Kamen Rider Build

I genuinely hate Kamen Rider Build. I didn’t enjoy this show at all. I have an 11 episode podcast from when Build was airing where I watched it with my friends and we discussed it. By episode 2 my opinion of the show had gone down so horribly.

I know people don’t like to hear others dislike of shows. I’ve had many, many people come to “correct” me on my opinion. I have watched the first 12 or 13 episodes of Build approximately 7 times and I didn’t enjoy it. This is my blog. You are welcome to stop reading. However, I want to write my honest opinion of the show on my own blog.

Given how far I got into the series, I will only talk about the two riders I actually met.

I hate Sento. Very simply I hate him. Sento is a horrible person. He endangers people for the sake of his “experiments” yet still calls himself a good person. His idea of “helping” Ryuga is to trap him in his basement and force him to change his entire personality to suit him. He calls Ryuga selfish for wanting to be able to go outside without being arrested and potentially murdered. You might go; “well Graham, Ryuga was a selfish person!” but I’m sorry to say you’re wrong. Ryuga wants his basic needs met. He wants safety, he wants security, he wants to be social, and as part of getting there he wants cleared of his crimes. At the start of the show, Ryuga is at his most vulnerable, this is the point in the series where everyone around him is singing Sento’s praises no matter how much he disagrees and Sento treats him as selfish for disagreeing. Ryuga has escaped from being involuntarily used as a lab rat after going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He has barely anyone he can trust. He can’t go outside safely. He has become a prisoner in the home of someone he just met, who’s spent the majority of that time insulting him. That person claims he’s going to help him clear his name.

Months later, that has not happened. In fact, Sento has seemingly shown no interest in helping him clear his name because he’s decided Ryuga is selfish for wanting to be safe, secure, and social. If Ryuga doesn’t do what Sento wants, Sento seems unwilling to help him. He has to push for anything related to his issues to be addressed. Sento has gone off on his jolly ol’ jaunt about anything else.

Now, you may think; well, Ryuga has the fridge-basement to feel safe and secure in. He has Sento and Misora for company.

Let’s revisit the fact the main source of Banjou’s trauma;

1. The recent death of his girlfriend, an act started by her being used for human experimentation against her will, before being eventually killed and turned into a children's toy by none other than Sento.
2. The fact he himself was used for human experimentation against his will.

So now he’s living in this basement, where he’s regularly having to deal with this scientist excitedly attempting to test his experiments on him. Regardless of consent, regardless of if he’s prepared. A guy who has shown no regard for his comfort, for actually helping him, and who is basically demanding Ryuga sing his praises, while forcing him to continually face this trauma again. This doesn’t exact bring “safety” to people’s minds. Misora chains him up and sings Sento’s praises. She’s dragging him down and forcing him to conform to Sento’s wishes. This means his entire social interaction is people telling him the person who is directly making him feel unsafe right now, and refusing to help him be safe elsewhere, is the perfect human being and he should be grateful.

In conclusion, I can handle a main rider being a horrible person. The thing that made me genuinely Hate Sento, was the fact he was defended. He did horrible things and then Misora would go “well he’s nice when you’re not looking, Ryuga.”, like some victim trying to justify that an abuser isn’t a completely horrible person. It made me unable to like Sento because all his horrible actions would be waved away as “he’s nice sometimes when others aren’t looking”.

Hiroki was the better part of watching Build. Too bad about that one HBV. If I try to pretend it doesn’t exist though, he was what kept me watching Build as long as I did and honestly seeing him being forced to bend to Sento’s will and believe he’s a good person as he continued to act how he did, it was just extremely upsetting.

Regardless of my personal hatred of this show, everyone I know loves it. Anyone reading this will surely love it too. I therefore will still recommend it and hope you do enjoy it.