That super sucks! My condolences!

I don't love the cape, but I sort of completely love the hands sticking out of the shoulders? Seeing Gridknights tiny hand poking out of the combined robot's shoulder, just to grab the cannon, is pretty great.

It's a really beautiful scene for me, because while Chise gets upset at how dismissive Yume is of Chise's interest or of her own value, it never gets combative or accusatory. The volume on this scene always stays at Aching, from both sides, and it really drives home how difficult it can be to appreciate the things you have more than lament the things you don't, while still finding it within yourself to support the people you see falling. Sometimes literally!

You know, it's only just now dawning on me that this is sort of another way I have like a mirror universe version of DreamSword's experience with these shows? I stopped watching SSSS.Gridman weekly after episode 8, and then came back a month later to quickly plow through the last four episodes while the finale was still fresh.

But since that was ultimately a positive experience for me, and a decision that was entirely my own, of course for him it was just forcibly being jerked around by outside forces for... was there even a reason? Actually, wasn't that whole "simul"dub super late to begin with even though Gridman's wasn't? Because to have a delay that long on top of a delay -- especially if there was no explanation given -- is going beyond super sucks, and into the territory of like, like, Super Mega sucking.

No mentioning of how Kaiser Gridknight is Coronation Starscream? Dang. Also:

Yeah, basically. I won't lie, I didn't think too much of it at the time, but in hindsight? It really feels like FUNi just didn't have the same passion(for lack of a better word) for Dynazenon that they did for Gridman. And definitely not Universe(more on that later on in the thread). Which super sucks for alot of reasons; especially if you're literally anyone else other than me and was really digging everything the show had to offer.

Maybe some of that lack of care and effort rubbed off on me; who knows?

I guess I didn't connect the two designs because Kaiser Gridknight isn't immediately murdered? But they do share some similarities!

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 10 - “WHICH MEMORIES DO YOU REGRET?”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon10a.png

In an episode that’s all about how a fascination or obsession with our past – the regrets, mostly, as the title indicates – can make us lose the grip on our present, and how that’s visualized through a kaiju literally vanishing the present, it's only right that we start this episode without our theme song and opening credit sequence.

I like that, as a choice to immediately destabilize an audience. This whole episode mimics the rhythms of Gridman Episode 9, where all of the hidden traumas of our cast (except Chise, sucks to be me) are brought to light through a kaiju’s special power. Almost everything about this episode is grounded, sure: Yomogi’s inability to tell his mom that he doesn’t want to have dinner with her new boyfriend; Koyomi wondering if things would’ve been better for him if he’d run off with his childhood girlfriend; Yume’s desire to better understand Kano. But it’s also all heightened in that dreamlike way – the animation is super exaggerated for most of this episode, eschewing the normal laconic energy of the cast for something far more evocative and melodramatic. Everything about this episode, from the very jump, is meant to unnerve you.

And what’s more unnerving than the questions of our past? While the modern-day mysteries of the kaiju and the plans of the Eugenicists would motivate most other shows, this one refuses to grapple with that plot, because none of its cast can fully engage with the present. They’re all wrapped up, constantly, in what they didn’t do, or didn’t say, or didn’t get, or couldn't keep. What’s great about this episode is the ways, both large and small, that it talks about how your past isn’t something you can every really resolve, like a mystery. It’s all gone, and you don’t get to turn it over more to look for real answers. All you can really do is make your peace with it, learn from it, and apply it to your present so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.

We’ll talk about the bigger way that this episode did that, but I really want to talk about the small way first. Koyomi! He’s been mired in the way his childhood friend (I swear to god I have no idea what her name is anymore; Yomogi only ever calls her “Supervisor”, and she hasn’t shown up in a bunch of episodes) offered him a chance to run away with her, and he turned it down. So now, in the kaiju, he says yes to her, and runs away. But it doesn’t… it hasn’t fixed him. Not even because it isn’t real, but because he’s still trying to hold onto something that won’t last. She doesn’t really love him, and this isn’t really going to work, and it was all a childhood fling that he has to stop obsessing over. Like the money flying around, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he closes his grip, he’s got to let go of it and get on with his life.

The Yume/Kano stuff is the main way this episode talks about its themes, and for something the show’s been building up to since its first scene, I thought what we got was better than I could’ve hoped. We don’t really get a solution to the mystery of what happened to Kano, because it doesn’t really matter if it was an accident or a suicide – she’s dead, Yume will always miss her, and that’s it. (While Kano directly tells Yume she wasn’t going to kill herself, I think there’s more than enough grey area to think that she’s lying to her little sister.) Finding out what exactly happened that night is irrelevant, because the larger issue was that Kano felt isolated, and Yume regrets not finding a way to help her, but now realizes that she has to find some way forward from that, including leaning on the people around her in a way that Kano never did. The two ankhs can detach, and link back up; it’s not being trapped by your past or suffocated by memory, but being able to find help when you need it.

The Gauma stuff, for me, was sort of whatever. I like Gauma just fine, but the more fantastical mystery of his ancient past is honestly the least compelling part of this show, and at times it felt almost inappropriate to put it up against the other plots from this episode. It's more compelling for me to watch a story about Koyomi’s regret, or Yume’s anguish, or especially Yomogi’s heroic efforts to be there for his friends, even if he couldn’t do anything more than be there.

Because, really, that’s the most valuable thing we can ever do, you know? Just be there for each other. And you can only do that in the present.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon10b.png

All of the resolutions this episode brought forth felt way too simple and clean for me.

And I most certainly did not like how Yomogi was presented as the big heart that brings the group together when all this time it's been Gauma who's been the legs that the entire group stands on.

I'd've probably been alot more receptive if everyone found their own inner peace, but instead the peace of mind and solutions are just handed to them, either via Yomogi, or in the case of Yuma, being told by some version of her sister that all of the awful stuff didn't happen so don't worry about it.

It all just felt cheap, and just like with the equivalent episode of Gridman, this was my least liked episode of Dynazenon.

So fun bit of symbolism. Koyomi, whose trauma is that he was a coward who ran away, now has a scar on his ankle identical to the one Gauma, whose trauma is related to unrequited love, has on his face.

And our kaiju’s is named Garnix, after the Zeigarnik effect, a phenomenon where people will remember unfinished tasks more clearly.

Aside from that, this episode didn’t really stand out.

But, to me, the arc of Yomogi has been more about finding a way to express to people that he cares about them, which isn't really Gauma's story? (Quite the opposite! Gauma's been sort of evasive about his past, and just bravado-ing his way to getting the whole team to work in unison.) As important as it is for the other characters to let go of their regrets, Yomogi's regret is that he doesn't vocalize what he wants, so he sort of has to be the one to do it here for the narrative to work?

Sorry to hear that!

That seems like a strange distinction to even bother making, to me? Gauma's role in the series is certainly more rooted in outwardly fantastical elements than the other members of the team, but he still has a whole personal journey going on that itself encompasses regret, anguish, *and* heroic efforts to be there for people he cares about. On the surface, he's often presented as sort of a silly character whose exaggerated qualities contrast with everyone around him, but -- and I think this is what his particular flashbacks in this episode are meant to highlight -- he's ultimately carrying a lot of very serious baggage, the same as they all are.

Sure, he fits thematically here, but I just wasn't all that jazzed to see his story of monster destruction and violent battles against insurrectionists put up alongside the other three characters more grounded and relatable struggles. Not saying it doesn't fit in the episode, just saying I wasn't as much a fan of it when compared to the other three stories. Sorry if I phrased it badly!