[Kurona]

I have mixed feelings towards the latter third or so of Build, and, yeah; I would be lying if I said this wasn't part of it. Between this and stuff like Evolt getting emotions punched into him, a lot of this really felt like they were just throwing a lot of different ideas at the wall and none of it is cohesive or feels like they had much of a plan. Shinobu is the cherry on top of that; I guess with a series as good and morally complex and challenging as Build, they really had to balance it out with a super bad super simplistic super dull "Forgive Your Asshole Family Because, Um, Family" arc that just has no place here.

Remember when Mach basically said "I really don't care that you're my dad, you're a treacherous manipulative car crash that hurt so many people and just killed my friend, so I'm going to literally murder you with an axe"? It really, really feels like Toei felt they committed an unforgivable sin by letting Drive's writer get away with too much "sometimes family can be bad" messaging and have been trying to make up for it ever since between Takeru's dad, Zero Specter, those two Ghost episodes in a row dealing with the dad of a minor forgettable character (Ghost done a lot of this, huh?), Fuma, kind of Cronus in Another Ending, and now Shinobu. Like, okay, calm down, we get it; you think family can always be forgiven because family, Toei. I get it, I'll start hating Mach for finding the will to do the right thing in a moment that was deeply hurtful morally and personally to him now, you can stop.



... also, Shinobu used the Phoenix bottle once to immediately escape and in doing so he totally cheated us out of a potentially wicked Tank Phoenix suit. Objectively terrible person.