KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 5 - "MELTING SEA"

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../hibiki05a.png

"I better ace that interview
I better ace that interview
I should tell them that I'm not afraid to die
I better ace that interview"

-Mitski, "My Body's Made Of Crushed Little Stars"

Literally everything in this episode about a superhero trying to find and defeat a giant crab is spinning around one teenager having anxiety about his exams, and I love it.

Like, man, man. Basing so much of this one episode on how stressed Asumu is, such a great idea. It's to the show's credit that it never feels like you're missing out on something, by following Asumu around. It's as captivating to watch as any (two-move!) Hibiki fight scene. It's a plot that doesn't need a single supernatural thing to happen in it, because it's already epic.

That's... I think that's the secret to why so much of Hibiki works so well. The monster stuff, the Hibiki parts of Kamen Rider Hibiki, are all downplayed, made mundane. It's funny and relatable to see Hibiki and Kasumi going through their routines, treating monster extermination like a sales call for a small business. But then the teen drama is made mythic by its dominance of screentime, with Asumu's anxiety feeling as apocalyptic as any giant crab attack. This is a show that makes the heroic stuff look boring, and the boring stuff look heroic. Just a fantastic idea.

The Asumu plot, on its own, is nicely open-ended. After a brief (episode-highlight) meeting with Hibiki, Asumu feels confident in his upcoming exams. Except he's not. He's completely terrified that he's not good enough, that he's stupidly put all of his eggs in one basket, that he's going to embarrass himself, that he has no other options.

It's a plot that's bubbling under the whole time, likely to explode in the next episode. Asumu seems frantic to tell someone, anyone, that he feels underwater, but the words never come out. It's like he's taking the wrong lessons from Hibiki. He sees an upbeat, successful loner who preaches self-confidence, and decides that that's all he needs to do to succeed. Just believe in yourself, and you'll win! But that's not nearly the whole story to Hibiki. He's had years of training, and a support system that keeps him in strategies and disc animals. Hibiki succeeds because of all of the people that he can depend on, not because he can breathe purple flames. (Not to discount the purple flames! Actually a pretty big factor in Hibiki's successes!) But the interactions that Asumu's had with Hibiki keep him from understanding how much of a loner Hibiki isn't.

I mean, even Hibiki isn't clear on how much he needs people, so it's a fair thing for Asumu to miss. In the same way that Asumu is trying to tamp down his anxiety, and failing, Hibiki's trying to act all nonchalant about a kid he clearly sees as having the potential for greatness, and failing. Ichiro doesn't miss it for a second, but he's nice enough to (I assume) let Hibiki start to figure out on his own that he wants to take Asumu under his wing. He's trying to be respectful of Asumu, let him live his life, but these two need that mentor/apprentice relationship like crabs need to grow to the size of a studio apartment.

And, on the topic of the monster plot of the TV series where a superhero fights monsters... some good, some bad. I liked the rhythm of the search, as usual (it's that Kuuga thing of We Need To Show You Every Single Step In Detail, but padded out with great dialogue and relaxing outdoorsiness), but the fight against the Hime, come on. It's literally just some distractions by the disc animals, and then two moves by Hibiki. Come on! Give me a little bit more meat on that bone, show. The giant crab is... not my thing, but it's fine for the few seconds it's onscreen. Not really worth talking about.

(Similarly, I don't really care to talk about Zanki or Ibuki yet. It's cool that they just mentioned them, like other traveling salesmen for Team Hibiki Bar and Grill, but there's really nothing more than that to dig into. I'm excited to meet them, though! Although I assume I already did, judging by that parking lot scene with Asumu's mom!)

It's almost dumb how invested I am in Asumu's anxiety about getting into the right high school. If they'd never even had Hibiki suit up to fight a monster this episode, I don't think I'd've noticed or cared. It just feels so epic, Asumu's journey. I'm 100% in his corner.

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You met one of them, yeah (and got another mention that Oni remind Asumu's mom of her estranged husband). These aren't the last Oni that get mentioned, too - one of the cool world-building things this show does is that there are lots of other Oni active in Japan. Some of them become regulars on the show, some aren't even seen. It really helps sell the idea that this is a large organization, though, and not just a handful of people hanging out in a restaurant (I will revisit this idea from the other direction when we get to Kiva).

