#and you see him manipulating the gods even in the 2nd ep when he convinces percy to go on the quest

[thebigqueer]

i think the biggest reason im so bitter about the lotus casino scene is because while i understand why the changes were made, there was something so inherently child-like in the way the trio acted in the books that i feel like just wasnt allowed to be present in the show. they were immediately enamored by the games in the book, and thats what made them so relatable and fun to read. it makes sense for the show that grover and annabeth know immediately what's happening and know that the lotus casino is a trap considering their knowledge of the greek myths but i feel like that change takes away from them feeling like actual kids, which was one of the main things the show intended to hit. i feel like im seeing this in other points of the show too - they dont feel like kids, they just feel like kids' bodies. and yeah okay maybe being a demigod "makes you age fast" but there was always a sense of childishness in the books even with that fact that just isnt in the show.

[kabutoraiger]

usually i type up “final thoughts” posts like, immediately after i finish a show. usually i’ve already made up my mind about how i feel, i guess. but kr build is... a tough one to wrap my head around.

i went into build needing it to be really good. for me personally, rider hasn’t been truly great since fourze. i’ve definitely liked certain seasons in between. but i haven’t loved them. and so this was me kinda placing all my hopes on this 1 show to tell me that rider still had the potential to be incredible.

and... it was, in some ways. mainly in terms of character - it’s been a while since i’ve loved a main rider OR a secondary as much as i love our best match boys. their relationship is something i hadn’t realized how much we’d been missing in this franchise. we hadn’t had that powerful main/secondary romance fated connection since... decade, i guess, and nothing quite like ryuga & sento since kagami & tendou. even then, there’s only so far i can take that comparison. bc ryusen really is pretty incomparable to the rest of heisei rider relationships. build has a lot of showa leanings but it’s the main duo that reminds me the most of the olden days.

i mean tell me this isn’t some build lads dialogue right here:

and the rest of the cast has so many other standouts - sawa, who despite being severely underutilized is still wildly interesting and unlike any lady in rider in the past few years. gentoku and his several weird phases each of them iconic in their own way. evolt, who entertained me more than any central villain in rider ever has. (thank you papa dan the capitalist man for paving the road for more genuinely fun big bads. your contribution was invaluable)

soichi. though why i love him so much i’ll get into in a moment.

the way the relationships & connections are woven together in build is astonishing to me. the way misora’s childhood interests informed the fullbottles (ok, sure, a lot of That was half-assed as far as explanations go, but on the base level there are some affecting ideas in there). the way the best match ft. her favorite animal then named sento. the way sento & ryuga were seemingly destined to meet from early on. the way sento was built by evolt, and the way that was all slowly erased as he was rebuilt by people who loved him. the way evolt’s manipulation of his “proteges” so to speak mirrors nanba and his “children.” all these themes of being put on a preset path by some dark or terrible power or person, and having to fight to free yourself from it.

there are so many beautifully complex things going on in build. the ties into real world politics. the way the pandora box doesn’t turn people berserker violent but instead makes them lose their human empathy, makes them scheming and cruel. gives them imperialist notions of the ultimate satisfaction being war and conquest. the blatant “here, see for yourself, kids” about why wars happen - not for the greater good but because people in power want them to - and how innocent people will always get caught in the crossfire and be turned into little more than weapons to be disposed of at someone’s whim.

there is so much happening in build.

there is too much happening in build.

in the end, it throws so much at the screen that it was never all going to stick. you could make entire shows out of minor parts of kr build. the nanba children, ryuga’s origins, vernage and the dead civilization of fcking mars!! these could all be entire premises on their own. in build, these things are almost an afterthought. it’s dizzying, at best. frustrating, at worst. even moreso when you consider that clearly mr muto needed to burn time somehow before the endgame, which is the only explanation i can come up with for the collecting lost bottles nonsense and all that ungodly boring shit with sento’s dad.

how do you look at this show you’ve made, which has about 50 incredibly interesting ideas too many, and decide to ignore all of those in favor of dad drama, toku’s favorite dull as dirt oft-recycled plot concept? it’s mind boggling to me. and to think that time could’ve been spent deepening characters & relationships, too. letting sawa talk to utsumi. doing Anything with utsumi to establish some kind of consistent personality, to make us actually care when he’s revealed to have technically died in the human sense and had his free will stripped from him many episodes prior. letting misora & kazumi have a normal goddamn conversation for once. treating misora as a person with wants of her own and not just a cute little prop to stand around and cry over others.

letting soichi wake the fuck up!!

the intriguing tragedy of soichi is something that i kept hoping and wishing that build might address. being trapped inside your own body for a decade, watching someone pose as you, and with such a spot-on impression that no one notices at all. the helplessness, knowing that this entity is plotting something terrible for everyone on earth and just. not being able to do a thing about it. but the emotions most of all - what did he feel for sento & ryuga & sawa while he was trapped? was it real, if he had no say in it, if he could hear them but they couldn’t hear him? and what did he really feel towards evolt, his only actual 2-sided conversation partner for 10 whole years? how well did he know him? what wild knowledge of evolt’s weaknesses could he have imparted if he’d just WOKEN UP!!

and now, with the ending, it’s like it never happened at all. i suppose the idea going around is that someday they might remember. but that’s just... so nebulous. it’s not a merge of worlds if one is just gone. i’d hoped so much that certain outcomes might have carried over, just with different causes. gentoku’s father still being dead, for example. in the new world he wouldn’t have been killed by evolt but instead in, say, a political assassination.

it just all feels too simple. all that pain and strife just wiped away. maybe it’s hypocritical to complain about this as a ryuki fan, but. in ryuki, resets were established as a thing that could happen. and via the setup of the rider battle, what other option was there to end the series satisfactorily?

here in build, we were told that the worlds would combine, and that evolt would never have existed. but evolt was not the singular source of villainy in all the universe. this show which took so many thought-provoking risks early on is now apparently telling me that in a world without evolt, humanity is totally at peace. nanba was never affected by the pandora box’s light. he was just goddamn evil, because sometimes people are. i loved that about his portrayal. in a world with no war to profit off of, this man should by all accounts probably be trying to start one himself.

but that’s not the world we see in the final ep of build. instead, everyone is simply normal and happy, the terrible things that shaped them in another reality seemingly having never occurred at all, even the things (re: nanba children) that by all accounts still should have.

it’s a disappointment. it feels like the easy way out.

but at the same time holy shit that ryuga & sento romance ending and the idea of the others even just potentially getting their memories back is like my IDEAL tropey shit i am so into that stuff oh my god dude!!! i cried so fucking hard just thinking about it!!

... so. yeah. conflicted might be the word for all of this.

i wish build had been better. i’m not sure what exactly happened, in that 2nd half. rewrites, i guess? the command that it now had to be compliant with the setting of the next rider, and so whoops time to do a little reality smushing & for some reason throw out all the other plot points? demands to toss in even more fucking merch like it didn’t have enough collectibles and upgrades already, good lord, even kids can’t possibly keep up with toy schedules like this, can they, like by the time you convince your parents to buy you [x] it’s already goddamn obsolete in the show --

but it’s hard to deny that build affected me in a big way. i got tired of it, near the end. but i’m glad i watched it all the way through. and i’ll never forget the absolute euphoria i felt watching, like, ep 12 to ep 30 or so. that stretch was a highlight of this entire franchise for me. it was like i was watching something made specifically for me. it was beautiful.

beautiful just like the suits in this show. damn. 

if only sawa had gotten one.