Kamen Rider Gotchard Episode 42- "Let's Search! The 102nd & Brothers Thoughts!"
 

Houtaro and company learn of the 102nd Chemy.

It’s almost over thank Buddha

Gigist says @ 00:30 that Germain was destroyed, and Glion says @ 00:58 that his soul and Germain's body was fused, so there's little chance that Germain will ever appear again. Germain was supposed to be a God who ate Glion, a mere human, alive. Yet, Glion was not destroyed at all, but was still intact without zero damage whatsoever. The story showed that Germain took Glion into the Door of Darkness and ate him alive. Germain himself stated in the beginning of episode 40 that he was the one who ate Glion. But as it turned out, Germain merely kidnapped and imprisoned Glion inside his body. Germain was supposed to be a God but he couldn't even destroy a mere human. What a dumb God. It seems like Gaelya and Gigist will meet their demise through the same kind of stupid mistake and sheer incompetence. It's more and more the case that the Unholy Trinity (Gigist/Germain/Gaelya) = Gifu v2.0, or rather, Gifu v3.0. *facepalm

The liquid being synthesized by Houtarou is the hilariously named Ugokenakunar solution. Why does he hold it with his hands, not beaker glass holders? At least his inaptitude results in Rinne doing a funny pose, haha.

Sabimaru meets his older brother Kenichi who works at the Kongou lab which is led by an alchemist named Mami Kongou. The aim of the Kongou lab's main research is to create a new Chemy, not in accordance with the order from the AU which banned all Chemy researches 10 years ago. The Kongou lab even has its own library and study room. To avoid the misuse of the new Chemy, the Kongou lab disassociates itself from the AU due to Glion's influence in the AU. Spanner saying "Unfortunately, Glion was resurrected" @ 08:54 sounds like Poe Dameron's "Somehow, Palpatine returned" in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), haha. From the photo @ 13:31 it seems like Glion was once a prominent staff of the Kongou lab, or perhaps even its director. The Kongou lab could be the place where he gained the skills in creating The Sisters and his other homunculi.

Kenichi says that Isaac is the result of his research where he succeeded in applying alchemy in AI. I hope Isaac doesn't hallucinate and create an image of humans with three legs and mutated arms and hands with seven fingers, haha. His next goal is using Isaac as a bridge to communicate with Chemies, a goal which Houtarou also enthusiastically expects. It seems like there was something happened in the past that created some kind of rift between Sabimaru and Kenichi.

The 102nd Chemy that appears @ 14:35 can switch between 2 forms (turtle and tank). It's revealed that this Chemy was designed by Sabimaru and Kenichi when they were kids, and was named Kamedoon. I think the Kongou lab is also attempting to create a fusion/chimera Chemy, similar to the ones created by the Gotchardriver, although the resulting fusion Chemy is still erratic and unstable like shown in the subsequent scenes. If succeeded, this new technology could be later stolen by Glion and used to develop his own Driver (El Dorado Driver?). This new Driver could have the ability to fuse more than 2 Chemies. Glion still has several batches of unused RepliCC's, so this could be the route he's taking. Last week I hypothesized about the 102nd Chemy being an artificial, uber-chimera Malgam-Chemy similar to KR Juuga's chimera demon. It turns out that the 102nd Chemy is not that grandiose, haha.

Thematically, a research that attempts to fuse organic matter (turtle) and inorganic matter (tank) could be an allusion to transhumanism. Spanner's statement @ 18:04 could be an allusion to unethical bioengineering researches such as DNA editing and other forms of invasive genetic engineering, to which he actually agrees on the AU's decision to apply the precautionary principle by forbidding new development of Chemies since a decade ago. This is an interesting theme that should've been developed since early in the story, not in the last 20%. What have you been doing, Gotchard writers?

In the scene @ 21:59 Houtarou seemingly succeeds in defeating and capturing Kamedoon into an upgraded blank RCC, but @ 22:33 it's shown that the captured Chemy melts away from the RCC. Could this be a truly brand new kind of Chemy that can't be captured into an RCC?

And where's Fuga? He's nowhere to be seen when he's actually needed. It doesn't have to be the real Fuga. A surrogate Fuga is adequate. He could've given invaluable insights into the mysterious nature of the 102nd Chemy. It seems like Fuga will only appear when a retcon is needed by the story.

