[XW1n5t0nX]

Faiz Final Episode
Alright, final episode time. I am pumped, I can watch it, I will watch it! *Turns baseball cap backwards* Let's do this.

Well it looks like Takumi may just be running out of time.

Is it just me, or does that sign with the Smart Brain logo on it look like it was added in later? It looks really Photoshopped, almost like it was green screened in. It could just be me though.

Well...wow. I guess Smart Brain likes to think ahead. Why else would they build an entire catacomb leading to an area to have little boys hover with tentacles hanging around him? Okay fine, let's get it out of the way. Boy, I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going. Now that we have that out of the way, let us move on.

Oh my God they're going to freeze Takumi in carbonite!

Why did Keitaro bring a friggen iron with him? Was he going to use it as a weapon? Silly Keitaro, that isn't going to do jack diddly shit against who you're going up against.

They all brought irons? And they used them to knock people out to steal their clothing? Huh I guess there was a purpose to bringing them.

"My soul is prepared." What the hell does that mean? Is she ready to fight? Couldn't she have just said that instead of "My soul is prepared?" Is she going to freaking transfer it to Takumi? Show, explain!

So basically you can't get to Tereou worth crap?

It's the final showdown! *da dah dadahdah da da dah dadahdahdahdah*

You know I just now noticed, Naoya wears a leather jacket in his Orphenoch form. Don't know how I didn't notice that until now. The little things I suppose.

Man these two are giving it everything they've got. They're fighting as Faiz and Kaixa, and they're fighting it out in their Orphenoch forms. This battle is getting intense, so is the Naoya/Mihara VS Saeko/Takuma one. I'm friggen loving it!

But where the hell did Takumi get the blaster from?

Why did everything get trippy with the visuals? Oh, I guess it was just the netting. That makes a bit more sense. Still looked really weird though.

Takuma you are such a freaking pussy. And was it just me, or was Saeko getting off on that there?

You get points for trying Mihara. Unfortunately you just don't have what it takes to charge in like a bad ass and save the day. Good try though.

Well it's nice to see Yuji have a very, very quick/rushed last minute change of heart...

Oh noes they died. Woe is us...so how many minutes until Takumi is on screen?

Takuma is a construction worker? I would have never in a million years predicted he'd be doing that for a job. He's so freaking weak and spineless that I'm surprised he'd have any job. Maybe a librarian or something along those lines? But construction? Shock horror.

There he is!

You are a dirty copycat Takumi.

Well that was it. The end. 50 episodes all completed. Took me a few months but finally Faiz has come to an end. So, how good or bad is this little show?

The story of the show was pretty much a hit or miss thing. It had a clear cut storyline that the episodes followed along, it's just that it was muddled up with quite a bit of filler, and even some story centric episodes that didn't do much. I think the best story we got was Delta's introduction. Those episodes were really good (and in 27's case, perfect) and built up so much hype you couldn't help but get excited from them. The rest of the story built up hype as well, but never as good as the Delta story did. But how did the overall story do? Well, I think it worked when it worked, and it didn't work when it didn't work. It's pretty much a story of evolution, ideals, morals, dreams. The thing is though, it didn't always work well. Some bits were good, some were great, some were shit, and some were bad. It was a story that I think as it went on got a little too crowded and cracks started to show because of it. By the end of the show, it gets really rushed and confusing, which is a bad thing. But I will applaud it for being very good and even clever at times. It was an interesting story for what they presented, and at times it worked so well. Overall, Faiz's story is a mixed bag, and it definitely isn't for everyone. Hell I'm the only one of the watch group we had in the beginning who finished it (Locke dropped it, and I got no idea what NGW did), so that says something. It's interesting, and good at times, but in the end it's pretty much all going to depend on your taste.

When it came to the characters, it is very much a hit or miss situation. You will either love them or hate them. They'll either be some of the best you saw, or some of the worst. Personally (get ready to hear me say this a lot), it was mixed to me. As far as development goes, you had some winners and some stinkers. The best developed to me would probably be the titular character with Takumi. When the show started out he was nothing but a whiny punk brat who I wanted to slam into a wall. But as the show kept going, he slowly began to change into a more kind and considerate person. By the end, I really liked him. It wasn't handled the best at times, but honestly Takumi had the best development strictly due to how full circle he came. I would have given the award to Yuji, but by the end he flip flopped so much and had his story rushed so quickly that it kinda ruined it for me. Everything up until the whole experimentation arch was pure gold, and alone would give him the best development, but the end of the show kinda fucked that up. As for who I believe had the worst development, I'd have to probably say Keitaro. He was the same person throughout the entire series. Now Kusaka was like this as well, but the difference is Kusaka actually had a character, and even some layers to him. Keitaro was just the same guy throughout the whole series, and his character could best be described as a laundry man who works the Bat Signal. I like Keitaro, but boy did he have no development once so ever.