I really love how well the show captures the anxiety, it's a real feature of Takatera's shows. I'll talk about this in a lot more detail after episode 29, but a few years after Hibiki Takatera got a lot of the band back together to make a new show. That series is called Daimajin Kanon and it's a spin-off of some old kaiju movies from the 60s; at the time, at least, it was the most expensive tokusatsu ever made. It featured a lot fo the crew from Kuuga and Hibiki and it's another series that really effectively depicts a normal character intersecting with a more fantastical world. That show's main theme is depression and, like Asumu's anxiety issues here, it does a great job of capturing the tone of that emotion and conveying it to the viewer (almost too great, actually, the first few episodes are kinda brutal).

It's a really neat way of doing a large-cast Kamen Rider show. Blade had some elements of this, where Kenzaki (literally had to go look up his name) wasn't the decision-maker, but everyone worked to help him succeed. Here, it's like there's a plan and eventually it trickles down to have Hibiki do his small piece. It's, again, taking what should be massive and mythic, but rendering it commonplace and bureaucratic. I love it so much.

I think my favorite aspect is how, to this point, we don't really know exactly how stressed Asumu is, or what he wants. He's obviously having a lot of internal conflict about his upcoming exams and his plans for the future, but it's all kept internal. Does he want to excel at Jounan? Would he rather follow in Hibiki's footsteps? (The first thing I want to talk about in the next episode post is the end credits.) Is he scared of failure, or second-guessing his choices? Should he be supported, or is this fate telling him to choose a different path? It's crazy open to interpretation, which makes for a fun experience in following his story.

Asumu is well, just a normal person. He obviously won't be able to do much between the supernatural fight between Hibiki and the Oni. And now you're concerned about that there aren't any big reveal or key pieces of info, unlike before?

Ah yes, would change your mind about camaderie then, with what you say about Hibiki here getting along with Asumu's family? Although Hibiki left anyway.... And yeah, their kindness being so pure means they will treat anyone equally, friends or strangers, because it's what they mean to "protect everyone", not just protecting those that are close to them. And well, for Hibiki here, birds of a feather I guess for having many similarities to Asumu at least, and that does make for getting along easier.

Trusting your instincts can be negative too, but this show portrays it being advantageous here... but it's usually not be considered as such, like instinct is usually considered as being based on heart, instead of maturely thinking.

Yo man, don't underestimate The Power Of Music, drumming means you literally smacking the monster many, many times with your weapon! It's just accompanied by music for thematic effect. And yes, that'd mean Hibiki is a musical genre series in the franchise, it's the genre when you do conversation by singing like Asumu's biking.

Oh please, I mean it. The entire series was based on Onigeki Hibiki, a story by Shotaro Ishinomori. Instead of deciding to adapt said story into a Kamen Rider series, Toei had created a new Kamen Rider series... and also, this series got retooled due to business and toy viewpoint. It truly is meant to be a radical departure from the standard Rider formula in order to shake up things in response to the declining ratings and sales of the franchise, and well, it really wasn't supposed to be a Kamen Rider at first.

Well, I said I’d be here when there was a debut and I am a man of my word.

I was rewatching this episode yesterday to find out how to refer to a character without spoiling later developments and I discovered this as the first thing of note. An Easter egg for the first series where Taketera was the main producer (for those who are wondering it was Gekisou Sentai Carranger. It’s supposedly a popular series, but most of the opinions I’ve seen of it are negative. As is mine. But that’s not the point)

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And then there’s the guy on the bike. I won’t say who he is, just that he has a real name and that he’s been added to the credits. He’s played by Jyoji Shibue, who had recently come off a year as the male lead in the live-action Sailor Moon (the one that had Scissors Undead from the last season as one of the villains)

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And in addition to Zanki (which is shorthand for ZANgeKi no onI, literally Slashing Demon), we also have a name drop for the guy who Hibiki talks to over the phone with about him. That doesn’t just happen.

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And finally, I’ll mention that Shibue has been fairly active in Kamen Rider video games the last few years. The only reason he’s not in Zi-O is that Super Sentai poached him to guest star as, fittingly enough, a Hibiki-esque character.

