Best and Worst Kamen Rider Finales

lazycoconut said:

My best would be Kuuga, OOO (I know it left a lot hanging but it really hit hard on an emotional level), Black and Ryuki.

Worst would be Decade (obvious reasons), Den-O (I really hated the crappy melodrama of the Airi/Yuuto storyline) and Blade. I don't think Blade's ending was bad in itself but I hate "Hajime" more than any other character in the franchise, possibly in any tokusatsu series ever. I loathe him so much that I use inverted commas around his name because I will never consider him a human character. So given the role he played in the ending there is really no way for me to like it.

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Whoa, and here I thought I was the only one who hated Hajime. :laugh:


Anyway, Best to worst finales for me:

Best:
1. Kuuga: Never seen such plots wrapped up better than this show in Kamen Rider. And the final battle was very powerful.
2. Agito: While not as powerful as Kuuga's, I loved how the last few eps really showed off how much potential the show has. It was a shame to watch it end, but again, still glad that everything wrapped up so neatly.
3. W: I don't think it really matters WHEN Philip should've been revived. The story is still what it is, and it wrapped stuff up very nicely.
4. Black: A very epic finale. My only gripe is that the last ep ended with a rather boring clip show imo. Especially shortly after a whole clip show ep.

Middle:
5. OOO
6. Kiva
7. Ryuki (Movie ending)

Worst:
8. Hibiki
9. Den-O
10. Blade
11. Ryuki (series ending)
12. Kabuto
13. Faiz
14. Decade

Best: Blade and Kiva
Worst: Decade and Faiz (Hello! The Orphenochs are still alive!!!!)

004Brave said:

I haven't finished Ryuki, but why did it get so many endings? And which is the real one? I'm confused....

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I assume you are referring to the different endings to the TV show, the film, the multi-choice special? I've seen two theories on it.

The first is the simplest. They are different takes on the same basic story, but aren't in continuity. Therefore there isn't really a "true" ending.

The second is more complicated. I first heard it here in these forums, but they didn't offer any evidence that it really was author intent as opposed to their personal fan theory (in fact I can't even recall who it was or what thread it was in now). But I will reiterate it for completeness. It is shown in the series that Kanzaki Shiro has Odin as his puppet, and that Odin has a time vent card that allows him to go back in time and change things slightly. The theory is that Shiro has been using the time vent card to go back and alter events to try and give him his desired outcome, only for it to still not happen. So he goes back over and over, trying each time to nudge things into place for himself and failing, until all the different realities depicted are played out. In that instance, the TV show ending, which has Shiro finally give up, is the "correct" ending.

I quite liked this second theory at first, but the more I think about it, the more critical of it I become. For example, the 13 Riders special has a device that is vital to the mirror world's existance. That would be a great target for the alternative riders in the series, but it doesn't seem to exist in the main show. So personally I go with the "equal but seperate" continuities theory. Although notably, the movie's version of events could be in continuity with Agito lol.

Toku Prime said:

I assume you are referring to the different endings to the TV show, the film, the multi-choice special? I've seen two theories on it.

The first is the simplest. They are different takes on the same basic story, but aren't in continuity. Therefore there isn't really a "true" ending.

The second is more complicated. I first heard it here in these forums, but they didn't offer any evidence that it really was author intent as opposed to their personal fan theory (in fact I can't even recall who it was or what thread it was in now). But I will reiterate it for completeness. It is shown in the series that Kanzaki Shiro has Odin as his puppet, and that Odin has a time vent card that allows him to go back in time and change things slightly. The theory is that Shiro has been using the time vent card to go back and alter events to try and give him his desired outcome, only for it to still not happen. So he goes back over and over, trying each time to nudge things into place for himself and failing, until all the different realities depicted are played out. In that instance, the TV show ending, which has Shiro finally give up, is the "correct" ending.

I quite liked this second theory at first, but the more I think about it, the more critical of it I become. For example, the 13 Riders special has a device that is vital to the mirror world's existance. That would be a great target for the alternative riders in the series, but it doesn't seem to exist in the main show. So personally I go with the "equal but seperate" continuities theory. Although notably, the movie's version of events could be in continuity with Agito lol.

