KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 37 - "I BET MY FACE GIVES IT AWAY, DOESN'T IT?”

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So, Ryutaros.

If we're going to have an endgame kick-off that draws from characterization, Ryuta is the best character to focus on. He's the most unpredictable, the least stable. His connection with Ryotaro isn't a contract, a mutually agreed-upon spirit of cooperation. He snuck in, tried to destroy Ryotaro, but fell in love with the idea of family. He's part of the team, but the least-trusted member. His motivations are inherently selfish, inherently childish. If anyone's story is going to eventually doom the crew of the DenLiner, it's Ryuta.

(I mean, him or Ura. I wouldn't be shocked if a future story is some Imagin attacking the train and screaming HOW COULD YOU BREAK MY HEART at Urataros.)

The situation with Ryuta and Ryotaro and Airi and Yuuto, it's untenable. The show put a pin in it a while ago, when Ryotaro told Ryuta that he'd die before he let Ryuta kill Yuuto, but there wasn't a real sense of growth to Ryuta. Even here, he brushes off his reluctance to kill Ryotaro as him being bored with trying. Ryuta has become more integrated into the cast, and more charming for his coloring and excitability, but there's still this feeling like he can't be managed long-term. If he wants something bad enough, he's going to go after it.

A lot of this episode is just reminding the audience of that aspect of Ryuta. We haven't really seen this side since his early appearances, and most of his more recent uses have been as a kid brother to the other Imagin. Here, we're back in Loose Cannon mode for Ryuta, where he's hijacking Ryotaro's body, freaking out Airi, and threatening Yuuto. It's not so much an escalation of any of those things as it is an indication that this side of Ryuta never really left. It's interesting to see again, to know that the show isn't done talking about this plot, but it's not really a new take on any of it.

And then Kai shows up.

Den-Parado! I liked him. I always like happy villains, ones who are menacing because they're so upbeat, not in spite of it. They seem more powerful for how they don't take the heroes/society seriously, how it's some game they're playing on Easy Mode. (Sorry, he just reminds me so much of Parado!) Kai has that part down cold, as he's constantly wondering if his smiling means he's mad or not. He feels more inhuman than any threat the show has had before, with his absurd curiosity at how to be intimidating, or in his simultaneous vague disinterest and laser-like focus in getting Ruta to complete a task for him. He feels like the best possible Den-O villain: an exterior of humanity and an interior of unknowable malevolence, portrayed by spinning out emotions he doesn't care to understand.

His interactions with Ryuta were great, especially the dance-off. It's the perfect way to manipulate Ryuta at this point. He doesn't feel like the DenLiner crew are taking his emotional needs seriously (Momo 100% is tired of playing along with this kid's unrealistic obsession with Airi), and here's Den-Parado, meeting him on his level, speaking his language, playing his game. It's not about trying to control Ryuta, it's about using Ryuta's needs to manipulate him. It's trying to craft a Win-Win that the DenLiner crew can't seem to convince Ryuta of. Den-Parado is friendly without ever seeming like a friend, and I find that kind of villain addictive to watch.

This was the start of our push into the endgame, and as such it's only really about introducing a new major villain. With that goal, it's a huge success. Den-Parado gets me more psyched about escalating this show's threat level than anything else they've tried. (They haven't tried a lot!) Not even close to sure of where the story might be headed, but I'm glad it's got this much momentum. Really fun plot-via-character-driven episode.

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THE BAGGAGE CAR

-When this show needs to get melancholy, it knows how to get there fast. Having a sunset training session with Ryotaro and Momo, where it's fraught with this tension of impending dissolution (whether that's The New Train Line or just the metatextual The Show Is Ending In A Few Months), it's unbelievably bittersweet. It feels like a goodbye, almost. Momo's making sure Ryotaro can keep being Den-O, even if he's not around to see it. More than any villain intro or new setting, this scene is the announcement that we are entering our final batch of stories for Kamen Rider Den-O.

-Speaking of new settings! We don't see a lot of the Train Stop (???), but its very existence feels compelling, simply because it's a tactile new thing the show can have its characters interact with. There's a frustrating amount of nebulous worldbuilding in this series, so I will absolutely applaud the series for showing a new thing and in the same episode saying Let's Go To There. Yes! I am okay with the odd bit of immediate gratification, rather than five straight episodes of cryptic comments from Owner! It's a pleasant change of pace!

Well, it's no problem, really; ToQger's just such a grea—

っておい！

Well, putting that to one side for now, I don't think I have too much to add about Liner Form and episode 36 that hasn't been said by someone else already. Mainly that, following on from the Ghost comparisons with Climax Form's debut, it occurs to me that what Grateful and Mugen each symbolize in terms of the characters has a lot of parallels to Climax and Liner... which certainly accounts for Liner Form being one of my all-time favorite final forms.

