[Tokumonkey]

I just finished it. I'm used to being at least a little disappointed by Rider series finales. The very best series finales have usually only registered as "pretty good, for what is was" to me. Even ones that ended reasonably well didn't quite feel like they'd tied up their story to my satisfaction. (Gaim managed it if you pretend the series ended with the final Urobuchi-written episode.)

Build managed to pull it off. That was great! They remembered to lead with the strongest element from the series, which was the friendship between Banjou and Sento. They left the door open for Misora to someday be able to reconnect with the two of them.

I might have hated the "all the death and madness never happened" plot resolution if they hadn't remembered to make our heroes pay for it. They'll go unsung, and they have no place in the new world they've created. Happy-ending-asterisk is just about the perfect tone.

I can also now exhale: Kamen Rider Build managed to finish as one of the best modern Kamen Rider series, and it never got bad. I think the harshest criticism I have of it is that you could have cut five or six episodes toward the last third, and that was mostly due to the plot hovering far too long on "Evolt has essentially won, but we can't get to a final confrontation and need to stall for a while." Not quite filler, but moseying toward the finish line right when the pace should've gotten frenetic.

The narration at the end - the way it gave us awesome new context for the fourth-wall-breaking opening narration - was flat-out brilliant.

Poor Zi-O. That series is going to have the Gaim problem: how is it ever going to live up to the series before it? Build has been a fantastic ride, even despite that the toys are seemingly more prevalent and obnoxious than ever before.