[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

I’ve just realised that throughout this show, there have been 5 users for the Faiz Gear.

Whoa! That's some fun trivia. Thanks!

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Now I understand of Kusaka not wanting to tell Mari anything that he treats her inappropriately, but I don't know why Mihara tells Rina but not Mari (out of care); because I'm sure that Mihara probably should care for Rina more than other Ryusei School alumnus including Mari.

Honestly, it's just a problem in the plotting of the episode. It's bad writing on Inoue's part.

Kusaka's found dead on the beach by Mihara and Takumi. The next logical person who'd need to be told was Mari. But the problem is, dramatically, it needs to be an in-person scene. Having Takumi just call up Mari to say that Kusaka's dead is a horrible scene. He has to tell her in-person.

The problem is, the Mihara/Rina scene happens before the Takumi/Mari scene, and that means that Rina's naturally going to want to talk to Mari about it. And there're a few ways Inoue could've addressed that, to keep the Mari scene with just Takumi and Keitaro. (That scene shouldn't be about the Ryusei kids, it should be about the core team's internal grief and Takumi's self-loathing. Two more characters makes that harder to do.) He could've had Mihara say that Takumi was going to tell her, or that Mihara wanted to tell Rina first and they'd go over there next. Both totally normal things to say and do. But Inoue instead opts to have Mihara suggest that they never tell Mari, which a) is completely insane; b) totally pointless, since the scene after next is Takumi telling Mari about Kusaka; and c) it makes Takumi's information have to include a kind-of accidentally cruel Did No One Tell You component.

It probably should've been either a different line of dialogue for Mihara, or moving the Mihara/Rina scene a little later in the episode. But then, that'd be tough because it's largely expository (it's really just telling Rina that Kusaka was killed by Orphnoch, which serves to frame the Smart Brain scene that follows) and it doesn't matter once Mari finds out. Basically, it's a scene that made more problems than it solved.

Alternately, I really really like the idea that Mihara is trying to become the new Kusaka, and this is how he does it. He's got this moment at the end of the scene, where he wishes for Kusaka to live on inside him, and all I could think was that Mihara just heard a tiny voice in his head saying, "Just keep lying to all of your friends for no reason!"

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

And yeah you only said things about her now, while praising Murakami previously (even at his "anticlimatic" death).

I got a lot of favorites, man! It is not a zero sum experience, enjoying characters on these shows, but I can only talk about so many at once!

The other thing is, this is like a living document? I'm not at the end of a story, picking favorites and criticizing losers. It's something that changes as stories change, evolves as the characters evolve. Sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it takes a while. Kageyama snuck up on me a bit, and it's only near the end where I fully appreciate what she brought to the table.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I guess if Takumi and Yuji had a dialogue about their current clash (Yuji thinking its better to live as an Orphnoch and Takumi refusing to throw away his humanity) it'd still feel like argument?

The problem is I don't feel like I'm hearing a dialogue between Yuuji and Takumi, because Yuuji isn't on the show anymore. I'm watching a conflict between Murakami and Takumi. I'm hearing Murakami's smug dismissal of Takumi's beliefs, and that's not a conflict I'm nearly as invested in as Yuuji's conflicted nature versus Takumi's conflicted nature. They were like two halves of a whole, and now it's just Good Guy versus Bad Guy and it doesn't do as much for me.

(Like, I don't want to dwell on this, but Yuuji backhanding Kaido was the most Okay So You Don't Want Me To Care About Yuuji Anymore Got It scene they could've done. It's like when Kusaka hits Mari. It robs that character of so much remaining goodwill.)

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

He doesn't understand that his teammates are lawful evils who are clearly going to turn on him for disobeying the president. He brought this punishment on himself.

I don't even know if I feel like they're doing it for Smart Brain, so much as they really don't want to die. Like, I think Houjou and Kageyama decided on their own to take out Kitazaki, because he had no grasp on the stakes of this fight. In a battle with this much that can go wrong, and how final the result would be, Kitazaki's a liability they can't afford.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Takumi's in a difficult position here. He thinks the End Justifaiz the Means, that he can murder an innocent kid to save humanity. But no hero would want to have to do something like that. He's reluctant and I'm kind of glad that Kaido and Kiba stopped him before he convinced himself to go through with it since that's not a guilt he would be able to get over easily. He has enough burdens to deal with. It doesn't help that he's having another breakdown at the time, believing that Orphenochs must die. He's right that it's the most effective way to save humanity but focusing on the objective and acting too dispassionately to accomplish it makes him less human by denying an Orphenoch the right to live which isn't the Takumi we've come to know. Takumi has to be a hero this late in the show, he has to act honestly and fight not just for the greater good but the good he has in his heart as well. That's the only reason why humanity is worth defending.

Yeah, I don't love some of the overall elements of the final string of episodes, but I do love the dilemma that Takumi's in. Like, he kills this kid and dooms himself (spiritually and physically), or he dooms humanity while saving his own life. These options are impossible, and I actually am looking forward to how the show resolves them.