[FreshToku]

One day has passed since my immediate opinion post of 'really liked it' in the other thread, and I can say that I do in fact still really like it :v Every Rider movie has the standard format of being a higher-budget one-off action-fest, and it feels like this movie totally embraces that, and in a weird way, that kinda helped me appreciate what few slow, character moments there were in-between, if that makes any sense. Es is not that much more compelling than the average movie villain, but I thought they did a really good job fleshing him out in the limited time they had. They then switched him out near the end for antagonists that are literally defined as the worst people he could find, which I thought was a neat little twist, since it allowed for a big climatic fight even after Aruto had appealed to the villain's emotions. I will assume the ending is him and Akane passing away together after making peace because it'd be kinda messed up to think that they are still just in that digital world.

No point in going into detail how every little fight scene (I thought they were literally all great, from Valkyrie's Kuuga stunt show to even the wonky CGI plane fight), but I just feel like mentioning how I was particularly fond the middle fight when Aruto confronted Es for the second time. The deeply-ingrained expectations I have of these kind of shows had me immediately assuming Metal Cluster Hopper was just going to job some more to Eden since Zero-Two already lost earlier, but then it actually got the upper hand using its unique ability to counter Eden's, and I was like 'wooooah!!?!'. Between this and its great showing against Ark Zero that one time, maybe it was right to hog all the screentime it did in the show?! (Actually still not true)