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What are you watching? (Kamen Rider Edition)
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11-23-2020, 08:48 PM
#
16243
Kurona
Showa Girl
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 9,064
Kamen Rider OOO Episode 10
I love Eiji Hino.
He's a man that through all his travels and everything he's seen, and everything he's been through; he tries to be the best person he can and see the best in everyone else too. It's a mindset that in its worst moments leads him to deeply undervaluing himself and being too quick to forgive others, but at its best; can let him reach out to people that others would abandon. It's perhaps this that leads him to be more tolerant of Ankh and the other Greeed -- it seems there's maybe a part of him that understands these are creatures created out of desire that know nothing else, maybe he pities them despite everything they do so he never truly gets angry with them nor gives up on Ankh. He's a kind person that sees that even if someone's doing something awful, if there's something behind that or something holding them back; maybe that's worth trying to understand first. Dr. Maki is a grown man. One who is very smart, who's very in control; who knows the lives involved in his experiments and the risks to them, who lets someone completely under his command run wild with bombs when at any time he could have the guy taken in and arrested -- so even though the data from this will likely be useful, even though this is the guy creating the Medal System he's so reliant on and enamoured by.
It's a strong moment, I think. It lands all the better because the past 9 episodes have portrayed Eiji as unfailingly kind, offering help and advice to any random stranger who needs it, being very understanding to even people who seem selfish and awful and never raising his voice or really scolding -- his conversation with Takeshi a couple episodes ago is a great example. So to see him finally,
finally
lose his temper; to see something that makes him downright hate someone and come close to assaulting them? It's a good, good, good fucking scene. It shows exactly where his boundaries lie and that he isn't so naive as to truly believe everyone's a good person or something like that, and that there are people you've got to stand up to and sometimes disavow completely. I think it's also a great thing to teach kids about boundaries, and the only person he does this to being the person who develops the technology that lets him fight as effectively as he does? That's very Kamen Rider, isn't it?
This is a fantastic episode elsewhere, by the way. It always impresses me when a masked hero genre show is able to make the part of the show where no-one's being a masked hero exciting -- Eiji's frantic, hurried dash through the amusement park to warn everyone to leave and shut off as many bombs as he can is as exciting as it is genuinely scary; and it's beautifully contrasted with Gotou doing everything he can to open up the lab to let all the scientists free from the Yummy. This is also particularly interesting in its placement as it's the first scene of him truly being a hero in his own right, and is in an episode which started off by having his interest piqued in Maki's mention of a medal system normal humans could use. Hmmm. That sounds like an intriguing concept to explore, doesn't it?
Fantastic episode all around, and I didn't even mention any of the Kamen Riding; which is maybe one of the best things you can say for a Kamen Rider show!
Kamen Rider Ghost Episode 6
If there's two things I hope I've communicated well enough in this rewatch so far, it's that A) I have a newfound love for Takeru as a character through his lack of confidence; and B) I
love
when characters are hypocrites with their beliefs.
Takeru so far has spent the series running into people who say that their work is more important than their life -- advances in science, in business, etc - to which he emphatically responds no,
no,
above all else your life is the most important thing. It is a downright beautiful message to send your audience especially when a lot of aspects of society can feel like they're saying or encouraging quite the opposite at times; I've been vibing so so much with Ghost's insistence that life and people have value in and of themselves, yet here he is; saying what's the point of living if he can't ever see people again. And granted, yes, that is quite a different and quite a
larger
issue; but that's what makes it all the better -- this episode is insisting that life still has value no matter what, and Takeru is still starting to question if that's true at all.
Which if I might get emotional for a second about symbolic stuff I'm not even sure was intentional?
Musashi.
The big rule about Eyecon creation is that there must be a person involved with a deep connection to that person -- usually the character of the week, but for Musashi? That was
Takeru.
So when you've got an episode where he's slowly falling into a frantic mess and unintentionally pushing everyone away, and you have him drop that Musashi Eyecon and abandon it to his enemy; only to have it saved by his best friend, who throws it to him after an encouraging chat, and he uses Musashi to finish off his opponent
right after
getting a brand new toy, and after every usage of it since the first episode has been a failure? Bit hard not to read into that as important! Everything going on with that is beautiful, especially as they don't have any blatant "Musashi... this is The Most Important One" scene. One thing I have noticed about Ghost so far especially in comparison to OOO (though, uh, hardly an insult if you're not being as elegant as
OOO
) is that Ghost is extremely blatant about what it's about and saying what it's about? And I don't have too much of an issue with that; especially when you're dealing with subject matter this important on a kid's show, sometimes a bit of bluntness is important! But it also means that it lets subtleties like this land so, so much more.
To bring all that round, I like how this episode recenters the moral around not only saying that life is important above all else; but that it's okay to not pursue lofty achievements too much if it's driving your loved ones away and causing you issues. It's a beautiful beautiful moral that's all about hammering home the inherent importance of life, and it's made all the better by the final moment having the character of the week writing a letter saying that instead of going for performing on the grand stage, right now he's going to refocus on enjoying music and finding what's important to him in that. Kamen Rider is often very good at finding importance in the mundane, but I'm finding that Ghost is
specialising
in that area, and it's just wonderful to see. This series is slowly turning into something special for me!
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