[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

I was literally just about to say that!! I love that a long-running franchise can just let stories happen and end. There's not even any worries about getting cancelled or cut short because they constantly have a tight schedule of "on for between 45-50 episodes" so it's fairly easy to plan around it.

There's always sequels and teamups and returns movies and such, but even those I feel don't take away from it -- when the series ends, that's the main story over. Anything after is just a look at what the characters are doing now or just a cool "I'm your senior rider, let's team up and beat the heck out of this god or whatever" moment. These stories are allowed to just end and that's so, so, so important to me.

So, I feel like I’ve talked about this ad nauseum, but I think there’s a difference between the classic Legend Rider stuff, like Shotaro and Kaito looking for a lost dog, or the bit where Gentaro calls Shotaro “sempai” and you can see Shotaro puff out his chest, or just anything ever with Shotaro he’s the best, and the newer follow-up films. For the former, it’s a fun cameo. For the latter, it’s like, I Guess Kuroto Has Another Scheme We Never Heard About?

I think a lot of it comes down to the negative side of the philosophy where these stories are allowed to end: they have to end. They’re, mostly, designed to tell one story, to defeat one enemy. They pretty much all do that at the end of the season. After that, we want to see them ride off into the sunset, right? They've won their fight. And the show’s built for them to do that. It’s built for there to be nothing left for them to do, no big villains left to fight. Continuations for Kamen Rider always feel like a retcon to me, something that wasn’t in the original story that now is, that we have to pretend isn’t some forced way to continue the adventures of characters we all love.

It’s, weirdly, like the opposite of a problem Doctor Who has, where the character/iteration seems built to run indefinitely, and anytime they try to treat an actor moving on as the end of a story, like it was always about one thing instead of a series of adventures, I don’t really buy it. That’s why I love that there are any number of audio adventures for older (or just old, I guess) Doctors, where they can have another go around with their companions.

I don’t know, maybe that seems hypocritical, getting angry at one franchise for adding on to their narrative when I praise another franchise for the same thing. It feels different to me, though. Kamen Rider series feel finite, and I like that. Doctor Who feels infinite, and I like that. When either of them tries it the other way, sequelizing Kamen Rider or finalizing a Doctor Who story, it feels wrong to me.

This is all probably very splitting hairs, but I do get these weird emotions about Kamen Rider. Surprise!