It's perhaps misleading too that there's Ichigo and Nigo fighting OOO which made the kids confused, and the earlier conflict for the Rider Scouts is kind of similar too to think they're enemies. Dunno if Ichigo and Nigo attacking other Riders wouldn't sit well for some fans due to them being the golden standard of Riders to them yet they're doing the Ryuki thing (something deviative from some for Kamen Rider values) temporarily there.

It's unknown who was behind the suit of Scissors there. Because Kamen Rider user isn't the same as the suit/abilities, like how it was displayed in Faiz, where Delta user can range from Saya to Kitazaki. Like even in Ryuki, for 13 Riders special, it was unknown who used the Tiger and Imperer suit. RT Ryuki also has different users for existing Riders. And Sudo's actor has retired too if Scissors' original identity should be retrained. It's common for the movies to just add any of the previous Riders, likely except the main antagonist ones, for the fight.

I mean, yeah, it could be anyone in the Scissors suit -- super excited for Zanki to get to TATAKAE as a crab-themed Rider -- but there's no reason to think that it's not Actual Murderer Scissors. Don't let Rider 1 and Rider 2 off the hook by doing their explanations for them!

Not like Birth and OOO doesn't try. It's just that Lost Ankh is something powerful enough to generally gain an upper hand against OOO's currently strongest form TaJaDor. It's lucky that for now, Maki has someone who cares for him who comes to his rescue, Date, despite being a depraved bastard otherwise. It's unknown if this is part of Maki's plan, but so far, in Maki and Kazari's divide, Kazari has the upper hand now, halting Maki's plan to make Kazari go out of control, but indeed as I thought, Kazari working with Maki would just have him being planned to be used as a pawn, so dunno if working with another deranged individual is an inherently smart move, unless they can anticipate this.

Kougami is actually being menacing here to threaten to eliminate anything that is against what he personally wants. It's something healthy for one to prioritize one's own desire over others, but perhaps this is what increases suspicion about Kougami. Not exactly about Kougami, but villainy is also often about imposing one's desire over others regardless of how much damage is done. Lost Ankh was the part of the red herring in ep. 25-26 two-parter though that Ankh didn't actually spawn the Yummy. As Lost Ankh is clearly villainous, and is the rest part of Ankh's body, this may be an indicator of what Ankh would do if he's not limited to a left hand that is dependent on Eiji and is bossed around by Hina, that the sinister stuff Ankh planned like spawning a Yummy or getting rid of Hina aren't just talk.

I don't know that I'd call Ankh Lost "villainous" at this point? It's a wounded creature looking to keep itself alive and make itself strong, even if that means destroying the other part of itself. That sounds exactly like what Ankh is doing?

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 30 - “THE KING, A PANDA, AND BURNING MEMORIES”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo30a.png

I am not normally one for exposition episodes – especially DOUBLE exposition episodes – but I think this one worked as well for me as it possibly could. There’re still a few flaws, namely a Shark Panda Yummy climax that feels completely irrelevant to what’s actually going on in this story, but I liked how this episode worked to reveal a couple of its major mysteries.

Like, we are definitely moving into a new phase of the show’s conflicts, and you need to lay a couple cards on the table to better understand exactly how screwed our heroes really are, and in which precise direction the screwing is coming from. It’s all well and good to have Maki and Kazari plotting while Ankh Lost exists in the shadows, but the only way the conflict can move forward is by understanding what’s at stake, and what’s at risk.

The Ankh backstory exposition does a nice job of filling in blanks via Ankh’s confession and Kougami’s research, but the real value is less about the past and more about how it informs the present. (That said, I like the reveal that the snarky and selfish Ankh of today was actually betrayed by an OOO it trusted 800 years in the past. Fun subversion, and great way to give Ankh’s modern day guarded nature a tragic backstory.) While we needed a couple details to confirm what we basically knew already about the two Ankhs, the bigger deal is what Date and Gotou have been trying to learn via their corporate subterfuge – namely, that Eiji’s increased power as OOO is maybe prelude to insanity and petrification.

