In the Heisei ending though, Hongo and co. just went full grumpy old men OOC.
The Heisei ending is literally the same thing as the Showa ending.
Look people, you can complain about the flower thing all you want, but the truth of the matter is underneath the aesthetics the end result is basically the same.
I thought Rider Taisen was pretty stupid with the "Showa yelling at Heisei for clinging to dead people" when...the Showa Riders are way guiltier of it. They couldn't let things go. They (rightfully) moped about being turned into cyborgs. Kazami sung about his dead family in the openings every week. Nobuhiko wasn't even dead, but Koutarou and the narrator wouldn't shut up about him. Heisei Riders are totally indifferent to a character dying, it will be the spark of one episode, but they're forgotten next week. (See: Kaoru Kino, anybody who died in Ryuki, Zanki, etc.) Heisei Riders don't mope about being Riders, they think it's, like, cool and KITAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. So, it's still Yonemura sucking at writing.
There is a difference between "reminiscence" and "obsession", and I do not understand why you lump the issue with Nobuhiko into being "not letting things" while saying "he isn't dead", because I would say that if your brother is still alive and held captive, not letting things go is
pretty understandable.
And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Heisei Riders who are bummed out of being a Rider, or at least not entirely fine with the situation they are in
I thought it was totally stupid to have Takumi bungle a fight so bad because he wanted Kusaka to come back. You kidding me? You know he had a party when Kusaka died in the series. All of Japan did. If Kusaka's mother were alive, she would have celebrated. Sad thing is, Yonemura accidentally wrote something good in the earlier portion of the movie with those scenes between Takumi and Jin, but of course fumbled and ruined them by what he did later on in the movie.
You are missing the point. The thing about Kusaka is the fact that
it is exactly a bad thing, because Kusaka, whom also effectively acts as a shorthand for all the shaggy-dog events of Faiz, here represents how not only everything in the past is not worth preserving, but how dwelling in a past can in fact destroy a person, which is why Takumi has virtually gone nowhere since the end of Faiz and effectively stuck in a personal limbo.
It is the very opposite of fumbling, it is absolutely vital to the story, to effectively provide a thematic reason for Showa Riders' hostility just as the plotline with Shu is for Heisei Riders'.
And as for Rider infighting, I'd rather them acknowledge the fact how utterly bizarre and out-of-place Gaim and Drive are than just accept them willy-nilly, when there is clearly something up with them compared to other Riders.
