[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--2--

And, shit, that’s probably a good emotional state to be in for this episode! It’s a darker one! Lots of emotions! As expected from the last cliffhanger, it’s centered on Yuka’s newfound status as a fugitive, and what that does to the status quo.

Team Faiz reacts pretty much how you’d think, and they’re mostly in the background for this one. Kusaka doesn’t shed any tears over one more hunted Orphnoch, Keitaro tosses out a conversation-starter that propels a fascinating subplot for Mari, and Takumi has some feelings about Orphnochs’ right to exist.

It’s Team Orphnoch that, naturally, gets a little bit more weight behind them, and I love the choices the story made. It hits the beats I’d want it to, and lets each character in the group do precisely what they’ve been designed to do.

Kaido immediately tells Yuka to turn herself in, which, yeah, smart decision. Things got out of control, he definitely doesn’t want any trouble with the cops, let’s get this all shut down. It’s casually cruel to Yuka, suggesting she’s brought danger into their lives, but I feel like that’s a Kaido move? He’s incredibly self-centered, and he’s one of the least empathetic people on the show. Him wanting to bail, to abandon Yuuji and Yuka the second things get dicey, I can see it.

Yuuji’s reaction is, again, totally in-line with where he sees himself within Orphnoch culture. He views himself as a leader, a revolutionary. He’s trying to carve out a place in the world for Orphnochs to hold onto their humanity. If this is happening to Yuka, it’s because she’s an Orphnoch. He can solve it by proving to the police that she’s done nothing wrong, that Orphnochs can be peaceful and human. He never once asks Yuka why the cops might’ve attacked her, of all people. He’s so high-minded, so Big Picture, that he takes on her burden since she’s an Orphnoch.

And of course, these decisions by Kaido and Yuuji are killing Yuka. This is her nightmare. Kaido is anxious and scared, and it’s her fault. Yuuji is going to sacrifice his safety for hers, and the guilt she feels is immense. Her life, her stability, it’s all been demolished.

There’s a very sweet callback the show does, where Yuka emails Keitaro to tell him about her dream. It’s the same thing she did when the walls were closing in on her back in school. She longed for isolation back then, for solitude. Here, her dream is of connection, of affection. She deserves love. She deserves family. She’s grown so much. And, to prove it, she makes the decision to turn herself in. There's an element, maybe, of the martyr complex she’s always had. She wants to make everyone happy, even if that makes her miserable. And, maybe, it’s because Kaido rejects her when she most needs support. Maybe it’s a choice she makes because she feels alone, abandoned.

But, I don’t want to see it that way. I like thinking of it as a maturity, as a realization that hiding in crushes, hiding in someone else’s sacrifice, it’s just another cage. Here, she gets to wipe the slate clean on her own terms. To not let Yuuji or Kaido wrest her story away from her, but to do the right thing, even if that means her dream is gone. It isn’t the cowardice of subsuming her hopes in order to follow someone else’s path, it’s the bravery to move forward by herself into uncertainty.

Yuka’s story… I love how many interpretations you can pull from it. I love how nuanced and poignant it gets to be. Yuka’s story, it’s the least showy, maybe? But it’s the saddest, and the most interesting to me.

Yuka's story is indeed the most interesting and most tragic. Maybe it's for the best in a way that she hasn't been involved in the plot recently. Out of all the characters, she really needed an escape from her terrible human life, a chance to be happy. Unfortunately, her happiness is temporary as now she finally has to deal with the burden of being an Orphenoch in a world where she isn't accepted. To paraphrase the theme song, she can't run from her dilemma anymore.

Kaido's reaction was insensitive but totally in character. It's reasonable that he wouldn't want to get in trouble with the cops. Yuka is a liability to him right now. It's also hypocritical that the guy who boasted several times about wanting to kill humans loses his cool when someone else actually kills humans. He's a hedonist with a conscience which means as much as he wishes he could just kill humans, he can't go through with it. He's all talk.

It's sad to see Yuka reach out to Kaido only to have her feelings crushed. She wanted to redeem herself to her friends. Turning herself in to the cops was an act of courage, a last resort, but she unwittingly ended up right in the custody of the secret science society. They experimented on like a lab rat to "cure" her mutation. It's such a terrible thing to attempt to do to someone, to deny their right to be who they are, to strip them of something that makes them unique. They don't even care if she survives.

Wait, that sounds familiar....

You called it, Die, I guess this show is basically Japanese X-Men now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--3--

Mari’s story this episode is no slouch, either. Man, some fun moves in that one this time out.

Keitaro’s casual mention of Hey What If One Of Us Becomes An Orphnoch has a little bit to it that I liked. It’s just a little slice of story, nothing huge, but there’s an idea that I think is a huge, huge part of the series' themes.

Basically, Mari freaks out because she’s scared she might turn into an Orphnoch. With all of what Sawada went through, maybe her and Kusaka are next? Kusaka tells her that it probably won’t happen, because it likely would’ve already occurred. (I mean, Mari’s died once since her previous resurrection, so it doesn’t feel likely.) He does say it in a very suspicious way, so who the hell knows for sure.

But it’s the end part that I think is fascinating. When Kusaka tells her she’s probably not going to become an Orphnoch, she’s relieved. And then she’s incredibly guilty for feeling relieved. Kusaka tells her it's fine to be relieved, because (basically) Kill Them All, but the way the show even allows for judging Mari, of Mari wondering if it's fair to feel relieved, it’s amazing.

It ties in with the idea of acceptance that the show spent a long time interrogating. Mari reflexively others the Orphnochs, feels grateful that she doesn’t have to exist as one of them. And it exposes a prejudice that, despite knowing some of The Good Ones, she hasn’t really examined in herself. She was terrified that she’d be a monster. Not that she’d be hunted, like Yuka, or reviled, like Takumi. But that she’d be something worth being hunted or reviled. That she views that as the baseline for an Orphnoch, while Yuuji and Takumi are exceptions.

It’s something that I really, really hope the show spends a few more scenes on.

It's pretty crazy how Keitarou brings up the possibility of them becoming Orphenochs like it's no big deal. Come to think of it, he's one of the few people in the show who has no experience of being dead, so he doesn't really understand what he's talking about. It's true that anybody with the right genetics can become an Orphenoch, either on their own or as a result of being sired by another, but would Keitarou be okay with that?

Like most of the Ryusei School guys, Mari doesn't have any compatibility despite dying twice, while Kusaka has been safely using Kaixa Gear with no symptoms of change. Sawada was the only member to revive as an Orphenoch so what Kusaka says here does seem consistent. For him, Mari becoming an Orphenoch would be the worst case scenario, as we previously speculated. He's clearly the most knowledgeable guy when it comes to the reunion incident so I think it's okay to take his word for it this once.

The show is getting dark now but there's still a lot of comedic intervals to lighten the mood.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

Speaking of Phase 2 specials! I've been wondering where those kind of things will fall into your rewatch, since I assume you'll want to rewatch them now with the greater context of these old shows in mind.

In case you weren't already thinking of it, my own personal suggestion would be that you continue watching 'as they air' as you've been doing. So like, once you finish Decade, you just go on a little marathon on your own time of all the Spring and Winter (and maybe even the Summer) movies. That way, you'll also have refreshed on modern rider before jumping into the next anniversary series in the form of Zi-O.

Yeah, this is a good idea. I totally have stuff I want to discuss about Kamen Rider 4!