The design has grown on me a ton over time (always loved the feather eyes and sword; the relatively understated body was an acquired taste), but, much like with Ghost, it's all about what it's doing narratively that makes me so attached to it.

(Okay, well in Mugen's case, it's both at once, which is why nothing will ever top it, but you get the idea.)

It's hard to say how much I really agree or disagree with your assessment of the episode, though. As evidenced by this...

...it's very much a case where I think it makes more sense in the grander context of the show's narrative than as a standalone story, the way Climax Form's did so well. And since it's rooted so deeply in Den-O's very particular style of telling an overarching story – that we've established I really like and that you take issue with – there's probably not much sense in trying to argue that further right now. I rewatched this one on a whim after reading your post, and what I'd most like to say about it is actually just that Takeru Satoh is really freakin' good at playing Ryoutarou?

And, uh, speaking of the overarching plot and extremely talented actors with careers that went places after the show! How about that Kai? Don't think I can put my opinion on him any better than I did here:

I'll leave the detailed actor trivia to someone else, though, and instead point out that 37/38 are more Tasaki episodes, which explains why I remember them looking so pretty.

I think this comment gets at some of the disconnect this thread'll have with people who've already watched Den-O: I don't know how this all fits together yet.

For a lot of these series-long plots, not specifically Den-O, it's easy to see in retrospect where little bits of character development start, or how a relationship pivot will payoff down the line. For me, I don't have that full picture yet. I can't say how each piece of the puzzle fits together narratively; I can only judge the quality of each piece.

(cut an entire series of paragraphs about watching individual episodes versus bingeing that felt irrelevant to the discussion)

So, yeah, there's a lot to Kobayashi's plotting here that rewards patience, and I'm finding the rewards for that patience to be not as generous as what's being asked of me. If there was a little more attention paid to the episodic increments of storytelling, rather than the current It'll All Make Sense In The End deferral, I think I'd be more kind to the pacing.

Liner form is a favorite form of mine from a design perspective. While I don't remember a lot about den-o but I remember someone (maybe Fish?) saying something along the lines of why Liner form is great from thematic perspective. It's that it represents Ryotaro going into battle on his own but with his friends still there with him. I think another thing about it that might be more inline with Die's analysis of Ryotaro is that liner form is Ryotaro accepting every part of himself while still being a himself. Climax is a bunch of friends working together, but Liner might pull more on the metaphor of the imagin as aspects of Ryotaro. He's pulling on the different aspects he's hidden away to be strong. or something like that. I don't know I haven't watched den-o in years, and also have very little ability to analyze tv.

Yeah, Liner Form and Ryotaro's development into a more fully-formed hero... it's definitely something that needs to happen as the series nears its completion. Ryotaro Gets Better As A Person is, like, the bare minimum expectation for a year-long Den-O series. The best way to illustrate that is him not needing the training wheels of being possessed by an Imagin. Him being his own Kamen Rider is the show's proof of concept.

It's just, it's weird how sort of out of nowhere it happens? The more the show leans into the Imagin trying to prepare Ryotaro for their absence, the smarter Liner Form looks and feels. The problem is, all of that emotional content occurs after Liner Form debuts. Climax is the show having a problem, and then creating a tool to solve it. Liner is the show introducing a tool, and then searching for a problem for it to solve.

Oooooh, okay that makes sense. For some reason I thought the episode where liner debuted was about Ryutaro having to stop being a rider due to strain on his body and then trying to fight in platform then getting liner. Also I like the liner henshin.

Nope, you've got the right episode! It's less about the strain on his body (that was an earlier story with a wacky ending), and more about... some upcoming Time Nonsense thing? In Liner's debut episode, the Imagin are unable to possess Ryotaro in the past, mid-fight, so they create the Liner sword so he can fight back.

I've just been finding the idea of Liner stronger as the story goes on, as it starts to focus more and more on the Imagin basically preparing for their deaths? There's a winding down to the Imagin, post-Liner, that makes Liner seem a lot more integral than when it debuted. I can 100% see myself loving the themes of Liner by the time the series is over; I don't think the debut episode works as well in isolation.

We all knew him as Kai during the show's airing but nowadays Hideo Ishiguro who plays Kai is more revered as the 50th anniversary giant of light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XirMfCghQLo

Someday I'm going to appreciate one of these non-Kamen Rider shows, I promise.

I really really need to do this too, but also I lack energy to watch even Kamen Rider for some reason.