[Kamen Rider Die]

All of the scenes of Sano's success, I love how unreal they are. There's a dreamlike quality to them, all these old men telling him how great he is, how special and perfect he is. The speed at which he ascends to the heights he always dreamed of, it's bizarre. It'd be a joke, if it didn't feel like a parable.

It's heightened, but everything in this story feels heightened. Or not everything, and that's why the heightened stuff works so well? It's that apartment. It's like an anchor for the story, a refuge from a world of dreams and nightmares. Toujou smashing the windows, covering the reflections, it sets that part of the story outside of the narrative, allows it to be smaller, more intimate. The time spent on Toujou just getting out of bed! Those smaller scenes, they emphasize and underline how absurd Sano's life has become, how little he's changed fundamentally despite the absurdity. He can have a flashy car and a briefcase of cash (that look on Ren's face, the way money doesn't matter except this isn't money this is MONEY), but he's still a small man, trying to figure himself out, trying to understand his own motivations.

That apartment. Man. It's key to what makes this story work, I think.