[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by AkibaSilver

If you want an elaboration from someone who thinks the ending is a bit naff, I'll try to give a few thoughts I have. I don't hate Ghost, and the middle run of episodes is good stuff, but the end just kinda lets me down. I just don't find Adel and the Ganmeizers compelling villains. Adel doesn't have the bombastic *fun* evil other villains use (Chronos, Evol, Gold Drive), so it's forced to come down to his plan and characterm. He never feels like more than a petty child (maybe that's the point, idk, but it doesn't make it better), and the plan... look, watching Ghost week to week, I didn't have a clue what was going on with Demia. First it's stealing people's souls, then it's pulling a "The End of Time" and mutating everyone into Adel. I just couldn't follow properly, so it was less engaged.

Plus, the Ganmeizers could be replaced with planks of wood that shoot lasers. Combine that with the random reappearance of the stars of the Legend Rider specials, for whatever reason, as well as Ghost's inability to properly explain how any of its magic-science fits togther... it lost me.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things I love about Ghost. All three main Riders are pretty great (but then again I think Geiz is great and half the board disagrees with me on that!), and the ReBirth movie, while being bonkers af, is a fun ride. But the finale just doesn't live up to the hype, either thematically (for reasons you gave) or excitement-wise.

So, yeah, the Ganmeisers are just not interesting. Never were, never will be. The biggest problem I had with the Ghost finale is that, for me, the real meat of the conclusion is the stuff with Adel.

For most of the story, Adel is not a great villain. He rarely seems like a real threat, and the overall plan is just "turn Earth into Ganma World", which, it's too nebulous to feel viscerally scary. The ramp up into monomaniacal I Am The World insanity is too cold and emotionless to really get things going in the final run of episodes.

But! Once Adel hits the villain stage of Taunting The Hero Because You Killed His Dad (all dads are dead), I feel like the show really, really locks into something. All of the isolation that Adel's brought on himself is revealed as a defense mechanism, and it's used as the thematic opposite to everything Takeru stands for. Making the climax of Adel's story "Takeru hugged him so well he didn't want to be evil anymore" is hokey as shit and also amazingly brave. It's a way of the show being true to its emotional goals even if folks would rather see a violent confrontation. It's cathartic, but in the most unexpected way. I don't know, I thought that choice bought the show a lot of my appreciation.

I get what you're saying, though. If the Adel resolution doesn't land for you (for a variety of very valid reasons!) the final string of episodes mostly just drag and then stop. Still, I'd suggest that it's at least competent and steady in a way that the high/low swings of the earlier parts of the show maybe weren't.

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Originally Posted by Kurona

I have similar reasons to Silver; but in addition I felt that they really dropped the ball on giving Alain ANYTHING to do; and I got absolutely nothing from Makoto's side of things. I've also got a big ol' rant about Jiro saved somewhere...

But, yeah, maybe it's not as bad as I initially felt

It's a little tough, because the show seemed like it blocked off a time in the season to develop Makoto (up to episode 15) and Alain (13-mid 20s) and then was , like, "Mission accomplished!" They did good work defining them, and then froze them in place. Rewatching the Ex-Aid movies, I realized that one of the storytelling drawbacks to Takeru's habit of empathizing with everyone and getting everyone to work together is that there's no friction in the team dynamic. Past the two-thirds point in the show Team Ghost is, like, a hive-mind. There's no real dissent, no real alternate strategies, no schemes or intrigue or anything that'd add drama to the group's setup. When characters do act on their own, it's to protect everyone else. And, I'd argue that everyone rallying around Takeru's worldview is exactly what the show is going for (connectedness! It's a motif!), but it inarguably robs the show of some basic ability to generate drama.

Like a lot of things that keep Ghost from greatness, it's a choice, and I can see why the producers made it, but it maybe wasn't the smartest choice.

Still, and I'm sure this doesn't matter much to folks that were way more into Alain (reasonable!), but I think the show was really trying to dial into the Takeru/Adel conflict, maybe to the exclusion of other stories. I ended up thinking it was a worthwhile use of episodes, but, y'know, I can see why people might feel otherwise. I don't feel like my view is the only one. I am not the world!