[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 46



I may not love this series as a year-long story about Mirror World, and the mysteries it holds, but I do love it as a series exploring Shinji's character. That arc, the challenges he faces, it's a really great use of the Kamen Rider franchise.

This episode exposes the series to date as a slowly closing trap around Shinji's moral code. It's fiendish, the way he's got no daylight in this one. He'll hate himself forever if he takes part in the Rider Battles, but he can't bear knowing he let Yui disappear. It's an impossible choice.

It's also one the show has spent 45 episodes leading up to. We've seen Shinji try to balance his Rider Should Not Harm Rider ethos with an ever more deadly cast of adversaries, and the ticking clock of Yui's Worst Birthday Ever is the most terrible consequence yet. It's Ren who lays out the dilemma cleanly for Shinji, letting him know what he's deciding by not deciding. Worse, Ren kicks the legs out of Shinji's entire code, positing that Shinji's indecision all year has been worthless, terminally unhelpful. It's that argument, and an It's Just A Flesh Wound dismissal from a slowly dissolving Yui that gets him to make a choice, to choose to fight to save Yui. It's a strong scene. It's a useful scene.

It's the wrong choice.

I'm probably not going out on a limb when I speculate that, with four episodes to go in a series defined by the innate humanity of Shinji Kido, we aren't going to get a conclusion where Shinji hacks his way through Ren and Kitaoka to save Yui's life. That... I feel like that'd be an unsatisfying ending? I didn't really love it in that 13 Riders special, after forty-odd minutes of story, and I can't imagine it's going to land better after 40-odd episodes of story.

But I really like that they're letting Shinji make the wrong choice. If everything in his story has been leading up to this, that includes all of his self-examination, his frustration, his hopes, his losses, all of it. It's all a journey, even the missteps. And that means he needs to screw up, to get it all wrong, to learn the wrong lesson, before he can get the good ending. I need to see Shinji take bad advice from Ren (Ren! Why would you ever think you were getting unbiased advice on whether you should or should not kill Riders from Ren?!), in order to see him understand why that's the wrong choice. And I need the show to make it impossible for Shinji to avoid making that wrong choice. I need there to be a major character in danger, a ticking clock, a realization that inaction is cowardice, for Shinji to leap to the conclusion that the only answer is playing Shiro's game. Because it's not. It can't be. And it's not heroism if Shinji obliterates his soul to save Yui.

And, boy, heroism and what it means! Seems like that's of thematic relevance in, uh, probably every episode of this show! It certainly is in this one, as we get not just Shinji's Choice, but the final fate of Toujou. After getting sound advice from Kitaoka (Kitaoka!) that heroism isn't something you can strive for, Toujou's world is shattered. Everything to date has led him into despair, so he wants to wipe the slate clean. He (mostly) burns Professor's notes, although Shinji sees enough to get him worried. (More on that later, hopefully.) But he wants to get rid of all of the other Riders, too, to regain his heroism and silence the haters. His whole Three O'Clock At The Bike Racks challenge works pretty well, drawing Knight, Zolda and Ouja into an awesome three-way fight. It's all a distraction, though, for Toujou to douse Asakura's car in gasoline. The car explodes, nearly killing Kitaoka and Goro, and probably killing Asakura. I'm... you know, I'm not certain Asakura's dead. In a show with mirror escapes and contract monsters, there's some wiggle room. I'm not counting that dude out just yet.

I am counting Toujou out, however. As he pats himself on the back for killing between zero and three Riders, he sees a truck bearing down on a father and son. A father and son that remind him of Professor, and Son of Professor. In a moment, he pushes them out of the way, saving them by sacrificing himself. That moment, I like to think it's regret over his actions. That without having time to justify himself, he snapped to a decision that was based in guilt, in the relationship he destroyed. Or maybe it wasn't based in anything. Maybe it was someone who never understood what heroism was, never felt it within himself, finding the resolve to do something good for no reason other than that he could. Maybe Toujou always could've been a hero, if he'd stopped trying to be a hero. At least he got his wish, in the end.