The Sisters are absent in this episode. None of them appear in this episode. Not even one frame.

Next week:

Glion ambushes the Kongou lab. He's shown holding Kenichi's copy of the Isaac tablet. What he's gonna do with it?

Who is the KR Dread that Sabimaru's fighting against? Is it Kenichi behind the mask? Is it just a puppet remote-controlled by Glion? Or is it just Sabimaru's imagination?

I see you're still not contributing anything to the discussion.

Nothing to contribute. Possibly the worst season since Skyrider.
And Skyrider was almost watchable

Okay so I find it pretty cool that despite it being pretty late into the series we're willing to do stuff like give Sabimaru a focus episode, and use that focus to expand on the different applications of alchemy via Kongou Laboratories. And hey if next week is any indication, we're actually going to cycle all the way back to Sabi's stint as Dread's first user and probably give him closure?! That's honestly great.

Other than that, this might be the most amusing Spanner's been in a while. Sticking him with a sassy kid was honestly just what he needed. I also like how this has been like one of the very few times he's fought together with just Houtaro and the finale of said fight is Houtaro dragging him to be shot out of a cannon lol

The most important thing though is that some kid drew a penguin Chemy, and 1) They have immaculate taste, 2) Bandai I need you to make new Chemy and have a Penguin be one of them for Gotchard post-series.

Well, as expected, this is a Sabimaru reveal episode. In this regard, the show does a great job, as we learn that Sabi grew up in an environment where his oddities were not at all such and were even encouraged, and we also get drama with his older brother and the unstable Chemi that they created together. Isaac's nature is also revealed and it turns out that Sh Ranger was right. In terms of the general plot, this is something straight out of Showa: a commune hidden from outsiders, which is aware of all the affairs of the heroes, but no one knows anything about it. Nowadays it’s common to send such stories to specials. Also, Spanner suddenly became concerned about combining AI and alchemy, although nothing bothered him the previous year.Well, it was possible to come up with a less ridiculous reason to leave the girls at the base.
However, the atmosphere itself, when the seemingly benevolent head of the laboratory keeps dark secrets, really hooked me. That and the riders shooting from a cannon is the kind of madness that you don’t even see in every tokusatsu. Plus, I liked that they immediately made it clear to us that Geryon is now equal in strength to the Kings, which means he has become even more dangerous. So I'm looking forward to the continuation.

Sorry for late reply!

Geryon wasn't a mere human though, he was a homunculus and it seems like Germain was unaware that Geryon had backed up his consciousness inside the engoldened Rubik's Cube. Germain did eat Geryon, did kill him, probably did everything he claimed to have done, but of course he was still an idiot and his critical mistake was making a servant smarter than himself. Gif was lucky that he lived in a world of gullible idiots, otherwise Revice would've ended much sooner. I would expect more of Gigist and maybe Gaelijah.

Wouldn't be the first time we've seen a "Kaizo Chemy". Mechanichani is part crab, part mecha. Gigalodon is part megalodon, part battleship. Spanner has grown to see Chemies as more than mere tools, but he's right that they're a potential threat to humanity and that the creation of more Chemies would increase that risk. Unless there's a way to permanently remove the malice attraction from the equation.

This is called spam.

Spanner is so serious that he must assert his Super A Rank Alchemist superiority to not only teenagers, but even a little kid. :lol

I was surprised to learn that the world of alchemy has an elementary school. It's good to see the kids' excitement about alchemy. So the Tsuruhara siblings created at least 13 versions of Isaac together, with the intention of bridging the communication gap between humans and Chemies, which would surely bring Houtarou's dream another step closer to reality. Like with Hopper1 in Episode 27, looks like Isaac can change his voice at his own judgment to match the one whose thoughts he's interpreting, but I guess Sabi is such a big Isaac fan that he just prefers using the default voice setting.

I think Kongo Laboratories is the same place as Katsuragi's lab?

