[Fish Sandwich]

Sento,where the f*** have you been keeping that thing the past 19 episodes?! You could've at least driven it down a wall or something for old times' sake. Come on, one last chance for a bike screencap and this is all I get?

Well, bike action or no, Build's finally over, and I... er... well, I kind of have some mixed feelings, and they're exactly the feelings I was worried I was going to have.

For the most part, this episode left me feeling like...



But then other parts of it made me feel like...



...and, having watched the episode twice now, I think I've had enough time to process it all, so in the spirit of full-circle storytelling, I'm busting out the bullet-pointed list for the first time in months:

- The pacing here was on point, since the episode starts at the climax. The crazy reality rewriting nature of the ending called for a lengthy enough epilogue, and we got that.

- The actual fighting part of the final fight was rather underwhelming, but the emotion of it hits perfectly and does an admirable job of distracting from things like shoddy CG and the fact that the whole fight is just two dudes smacking each other around in the dirt. I especially appreciate the callback to episode 3 because those lines from Sento were always hugely important to the show even without it dwelling on them afterwards.

- Likewise, one thing I'll say upfront is that ending the show on Sento and Ryuuga is the way to do it. This series was always about them at its heart and anything else just wouldn't have felt right.

- I love Katsuragi saying goodbye and the symbolism of him fading out like a ghost to drive home that, having finally set things right, Sento is no longer haunted by his past. It's a simple bit of visual storytelling that goes a long way.

- Sento pulling out a script and doing the narration at the end was beyond adorable, and the simple fact that they ended the series on a meta gag like that speaks volumes about Build's sense of humor. The fact that it can pull off ending on a gag like that speaks volumes of its quality.

- That melancholy scene in the cafe with the oddly appropriate music playing was neat. It's like a glimpse into what it would be like if they decided to play this conclusion as more of a downer than it actually was.

- Unfortunately, that brings to the part where I complain about alternate realities for half the post. I'm seriously shocked how alone I seem to be in feeling like I do, so if there's some secret to how this works that I'm missing, please tell me. But as far as I can tell, aside from the presence of Sento and "our" Ryuuga, it would've made no difference whatsoever whether this plan to merge two worlds succeeded or failed. This "new" world seems to be identical in just about every way to what "World B" was presumably already like anyway. This whole final showdown was supposed to the ultimate confrontation between Evolt's destruction and Build's creation, an almost mythological conflict between two diametrically opposed beings with everything on the line, but when it came time for Build to actually build something, he basically just stole something that already existed instead. And those people screaming in fear as giant math equations send chunks of the Sky Wall raining down on them don't exactly look like they're being "saved". It's extremely frustrating because this ending, wild though it may be, is actually super thematically appropriate, but because of the way it was executed, it also feels like the exact opposite of that. There's all these questions being raised that aren't important to the story, but still manage to detract from it.

- Why does having Evolt's DNA make Ryuuga want to dye his hair?

- More seriously, if the reason there's two of him around is because "World A" him is different from "World B" him, well... doesn't that apply to just about everyone? Especially poor Misora, considering she played host to an alien being too.

- Similarly, the show DOES realize Sento Kiryuu and Takumi Katsuragi aren't actually different people, right? Because if it does (and I know it does), that only furthers supports my idea that there should be two of everyone. Mind you, the show could've easily avoided all of this by just saying Ryuuga and Sento are the only ones still around because they were at the center of the whole mess or something.

- Of course, if the scene at the cafe WAS meant to hint that it might be possible for people to remember "World A", then that goes a good way toward mitigating my complaints. But one, it comes off super ambiguous, and two, that still begs the question why "World B" is like the default setting for the "new" world if the whole point was to put them together. Still, I'm probably going to hold onto this idea in the future to preserve my sanity.

- Or maybe the Cross-Z V-Cinema will clear this all up retroactively? I mean, the plot is liable to follow up on "other" Ryuuga, so...

- Oh, and speaking of things to be cleared up later, I'm not going to whine about the Ride Watch because I have a feeling Zi-O is going to directly explain it in a few weeks.

- Not that any of those last two points do anything to help Build stand on its own.

- Also, why does having Evolt's DNA make Ryuuga want to dye his hair???

All of that being said, I should really stress again that I did love the episode, I still adore Build, and if I were any good at organizing favorites lists, Build would be very high up in my favorite Rider series. Like I said early on in that rant, it isn't actually the job of a good story to bog itself down explaining the minutia of the universe, and while I do wish Build had done a better job directing my attention where it needs to be, it's a hell of a long way from a bad finale.

This show was great, and if Zi-O is even half this good, we're in for another fun year.