Best and Worst Kamen Rider Finales

[Scissors]

Best:

Kuuga
I liked how everything didn't seem rushed at all, and that they wrapped up all the things Godai had brought to the characters in the show.
I disagree when people say that his final fight was cheap. It was just open to imagination. Not showing the full power of the Ultimate Form was a clever move. To this day, people still debate about.

Stronger
As the original ending to the whole KR franchise, I think they did it very well.
Despite having to end the show earlier than expected, it didn't seem unprofessional in any way.
There was a huge build-up towards the end, where we got new generals and re-introductions to the old Riders, and none of it seemed rushed at all.
The final showdown with the Great Leader was cool, and to make it even better, we got to see the Riders ride off into the sunset while "Let's Go Kamen Rider" was playing in the background.

Worst:

Blade
I keep feeling that the writers were desperately trying to tell us that Kenzaki was actually the main character of the show.
Since the very first episodes, he didn't do anything than stand around looking confused and then fight when an undead showed up.
The whole show was centered around Hajime, with Tachibana and Mutsuki getting their own character arcs.
Kenzaki got nothing. Heck, even the supporting cast got fleshed out more than he did.

So basically, the writers created a tragic ending for a character that we hardly cared about.
This is why I personally liked the Missing Ace movie a lot, because it gave us the ending that we were supposed to have in the show.
Having Kenzaki seal Hajime would have been 10 times more dramatic, and most of the fans would actually have cared about it.

Faiz
I am not really angry that the big bad didn't get defeated.
Like in Hibiki, sometimes it does not make sense for villains to simply disappear.
What I didn't like was how rushed it was.
Kiba was suddenly a dick who even attacked and kidnapped Mari, the very girl that he had been in love with from early on in the show.
He had been a man of reason through the whole show, despite being treated badly by both humans and orphenocs.
Then because one of his friends was killed, he suddenly declares war on humanity... Um, I know people in sorrow can be angry, but seriously?

And then near the end of the final he suddenly switch sides (again)

And... aaagh. It is just a big mess :redface2:

 

[NateRiver]

Kiba was suddenly a dick who even attacked and kidnapped Mari, the very girl that he had been in love with from early on in the show.

This really doesn't redeem anything, but Kiba never really romantically liked Mari.It seemed that he thought of her more like a sister or daughter.Actually, it was Mari who liked Kiba.

 

[KingRanger]

So basically, the writers created a tragic ending for a character that we hardly cared about.

You really shouldn't use WE when saying things like that.

 

[Kenori]

I have always wondered why Faiz's ending gets so much hate? I will never understand it.

Faiz's ending is absolutely PERFECT. It is the icing on an otherwise awesome cake. Faiz is a series with one theme: life after tragedy. Everything about this series, from the big bads, to the main and side character plots, have something to do with this theme. No matter how bad you have it, no matter how hard things are, no matter what happens in your life, you have to push onward. You see it in the whole theme of the bad guys for the year. The way the orphenochs had some kind of tragedy and died because of it. You see it near the last episode when Keitaro loses Yuka.

So they don't show the fight with the Orphenoch King. The Orphenoch King was a silly one off monster anyway. I thought it was PERFECTLY symbolic of the overall plot to Faiz. You don't need to see the death of the Orphenoch King because the death of the Orphenoch King is completely irrelevant to the overall story trying to be told.

The whole point of the story is that when tragedy strikes in the hardest of ways, you need to look inside yourself and use it to turn you into a better man. Look at the people who dont do this. Every one of them had the opportunity to stop fighting, to turn around and walk away, but they dont. They keep going after Faiz. Hell Mr. J had THREE opportunities to stop, but he refused, and he paid for it with the true death.

So yeah, Faiz's ending has a lot deeper meaning than a lot of people with the "OMG WHAR THE EXPLOSIONS?!" mentality can usually see. Hell, I probably would have been one of those people if it that series hadn't resonated with me so well.

 

[Painted_Outlaw]

So they don't show the fight with the Orphenoch King.

Well, they show it but...
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCrZ_QCz3aI"]Kamen Rider 555 Faiz Final Battle - YouTube[/ame]

The Orphenoch King was a silly one off monster anyway.

I dunno. You have Smart Lady mentioning the King when she first(?) meets Kiba then you have Murakami mentioning all the time about how "the king will save us!".

You figure it would've amounted to something more than it did.

 

[Solo the Wingman]

My biggest problem with the Faiz ending, face-heel revolving doors notwithstanding, was just how out and out rushed that it was. To me, it felt like the script ran long and they decided to cut it where it was rather than go back and edit it for time's sake. Takumi gets fed up and drops a monster kick on the Orphenoch King... and then we have a jump cut to confusionville. I found it really disorienting.

I like Faiz. It was the first Rider series I'd ever seen, so it holds that special place in my heart. But I wish someone had tweaked the ending a bit so that it flowed better.

The fact that the Orphenoch King didn't completely die doesn't disturb me too much. It allows for the possibility of 'and the adventure continues' and, like Kenori, I've never felt that defeating the Big Bad was the overall gist of Faiz' story. Faiz was the story of a lonely wolfboy and a horse; that aspect was done reasonably well. Hoo boy was it not perfect, but it was workable for the most part.

---

Anywho, the best finale out of the Rider series I've seen pretty much has to be OOOs. Decade was a mess (thanks, Inoue, for ruining a good series). W just didn't know when to quit... but OOO wrapped everything up in a tidy little package that was just enjoyable. And Movie War Megamax built off of that finale without destroying it. I'd call that a success.

 

[Smilodon]

To this day, no finale of a Kamen Rider has given such an emotion walloping than OOO. It really went all out in its finale and it set the bar for finales in the future pretty high. Plus it seamlessly transitioned into Megamax which then also neatly wrapped up OOO's story forever unless we get some Direct to DVD stuff like the Accel/Eternal movies.

