[Fish Sandwich]

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Originally Posted by Kurona

What an incredibly sick move to have the last shot of the show for two weeks be Birth de-transforming into a guy we've literally never seen before

Still one of the most daring introductions to a secondary Rider out there. I mean, you have got to have some serious confidence in the story you're telling to just completely throw the viewers for a loop that way. You literally can't guess who Birth is going to be, because Date just pops into existence out of nowhere here. It's awesome!

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First of all, um, apologies to Fish! I already went on a whole spiel up there about how I meant to watch these sooner, but he's made little secret of this being one of his favourite episodes he goes back to a lot; and especially with me pouring so much love into this rewatch and saying I wanted to watch this on Christmas day I'm sure he was anticipating this. Uh. Sorry for taking a bit!

So, in order:

- You'd better believe I was anticipating this.

- You don't need to worry about hurting my feelings when you're over there in Die's Kabuto thread comparing us to two of the most notable and talented directors in the history of film. (seriously holy s*** that was a nice thing to wake up to on the first day of 2021 thank you)

- This episode of Ghost is THE BEST. I think you covered it pretty well; I mean, I know from experience how hard it is to go into it without just saying "watch it and pay attention to everyone's facial expressions". It took until right as the series finished its run for me to truly realize Ghost was a new favorite for me, but this particular episode, I remember just flooring me right at the time with how unlike the average episode of Kamen Rider so much of it felt it terms of tone, and how it expresses its themes. It's hugely unfortunate how often it gets dismissed the way it does. I can't think of anything that shows the writers (and this was a Fukuda episode, by the way) knew what they were doing any more than the simple fact that the thing that saves Takeru's life is the undying love of his father.

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Originally Posted by Kurona

It's quite the trope and one I'm surprised I never see brought up!

I've personally been calling them "season finales" for years now, so it's definitely something I've always recognized. I think it actually started with OOO, too, funnily enough! Double was when the whole schedule change happened with Decade running shorter than normal, and in its particular case, they just made you wait two weeks to see the back half of FangJoker's debut, which is insanely cruel. From OOO onward, though, it's usually a pretty straightforward climax to cap off an arc. Or, if you're really cool, like Wizard is, you just save Christmas in a fun, relatively low-stakes standalone adventure.