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Okay......:sweat:

There is nothing confusing about the Ryuki endings. There are 3 of them. One they go out in a blaze of glory. In another the world gets reset and nearly everyone gets a happy ending. And in the other Ryuki becomes Knight.

I like Episode Final's ending best.

So why did Ryuki get multiple endings? Was there a huge backlash of the original ending or something? I'm curious.

OOO was the best. But it would've been nice if he had an ultimate form at the end with all the types in his control.

Well....so far, I think that Blade had the best finale in the history of the Heisei-era Riders. I mean it really felt deep and complex because of the background story of the 100-year war. Now for OOO's ending, I think the Director's Cut really took a different toll on its' final chapter because you really get to see how deceitful Kougami is on wanting Eiji to take all of those Cell Medals to obtain full control of the Dinosaur Medals and the King OOO Medals. Same for Den-O's ending in both the TV theatrical cut and Director's Cut. Now Kabuto's ending...could have been better if only they had given Dark Kabuto a final fight scene and added Drake in final battle as well.

Double's ending....I have to agree with everyone, I don't mind Phillip being dead in episode 48, but I felt that episode 49 should have been made as the actual part of Double's segment in Movie War CORE.

Now here comes the far worst endings.
-Decade: failure of production
-Kiva: Not enough purposes to Taiga's projection and rejection of Saga's power.
-555: Didn't actually get to the punchline of the final episode.
-Ryuki: Really, really weak! The Movie version served as the actual alternate ending which to me was much more fitting.
-Hibiki: The whole "one year later" thing should not have happened in the entire episode. It should have been like at the last 5-8 minutes of the finale.

Now, I am not going to saying anything about Kuuga and Agito, because I haven't seen Kuuga and I am planning on rewatching Agito someday in the near future. So when I do see them, I let you know what my thoughts were.

Toku Prime said:

I don't mind any of the three endings, I just wished they'd picked one and stuck with only that one.

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I think that would've been counter to the sort of tone W was trying to establish for Heisei Rider's second decade, though. The "multiple endings" thing is clearly a shout-out to the production style of Showa Kamen Rider, where the stories were approached more as a series of adventures than a closed narrative. It was not unusual in a Showa series for an evil organization to get defeated halfway through the show, just for another one to show up.

Likewise, you sometimes had "final villains" comparable to Foundation X only showing up for the last handful of episodes. Toei used that approach to Showa Rider to make the universe feel big and exciting, and to establish that a Kamen Rider's adventures were really an ongoing struggle. W essentially tries to bring that feeling back. How well it did that is debatable, but if the show just focused on one thing it would be a radically different type of show.

004Brave said:

So why did Ryuki get multiple endings? Was there a huge backlash of the original ending or something? I'm curious.

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The tl;dr version of the story is "It was a promotional stunt."

The long version is that Toei was trepidatious about doing Ryuki at all, because it was such a radical departure from the successful Kuuga/Agito formula. The show's early ratings were considered bad at the time (though they're much higher than modern Rider ratings overall), and there were rumors that the show would get canceled and replaced early.

Well, the movie comes out about halfway through Ryuki's TV production run. Ryuki's producers basically used it to try and hype the show with a "How will it end?!" angle, while being careful to present an alternate ending that wasn't what the TV show would do. The stunt worked. People who went to see the movie began tuning into the show a bit more regularly.

By this point in the series Ohja has debuted, and he immediately became the show's breakout character in terms of driving its popularity. The multiple choice special airs a bit after the film opened, I believe, and uses the different ending scenarios to keep hyping the show's plot and the idea that Ryuki will have a wild, unpredictable ending you've just got to see.

The actual TV ending is probably the one that should be considered most authoritative, since it was probably the one planned when the show was in pre-production. Unfortunately, the TV ending feels really bland and generic if you've already seen the movie and special endings (though it works okay on its own).