[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 40



--1--

I do like the new suit! As a Ryuki fan, I dig the silver chest plate over the red bodysuit. I’m a little surprised that they went with that color scheme the year after Ryuki aired, but maybe kids didn’t notice? Still, it’s a very cool look that has an energy to it that sells the concept of Unbridled Power or whatever. It’s a neat design!

And, shit, what an action sequence to debut it! If I was a kid in Japan watching this, I would be begging a parent to get me that toy. It’s strong enough to handle the deadliest Orphnochs, it’s got a giant sword, it’s got shoulder cannons, and it’s got a jetpack. It’s the coolest Rider that’s been on the show so far, and it cut a train car in half.

Incredibly fun opening for a show!

--2--

My favorite touch in the episode, though, was how the appearance of Faiz Blaster (yes?) affected Kitazaki. To explain why, I’m going to go slightly off-topic.

Let me talk about Orange Cassidy.

(I was at that event, it was phenomenal.)

Orange Cassidy is one of my favorite wrestlers right now. He’s in AEW, which is my favorite wrestling promotion right now. When AEW was set up at the C2E2 convention this past February, and we (me and my business partner) were there for one day to do a bunch of business stuff, we absolutely spent an hour of that precious time standing in line to get a photo with Orange Cassidy.

The thing with Orange Cassidy, though, is that he’s the most low-energy wrestler ever. That’s his gimmick. He slowly walks to the ring. He rolls in under the bottom rope. He wrestles with his hands in his pockets. His superkicks, normally aimed at an opponent’s head, connect weakly with their shins. It’s like watching someone wrestle in slow-motion.

And the crowd eats it up. Ever minor movement is treated with a roar, like it’s the most impressive physical display of all time. It’s hilarious. Being in the crowd for an Orange Cassidy match is electric.

But there’s a thing that happens in each match, where, out of nowhere, Orange Cassidy turns it on. He gets fired up, he starts sprinting around the ring, leaping through the air like an acrobat. The joke, said by the announcers, is that He’s Going To Try.

That’s pretty much what I thought about, as Kitazaki lost his shit after narrowly escaping Faiz Blaster. He’s a bored combatant, slacking off during fights because he doesn’t feel challenged. But now, now that he was whipped so soundly, He’s Going To Try.

I’m looking forward to it!

--3--

This episode, though! I mean, if you can tell by how much of this episode I just spent talking about a North American wrestler, this episode didn’t really land for me.

There’s ways I’m trying to talk myself into finding something positive, but I don’t love talking myself into liking something. I didn’t like this one, you guys.

It’s pretty much all because of how the show centers itself, and what Mari and Takumi are dealing with, on the Redemption Of Sawada.

Like, that is a gamble. That is a character that has earned basically zero sympathy, and he gets the sad death scene. That is the emotional crux of the episode, and the only way it works is if you feel Sawada’s death is something to avenge. And, I don’t?

It’s a very Kamen Rider thing, to take someone responsible for atrocities (Sawada has killed so many people) and say Well He Was Just Confused And Hurting. And, sure, Sawada didn’t ask to be made an Orphnoch. And Sawada was having a difficult time navigating his human emotions with his Orphnoch freedoms. But he killed so many people. He killed Mari. I don’t know that he ever apologized for any of that? Ever?

So that part of it, for me, completely didn’t land. I was not looking for the show to redeem Sawada, and its attempt made a whole lot of false assumptions about how that character made me feel. As a way of unifying Mari and Takumi’s story, though, it worked a little better, with a couple huge caveats.

Honestly, though, the scene of Mari and Takumi just talking in the church was doing all the work for me. If they hadn’t interrupted it for the fight, it would’ve made this episode a winner. I liked that it neatly closed off the storyline about acceptance by leaving it up to Takumi. Mari can accept him, but Takumi has to feel like he deserves that acceptance. He has to hear Mari say he’s her friend and a good person, and he needs to feel like those statements are valid. I think that scene gets 75% to where it needs to be in its truncated form.

The rest of that storyline concludes with Sawada’s death, and what Sawada trying to redeem himself means to them.

The big problem I have is that I barely understand why Mari is so desperate to see Sawada redeemed. If I squint, I can see it as similar to Takumi’s hopes for Sawada earlier in the series, that it proves something about Takumi that Mari needs him to know. But, still, he straight up murdered her! Unapologetically! And she’s still assuming he’ll turn a corner! WHAT DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO DO ON THIS SHOW TO GET MARI TO DROP THE -KUN HONORIFIC?! Having her show this much blind faith in terrible people who have abused her and her trust… I don’t see it as a laudable character trait!

But, the point Mari’s trying to make is a good one, that it’s within Takumi’s power to be human instead of a monster. It’s a choice he gets to make. Sawada wasn’t a monster because he was an Orphnoch, he was a monster AND he was an Orphnoch. Just being an Orphnoch doesn’t make becoming a monster inevitable. It’s all just choices.

Or, that’s what I want to take out of that death scene, because the alternative is that Mari was willing to forgive both a weeks-long killing spree and her own goddamn murder because a boy who had a crush on her back in school helped out a friend of hers once. God, I hope that wasn’t supposed to be what I got out of that scene.

--4--

Still, at least wasn’t as hilariously (hilariously) stupid as the Delta stuff with Mihara and Rina.

It… I cannot take a single thing that happened in this plotline seriously. It’s ridiculously overwrought and so ludicrously high-stakes (Rina gets hit by a truck to save the Delta Gear that Mihara threw into the street!) that it’s practically a parody of a Hero’s Journey story.

Rina’s speech to Mihara, about how they have to fight to make a home, is mercifully brief, but also totally bizarre. People keep saying that Mihara has to fight to build a home, but I’m not seeing any proof of that. When Kusaka was saying it, you could (reasonably!) write it off as manipulative bullshit. Because, y’know, Kusaka was saying it. Here… is Rina brain damaged? Is that the excuse? Because I’m pretty sure Mihara has a literal home to go to, and a job. Just let the man quit being a superhero already. The Delta Gear works for literally anyone. Let Mari wear it, for chrissakes. There are so many people in Japan who are allowed to live normal lives, let Mihara be one of them already.

I mean, I’m ranting about it, but it was gloriously stupid. Just jaw-droppingly ill-considered. My compliments!

--5--

This show is in… oof. It ain’t in a great place. There’re things that work great (all the Mari and Takumi stuff sings, the Kaido/Yuka skit at the orphanage was funny), but the show keeps adding layers to the Ryusei School story that compare unfavorably in my mind to Agito (that Rina speech is 100% the Agito theme and is totally misplaced on this show), and it keeps backgrounding strong characters (Yuuji is a no-show, there’s the one Kaido/Yuka scene, remember when Keitaro had stories about him) to clutter up with a plot that doesn’t have an emotional weight to it.

I feel like I’m watching a great concert with a killer setlist, and then two-thirds of the way through the band’s like Hey Let’s Just Jam For The Rest Of The Night. It’s real frustrating to feel like the wheels are coming off of this thing, you guys!