[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

As I subtly foreshadowed with my screencap for episode 45, nearly everything I like and dislike about this show ultimately comes back to Hiyori. I've made it into something of a bit, and I'm sure Die is grinning at the predictability of her being the thing I'm immediately talking about, but having watched the show again, it's so clear to me now how critical her character was to it.

As someone has mentioned a few times (and I'll paraphrase here): Just because something's predictable, doesn't mean you can't enjoy its execution.

Yeah, Hiyori. There's this brief window, after she disappears, where the character still feels as vital as ever, as present as ever. But the longer she's gone, and the more the show starts telling other stories... it's like she becomes a lost cause, like the show is fighting to recapture something that's already gone. And if that was how it felt for me, a viewer who only had to deal with her absence for a couple weeks, I can only imagine how much the weekly viewers in 2006 had moved on.

There are times when I wonder what the show could've done differently. I don't really bring them up here, because I think How I Would Change Things misses the point of art. It's not about how I'd've told a story, it's about how the story was told. I can like or dislike things, but I don't want to spend a ton of time trying to fix something that ended over a decade ago. But with this, I wonder if the show would've been better recasting (tough, but possible) or just eliminating Hiyori entirely. I imagine both of those choices would've been distracting for fans (and potentially incredibly divisive), but it would've kept the show from feeling tethered to a plot it couldn't really progress.

Regardless, I'm glad you were able to find more in this show than last time. It's not my favorite, for sure, but I found it to be a real enjoyable watch. There're shows I've done threads on here where, at times, it can feel arduous to draw out something interesting, or frustrating to figure out what the show's trying to say. With Kabuto, I found the overall experience to be really pleasant. A fun show to watch and talk about, even if it's not one I'd feel the need to gush about in the future.