[Kurona]

Very surprised how much I liked this one!

My expectations were kinda low after Saber X Ghost, I gotta say -- though not in a bad way! That special I felt was mostly just fanservice without a lot of meat on the bone, which is fine; sometimes all you need is a Rider teamup where they have some fun exchanges and beat up a bad guy. Literally all you need in life sometimes!

But then this one went so much further than I expected by leaning very heavily into Ghost's V-cin story in a way that allowed a side character to have grown into a main character? And I mean, it's hard for me to really process the weight of it all until I've rewatched Sin Specter later this year; but I absolutely love how this special cleverly uses the leftover elements from that, ties it into Ghost's themes of family and human connection AND allows Kanon to become the main character of the piece. It's almost too perfect! Like... reaching out a hand to synthetic humans, treating them as their own people; a wonderful extension of Ghost's overall ethos and messages -- how DOES a series about humanity react when given artificial humans? By accepting them into your family too, of course!! Making them Kanon's little sisters - and focusing on that rather than their connection to Makoto despite the name of the special - was also a genius move in showing how a side character has grown in these last five years and how she would take everything that happened in the show to heart. She was the one being shown kindness and love and familial acceptance and self-sacrifice years ago, and now she gets to pass that on to her own family. It's so on-point for Ghost in such a subtle way and it's wonderful!

Taking that even further by allowing her to actually transform and be a badass hero and protector of the weak in her own way? EVEN BETTER!!! Putting aside for a second how much I love this form being pink and sparkly since it parallels Kudo's most recent role that I loved so much; this is one of the best Female Riders... ever? Like no, seriously; even though that's not a hard bar to clear, it's centred on her determination and her drive to protect others rather than the other way around that it usually unfortunately is; and man that is such a great breath of fresh air. She actually gets to stand on her own as a Rider, which makes seeing her teamup with her brother feel so much more legitimate and just downright fucking cool!

I guess if there's any downside, I think there wasn't as much runtime as there could have been which also led to elements like the Saber characters feeling sidelined? Granted they are pretty sweet, and I say this with the clarification that I'm not a Saber fan in the first place; but I just didn't get much from their appearance here? Rintarou's lines about family and how that connects to the special is decent, but it mostly feels like he stood around confused while Kanon regaled V-cin lore until Makoto handed him a power-up. I think there was potentially something there, but it needed a bit more room to breathe and ultimately felt more like he's just there so the title could say "a teamup of two secondaries!". In a similar manner, Takeru and Touma showing up at the end was... was a bit out of nowhere and weird? Like, hey guys! Where've you been? You've just sort of been hanging out now?? Oh, and... I really could have done without that reminder of Makoto's really weird dream sequence. Especially coming off the Shindai rubbish it's not something I wanted to see.

Still! Those are all more or less minor quibbles in what I felt was a wonderful continuation to Ghost 5 years later that basically done everything it needed to and more. Very tight script, very solid character work, just a great special all around! When I finish my Ghost rewatch later this year, I will not be unhappy at all to have this be its last stop.