[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

It's shocking to me how much this is the Zero Specter thing again! A father who faked his death and abandoned his family for a decade who reappears to threaten his child is not a thing you can forgive in an eight-second apology! There's so much emotional honesty in this series, so much nuance, and this Buildad plot is insulting in how little thought seemed to go into it. Even thematically, it's such a pale shadow of the "Sento vs Takumi" storyline the show had spent 30+ episodes on! Literally the only thing that worked is that flashback scene at the Mars celebration, and there's no way that's worth all of the time where this plot sucked.

Okay, deep breath. Hold on. To be honest and fair, there is one other thing I thought the Buildad story did right. I really enjoyed the villain using all of the first act suits again, whipping Team Build with, like, NinjaComic and PirateTrain. That's a great concept that was wasted on a shit character.

Also, yeah, Drive it did right. I thought some of Mach's motivations regarding his dad were weird or difficult to portray consistently (a lot of guilt that manifested in being an asshole to Chase because he's mad that his dad made him a real boy?), that storyline did end great.