[Fish Sandwich]

It doesn't get much better than this, does it? A Kamen Rider finale where Kamen Rider rides his bike and everything! Right off the bat, there are so many touches throughout Revice's final "fight" that made me utterly adore it. Remember how I said last year I was kinda hoping for some big Saber fashion show where he'd use all his old forms in the end? Well hey, turns out Revice has my back there, handily cementing its status as the current Reiwa king of actually remembering those old toys every once in a while. They even put Megaladon's Remix in there, as if specifically to apologize for its sole previous in-series appearance being when Barid Rex busted out all 10 of them. That is love right there, from the production team. And that's just talking about how the merch is worked in!

The whole idea of Revi and Vice having this last little bout amongst all their memories (and all our memories) of them together was especially well-realized, I thought. It's a strong concept to tug at the heartstrings, and while I can't describe it very well, it just kinda looks like something that came out as good as it did because Shibasaki is the director here. I'm just not sure anyone else would've thought to really make those clips part of the scenes in the same way, and that alone made me really glad he got to close out the show he began this year.

It's a dang strong finale, all around, really. Something waaaaay outside the norm, and an appropriately personal conclusion to a series that centered its thematic core around the relationships we have with ourselves as much as it did the ones we have with each other. We're at maximum Revice-ness the whole time here, and that's everything I could want. I'd be preaching to the choir if I said it was a bumpy road getting there, but I can only hope it's every bit as obvious that this series managed to dash gracefully across that finish line when it counted most.

At the end of the day, I think I actually just really liked Revice?

It took me way too long to realize it. To begin with, I was/am/will always be madly in love with Saber, which meant that going in, there was basically nothing Revice could do to capture my heart in any meaningful way. Sure, I enjoyed those early episodes, and recognized their quality, but I wasn't truly connecting with the series. And when it hit that stretch after the midpoint that a lot of people didn't like all that much, I was honestly right there with them for a good bit, which was quite the scare. Can you even imagine a world where I came in here after the finale and said "this Kamen Rider show was just meh, okay I guess..."? But so many of the things that were bugging people were starting to get under my skin, too, which, even as sporadic as my posts were, you can see if you go look, as my praise became noticeably more forced, and, unbelievably, I even criticized Revice at points! I didn't *want* to sit there berating a show from a franchise I love, but with all those nitpicks piling up, I had lost sight of how to put that negativity aside and see the show for its strong points instead. Luckily enough, I was also finishing up a complete rewatch of Zero-One around this time, and I once again found myself chuckling right along with Aruto and Horobi as I realized how much I had been wasting my time with all this malice nonsense. I had literally learned this exact lesson once already. It's the magic of that show's last episode, I suppose, but it has a way of clearing my head. Suddenly I couldn't believe how much I'd been failing to give Revice credit for what it's doing, and my appreciation for the series as a whole ended up exploding during a period where it seems like most people were still hating it.

I'd put the way I feel about Revice now in my own words, but Shouko Fujibayashi wrote far better ones:

君に足りないものなんてなかったって、痛いほどに今分かったから

Maybe it's only natural I'd see some similarity between the way my opinion on the series has changed and the way Ikki and Vice's relationship grew over the past year. Not that it actually lines up that directly, but listening to the song that (beautifully) scores most of the action here, those particular lyrics struck a chord with me. After spending so much time wanting Revice to be all these things it wasn't, lately, I've come around on it to the extent that I can't imagine asking it to give me anything more than it already has. When I started thinking about the bigger picture, all those flaws just stopped seeming worth complaining about.

What I'm probably going to remember about Revice the most fondly is what an immensely strong thematic throughline it had. Not all of Revice's characters are connected by blood, but nearly every single one of them is connected by failure and regret.

It's an angle for a superhero story I thought was immensely fresh, focusing not merely on the importance of being kind to others, but placing a spotlight on how people are often cruel to themselves. We beat ourselves up for our mistakes. We get scared of the parts of ourselves we don't like. We try to hide those things away, and pretend they aren't there. Or maybe we simply condemn ourselves to the notion that we can't ever improve. That we don't deserve it, when we carry darkness in our hearts.

As much as you can criticize some of the trouble Revice had with the literal rules of how demons and all that work, I firmly believe the show did some commendable work with the concept. It's a series filled to the brim with people who have to learn to face themselves. A lot of them go about it in a more traditional, metaphorical sense than the Igarashi family does, but everyone has to do the hard work of forgiving themselves at some point. That's not a lesson I see from a show like this every day, even though it's maybe an important one to teach. It's not merely okay to love yourself; it's downright healthy. And nowhere does the series display that more prominently than with its title characters, which is something this finale does a fantastic job capturing. Ikki and Vice at the start of the show were all friction and bickering, and I won't soon be forgetting the journey they took from there to the kind of harmony that exists between them at the end. Ikki learning to accept Vice results in positive growth for the both of them, to the point where a selfish and irresponsible demon can learn to be a doting busybody, and a pathologically selfless egotist can find it in himself to actually step aside and let somebody save him for once. And really, that's an amazing capstone to Ikki's development. He realizes what's going on, and humbly accepts everyone else's resolve instead of forcing his own on the world. Totally unthinkable behavior for him in the beginning. I can entirely believe the Ikki we leave off on might finally manage to start chasing his own dream after the journey he's been on.

It's exactly like the episode says -- your best times are still ahead. It can be tough to admit it to yourself, but there's nothing more freeing than learning to believe that. I really can't think of a more appropriate final statement for Revice to have left off on than that. Wonderful message, for a wonderful finale, to a wonderful series.