It's a great part of the fight, and it harkens back to Episode 15 for how Ankh and Eiji just have to make do with suboptimal combos and Medals. It's smart writing!

The grasshopper is the part I always remember too, but I will say this scene *immediately* came back to me after reading this. Pretty great stuff.

I remember having a theory like this about those Kiva episodes by Yonemura too, but I can't help but wonder if that's a great idea for a scene that happened specifically *because* it was a new writer for the show? It sort of has a scent about it, where I can easily imagine Mouri looking in on OOO from the outside first, seeing that it has this hero who has a bajillion forms but not all at once, and immediately getting excited to just kinda do something with that, and have it be really fun?

Unlike Takuya in Ryuki who clearly had the wrong motivation to only want to have fun fighting, Takashi seems to be righteous to want to not tolerate bad guys and stop injustice, but this is something that I also have a hard time conveying to the audience regarding the part of heroes' goal shouldn't be punishment. Maybe it's just hard to explain why a twisted sense of justice is wrong. I see some complaining that the bad guys in fictional medias don't get enough suffering/punishment, namely if they got redemption, which means letting them get off easy and not properly giving the crime its supposed weight, like what Takashi complains. But heroes are also often described as fighting for justice, and justice is often used to refer to punishments by law done for the victim's sake so they get closure, so making bad guys pay are expected for heroes' job by this.

It's expected for Goto to react first in this, as Goto's an ex-cop, so he can't stand by seeing a kid got hurt. Reminds me of Terui in W reacting to Nagi pushing a kid in the zoo. Otherwise, I too can have a problem on how to react against infractions and injustices, as indeed calling people out (or characters) can get one dismissed or ostracized by people for disturbing and offending them, perhaps including in this website. For the one supposed to be role model like most main Riders, the obvious thing they'd interfere and stop are the monster attacks, but people'd need help even without monster's existence, which is usually what differentiates main Rider types and those who care less about people's plight and mainly just beat up monsters (e.g. for revenge), which can be also due to normalized bad behavior done to them (e.g. not respecting boundaries).

Some of it's that, for sure, but it's maybe more that Gotou's main (semi-obnoxious) motivation on the show is Righteousness, so he needs to charge into a situation and sort of make everything slightly more confrontational than it needs to be by being inflexible and stern. He's working on that! But it's not going well!

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 22 - “CHOCOLATE, CONVICTION, AND THE POWER OF JUSTICE”

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More than anything, man, what a visually impressive episode this was.

Every beat of the story feels plussed by the direction, whether it's adding a surreal overlay to Kanbayashi’s Yummy-assisted mission of vengeance, or a melancholy grounding to Eiji’s fears that unchecked righteousness can end in bloodshed. (Sort of makes sense that the guy whose origin is based on the consequences of a civil war would maybe not feel super great about people lashing out in the name of what they think is right!) The camera moves never feel showy, either – the way the Grasshopper Yummy keeps appearing from inside the frame is all about how it’s the conscious manifestation of Kanbayashi’s desire, always with him, not some hidden aspect that’s been weaponized against his will… as well as just being the coolest shot ever. Whole episode is just incredibly fun to look at.

The story itself… sort of a mixed bag for me?

I liked the Eiji part the most, probably. Him having to explain to a guy that doing the small things reliably is better than doing the big things eventually is a nice little Eiji-specific message. It values less ostentatious things like, uh, not abandoning your family for an indefinite amount of time. (I liked this story despite Kanbayashi’s plot being sort of a weirdly typical story about Dads Abandoning Their Families, which is kind of a horrifying recurring plot in Kamen Rider stories. But at least he’s not just randomly dead before this story even begins?) Eiji stories are at their best for me when he saves the day by clumsily imparting his authentic advice to someone, rather than suiting up as OOO for a pyrotechnic finish. Again, it’s just doing the small bit of good that’s right in front of you, rather than saving it all up for some heroic battle.

Meanwhile, we’ve got the Takashi/Gotou stuff, and I just… I sort of can’t ever really get inside Gotou’s head? I’ve harped on this before, but the actor just really doesn’t do it for me. I can’t tell if it’s his limitations as a performer – being unable to portray the mixture of Determined and Lost that the story has him in – or if he’s just making choices in the scenes that I don’t think match the energy of the show. (Like, I don’t know if Gotou is an Asaya Kimijima problem, or a Kamen Rider OOO problem.)

But this one kind of fell apart for me in that final Takashi scene. The idea of staying true to your desire no matter what is a good one… when it’s something relatable like Hoping Your Dad Comes Home. That’s cool! That is exactly where you want to be emotionally, instead of thinking too big about how to force your dad to come home by punishing evildoers -slash- litterbugs. Letting that mirror Gotou’s growing realization that it’s not his job to save the world by himself – instead, letting him work alongside everyone else to achieve more – is a very interesting way to dovetail both plots, but it just… I don’t know, it didn’t fully land for me. Gotou’s idea of Saving The World still feels hopelessly childish to me, and more in line with the tragedy of Kanbayashi than the wide-eyed belief of Takashi. Gotou’s thing is weird! It’s weird for him to want it, and I don’t know that the character has me on his side the way the show assumes.

