[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by FreshToku

The Riders and Undead go vroom vroom until someone explodes, and sometimes that's all you get! Ah well, they can't all exactly be thematic masterpieces. I think it might have sit more well with you if the show didn't play it as completely straight as it did, but there's something to be said about how sincere the show presents all this stuff.

Yeah, a lot of it was how much the show was just going We've Got A Motorcycle Chase! This may sound heretical from someone who claims to be a fan of Kamen Rider, but I don't give a shit about motorcycle chases? I just found that whole section incredibly dull. If they'd try to make it less about, honestly, the thematic elements, I might've found it easier to tolerate.

Because, you know, it all is about something! Kenzaki wants BOARD to come back, while Tachibana thinks the real BOARD is the friends they made along the way. So Black Fang ends up embodying those feelings, where they want it back before realizing they need to let it go.

But then it's so much motorcycle riding and I just couldn't invest in it, at all. And since they're wrapping all of the emotional and thematic climax in But The Bike You Guys, there was just nothing there for me.

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Originally Posted by LeviathanBlossom

I think that for Shinmei, knowing that he's going to be competing against the rest of the Undead and that he isn't likely to be able to be the last man standing on his own, insinuating his way into the organization that unsealed the Undead to begin with in order to find some kind of advantage he could theoretically use against the rest of the Undead isn't necessarily a bad plan. It is possible that Tachibana screwed up his plan by, you know, destroying BOARD.

Drawing out Kenzaki and Tachibana by posing as an ally in order to get access to the only working pieces of BOARD tech remaining with the aim of finishing his weapon is maybe also not a bad plan.

As far as the race track goes, I got nothing

The story is heavy on event-driven and light on character-driven and the consequences thereof for our main characters, and I'm not going to tell you that it not working for you is wrong - over the past many threads you've been pretty clear about what kind of stories do and don't work for you, and this is not the kind of thing that you have been positive about. Which is a tl;dr way of saying that I don't expect you to feel differently about the story whether or not it makes any kind of internal sense (and that's ok!), just that I don't necessarily think Shinmei's plot was Entirely Ridiculous.

There's some broad strokes where I can see what the show's saying with Shinmei, especially doubled up with Miyuki's story. They're both characters who feel underpowered, and they'll need to scheme a bit more if they want to win. As a basic concept, yes, sure, a good plot for a Kamen Rider Blade story.

It's just, for me, the specifics were both dull (that chase) and nonsensical (everything at the race track). There's a million little things that needed to go right for Shinmei's plan to work (why not just call Kenzaki and get his help?), making the reveals come off as rushed and convoluted.