I really liked Kuuga's finale. Not just the Daguba stuff but the whole 'Life After Godai' angle they went with showing how everyone was changed by Godai. It just seemed really well and pulled the 'Adventure Continues' aspect much better than Faiz did (And I enjoyed the Faiz ending)

 

[Igadevil]

Even after all these years, and after all these other finales, many of which are pretty great... I still have to go with the original series.

Put aside that it involves my favorite episodes of my favorite Tokusatsu series ever. Taken completely on its own, it's just a really great story. On the one hand it doesn't exactly have "SERIES FINALE!" plastered all over it like some later endings, but it's more of an organic thing that the show had gradually been building up to for almost two months. Back in episode 89 they changed the ending theme again to the great "Lonely Kamen Rider", but also the opening to "Rider Action". Why? After nearly 90 episodes of "Let's Go!! Rider Kick", right when the show's about to end?

Because that's the point. Things are changing, things are winding up to a close, and the slightly more 'climatic' sound of that song REALLY works (LGRK still gets used in the show, including at some excellent points in the finale.) That's right around when people would have started becoming aware that Kamen Rider was ending at last, at least in a sense (V3 episodes 1 & 2 were originally to be episodes 99 & 100 before becoming their own thing, and by the point of the original series finale this would have been common knowledge.)

The last 9 or 10 episodes are thus thematically linked in that things get worse than ever for the heroes, things feel a bit more ramped-up than before. 89~90 has Rider 1 having a pretty tough time with two monsters, one of which gets upgraded in the second half (which shows how the stakes are being raised, and even subtly hints at what's to come in V3.) The other one is Canary-Cobra, who wins the award for most deceptively-themed monster in Kamen Rider since he may look like the mascot for a fried chicken chain, but he's also a ruthless sonnuvabitch (who also gets an upgrade of sorts, even more Destron-lite in style.)

91 is mostly another spin on "bad guys try to create evil kid's club versions of themselves" until the end, when it takes a radical twist and has a killer villain entrance. 92~94 are the epic Shocker Rider story line, wherein Kamen Rider finally meets his true match, and Rider 2 returns after a long absence. He sits out the next three episodes, but he's always in the back of our minds throughout. You're just waiting for the return. 95 & 96 are done-in-one stories which still see Hongo pretty much being run through the gauntlet.

Finally we get to 97 & 98, where despite being mostly self-contained plot-wise, the story feels like the culmination of something that's been building up all this time. Gelshocker has been getting more dangerous and desperate with each episode, and finally they come up with a plan that, honestly, is pretty good (and succeeds to an extent.) And it gets into why, as cool as it looks, the Henshin is also when the Riders' are at their most vulnerable (something I think is true of all Riders, even if they have some magical doo-dah forcefield or something, there's always a moment when they could be taken out. It's just by luck that most Rider villains never try.)

On top of the tense, tightly-written story you have some great action scenes, including a fight on a moving roller coaster. There's a fantastic villain death, a big rumble with a bunch of rehashed monsters that's a blast and the confrontation with the Leader (right after one of the best Double Rider moments in the series.) I've always liked how the Shocker Leader is less a test of pure strength and more one of endurance; you can't simply outfight him, and even in Let's Go Kamen Riders the only way to actually beat him was to basically cheat. Even if his demise paves a clear way to V3, it's also vague enough that it could really be the end, which is another reason this is my favorite finale.

It's the only one where Kamen Rider could have ended right there, nothing more, and I'd be okay with it. Once you get to V3, it becomes something that can't just end with any old series; Kamen Rider is more or less doomed to continue on forever, much to fans' delight. Every series can have a great ending for itself, but I don't think there will ever be a great ending for all Kamen Rider until they can do something that exceeds this. Stronger comes pretty close, and All Riders vs. Daishocker did to a lesser extent, but even those feel more like "ends of an era" than "ends of everything".

But here, if this had really been it... I'd be okay with that. The final scene is perfect, a celebration both of the Riders' victory as well as one of the show's arguable secret true main characters (the others getting their moments earlier on.) It's just happy enough, but just bittersweet enough too.

There are a lot of great Rider finales, including Stronger (which is a top contender for the best one, and my second-favorite.) I also particularly like X, Amazon, New Kamen Rider, BLACK, Agito, Blade (movie) Den-O (the first one!) W and OOO. But if there's one that still takes the top spot, every time, it's the original Rider ending.

 

[Lynxara]

I have always wondered why Faiz's ending gets so much hate? I will never understand it.

It's because it doesn't really feel like an ending. It feels like the show forgot to renew its lease, so it's got to pack everything up and get out ASAP before the new tenant arrives. I think all the stuff that actually happens is irrelevant, it's the ridiculous pacing that puts people off.

 

[Kenori]

It's because it doesn't really feel like an ending. It feels like the show forgot to renew its lease, so it's got to pack everything up and get out ASAP before the new tenant arrives. I think all the stuff that actually happens is irrelevant, it's the ridiculous pacing that puts people off.

I can't deny that the ending episode feels rushed. But I feel like the whole idea of it not feeling like an ending episode, whether it was intentional or not, I think works for the shows benefit.

I still think Faiz, rushed or not, is still a great ending to the series that, again intentional or not, really goes with the theme of the rest of the series.

Oh and incase you wonder what my least favorite ending is, Decade's is right at the top. Say what you want about Faiz, but at least it HAS an ending, at least there is SOME closure there, even it is the kind of "We'll keep on fighting the fight" kind of closure. Decade just ends. On a cliffhanger. With nothing ever really resolved.