Other than that (which I’m totally admitting is more about my enjoyment of a performance than it is an indictment of the story), I liked this one a lot. The direction is faultless, the Eiji/Kanbayashi stuff totally clicks, and all of the Date/Gotou stuff gets me closer to caring about Gotou than I’ve ever been before. Solid conclusion to a great story!

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What Eiji said here needs to be acknowledged more by fiction fandoms. It often happens, as explained in the Draco In Leather Pants page here (clearer on some of the actual examples), that people justify anyone who's fighting for other people's sake or what they think is right, many of which are actual villains, that they did nothing wrong and being treated unfairly by the story and have the "supposed heroes" ruining everything by opposing them. And some also have a tendency to view any bad guys as pure monsters, particularly those who start wars like Eiji said, when they do come to the conclusion of starting wars due to the reasons above they use to justify bad guys and what Eiji criticizes, just that they have the power or position to make their desires come true.

By this, still I wonder about heroic abandonment stuff (though Kanbayashi doesn't fit this), but what do you think one should handle these scenarios, when Riders know that the civilians need help and that they're the only ones that can stop the threats? And that Riders can't be anywhere at once... I've always thought about how one shouldn't be biased to only care about personal loved ones only as an ultimate good ... well I guess there's Blade thing in Umi dealing with Kenzaki 'not helping' her but dunno. What Eiji said about what's wrong with unchecked righteousness is sound. Still, as Kanbayashi keeps his goal to become a defense attorney in the end, what'd be his solution to pass the bar exam as he abandoned his family to think about ways to pass the exam (actually as Grasshopper Yummy, he spent more time with Takashi).

Otherwise, seems that Goto does have this problem he needs to learn like what you said in the previous episode, where he actually was conflicted in taking down the Grasshopper Yummy as they only attack bad guys. Eiji did say similar things to Goto in response like what he said to Kanbayashi later. Though that part is still about Goto asking others about what to do against a supposed threat, so not doing his job alone? Doesn't seem that he still has the idea to save the world by himself. When Goto talks to Takashi, the pep talk he gave was about the standard believing in yourself.

Yeah, ha ha, the episode just sort of glosses over this detail? Kanbayashi acts like him saying he's going to be a defense attorney is the same as actually being a defense attorney, when nothing onscreen shows hm being any closer to passing the bar. (Unless the Grasshopper Yummy did that for him, too? Was the proctor a Bad Guy?) Since the real dilemma in the episode was Kanbayashi detonating his family structure because of his shame at not being the hero to his family he thought he should be, instead of realizing that all they ever wanted was him to be there, I'm sort of okay with the episode concentrating on that resolution rather than the career one. But it's still sort of weird!

Gotta be honest, with these last two I fast forwarded every time the kid was on screen. I can usually put up with child actors on tokusatsu, but this one really grated on me.

Honestly, he blew Gotou off the screen, so I was okay with him!

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 23 - “BEAUTY, EGGS, AND A DORMANT DESIRE”

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A cute little episode, but not one I felt especially engaged with.

There just isn’t a ton of meat on the bone? It’s a very setup-heavy installment of a two-parter, as Uva feints with Kazari, Maki hints at Date’s Secret Affliction, and a new Yummy is sort of almost spawned. Nothing ever feels substantial, with almost every plot point or scene acting as a kind of narrative ellipsis. Kazari fights Uva, but nothing comes of it. OOO and Birth fight Kazari, but nothing really comes of it. Date talks to Eiji about their potential earlier meeting and Eiji’s lack of motivation, but nothing really comes of it. Gotou gets a single scene to establish that he works at Cous Coussier and girls think he’s cute, but nothing really comes of it.

The most time we spend on anything, really, is with the toxic relationship between sisters Saukra and Rei. Like, a lot of time? Arguably too much, considering how blandly dismissive Rei is and how generically Ugly Duckling Nerd Girl that Sakura is. (They seriously do the She Takes Off Her Glasses To Be Hot thing! Kind of lazy!) The scenes between them do the job right off the bat, thanks to how broad the concept is and how solidly the actors get across Meek Sister and Snotty Sister, but then we just sort of get a couple more scenes that spell that all out? With a few extra characters? It feels unnecessarily repetitive, considering that the writing on this episode – at least dialogue-wise – is typically tight and clever. We don’t really need as much time spent on setting up the background radiation of Sakura’s feelings of being left out of the spotlight or Rei’s casual disregard for her sister’s feelings, because all of that stuff is super obvious, but the episode just makes that the spine. It’s just not necessary?

And yet, there’s nothing terribly wrong with this episode. I didn’t hate the fights, or the scenes with our core heroes, or even what this installment’s storytelling portends for next episode’s conclusion. (I actually sort of remember the next one being super fun?) The chemistry of the characters and the vibrancy of the setting are enough to make even a relatively formless episode like this one feel like time well spent, even if I can’t say I fell in love with it.

Maybe next time?

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