[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I mean, I think the show has had a fairly ambivalent take on how much Eiji's lack of desire should make him a role model? Eiji's a guy who spends nearly the entire show with his life on pause out of fear of his own desires, and multiple characters have pointed out that it leads him to be too reckless with his own life. (It's sort of what Hina's been talking about for a while now!) Eiji's an example of something in the series, but I don't know that it's an uncritical How To Live Your Life.

For starters, while we both disagree with prioritizing self-destructive and sacrificial ways for heroism and to save the day, I see many of the audience encouraging it, putting anyone who risks their lives and/or self-sacrificing themselves on pedestal, and viewing them as pure saints who are supposed to be an example of all of them, compared to the selfish way one lives their life to not have regard for others, regardless of what type of person they were before. I often see these type (including in Tokunation other discussion in other threads) dismissing good/heroic deeds if the ones who do it don't suffer/sacrifice in the process, thinking that they're only choosing to be good when it's convenient or such, they often only judge characters/person based on what they'd do in extreme situations.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 44 - “AN ASSEMBLY, A COMPLETE REVIVAL, AND YOUR DESIRE”

If watch enough Kamen Rider series (“enough” meaning “a sufficiently large sample size”; there’s no such thing as enough Kamen Rider) you’re likely familiar with the late-stage turn of a major character to the evil side of things. It’s as much a staple as quarterly power-ups and underutilized female characters. Once a year, someone Goes Bad: could be a slow descent into self-negation and madness; could be a split-second breaking point because of a tragedy; could be a horrible misunderstanding; could be a potent metaphor for how our childish dreams of charity and generosity curdle with age into a desperate desire to protect what’s closest to us, due to a society that constantly reinforces selfishness as a virtue in order to pit the masses against each other. (You’re never going to get me to dislike Keiwa’s arc! NEVER!) There’re about 25 variations on it, to an equal variety of narrative quality. I don’t know that it’s ever felt as ridiculously perfect as this, though.

About the ones that are considered perfect, honestly it's more about if the character was never really good in the first place. The characters just wait for their opportunity to actually commit villainy and get what they want. They don't really change, though perhaps that's why it feels more logical, but I think the ones that are actually good (I mean, similar to Eiji or Date type of righteous person) go bad can't be treated similarly as this. For another 'perfect' stuff, I think Micchy from Gaim is another case of someone who's already somewhat bad since beginning, of which it's may be overlooked due to him acting happy-go-lucky, but he's already cold towards his fellow school students, and is manipulative to throw his Kureshima family name, and stealing Takatora's Lockseed in 1st arc. He only cares about his friends (which made him on protagonist side that time), or to be exact, the people who please him, where as early as ep. 12, he already advocated for civilians (not his friends) to be slaughtered. Kaito is more obvious as an outwardly asshole, but indeed he didn't change as well that he always views the weak as deserving to be purged, not caring a bit about them or even siccing Inves on them, and at the end the whole humanity is his next target.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

If you don’t buy Ankh legitimately turning on Eiji and Hina to rejoin the Greeed, I don’t know if this show even works. Beyond feeling like the inevitable result of everything we’ve seen from Ankh over the course of the series, the specific events of the last three episodes make Ankh’s motivation crystal clear. He’s said from Day 1 that he wanted the safety of a physical body, and after being briefly absorbed by Lost Ankh, which was his nightmare, he reformed in a world where Eiji can now obliterate the Greeed permanently. For a character motivated entirely by a fear of being harmed by the people closest to him, the idea that Eiji can end his life is going to be the final straw. He’s been turning on Eiji since the start, and the last two episodes are just the last nail in the coffin.

Where for above, Ankh is, well, I'm the one who has been saying it repeatedly, he's the token evil teammate of the main cast, where he only wants something for himself, and even back then on Eiji's side, he already had no qualms about harming innocents or murdering them, such as Hina, to achieve that. Ankh was mostly just limited that he's dependent on Eiji, can't create Yummy, of which he already claimed that he would if he could, and that Hina's super strength prevents Ankh from causing further damage. You claimed that Ankh only sent out empty threats to Hina back then, but, well, dunno if this should prove that wrong. He already said that his power boost makes him no longer need Eiji anymore, holding his own against Kazari despite his human body. If this part of Ankh is acknowledged as a villainy (I thought it's about him spawning a Yummy himself like the other Greeeds), what'd make Lost Ankh wasn't? Felt he acted on his own for his later scenes.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Ankh as an endgame villain is the best thing this show has going for it, and that’s because we’ve watched him change and grow enough to see that there’s more to him, even if he won’t let himself see it. Eiji and Hina know where he came from, what he’s capable of, and they still want to redeem him. The power of that is what makes Ankh’s defection to the Greeed so compelling – we know that Ankh can be more than this, but he won’t acknowledge it.

I still feel that though Hina still feels some pity for Ankh, she never really knew or understood what Ankh really wants yet for now. What he wants is survival, a complete resurrection of his body, of which for now, he still only has an arm due to his Cores being destroyed, and that, to solve his villainy problem, which'd lead to steps of redeeming him, said missing Core part should be addressed. Not addressing what said villain personally wants won't work towards redeeming them.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It is incredibly difficult to take the rest of the Greeed seriously at this point, and I’m glad that the show barely asks us to. The certainty with which they reflexively betray one another is their most prominent attribute, but after 44 episodes it’s sort of becoming their only attribute. Ankh can barely finish pitching them on collaborating for a single goddamn fight before Kazari loses his shit and attacks him. While it makes for the occasional fun action sequence, the increasingly dull repetition of the Greeed undercutting one another starts to strain credulity; how in the world did they last a single afternoon 800 years ago, let alone potentially weeks or even years? I literally could not have cared less about Kazari tricking Gamel into attacking Ankh by telling him Ankh was going to run off with Mezool, and I only cared slightly more when Kazari got Dino Murdered twice over. There’s not much of Kazari to have ever found compelling on his own to me – no real nobility, and nothing approaching Ankh’s tortured backstory. Kazari was just a scheming jerk, and eventually he went up against a force too powerful to scheme against. There’s a hilarious irony to his deathbed assertion that he nearly Had It All, since, like, had what, exactly? What did Kazari ever do or want or almost get? He was the Tricky One, and then he ran out of tricks. That’s it.

What I think was just that, Kazari seems to get a second chance from the fellow Greeeds, even from the paranoid Ankh and Mezool, and ofc, he still blows it. It'd show that he has burned bridges with everyone and the fellow Greeeds won't miss him after his demise. Kazari is just the OOO's take on Tojo/Kamen Rider Tiger from Kobayashi's previous series Ryuki, a feline-based fighter who can't help to backstab his allies. His death also has Tojo's vibes, wandering the city in a daze. I also expected that, making an alliance with Maki wouldn't end up well for anyone, Maki ofc has no qualms about turning on those who has been useless to him. Otherwise, as OOO gets his final form, the show lets the Greeed obtain a full revival, in Kazari getting 9 of his Core Medals, now getting a prehensile hair power, and can even beat up PuToTyra, albeit perhaps Eiji was already tired.