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This would be a good opportunity to give some details on the different types of Makamou and the corresponding Oni equipped to exterminate them. The Bakegani introduced in this episode is a sea type, unlike the Tsuchigumo and Yamabiko which are land types.

Percussion Oni handle land types, Wind Oni handle sky types and String Oni handle sea types. However, with a good strategy, any Oni can substitute.

Zanki's injury meant Hibiki had to be dispatched instead and as you saw, he didn't really have a good plan to counter the corrosive slime which resulted in his first onscreen defeat. He lost cause he was unprepared. This is a parallel to Shounen feeling unprepared for his entry exams. It's like Hibiki's battles are a dramatization of Shounen's normal human problems.

No? It doesn't really matter to me, because the small-scale drama is more interesting than the monster fighting.

It's a guy who turns into a superhero to defeat monsters, with a heavy emphasis on human connections and allegorical struggles for growing up. It's a Kamen Rider show. I get that it wasn't originally planned to be, but it definitely is now.

Like, if I start making a pizza, and halfway through I make a calzone out of the same ingredients, is it always and forever a pizza? Is it a calzone in name only? Or did I make enough of a conscious decision to change it so that it could be considered a different thing now?

Thanks! And it's good to hear that Hibiki's been kicking around some aspect of the franchise!

Yeah, that's something the really helps tie the series together at this point, how the Hibiki and Asumu plots rhyme a bit. They don't beat you over the head with it (ironic, considering Hibiki's fighting style), it's just there in the background. It's good writing.

I don't have a whole lot to contribute about episode 5, especially since Sh Ranger mentioned how nicely the A/B plots parallel one another; but being the trivia hound that I am, I was watching an interview with Shigeki Hosokawa (Hibiki's actor) from the show's DVD releases, and he called attention to something about the first two episodes I thought would be fun to share:

Yakushima is famous for raining like crazy. It was almost pure luck they got to shoot in the weather they did, and knowing this in addition to everything else about those episodes, I'm starting to think the hypothetical version of Takatera I wrote in my first post here wasn't nearly as crazy as the real deal is. Like he seriously dragged the whole crew out to this island just because it looks pretty.

Well, previously he goes to the mountain for the memorial, but he's likely considered "pure of heart" and something surreal about that and Hibiki just can't be... left alone? But don't expect for the bolded one. Asumu And man, just judging this one by "not really a funny plotline"? Geez... Other than that, I don't really know about community's general consensus of Asumu, other than what you said for him being easy to root for. I'm afraid of him being singled out for being so lame and generic, especially in comparison to the "alpha" Hibiki.

Same dullness as... Asumu above in school. Yeah just that. Any routine job activities are like that, and probably this one shows more of a Rider, in non-fighting part.

Ah.. didn't you say the monsters are what you seek in that series because of them not being grounded and full of insanity? In contrast to, what stated, this one taking place in the real world, the setting and characters feel very true to life.

And... wait (dunno if you've) until you learn about Kasumi's surname, just wait, I won't tell you but that should surely get something of you. It's really on point for, what I also claim multiple times before (s̶o̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶e̶?̶), the point of not everyone is as strong as Hibiki, with that being the reason to keep Rider and supernatural identity as secrets (so far it seems that they only stay at the mountain). And Asumu's mom is mentioned it's Adachi. And Kasumi's actually the foil to someone... probably not introduced here yet actually. Dunno why for some reason, appearence wise to me, Kasumi gives me Rina Abe vibes, and Hibiki... gives me Isaka vibes.

Not to ruin it but this is something that happened in various, probably almost all series too.

At least he didn't build an entire island just for them to film on!

It... I wasn't judging it! I was just noting that it wasn't that funny. I then said it was charming! Like, immediately afterwards! Something can be designated as "not" something without it being derogatory! I really liked this episode!

If anyone's got something negative to say about Asumu, I haven't heard it yet. Everyone here seems pretty interested in his journey.

Yeah, but that's also Asumu's name, which gets us back to the Hirose problem from Blade, so I think I'm just going to call her AsuMum. Settled!