[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

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The main thrust of what Mari’s speech is trying to do is be the counterpoint to Kaido’s take on dreams. For Mari, for Team Faiz, dreams are what motivates us to be better people, what gives our lives meaning. There's struggle, but without that struggle we'd be less as people. For Kaido and Team Orphnoch, dreams are what haunt us, and other humans exist to keep our dreams just out of our reach. The struggle only has value if you can reach your goal, and falling short is a fate worse than death. Collectively, it’s a nice take on how having a goal can provide shape and purpose to life, but being too caught up on achieving a goal can lead to sadness and ruin.

It’s way more solid for Team Orphnoch, though, because *gestures at Team Orphnoch*. These three have been ground up in pursuit of their dreams, whether that’s love (Yuuji), art (Kaido), or not being emotionally abused 24/7 (Yuka). Kaido 100% feels robbed by the universe, and it’d be way worse if he found out “the universe” was his old guitar instructor, who is also Owlphnoch. (Something I wish someone didn’t spoil before this episode!)

It’s a really cool decision to have Yuuji and Yuka find out about Owlphnoch’s role in Kaido’s injury, but not tell him. It’s got the dual purpose of letting Kaido’s catharsis be his mentorship of the first-year, keeping that plotline nice and clean, while giving Yuuji new reasons to doubt humanity. Keeping Kaido out of those revelations means the Owlphnoch fight is against Horsepower, though, and it’s just not as compelling to me as the Faiz/Owlphnoch fight. They go back to the well of having mournful guitar-playing as the soundtrack, even though the two fights it’s over don’t really match the pace. And then halfway through they’re just like Okay Hard Rock Fight Song and that’s what we get over the monster immolations. It’s a smart sequence (no one on this show does Aggrieved And Confused like Yuuji) right up until it sort-of shrugs through the action. I love the idea of Takumi and Yuuji both protecting people without the people they're protecting even realizing it, but the actual mechanics of the fights were a little lacking.

But, still, the Kaido stuff was pretty strong. They’ve made him way more of the Brooding Bad Boy than I was expecting, and he really nails it. He’s got the chops to play psycho killer one episode, and proud mentor the next.

In Episode 5, the car scene established an important difference between the motivations of Kiba and Yuka. Kiba was happy in the past, but it's dead to him now so he has to change. Yuka never had a past like that, so becoming an Orphenoch was the best thing to happen to her. Kaido is kind of a medium. His past was taken from him, except his dream prevents him from moving on. Losing his humanity was nothing compared to that.

There's a great parallel between Kiba and Takumi in the climax where the former recites Kaido's speech as he's about to avenge his dream that was destroyed by Owl, and the latter delcares his intent to protect dreams. I like how smoothly these two plots come together to show that dreams are sacred and not something to be taken lightly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--4--

Also, damn, a whole lot of mentorship in this one!

It’s Takumi’s declaration, that he’ll fight so others can follow their dreams, that puts the button on the sort-of sub-theme in this episode of the value of mentorship.

Both Takumi and Kaido are frustrated by being on the outside and looking in. They see people pursuing dreams, and they hate it. Takumi because he doesn’t understand it, and Kaido because he misses it. But even if they can’t enact their own dreams, maybe they can work to help others achieve their dreams. Takumi doesn’t viscerally understand Mari’s connection to her dream, but he wants to give her the safety to pursue it. Kaido can’t ever play the way he used to, but the first-year can, and maybe with Kaido’s guidance some small part of his dream can live on.

Even the guest stars get in on the mentorship thread, with Owlphnoch as the mentor that needs to keep you in your place for their own ego, and Mari’s salon boss as the mentor that pushes you because they know you can take it. They’re not really that thematically linked (the salon lady seems too busy to want to destroy Mari’s hands, for example), but it’s nice to get a couple more examples of ways mentors can be complicated.

Speaking of complicated, one thing I’d love to get people’s take on is the ending sequence of Kaido destroying his guitar. It starts with Kaido showing pride in knowing that the first-year is good enough to be the Kaido he never got to be, so that Kaido’s dream can live on through him. And then he throws his guitar away, putting that part of his life to rest. It’s… I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel good about that? There’s a reading where it’s for the best, Kaido flushing out his toxic jealousy in favor of a fresh start. But the destruction in the final shot feels like it’s all a mistake, an abdication of his humanity in favor of a future as an Orphnoch. Thoughts?

As others have pointed out, this episode is an important turning point for Takumi and features his iconic line about protecting dreams. He's scared of hurting people and has no self-confidence. But this responsibility of Faiz gives him purpose and the means to help people. It's exactly the boost he needed and that's why he's starting to take it more seriously. It's selfish, which is just like Takumi, but it's not wrong. A superhero deserves to feel some pride.

The guitar is symbolic of Kaido's "curse", the burden he carried from the dream he's unable to fulfill on his own. Having passed the curse on to his protege, he has created a legacy that will ensure his dream will become reality in the future and thus ending the curse for good. That doesn't mean he's going to embrace being a monster.

Kaido's arc is interesting since it deals with his backstory after his introduction in the previous arc. Of course, that's cause he's not an Original Orphenoch. Kiba and Yuka are mutants but he's more of a mutate. This means he doesn't possess the mutagen to turn other humans so Smart Brain will need to use his skillset in other ways.

Finally, the debut of Faiz Edge which I forgot to mention due to it being separate from the Faiz Gear briefcase. When Faiz diverts Photon Blood to the rod, you can see it light up similar to a Lazer Blade from the Uchuu Keiji series. Although this lighting feature was already revealed in the OP. It looks cool in action nevertheless!

Auto Vajin was a protective charm for Mari but it acts recklessly when "helping" Faiz with the friendly fire. In its debut fight, it attacked Faiz deliberately but it was in response to Mari as the Faiz Gear user was Cactus who it recognized as a threat. It's still a little humorous how Takumi, the primary user of the Gear, has to scold it for behaving this way.