So I don’t remember much about this episode (is it the one where Chiyoko says “Repeat after me” in perfect English, or is that still upcoming?), so I’ll cash in on the first appearance of Gamel’s Yummies to discuss the etymology behind the names of the Greeed.

Uva: from “ubau”, meaning consume (his Yummies tend to eat somehing related to the desire that spawned them)

Kazari: from “kazaru”, meaning decorate (his Yummies possess their hosts and gradually manifest physically on them)

Mezool: from “aizuru”, meaning “to love” (her Yummies follow their creator around as they live out their desire)

Gamel: from “gameru”, meaning “pilfer” (his Yummies are created from himself based on other’s desires)

Ankh is the one exception, probably to highlight him as an outsider to the others, but in the early concepts, he was supposed to be called the more thematically appropriate Ashu, meaning “dominate”.

Neat! Thanks!

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 8 - “SLACKING OFF, HAVING NO DESIRE, AND TAKING A BREAK”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo08a.png

SLACKING OFF, HAVING NO DESIRE, AND TAKING A BREAK:
Not even worth separating those three out into different sections, because they’re all talking about the same thing. Like this episode!

Probably not going to be my favorite OOO two-parter, despite how much I enjoyed this installment. (I really enjoyed this installment.) The Uva stuff is dispatched more or less before the opening credits, Gamel abandons his plot halfway through, and the Yummy never feels looped into anything that’s going on. (Eiji could’ve been fighting literally any monster for any reason, it’s ridiculously perfunctory.) There’s really only one story in this episode worth discussing beyond an It’s Funny To See Ankh Harrassed By Children level of identification, and that’s the Momoko/Takeshi one.

It’s one of those cute toku stories that never really seems like a toku story at all. The Yummy is briefly inspired by Momoko’s violent frustration with her shiftless husband, but that’s nothing she really has to directly confront. OOO is necessary to save lives and defeat monsters, but it’s really Eiji who’s necessary to hear out two frustrated people and try and help them see how much they still care about each other.

And he does that in a supremely OOO way, which is by reaching a hand out, and not much more. Eiji blunders his way through his discussions with Momoko and Takeshi, frequently making terrible comparisons that reduce the complexity of adult relationships into misguided metaphors about summer vacation and overeating. (I mean, good for the intended audience, but sort of disappointing for Eiji’s maturity.) Eiji never quite gets what’s happening between Momoko and Takeshi on a relatable level, but he pushes back on both of their assertions that Takeshi has lost his desire, instead helping to reframe things as guy who needed a reset and a woman pushing him to put a date on that reset's conclusion. Eiji’s role isn’t to solve their problem, it’s to help them see that they both want to solve their problem. After that, after he’s given them a hand, they can solve it themselves.

It’s, again, very cute. I like stories where the resolution is reached due to the decency and humanity of the Kamen Rider, rather than its powers or transformations. It just… I sort of also like the powers and transformations? And when every part of the episode feels like it's telling the same story? Instead, with this one, we get elements that are randomly discarded throughout the episode, like the production team couldn’t remember why they ever cared about them in the first place. I guess that’s at least thematically fitting?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/ooo08b.png

Adding on to this, according to one of the old episode guides, at least, the specific order of events was:

- Really early on, they were going to have Eiji come up with the insanely half-hearted name "Toori", because he's a tori.
- After deciding that was too half-hearted for its own good, they came up with Ankh from the Hindi word for "eyes", because he's literally got the eyes of a hawk.
- The suggestion to give him a name derived from Japanese to match the other Greeed came after that, but they were already attached to "Ankh" by that point.

Interesting! Thanks!

That's what I meant as a bait, tricking the audience to think Eiji's keeping it but turns out he's not, called red herring.

Eiji shouldn't be biased towards Ankh, as the selfless hero he should treat anyone equally, not prioritizing those he knows better. So other people like Momoko and Takeshi's well-being should be in Eiji's radar rather than treating them as unimportant because Ankh needs something from him too. Ankh is just, one of who Eiji would help among the others due to his nature, Ankh just happens to be the show's other lead so he has more screentime. And for Ankh, Eiji is just a means to his end, if he can obtain what he wants in some other way, he gotta chase after it even if it wouldn't involve Eiji.

This feels more like stock surface-level toku to just have the monster being a threat to the public and emphasizing that to have the hero come in and save the day.

And OOO committed vandalism here to destroy some people's cars in doing so here. Japan word has no L, so L is converted to R. Lion would be Raion in Japanese's katakana (English/foreign words converted to Japanese letters). Goto starts to be grumpy in him being forced to assist OOO by Kougami, though it's because OOO is affiliated with a Greeed, Ankh. Goto seems to be prejudiced to Greeed and lumps anyone associated with them as bad, but he also takes it out to OOO as well, further destroying the cake.

To be fair, that cake was basically already destroyed from Gotou having his faced shoved into it (accidentally!) by OOO, so I can't exactly blame him for finishing the job.

The photographer story in 7 and 8 feel really Den-O to me, if that makes any sense. Something about the story beats and characters feel like they could have come straight out of that show instead. Probably a combination of the same writer and some beats that feel similar to the story with Shimada/Smart Lady and her boyfriend. It did play out a little differently, though, and I really appreciated the scene with Eiji and the dude having their little urban campfire chat. I think that moment, in particular, gave us some good insights into Eiji's world view. It's kind of fun revisiting these moments knowing how much I ended up liking him; I'd really written him off as a bargain basement Yusuke when I was originally watching the show.

So Uva got his Kuwagata medal back already. It's a pity, but the show swaps medals so much that I'm sure Eiji will get that one back pretty soon and we definitely won't only see it again in movies, right?

Yeah, I can see that. While I appreciated how the text of the episode is that Everyone Needs Desire In Their Life, to continue to push back on the easy read of Desire being a bad thing that the villains profit from, the subtext is a lot more nebulous, and definitely feels more about letting go of an idealized future in order to enjoy the present and recapture the past. That's a very Den-O story!

This was a minor thing I forgot to mention, but I like the tiny touch in this story where Ankh doesn't tell Eiji that he lost Uva's Medal. There's a beat where Eiji asks for it in battle, and Ankh's like Uh Maybe Try This New Medal Instead For Reasons. In a story about lack of communication, that's a nice little beat!

Uva, Gamel, and Mezool stuff rather reminds me of something in Kobayashi's show, but well, it's about Yui splashing Shinji and Ren with water during their argument, in Mezool also doing that to the other 2. Among the monster group, it's the female too who breaks up their infighting, and make them think more straight.

Eiji's effect feels stronger on Takeshi compared to Momoko with Eiji's talk about people not forgetting their ambitions easily, with a more sound comparison in Eiji still remembering his love for fried buns. Makes me wonder though if it's a right thing to do to butt in into other people's business like Eiji does here, in the end it worked great but it doesn't seem appropriate to do it, something I wished that Revice used it more in its MC that has busybody problem. Still wish that this is more related to the Greeed schemes, likely to see what happens when they find an opposite where the person they're targeting on seemingly lost their drive/desire, rather than the usual being consumed by it like the previous ones.

While generally the Riders on the good side will similarly detonate monsters with their powers, this is something that you'd get more from the lead Rider character types, the ones who are selfless and compassionate, while the other Riders on the good side, not all, but often, they're more of jerks who can't treat others with decency while beating up monsters. This might be a hot take from me, but I see kinder people as something that makes them more heroic than the jerk types who care less about others, driven by vengeance, would throw others under the bus with 'hard choice' pragmatic tactis, etc., where while they're still heroic (though some'd veer to anti-hero category), their negative traits makes them less and can make them lean to grey more.