[Xtreme RX]

I liked the finale in a lot of ways, it was pretty good all things considered. The Horobi vs Aruto fight was awesome and the resolution of it was satisfying. I wish he beat Ark-Scorpion as Zero-Two or simply Rising Hopper, Realizing Hopper just seemed very low effort (seriously, no additions to the suit?). I would have even taken his father giving him the CycloneRiser to become Ichigata. Nothing about Realizing Hopper was really impressive or special at all.

I liked some of the character epilogues, Yua/Valkyrie and Naki being the most satisfying. I also liked Jin and Horobi's new Metsuboujinrai. Fuwa/Vulcan's was straight-up odd and Raiden/Ikazuchi kinda got glossed over. And Gai/Thouser never really got his comeuppance save losing Rider fights a bunch of times so I'll never really be satisfied with his character arc.

Disliked Aruto making another Izu and trying to mold her into being the exact same secretary he lost. After all this talk about giving Humagears their freedom and making a dramatic point of it through his fight with Horobi, this kind of just flies in the face of that.

Cliffhanger with Azu and the new Kamen Rider was interesting, I guess we will see how all that amounts to in the winter film. Speaking of which, since it will be a standalone film, I hope that means the film will have a lengthier running time (same goes for Kiramager).

I did like how bold these last few episodes were. Aruto becoming Ark-One was completely unexpected and made for a great twist and the growing conflict between Horobi and Aruto really upped the stakes which resulted in an exciting endgame. While the ending didn't deliver on all accounts, I have to give props to the showrunners for keeping things fresh and fun even after production was heavily affected by the pandemic. While I will always wonder how the show could have turned out had it not lost episodes, I'm happy with what we got. It was an exciting first series for the Reiwa era and overall a good Kamen Rider series. Not great, not terrible, just good. And all things considered, that's fine by me.