The statement made by Germain in episode 40 @ 01:39 (that The Sisters are dolls that were made by dolls) didn't necessarily mean that Glion is also a doll/homunculus. It could also mean that humans were created by the Unholy Trinity. I've already elaborated about those 2 possibilities in my first comment in episode 40 thread. So far, the story and several characters (like Gigist and the other members of the Unholy Trinity) have repeatedly stated and implied that humans were created by the Unholy Trinity. So, that statement by Germain just reinforced the already established internal logic about the Unholy Trinity being Gods that created humans, which then created homunculi. Glion being a homunculus had never been shown, stated nor hinted at, except for that one ambiguous statement. If anything, Glion being a homunculus created several new questions, such as: When/why did the Unholy Trinity create Glion? What function did he serve, as the Unholy Trinity had already created humans? Are there other proto-homunculi besides Glion? Is there a connection between Glion and the Alchemist of Dawn? Etc. It would only make the story more convoluted.

If the golden Rubik cube only contained a copy of Glion's soul/consciousness, then how could the revived/copy Glion have the identical body/appearance of the original Glion? If the golden Rubik cube only contained a copy of Glion's soul/consciousness, then the the revived/copy Glion should only have the original Glion's soul/consciousness but have Germain's body/appearance. If the writers' excuse is "but Glion can do alchemy tricks so he can change his appearance at will", then I can only put the palms of my hands and my feet in my face, haha.

There's even a problem created by Glion's soul-copying technique in episode 42-43. If Glion is already a master (maybe even the master) at creating numerous amount of homunculi, then why doesn't he simply copy his soul into the bodies of blank homunculi, effectively replacing the homunculi's souls with his? He already managed to copy his soul into his favorite golden Rubik cube which was used by Atropos to revive him in episode 41. If Glion has already mastered the soul-copying technique, then why does he need a meandering plan in episode 42-43 to steal Kenichi's Isaac AI technology, which is also another technique at copying a human's soul? Don't know! This story has several logical anomalies that are very hard to resolve.

Speaking of Gifu, he didn't only live in a world of gullible idiots. He was also one of those gullible idiots, haha. No matter how idiotic and abominable Revice story was, it was nothing compared to (God forbid) Geats. If you said that Revice would've ended much sooner if everyone was not a total idiot, then (God forbid) Geats would've had no story at all. If Sueru had simply pressed the reset button on his universe simulation virtual reality video gaming console/supercomputer to reset the DGP/Sims program, then (God forbid) Geats wouldn't even have had a second of story, haha. This is why you never make the most powerful character in your story the villain. If you do so, then you'll create God-level logical anomalies that are almost impossible to resolve, if not actually impossible.

Definitely not the first time we see their appearance, but the first time we see how they appear. The story had never shown, stated, nor hinted at how Mechanichani became Mechanichani, or how Gigalodon became Gigalodon, or how Happyclover (my favorite Chemy) became a mixture of plant/fairy/Precure mascot creature, haha. This is the crucial internal logic that should've been expanded on very early in the story, not in the last 20%. Then again, it was my hypothesis before watching this episode. After watching it, not so much. It turned out Kamedoon was just a Chemy drawn and created by Kid Sabimaru and his older brother. Underwhelming.

Gotchard has the bad habit of showing a great, grandiose premise and then executing it in a half-hearted, underwhelming manner. This story's got huge amount of potential, be it from the internal logic or the plots/conflicts/intrigues, yet 50% of them are underwhelming and 30% are completely wasted.

Now onto Sabi’s background, he has an older brother named Kenichi, who seems to be cold to Sabi, but is more excited to talk about his alchemy research to others like Houtaro. Isaac is also explained as something meant for human-Chemy communication, not just something for the timid Sabi to convey his feelings, as other students at Kongo Laboratories also use them.

The main problem is about the 102nd Chemy, which should be forbidden. It’s heavily implied that Geryon is the one behind its creation. However, so far, the threat here is the director of Kongo Laboratories, Mami Kongo, thanks to her presumed past with Geryon which gave her conflicted feelings. Far from someone like Hijiri, but the other female Malgam here is also more innocuous than previous ones.

I don't know why Rinne and Renge are sidelined here due to a freeze alchemy locking them in place. I hope it can be something to preserve drama, like Nijigon wandering off after Supana dismisses Chemy as just tools to fight so Germain can beat up all Riders.

Supana’s not as good to children as previous standoffish Riders such as Kaito. His behavior puts Alumi off, and he’s focused on boasting about his achievements.

And in Revice Giff also ate Orteca, in ep. 28 (to Gotchard's 27 for Geryon), while Orteca returned after Giff's demise in the 40s.