[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 29 - 30



This one had a very Back In The Kuuga Mines feel to me. Not bad, but overly concerned with a million supporting cast things, to the detriment of the Grongi plotline. Overstuffed. Too many stories to serve in just two episodes.

That said, I always think it's cool when a Kamen Rider show can check back in with a former victim (or villain), so it's nice to get a return visit from both Chouno and Mika. Well, more the former than the latter. Chouno is still hilariously bad at living his life, while Mika's just, like, happy to be there. It's cute, but it makes her blend into a few already slightly-dull storylines. (It's a tough choice which plot I care less about: Will Enokida and Jean get together, or will Nana get Godai for her own? I hate both of these timewasters so, so much.) With Chouno, the stakes are so ludicrous (he only has 30 minutes to turn in his shitty drawing!) and the advice he gets is so relentlessly bad (shut up about your problems and be happy, idiot, because Godai is suffering for you) that I really, really love it. I mean, sure, I wish it had some nuance or made any kind of sense, but if it can't then I'd rather the show err on the side of Insane. You know?

The rest of it, eh. We finally, after five episodes, get an answer for why Godai can power up. It's what the show hinted at, that the defibrillation unlocked something in the Amadam, but it's still frustrating that they couldn't just tell us that back when it first happened. Waiting this long, it feels like someone finally watched episode 24 and went, "Holy shit, did we not explain this onscreen at all? Shit. Shit. Okay, uh, right away in #29, then. Second scene. Oh god, how did no one catch this?!" The Grongi plot has some neat potential, with the roulette wheel and the three Grongi in the gang, but it comes down to the same "catch them mid-Murder Spree and explode them" as the show used to do, which I'd hoped they'd outgrown. Tsubaki and Sakurako fret about what Kuuga's power is doing to Godai, but it's all theoretical at this point. The police get better bullets. A new bike is under construction. Pole Pole exists. It's a lot of checking in and setting up, but without adding up to much.

Not a great story, and they could absolutely lay off of It Is Impossible To Live In Tokyo as a theme for a couple episodes, but it was okay enough to breeze through. A decent Kuuga.