>>23392070
Yeah that's very true. I do find it strange we never get any backstory for him in the series proper OR any backstory on the original card deck owner in the actual series only in the 13th Riders. It's all by design I'm sure.

Again, the more I sit on it the more I will probably look back at it fondly in a lot of ways. But this is going from being able to watch it at my own pace etc etc. If I was watching this week to week and I got another "Shinji shows up late to ore journal and gets yelled at while Kitaoka and Ren do something worthwhile" episode I would have been writing emails to the studio. If you had told me a character like Asakura was gonna last the entire series I wouldn't believe you. I'm sure there's deep meta commentary on the idea of a Rider Battle where they have to kill each other and most of the time they just straight up aren't and there is definitely some kind of symbolism of the final rider fights ending without actually being a rider fight for any of them, they all die outside of the fight. It's at least an ending made with purpose un like ya know Faiz.

I still think I might like the movie finale overall even though we don't actually get a real ending there, I really like mirror Shinji as a concept.