[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I've gotta disagree here. At least, that was never the impression I got from the show, and I think the only reason it's easy to come to that conclusion is because most shows with a character like Nico would have the endpoint of their development be getting a "real" job.

Don't get me wrong, that obviously could've been a really strong arc if that was what Ex-Aid was going for. Obnoxious teenage girl learns that Life is Beautiful from hanging out with superhero doctors and decides to follow in their selfless footsteps? Man, that actually sounds awesome.

But unless I'm forgetting something here, that was never quite the focus of her character, which did, in large part, revolve around her crush Taiga, so I think it's more than fair for Another Ending to have getting over that to go back to her incredibly profitable e-sports career be the way she "grows up", just like she got over her obsession with Emu. There's no maybe about it as far as I'm concerned, at least when it comes to the question of how much it lines up with what happened on TV.

I think the whole direction Another Ending took was largely about going into more detail about things like that that weren't totally clear in the show (just like True Ending, actually advancing the story is a secondary concern, it even that), and while I think that leads to the feeling of retreading old ground they can have, I also think they're great for people who "need" the help. The first two felt largely redundant to me as someone who was already invested enough in those characters to draw all these conclusions, but on the other hand, as someone who got very, very sick of Kuroto after his resurrection, Genm vs. Lazer seriously impressed me with how it put things into context to show how, far from a walking set of repetitive gags, he's arguably the single most complex and deep character in the series.

The Nico stuff... yeah, I think it's fair to say a show about a Genius Gamer doctor who plays games all the time and uses those game-playing skills to defeat monsters and save lives probably would not want to suggest that video games are a childish endeavor one grows out of. That is a fair read! I guess my thought about it, from the end of the series, is that Nico'd end up going the Emu route: using her game skills as Ride Player Nico to assist Taiga in curing Game Disease victims. I never thought she'd be, like, Poppy, some assistant to a Great Man. So in that sense, her shifting to "just" being a gamer would've been like if Emu quit to be Genius Gamer M again. It's not that she isn't talented at being a gamer, and it's not that she doesn't like it, but she could be using that skill to do so much more.