I feel like every good Kamen Rider show should treat its hero’s power with wariness. It’s the core (or Core) theme within this particular show, that wanting something – anything – too much is what destroys people, so it’s crucial that Eiji’s seemingly benevolent usage of incredibly powerful and dangerous Medals has imminent and terrifying consequences. The trade-off to using combos to defeat evil is that he’s now at risk of becoming evil... or at least of becoming a monster, which is maybe worse. That’s a more thrilling potential story than the somewhat predictable and standard problem of Ankh being an inevitably selfish jerk, even if that story also sounds pretty fun.

But a show like this needs more conflict than just the existential dilemma of maintaining equilibrium with our desires, so it’s also time to figure out exactly how bad Maki is.

Pretty bad, as it turns out! While his origin is rooted in abuse and trauma, he’s still a guy who murdered his sister rather than lose her to marriage, and then used that murder to rewrite her personality in his memories. It’s a cool twist on his whole thing about Endings Mattering, because it allows for a complication where the Ending offers not finality or completion, but interpretation. Maki’s sister being dead means he can create whatever version he wants of her in his mind, to flatter whatever version of himself he wanted there to have been. That’s a more nuanced motivation than just wanting everyone to be dead, and it gets me more excited to see where this is all heading.

And it’s for sure heading somewhere, as this episode’s concluding shot has the trio of Kazari, Ankh Lost, and the now officially evil Dr. Maki heading off with an army of Candroids and one Hieronymus Bosch-esque Greeed painting to go enact some villainy. Great way to establish a new status quo!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo30b.png

In which Ancient OOO gets his first brief appearance. He was only a hidden sound in the original CSM, but thanks to making quite a few appearances in post show media (the novel being the first prominent example, in which he is characterised as Kougami as a medieval tyrant), the 2.0 added a whole second more with an appropriately deepened voice for the OOO Driver.

I’d talk a bit more about Dr. Maki’s backstory reveal (it’s basically the ASDF Movie gag about child murderers played seriously), but I think I’ll have more to say about it come 32.

Neat! Thanks!

I wonder if Maki was rewritten to become the main Villain at the time that they decided against making Ankh outright evil? Like no doubts he was always intended to be a villain considering the earlier draft of the show that Inoue had based Core off of had him as a villain. Could be possible an earlier dradt had Maki’s memories of his sister be true to have him die protecting Chiyo to further clear the board for Ankh’s reveal?

It's possible! Maki's too perfect of a rival for Eiji from the start for him to be eliminated at an earlier stage of the show, though, so I gotta assume he was always a long-term plan for the producers.

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 31 - “RETURNING A FAVOR, A PLOT, AND PURPLE MEDALS”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo31a.png

It’s a very Part 1 Of 2 episode, with a whole bunch of interesting ideas that don’t really add up to much more than that. It’s solidly done, for an episode that reintroduces Uva, debuts the Purple Medals, spends some time with Team Greeed, and wraps it all up in a Yummy Dilemma that’s directly commenting on Eiji’s potentially apocalyptic helpfulness, but it all feels a little too much like the setup for next episode’s statement.

And I’m not sure how disappointed in that I want to be? There’s nothing really wrong in this episode; to the contrary, it’s a brisk installment that deftly balances foreshadowing with a present-tense conundrum, while never losing sight on how this all affects our core cast. But it still has that problem of not really being fully about its topic or theme yet. We’re given some truly enticing things – Maki and the Purple Medals, Uva’s payday loan scheme (?), Sakata’s desire to help out someone who once helped him – but it's all stopped at the point where this would maybe cohere into something resonant, instead of just entertaining. Every plot is an ellipsis, rather than a period or an exclamation mark.

Which is, y’know, the Kamen Rider template, especially in this era. They’re almost all two-parters, and Part 1 is usually chock-a-block with cliffhangers. I’m not sure why this one hit me so weirdly. It’s maybe exhaustion with this type of format? You see enough of this scheme and you start to ache for the deviations. It maybe feels more exhausting for how many parts of this episode are tantalizing teases of things we’ll discover later, rather than a complete statement on anything. I want something to talk about, to think about, but everything here feels like the discussion comes tomorrow.

Yeah, man, I don’t know! Despite an episode of weird mysteries and a fun couple of kids caught up in a pleasantly absurd scheme of bafflingly unpredictable consequences (Sakata gave Suzuka’s family money anonymously, and it drove them to ruin???) that accurately describes Eiji’s main personality flaw -slash- deepest fear, I just… I feel like there’s nothing here to talk about yet? Is it just me? Did you guys get something out of this episode?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo31b.png