[MaskedRiderAsakura]

I don't know how to feel about this.


Once again, Alain comes across as the most interesting character in the entire show, so I liked that. Adel's redemption felt.....decent (more on that later). Uh....I don't know what else positive to say (not because the episode was that bad, but because great ideas were executed poorly), so I'll just continue on to cons.


First off, this episode is exactly why I was worried about the VotW plots well past the point of when the show should be winding down. Everything felt super rushed. We suddenly start redeeming Adel even though for the entire past 47 episodes, we've seen very minimal actual conflict in him and considering his crimes, that's a pretty big flaw. Kaito did less than he did and even he had an established point of no return. It took Alain several freakin' episodes to move over to the side of good, but Adel, who is ten times worse, goes from evil to good in like 5 minutes? IDC if Takeru has the ability to "connect" with people, that's ridiculous, considering everybody's been screaming in his ear the exact same thing Takeru just said for like the past 15 episodes and he just totally fucked off.

Igor...once again, rushed. Literally nothing about him at all would lead me to believe he was in love with Akari or that he had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. This moment would make a lot more sense if it was Javel sacrificing his life for Onari (btw, Igor "dying" to a standard mook is freaking stupid. Even Kanon, the most useless character on the entire cast was taking down Ganma fodder with no problem). And speaking of which, where IS Javel and Mr. Kaijin Rider throughout all of this? Did the show forget they were a thing?

So was the whole Fake Makoto plot just an excuse to include a fake-out death to make the finale seem more meaningful? I mean jeez, how many fake-out deaths has this series had? Feels like they've had more than the past few seasons combined and these moments are especially meaningless when Makoto just dies and Fakoto shows up like a few seconds later going "Nvm guys, I can save him" and just does it. I mean, earlier in the show, at least when they did these fake-out deaths they let them marinate for an episode or so. Here, we don't even 5 minutes of dead Makoto.

And I've never watched the web series so I have no clue what the fuck is going on with Frey and Freya or what their importance to the plot even is. Way to alienate viewers who haven't seen any of that stuff.

Alain was great as always though and that Adel moment would have been good if they gave us more setup but they didn't so...eh. Like everyone else, I patiently await Tamagotchi Rider.