I hate Shinnosuke/Kiriko because it's heavy on the "woman as prize for the hero" ideal. (Rio Uchida herself admitted this in an interview. When asked who Kiriko would choose out of the two guys, she compared the situation to Dragonball Z, then said something like "the viewer is supposed to want to see Shinnosuke win her.")
But she isn't Drive's writer. Oh well, I didn't know she said that, it changes a lot of things, except one... You can interpret it the way you want, and you can tell others about that interpretation. The show's writers don't have any control on how we interpret things. Sure, they can say that you're supposed to interpret it only one way, but you can disagree with that and you are free to keep the interpretation you like the most.
That being said, Personally, I think Shinnosuke and Kiriko being a couple is something tacked on the show, an afterthought. It came almost out of nowhere.
I've said plenty about the Roidmudes. They were basically killed off for the sake of giving the heroes a "perfect" happy future where they wouldn't have to co-exist with something alien ... and so that the show wouldn't have to address the issue of what would really happen if humans had to share the planet with another life form. If Drive really wanted us to believe that the Roidmudes could co-exist with humans, then either Heart, Medic or Chase (or all three) should have survived.
Yeah, I posted without reading the previous two pages where it was discussed that about the roidmudes.
This is an example where we have a different point of view in the topic. I don't see it as a happy ending, sure life goes on and they can live happy after that. If anything, I think Shinnosuke sort of failed as a rider. He was unable to protect the roidmudes and they went extinct because of that.
You know what was missing in the show? Chase's role. When he was first introduced, he was along the lines that he executed roidmudes to give them a second chance. That was completely dropped later in the show. We could have three riders: One that protected humans, one that destroys his enemies, and one who gives the enemies a second chance. That could give us very interesting situations in the show, and drive the show towards the roidmudes co-existing with humans. It could also make a way to Shinnosuke and Go really questioning themselves about what does it mean to be a rider, and to think if the destruction of the enemy is the only way to proceed.
In the end, the only thing that we can say is that Heart, Brain, Medic and Chase, all of them died being humans. Maybe there's hope for them to be revived and kept alive in the movie wars.
