[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 MOVIE - PARADISE LOST

OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE no I'm just kidding I didn't watch the movie yet

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 29



--1--

Why isn't Kaixa in the credits yet? He's been in this show for, like, more than 15 episodes. They put all of Team Orphnoch in the credits before they even all had debuted, and nothing for Kaixa in what would've been four months? Crazy!

In fact, they've added nothing to the credits. No Faiz Accel, no Lucky Clover, nothing. Weird! I wonder why?

--2--

It's nice to ponder unanswerable questions like that (unless someone wants to point me to an Inoue interview where he says he despises the weakness of altering credit sequences), since a lot of this episode is given over to Not All Orphnochs.

It's, y'know, not where I thought this episode was going to go! There's a little bit more of the Delta vs Faiz/Kaixa fight in the beginning, which leads into Lucky Clover's contest to see who can kill a traitor Orphnoch first. It's... it is not the smoothest transition. It's mostly Kitazaki saying that, while Murakami wants more belts, he doesn't give a shit. He just wants to fight traitors right now. And, sure, Kitazaki is an impetuous monster, but it feels a little poorly motivated. Like, he doesn't even know Yuuji's name yet. Why make killing him (or another member of Team Orphnoch) a priority? It's something I could maybe explain away as Kitazaki wanting the fresh challenge of a new Orphnoch, rather than fighting Riders again, but it's still a thin motivation.

But it mostly doesn't matter, since that's not really what the episode's about? It's a framework, but it's not what the episode's about.

It's about Orphnochs, and whether they're worth sparing.

--3--

Takumi's having a tough time of it, after seeing Skullcandy kill Saya. He wants to believe in the innate humanity of Orphnochs, but the murder of someone he'd grown to tolerate (Takumi's closest type of relationship!) by what was basically her brother, that changes his feelings. He's seen the worst Orphnochs have to offer, and now that's all he can see.

One of my favorite threads in this episode is watching Takumi just process his grief in the most Takumi ways possible. When Keitaro is crushed by Saya's death, Takumi tries to console him, but he does it by saying Hey You Can Stop Mourning Her Pretty Soon. He's trying to say something about the necessity of letting grief end, of letting someone live in your memory, but he's incredibly/naturally tactless, and it just makes Keitaro wonder what in the hell is wrong with Takumi. Which in turn makes Takumi defensive, and more tactless, and withdrawn. It's a classic Keitaro/Takumi Mess-Around!

It keeps Takumi in a funk long enough to be a horrible employee of a dry cleaners, loudly berating customers to do their own damn laundry. Takumi is losing his mind about all of this rage that he can't put anywhere.

Cue Yuuji, the rest of Team Orphnoch, a melon, and some awkward conversation.

Literally nothing makes me happier on this show than when we get all six of the main cast in a scene. Having them all sit around a table, speculating about whether Orphnochs are innately human or whether human-seeming Orphnochs are an aberration, it's a great way to surface the episode's themes while still being as charming as possible. Because, like, it's a pretty split decision! Yuuji's confident that Orphnochs are human, and so is Mari, but Kaido needs some prompting. (At least he got his Sour Kelp!) Yuka's onboard... sort-of? Keitaro is so ashamed to be around Yuka that he abstains. And Takumi thinks it's a question that can't be answered by a vote, partially because he's currently being outvoted.

It's a big question, and one the show isn't super into answering right this minute. Mostly because it's using that discussion to reiterate how in-the-dark Yuuji and Takumi are about their secret identities, and that's important to do since they are no longer in the dark.

--4--

THAT ENDING!

I'd gotten so used to Takumi and Yuuji just missing the chance to learn each other's secrets that, uh, I sort-of forgot they actually could learn them! And holy shit they just did!

For a show that's had a crazy amount of good cliffhangers, this one has to be in the top 3. (I can't rank them, but this was a really good one.) This episode had given us both a very sweet Takkiba scene (Yuuji asks if he wants to talk about what's bothering him!), as well as another brutal Faiz/Horsepower fight. We'd seen the bond of their friendship, and the depths of their hatred. That's precisely the moment you want to expose their secrets.

Oh, also, Delta shoots a billion missiles at them from the most Delta ride machine.

--5--

Just a top-to-bottom great episode, even if it surprisingly moved Delta to the background a bit. Seeing the whole core cast together is a huge treat, and the way the show used Saya's death to reexamine some of Takumi's heroism, that was unexpected but really neat to see.

Didn't really get to talk about it, but goddamn do I love the story this show is telling with Houjou. He's shed the skin of a tactical genius and emerged, gloriously, as a snivelling coward, terrified of Lucky Clover's resident bully. He's full Houjou, and it's my lifeblood. That scene with him hiding on the roof, being consoled maternally by Kageyama! Beautifully shot and so wonderfully weird! I love him as a helpless baby!