[ZeoRangerV]

Opinion time! I’ve been fairly quiet about my thoughts on Ghost for the last few months (unless you count my intermittent jabs at it on Twitter), but with the show about to wrap up I think I’m finally at a point where I can lay my thoughts out properly. Anyway, this episode in particular:

- I love movie/special tie-in material as much as the next person, but when things are as shoehorned in as Ghost has done it why even bother? The inexplicable Pink Necrom and Dark Ghost appearances were pointless, especially if the “joke” of having Dark Ghost appear was to have Edith say “it’s me” over and over to Takeru. The Frey/Freya stuff is even worse, because they didn’t even make sense in their own specials let alone here. The sad thing is that the one bit of movie plot I WOULD like to see carried over has been cast aside. Say what you want about Takeru’s father’s death in Movie War Genesis, but that scene has far more heart to it than “Oh hey Adel did it”.
- Unlike a lot here it seems I don’t really have a problem with Igor suddenly turning out to be in love with Akari, I think the show was just really clumsy in its delivery of it. I could buy Igor showing admiration towards her that hints at something more, just not “yeah its love” right away.
- Alain’s undoubtedly been the most endearing character on the show for me, and he really shined during his fight scene with Adel.
- Moving on from that, Adel’s redemption made thematic sense but again was far too rushed and/or ham-fisted. My bigger issue there was how it went from a touching family scene to Takeru telling the soon-to-be-dead Adel how his actions were unforgivable. That speech just really didn’t mesh with what was going on even if I do agree with him.
- The Makoto clone plotline came to a decent enough end for something that really felt like it was only there to give Specter something to do. This show has pushed the fake-out deaths way over the limit though.
- Oh hey it’s Kamen Rider Extremer. Is that going to get a poorly done movie throwback too or just be conveniently ignored?

Every week I come into these threads and read each post, and often I find myself in agreement with Fish Sandwich’s assessment of the show’s overall themes and bigger picture. My problem is that I feel like the show utterly fails on a week-by-week basis, and when broken down into components fails from jumping from thing to thing with only the smallest of explanations to carry it along. It’s good that there’s a bigger picture (one that only really centres on a handful of characters I guess, but its there), but if I can’t enjoy things episodically than how am I supposed to appreciate that?

Kamen Rider Ghost is undoubtedly the worst Rider show I’ve seen, but I don’t consider it completely without redemption. I feel like the writers knew exactly what story they wanted to tell, they just had absolutely no idea how to go about it.