[Fish Sandwich]

Dang, Build really just keeps knocking it out of the park for me. As the now obligatory "season finale" episode before the new year, this was great. The big mystery driving the show up to this point is largely resolved with a bunch of great character bits, making way for exciting new plotlines, and we get a big action scene set to the entire theme song to cap things off. Good stuff.

Oh, and I'm dead certain Over-Time mistranslated Ryuuga's line at about 15 minutes in, so just a heads up for everyone. They have him saying "I'm pissed because he's so pissed at himself", but what he actually said is "I'm pissed at myself for being so pissed at him". What they have gels with the climax just fine so this isn't a huge deal, but it's not what that conversation with Misora was actually about, and I think the actual line shows how much progress Ryuuga is making as a character to have that kind of self-awareness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

So here are my thoughts on Build up to and including the current episode.

The thing that keeps me watching is the flashes of inspiration, the strength of the performances and the chemistry between the cast. Everything else about this show, so far for me, has been awful.

The show has practically zero identity of its own, drowning in cliches and trite developments continuing the painful homogeneity of toku shows. The emotions never mature, the special effects never improve and the moral compass never becomes more focused. The show does attempt a few swerves but any twist can be seen from another dimension they are so telegraphed and all each twist does is make me aware of how little emotional investment I have in this show.

I also don’t care for the actual Rider’s so far. The mostly serious tone of the show completely clashes with the silliness of the Riders (including the villains). What happened to Riders evolving meaningfully? These shows have always been about selling toys, I get that, but Build is a walking advertisement for himself, nothing more and it is so egregious in its execution, everything just makes so much noise, so much shouting and so many sound effects but it is all low quality, painful, nonsense. I can’t concentrate on the action because the Driver is just shouting away while other props screech out horrible low res loops of the equivalent of an industrial blender being filled with metal. It looks like they are using the literal toys as props, they don’t even bother to paint the props on both sides.

You know, it's funny, outside of the "homogeneity of toku shows" bit, I feel all of those critiques could be leveled at Gaim just as easily.