[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 19



--1--

Aw, what a sweet episode.

I feel like I’m going to bring this one up a bunch if I ever see people declare Faiz to be the Mean Kamen Rider series. There’s such a sweetness to this story, to Keiko’s arc, and it’s all based in Faiz storytelling. It’s just, like, tuned to Aw instead of Yikes.

--2--

Like, Keiko’s whole motivation and attitude, it’s no different than arcs we’ve gotten with Yuka or Takumi. She’s lost something important in her life, and being reminded of it makes her lash out. She ruins clean white clothes because clean white clothes used to make her happy, and now she can’t have them. She pushes people away because she’s been abandoned by her amnesiac mother, and she doesn’t want to be abandoned again. This… this is all very Faiz!

It’s fun to see this stuff play out with a child, though, because it makes some of the more extreme pieces of acting out seem more realistic. Not that I’ve got a problem with extreme behavior with the cast of Faiz! It’s just, Keiko racing out of Team Orphnoch HQ because she’s having a tough time emotionally is a little easier to understand than, say, Kaido constantly racing out of Team Orphnoch HQ while Yuka yells after him.

They’re all children, is maybe what I’m saying, and Keiko’s story is no different than any of theirs. She just gets to have a happy ending, while they’re still mired in their own neuroses.

--3--

Boy, pretty fun to see all six members of the classic cast, though, right? If last time I was complaining (“complaining”) about how often folks just run into each other, this episode is the reason why I’m not mad about that storytelling choice. I love how intertwined the two casts are, how easily Mari can just be at Team Orphnoch HQ, or how Team Faiz will call Team Orphnoch to let them know how Keiko’s doing. That shit never gets old with me.

And, in general, it’s cool to see Keiko float between the two groups, to see how each side deals with her. Team Orphnoch doesn’t really get a lot of time around her, but it’s nice to see that they welcome her maybe a little quicker than Team Faiz. Yuka sees a hurt little girl and immediately feels protective; Kaido sees a chance to preen; and Yuuji feels sympathy for someone lacking a family. It’s, again, not a lot (they really only get one scene together), but it makes total sense how they’d all react to Keiko.

--4--

The return of Fungus The Clown makes a little less sense, if I’m being honest. It’s a part of this story that never really connects, thematically or plot-wise. He’s just a monster clown who scares a little girl, but he’s not really relevant to the story.

For Keiko, it's not like this monster is some nemesis who's responsible for her mom's accident or anything. Her problems aren't even Orphnoch adjacent! (I mean, there's almost definitely some Smart Brain stuff at play, but it's incidental at this point in her story.) She's a girl who's had a tough go of it, and it's all about reaching her emotionally. Having an Orphnoch show up moves the spotlight off of Keiko, the character who this whole story centers on.

The Orphnoch ends up being a thing that makes Keitaro scared, and Keitaro then has to overcome that fear to protect Keiko. But, like, this story isn’t about Keitaro being scared, it’s about Keitaro trying to help a little girl feel better about her tragic existence, as well as maybe trying to fix that tragic existence. Like, Keiko wasn’t mad at him because an Orphnoch attacked and he didn’t fight it, she’s mad because he blew up at her and told her to go away. Him fighting an Orphnoch is a) not smart, and b) not what she was upset about.

Even for Keitaro’s arc, again, he wasn’t beating himself up about being a coward for the first part of this story, so having him physically protect Keiko doesn’t really solve his story. His story resolution is about reaffirming his desire to improve Keiko’s life, and he does that by being Keitaro, which is to say by doing a ton of laundry. Having that clown keep showing up, it feels perfunctory, irrelevant, a distraction. There’s a story they’re telling about someone protecting people’s smiles, and then a random monster shows up randomly. It’s my least favorite way of using a monster in a Kamen Rider story, and it’s structurally the only real problem this episode has.

--5--

The fight against Fungus The Clown isn’t even the memorable fight from the episode! Faiz’s fight against Horsepower was pretty great (with Horsepower going to Four-Legged Drive mode), but the final Faiz Fight against Mr. J had one of the coolest finishes this show has had yet.

Mr. J shows up after Fungus has been destroyed, and it goes back and forth for a minute. Faiz goes for his kick finisher, but Mr. J blocks it. But then Faiz boosts off of Mr. J’s block, puts on his duster in mid-air, and then brings it down with an Exceed Charge to finish off Mr. J.

Holy shit. It was so impressive, and it’s the kind of thing I love to see a show do. It’s fairly typically for a tough enemy to be finished off with the hero just, like, trying harder, and that’s fine. Or maybe an ally helps out, and that’s usually neat. But when the hero has to fight smarter, when they have to combine the tools they’ve already got to beat someone that’s previously had their number (I mean, both of Mr. J’s other defeats are at Kaixa’s hands), it’s my favorite thing to see in a Kamen Rider fight.

So, yeah, great fight for a surprisingly sweet episode!