[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 37



For a show with a dead-simple premise, FIGHT OR DIE, there's a real sense of aimlessness going on right now. Ren's goal is saving Eri, but he's never sure how to do that, and it seems always just out of reach. Shinji wants to stop the Rider Battles, but he still doesn't know how to do that. Yui's been attacked, but it's not clear why, or if it's going to happen again. Eri's upset, and perpetually Almost Dead. It's a weird, shitty time for our main cast.

It makes for, honestly, not a fun time for me watching this show. There's this, like, morass everyone's stuck in. Characters like Reiko and the Second Secret Science Society are making moves, putting together plans, and generally trying to solve their problems. (Kitaoka and Reiko! Please let me watch that show instead of this one!) With our heroes, there's a lot of questioning, of letting people down, of not knowing how best to help, of being sort-of helpless.

It's an interesting idea to play with, but a frustrating one for me to watch. I get the need for these characters to feel overwhelmed, for the stakes to feel insurmountable and the choices to feel invisible. If there's going to be a triumph, there needs to be a time of being behind the eight-ball, of feeling adrift. It's just, to have all three of the leads going through it simultaneously, it doesn't feel so much like thematic importance, it feels like miserablism.

Shinji's got his typical There's No Such Thing As A Bad Suggestion attitude at play, going back to the Second Secret Science Society for a hint, a clue, something to help him stop the Rider Battles. They don't give him answers, but they do give him a lecture. They've got a number-centric view of heroism, where the plan that saves the most people justifies its own costs. It gets Shinji thinking, but it doesn't really come into play in this episode. It's also totally incompatible with Shinji's worldview, so I'll be interested in seeing how he inevitably refutes it. But, like, that's not a thing that happens in this episode. In this episode, he's confused and stymied. He's got no outs and things just keep happening around him.

Things like Yui being attacked by Kamen Rider Beetleborg, a thing that definitely happens and also definitely is not explained. Also, it doesn't do more than generate another Shiro Sure Pissed Some People Off dialogue. There's no sense of trying to keep Yui safe from violent abductions after this, which, really weird choice. (Shinji abandons Yui right at the end of the next scene, and for the rest of the episode, so, uh, hope that Rider doesn't ever come back I guess!) It's almost formulaic, and the characters bizarrely treat it like formula afterwards, like Yui almost being murdered in the Mirror World is just going to keep happening every day, like a sunset.

It's Ren's story that disappointed me the most, though. After a huge change like Eri being awake for the first time in a year, all of the Ren stuff is just Boring Asshole Ren (not even Fun Asshole Ren!) and his eternally jeopardized girlfriend. The worst stakes I can imagine for this storyline is waking Eri up and STILL having her be mysteriously imperiled, meaning Ren has to keep fighting for the exact same reasons he's been fighting for the whole series, and I'll be goddamned if that's not what this show decided to do. Such a letdown. Could've evolved it, changed it, but it's, like, a minor inflection at best. (Now Eri's pleading with Ren in real life instead of in a dream sequence!) Ren has to keep fighting, he's pushing away his friends, Eri could die at any moment, etc. Bummer.

This whole episode, at least the main cast stuff, was a real bummer for me. I felt like every story choice had me rooting for the heroes less than before. Contract Monsters help those who help themselves, right? But so much of this felt like characters going through motions because they've got no better ideas, and while that's a complicated concept that could have some nuanced results, what I watched was just a slog, all repetition and no forward movement.

Not one of my favorites!