[DreamSword]

Between these two episodes and the Old two-parter, I gotta wonder if Sakamoto and Ishida made a bet on if they could pull off eachother's' styles or not, because with the emphasis on unmorphed fights, I was absolutely convinced these episodes were Sakamoto, only to be surprised it was Ishida.

Anyway, I really hate to do this, given the trend that this thread has had between us so far, but like...



I really liked this two-parter, and pretty much agree 100%.

There's just alot of great emotion that carries the entire thing. Even Shroud gets time to shine with her actually letting Shotaro have a go at her as she begs him to make her son's' final days mean something. The atmosphere is top notch!

There's also how great Utopia is in general. He tends to get alot of flak in my experience, but personally, I think he makes for the perfect final boss for W. Not only is the suit stellar, but his utter lack of care for anything other than himself makes him the perfect foil to Shotaro, who's always been about serving the people of the city.

It's funny. Foundation X was rejected hard back when the idea was proposed, which is in turn what lead to alot of fans not liking the idea either. And yet, the producer who came up with it was ahead of his time because had the idea been proposed for, say, Zero-One? Toei would be all over it due to how much everyone wants to get in on the whole "Shared Universe" idea made popular by the MCU, whether one likes it or not.

And yeah, Foundation X is a total joke now, but in the context of W specifically, I think they work pretty solidly. You can tell there was genuine effort towards utilizing the idea and Kazu is a character who I actually rather dig. Plus, having another hook into next season outside of just the usual Rider cameo for the movie is neat to see, even if it does end up going totally nowhere in OOO proper. Maybe they would've just been better off bringing SHOCKER back? Foundation X essentially became Beta Shocker anyway.

Regardless, these episodes are very well executed for what they are, and that ending, which made me tear both times that I've now seen it, serves as proof that for all the faults I found on this rewatch, I really do love alot of the main cast, Shotaro and Philip especially. Their relationship, however one wishes to interpret it, is beautiful and for sure the big highlight of the show for me, and it's easy to see why Toei would want this dynamic to continue into OOO's' main duo(though OOO does its own nice twist on things, but that's for next year). And that's not even getting into the formula W would make last up until Wizard.

But yeah, great stuff--I mean, awful episodes. Totally terrible. Everyone who even remotely likes it should stop it. Right now.