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Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Kabuto
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01-16-2021, 12:31 AM
#
630
Kamen Rider Die
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 37
God, what a weird episode. I honestly don't know if I liked it or not? There're some incredibly funny moments, alongside some tense and dramatic ones, but this thing did not cohere for me at
all
. It's doing a bunch of little things that I love while adding up to a whole that I was lukewarm to at best.
I'm definitely in favor of a story where all of Team Kabuto goes undercover at a middle school, though. (And, like, Asumu's school from Hibiki, even!
Very definitely in favor of that!
) It's a chance to see these heroes interact with a group of kids, and that's pretty much always a winner for a Kamen Rider story. It's
way
more of a Kabuto flavor to have the kids be teenagers who are largely ambivalent about the frequent disappearances of their classmates under possibly supernatural causes.
I mean, it's not unique to Kabuto to have the kids in crisis be teens. Fourze made their bones on teens in trouble, and, yeah, Hibiki had its share of problematic adolescents. But the usual approach is for a pre-adolescent, someone who is just learning about how dangerous or unkind the world can be. (Gon, for example.) Here, we've got kids who are already halfway to being hollowed out, making them impervious to the normal pep-talk a Kamen Rider might give. But, Tendou... yeah, he's not going to give you a big speech to make you feel better.
He'll
feed
you, though, and that was my favorite part of this episode. In all of the time-shifting shenanigans of the last dozen or so episodes, I really liked that the most tangible stakes in this episode were centered on some teenage girl who feels like she's not succeeding enough academically. There's a thing about haunted mirrors and urban legends, but the episode seems to barely give a shit about it. (Or I'm just too aware of how much this seems like a Ryuki plot to invest much in the mystery. It's possible! I ain't too objective sometimes! Them naming the girl in this one 'Kobayashi' seems like they're hanging a lantern on it, though.) Where the drama comes alive is in how much Keiko feels pressured to achieve, and how much she feels like she's weak for being less than perfect. Having Tendou be there for her by giving her a snack so she can study better...
yes
. It's this incredibly small thing that feels like the most heroic act in an episode full of monster detonations. It's all about Tendou seeing someone working hard to improve themselves, and him giving her the support he thinks she needs. Not with a speech or a vow, but with some noodles in bread
that redefine deliciousness
. It's fully Kabuto, just like Keiko's story.
That idea of feeling crushed by envy and self-loathing when you can't be as great as someone else, that's the core conflict of Kabuto. Nearly every hero on the show has needed to make peace with their limitations, or stop measuring themselves against others, or know when to stop pushing themselves, and so on. Usually, we get it with grown adults (and Tsurugi), but it can work just as cleanly in a younger setting. Doing, like, Lil' Kabuto Themes for an episode or two, that's pretty smart. When the episode gets out of its own way and lets Tendou try to connect with this girl by saving her a yakisoba bun, that's when I'm fully engaged.
It's just, those moments are so buried in monster stuff and exposition that they're... you have to
dig
for them a bit. That thing with Tendou offering food to help a young girl, that's maybe twenty seconds long. It's great, but there's not nearly enough of it.
And I almost hate saying this, but maybe the episode could've turned down some of the humor? I laughed hard at what's here, but the tone of every weird Tsurugi thing, or Kagami thing, or Renge thing, they're fighting against this episode creating a legible sense of threat, or menace. This is an episode with haunting disappearances and hopeless teenagers that also includes Tendou opening a bread shop on a roof and Tsurugi attending a middle school. You can't... I think this episode needed to pick whether it wanted to be a slapstick farce or an emotional character study, but it opted not to choose. Instead, you get these warring tones, and it keeps this episode from really achieving anything.
Like, Keiko's story is really affecting! That kid has so much power in a small, soulful performance! But it feels like a dramatic subplot in a comedy episode, instead of what should be a dramatic episode with comedy cutaways. The balance of this thing is way out of whack, and it left me really frustrated by the end. Moments are strong, but they never feel like they're working together to tell a worthwhile story.
A QUESTION
It's an uneven episode with a lot of great gags, and none were better to me than Tsurugi getting Jiiya to do his math problem. Tsurugi's logic that, by employing and commanding Jiiya, he could claim Jiiya's skills as his own, was priceless. The clarity of purpose for Tsurugi, in him getting people to do his work for him, was adorable. Jiiya was also surprisingly good at math, for a valet? Not a skill I'd've expected him to trot out.
In which grade school class could you have most used Jiiya's help?
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Last edited by Kamen Rider Die; 08-31-2023 at
08:35 PM
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