the end of his story. As a villain, his motivation is inherently tragic. He was killed by a monster, and became a monster to protect himself. His humanity previously made him weak, made him a victim, gave him something to lose, so he tried to shed all of that and crush his humanity through murder. That villainy, where it's a sick form of psychological self-preservation, I think that's got a lot of narrative juice.

But, yeah, I couldn't quite get his story to square up with what Takumi and Mari's stories were doing. I see everyone's points, and I'm genuinely glad that other folks got more out of it, but Sawada's villainy was just too intense for me to make that story work the way the show intended.