Episode Final despite its name is not the final episode of the series in an extended film form. Rather it is the summer movie that offers an alternate ending to the series and replaces its final 6 episodes. Now while I didn't talk about the ending it was...fine. One could call the ending a cop out in the fact that it just hits the reset button and makes none of the series events canon in the new timeline but at the same time, it does feel like it is for the best to completely erase the mirror world and give the lives back to the people who had them cut short by the monsters. But say you did find the ending a cop out, does this new ending offer a better end for Shinji and friends. Ummmm...no.
Episode Final starts near the end of the rider war with only 6 riders remaining, The main four from the series, Shinji, Ren, Shuichi and Takeshi, plus two new faces not from the main series. Miho Kirishima, a con-artist who swindles rich men out of their wealth who joined the war as Kamen rider Femme for two reasons, one, use the wish to revive her sister who was killed by Asakura, and two should be obvious from what I just wrote, to kill Asakura in vengeance of her sister. The other is a mysterious individual who has contractor with a palette swap of Dragreder...Dragblacker...(I'll probably owe that to someone on the production team's child who decided on that), whose costume looks rather similar Shinji's. The rider's, like in the main timeline are given the notice by Shiro that if more than one of them is left standing, there will be no wish.
The film has three focuses, explaining why the rider war is a thing and how the mirror world was created, the growing relationship between Miho and Shinji, and this mysterious dark rider who has the appearence of Shinji. The other riders are kind of just there. Asakura ends up dead early on from the dark rider, Ryuga and Miho finishing him off. Kitaoka reitres after he becomes tired of the fighting and disappears afterwards (even though I thought that a rider simply couldn't give up lest there monsters eat them for not feeding them.), and Ren is kind of just here, yeah he gets a bit more to do as his status as the secondary rider but it is clear where the focus is for the movie.
So let us start with the first major Female Kamen Rider (Or second depending on what you want to count Tackle as.) Miho is definitely more of the tough girl who had to go that way because of her past but gets a soft side for people she gets to know. Her suit is really nice with the brighter white contrasting against other riders, her visor is a recolor of Knights visor but still matches her just the same. Unfortunately, she does suffer the issue of getting her butt handed to her by anything not a mirror monster and ends up needing to be saved by Shinji or Ryuga in the case of her fight with Ouja, which ends with her rather unceremoniously falling into a bush and dying after that. But I did like her, her relationship with Shinji is something that while we have seen a couple of time across film of a tough as nails woman softening to a kind man for helping her, but I would believe that in a different world, they may have been in a relationship if things were different.
Yui's story in the film does mirror close to what the main series had for her of discovering her involvement in the creation of the Mirror world unintentionally and her actions afterward, though in this case instead of talking Shiro into ending things as he refuses in order to save her, she ends up dying as time runs out and Shiro just dissapears, probably into another timeline since he failed here. It does reinforce the tragic nature of Shiro, a kind man pushed by his loneliness to do what he has done. There are a couple of changes to the main story that are not major, notably this Yui is the original rather than the mirror version of the main show and of course her sudden death also leads to the boundaries of the Real and mirror world breaking allowing monsters to more easily flow in.
So that leave's us with Ryuga which, if you haven't guessed by now, is a mirror world version of Shinji created by Yui in her childhood when the real Shinji, because in this timeline the two actually played together in her childhood and when he stopped showing up, she created the alternate shinji to keep playing with him. This creation now wants to become human and joins the rider war as Ryuga. As a main villain, he is fine, he does have to play himself as shinji a bit to eliminate the other riders, more so Miho than Ouja, and when we do get a small view of his personality, it is clear he is meant to be a foil to shinji in how they act. His suit is also perfectly fine being a fully blacked version of Ryuki's outfit that does give a good nega feeling to the character.
Oh yeah, the ending, the one thing that for some might be a major thing for people if they were not fans of the original ending. Well unfortunately, it is not any better. After defeating Ryuga, a large group of flying mirror monsters fly out of a building due to the barrier being broken and the only two riders left to face this are Ryuki and knight (I guess you could also consider Zolda, if he still has the deck). Ren declares that he must win the war for a reason that you probably wouldn't know if you didn't watch the tv series and it is kind of mute considering that the time limit has passed and shinji agrees to fight him. The two transform and we get a sneak peek at Ryuki's survive form (Ren's had already showed up in the tv show at this point) and the two fly off and that is it. Yeah it doesn't end more like it just stops.
Okay, despite the none ending, Episode final is fairly solid, it does have issues in how most of the characters are pushed to the sideline to focus on the new movie characters. But everyone here feels like their series counterpart, the action solid, and it does give us a solid relationship. Its going to light any worlds on fire and to some, the ending may aggrivate them, but it is a solid summer romp.
FINAL GRADE: B
Comments