[MaskedRiderAsakura]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Layton13

Aruto letting himself get beat to get rid of the Ark Driver's influence... Yeah, it makes all of Aruto's actions kinda not his own. It takes a lot of responsibility of his shoulders and puts it solely on Ark. Which I just find lazy and defeats the point they were going for.

I didn't take it like that at all.


Ark has always been the embodiment of malice, not the cause of it. It's why it's explicitly stated that Ark will continue to exist so long as malice does, not the other way around.

I don't think the show was trying to absolve Aruto of any responsibility for his actions. After all, Aruto already decided on what he needed to do before the fight even began, while still in possession of the Ark Driver. Rather, I think the Ark Driver's destruction was a symbolic and physical representation of Aruto's rejection of the malice and grief that led to Ark's creation in the first place. I also think, on another level, that Aruto was showing Horobi how they can overcome Ark (I feel like it was entirely intentional that both Aruto and Horobi were able to beat Ark by allowing the other person to attack them).

As for my thoughts on this ending, I kinda love it. And that might be because it kinda seems like a counterargument to Kuuga's. Whereas Godai had to tap into the "Ultimate Darkness" (essentially a metaphor for violence and destruction) in order to defeat N-Daguva-Zeba, and had to find his own peace at the end of his story, Aruto was only able to overcome Ark by rejecting the cycle of violence and hate that led to its creation in the first place.

There were definitely a few issues, namely the under-utilization of everyone who wasn't Aruto or Horobi, but again, I feel that was an unfortunate side effect from the pandemic and think we would have seen those characters do a bit more if things weren't sidelined because of COVID-19. I also did feel at first that the creation of the Zero-One driver was a bit asspull-y, but there's also already precedent in this series for gadgets, trinkets and weapons to be produced out of literal thin air, so it doesn't bother me too much.