[Kamen Rider Die]

Originally posted to "Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Ghost" on August 25th, 2019:



And then there's the Special Final Episode. What should be a combination of two things I care about, an epilogue with characters I'm invested in and an appearance by characters from my first ever Rider show, this episode just dragged for me. The epilogue for the Ghost characters didn't get much space to breathe, and the Ex-Aid stuff felt too "FINALLY something fun will happen next week!" And I love Ex-Aid! But they overshadowed the character work, and that's not really how I wanted to leave Ghost as a series.



And I'm actually a little surprised how much the Ex-Aid stuff bugged me. I really, genuinely liked Takeru by the end of the series. I was fascinated by what the show ended up doing with Alain, with Specter, with Javert. I wanted to see more of those reformed anti-heroes and villains. I wanted a better sense of what came next for this world, because, yeah, I liked it by the end.

~SINCE I CAN’T TIME TRAVEL BACK TO PREVENT THE TRAGEDY OF THAT REVIEW~

Oh, this was a really nice epilogue. Boo, 2019 Kamen Rider Die! Boo!

I like the use of an extended epilogue to talk about how Making Connections can lead to sadness, as the investments we make in other people can cause heartbreak if those people aren’t around anymore. It’s a bit of a spiritual successor (no pun intended) to the Hibiki finale, where it’s subtextually about this particular show not being around anymore, but there still being value in the time spent with it.

It’s a nice, low-key lesson for an additional episode. Watching everyone go off and have adventures -slash- abandon Onari is bittersweet, and it’s easy to be less than enthusiastic at the prospect of never seeing Takeru again. Having Ayumu – who is 100% Takeru’s son from the future – get all mopey and fatalistic over not having his favorite superhero around anymore… I mean, that’s sweet. It’s a bit tiresome to get to the catharsis (Ayumu’s delivery is as flat as you’d expect for an actor his age, and his dialogue is all vague and morose), but Takeru’s steadfast optimism and joie de vivre keep the episode humming along well enough.

Even the Ex-Aid stuff played a little better to me this time, not least because I am so excited to rewatch Ex-Aid movies. In this episode, the mechanics of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid aren’t really there (Genm can just vanish like a spirit? Shakariki Sports, of all things, can change the future?), but the tone is correct enough. Ex-Aid instantly protects a child, he wants to change people’s fates, the Gashacon Breaker appears… I don’t know, it’s fine. I liked how Takeru tried to take the Ex-Aid Changing Fate thing and wed it to Ghost’s Making Connections thing, so we get a little lesson about taking your connections into a future that you can shape. A concise story that teaches kids that friendships have value if you don’t get to see that friend again, and that the future can be a place where you make new friends… that’s a fitting little coda for Ghost.