But what about the characters themselves? I liked quite a few of them and found some of them to be fairly good characters. Some were pretty wasteful though such as the detectives, Mr. J, Keitaro, Rina, and a good chunk of the characters involved in filler. They aren't bad characters persay, but they pretty much amounted to nothing. Some were downright great but got nothing (SAYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). As for the best characters, I'd have to say they'd be Takumi, Kusaka, Naoya, Yuji, Yuka, and Sawada. The rest of Lucky Clover, Murakami, Smart Lady, Mihara, Tereou, and a few others kinda just fall in the middle of being good or bad. Who are my favorites? Naoya, Yuka, and Kusaka hands down. Yuka to me had the best overarching story of the show for a character (not talking about development, just story), Naoya was freaking hilarious, and Kusaka was kick ass. He may be an manipulating asshole prick douchebag, but that's why I like him. He's not like most other riders and is pretty complex IMO. Anyways overall, the characters themselves, and their character development were another mixed bag. Some of them were great, some of them were bad.

The final big category is action. I'll be quite honest when I say that Faiz has some really great action. Boy when it hit, it hit a gotdamn home run. Even if a fight wasn't overall great, it usually had a pretty cool spot in it. And to be frank, the fights all around are pretty good. There were a few that stunk (mostly do to length), but I can't recall a fight that I felt was really terrible (could be wrong, check my episodic reviews to double check me if you like). The action of Faiz is really the only category of the major three that isn't a mixed bag. It was good all the way through in my opinion.

I thought all of the designs for both the riders and the Orphenochs were either really cool, to outright great. The great ones mostly being the Orphenochs. All three riders had some good design work, and really fit the technological theme, as well as the naming scheme. I'm not the biggest fan of the Faiz suit mostly for the helmet. It really could have had been broken up more so that you did have this pineapple visor and really small fins. The Delta suit was good as well, but I found it to be pretty bulky from the thick white lines, as well as the big shoulder pads. As for the Kaixa suit, yeah I fucking love it. It's pretty much perfect in my eye. It's well balanced, it fits it's theme well, the unique armor bits are cool, the helmet is bad ass, it just all around was very appeasing to the eye. Would've have been cooler though if the yellow lines were purple, and the visor became yellow. I think this is why the other two are better then Delta. They had their color schemes broken up pretty well. Delta was just black and white, and it wasn't broken up all that well. But as a whole, the three main suits were really nice looking, and did the job of fitting their themes well. As for Faiz Axel and Blaster, they were pretty nice as well. I really loved Axel Form, and Blaster form was cool as well. Moving on to the Orphenoch designs, all but three to me kicked major fucking ass. Everyone fit the theme they had, and if they didn't have a real theme to them, they still looked kick ass for how weird they were. I'd say my favorite was definitely Lobster Orphenoch form, with Rose Orphenoch and Dragon Orphenoch right behind her for my favorites.

The effects were pretty nice as well. The best to me were the effects for when the Orphenochs turned into sand. The work on them was fucking perfect to me, especially with that one cop near the end. The CGI work is nice as well, but you can tell it's CGI and that it's from 2003, so I would say it hasn't aged all too well. But in total, the CGI and other SFX were really great and produced some cool shit at times.

The music was good, the camera work varied, the editing was varied. Really not sure what else to talk about, so how about my final thoughts?

I started watching Faiz mostly just to see if it was as bad as I saw people making it out to be. And in watching the entirety of the series, I have come to a decision. Kamen Rider Faiz is neither a good show, nor a bad show. It is a mixed bag, the mixedness coming from everything within the show. It had a story, characters, character development, camera work, and editing which could be very varied at times. The action, music, suit designs, and SFX were the only things to me that were pretty much concrete in how they were (they all being pretty great to me). The rest though is going to vary greatly, both in critical analysis and in personal taste. Faiz is definitely not for everybody. It has a story and characters which are very polarizing, and it's easy to see why the opinion of the show is so varied.

But did I enjoy the show? Honestly yeah, I did. I actually don't even see some of the problems with it. I didn't find it dark one bit and actually thought it was the same tone as most other Heisei shows. Not to mention the fact that I found it fucking hilarious in a lot of parts. I didn't find the characters to be bad, undeveloped, or a sex object that is the toku equivalent of one of the worst female characters ever, I fucking love Kusaka whereas the majority of people would gleefully want his head on the chopping block. I'll admit that it has some technical problems and that the story and characters aren't the best at times, but overall I really enjoyed myself watching it. I think what I enjoyed the most was how much it felt like an actual drama. I completely forgot at times that I was watching a tokusatsu show. I know not many people will probably like that part of the show, but I enjoyed it to the moon. It was great to see it break out of being a traditional toku show in what happened in the non toku parts. I obviously like it the show enough to want to own it on DVD (yay for Malaysia), as well as get representations of all the riders and a few Orphenochs. So did I enjoy the show and like it? Yes and yes.

In the end, Kamen Rider 555 is a mixed bag. It's bound to create a lot of varying opinions on it. It isn't a good show and it isn't a bad show. It definitely isn't the worst Kamen Rider I've seen, or tokusatsu show for that matter. I found it very enjoyable and I liked it. It probably wouldn't crack my top 3 favorite rider shows, and maybe even top 5 (that may vary as I watch more shows), but I'd easily put it in my top ten. It has one of my favorite riders, one of my favorite suit designs for a rider, one of my favorite suit designs for a monster, and yeah, I liked it.

I say if you haven't seen Faiz and are curious about it through my posts about it, or anybody else's, I'd say watch it and give it a shot. It's definitely worth a watch through in my opinion.

I give Kamen Rider 555 a C/3 stars out of 5