[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 43




--1--

I'm not sure if I've brought this up before (I never remember what I talk about in these threads), but I love the central irony of this show. Faiz is a show where the core gimmick is cellphones, and it's about the impossibility of communicating with people. It's like making a show with a ton of doors where the main theme was about keeping people out. It's kind-of perfect.

But, I don't know, it's also more specific maybe than "the impossibility of communication”. It's about how we take these surface-level things like phone calls and emails, along with our prejudices and our biases and our failings and our hopes and our selfishness and our empathy, and we use that to define other people.

And it's also about how we can communicate without being honest, without being open. How we don't necessarily know what we want, so we don't know how to ask for it, to demand it.

There's a... I don't know, a weight to communication. As we have more technology, we have easier and easier ways of staying connected, of communicating, but we stop saying anything that matters. We talk and we listen but we don't share.

--2--

So much of this episode is about how hard it is for Yuka to communicate what she's going through, to feel safe, to feel free.

There's so much space to this episode, so much silence. It's a very introspective design, built to make a viewer focus on details. Everything in this episode is about what Yuka's not saying to her friends, so things like overlapping dialogue, quick edits, background music, it'd all be a distraction. Instead we get long takes, tense pauses, and a light soundtrack.

The dialogue scenes are great, especially the domestic moments with Mari, Keitaro, and Yuka. We get the full tragedy of Yuka's life in just a couple minutes. There's a hollowness to Yuka's life that she just can't fill. It's Takumi's dilemma, the lack of a dream, but answered with sorrow instead of frustration. She isn't angry about it, she despairs for it. She sees it all around her and longs for it. Something to hope for, something to become.

There's that scene near the end, and I feel like it's going to haunt me. It's Yuka staring at a red balloon, caught in a tree. She realizes she's the balloon. She's entangled, restrained. She wants to float away, to be weightless, and she's held in place by fear, by pain, by other people's cruelty. But working against her bonds, fighting to be free, it might be more painful than being held in place.

The idea of that, of someone acutely aware of their imprisonment and resigned to it, it's heartbreaking. It's the thing that makes Yuka's story feel so devastating, and so effective. Other characters on this show deal in self-deception, or wrestle with impossible choices. They're trying to establish who they are and what they want. Yuka knows how broken she is, how far her life is from what it should be. She feels it, now more than ever.

It's a portrait of someone who feels like freeing herself from pain could destroy her, and so she accepts suffering. It's beautiful in its misery.

--3--

The thing that makes Yuka so certain that she can't be happy, can't be accepted (there's that word again), is because she's an Orphnoch. She was tortured because she's an Orphnoch. She can't let Mari or Keitaro know she's an Orphnoch. Lucky Clover wants her because she's an Orphnoch. It's key to her identity, and it's her main impediment for happiness.

But, y'know, why? Why does it have to be?

We get a variety of characters in this episode talking about the inevitability of conflict between humans and Orphnochs. Kusaka talks about sides being drawn up. Minami talks about how anyone who doesn't see the threat of the Orphnochs is an enemy. Murakami talks about the natural antagonism of humanity and their inability to allow for cooperation.

Except, maybe none of that is necessary? Maybe Yuuji and Sawamura are right to ask why everyone seems so ready to fight, to destroy one another. There can be coexistence, as long as each side views the other as worthy of existence.

Which is maybe harder to do in practice than it is in theory. Yuuji remembers how hard he had to fight to save Yuka, how many police officers stood in the way of him rescuing a tortured friend. So when he sees Sawamura wounded, begging for help, he doesn't see another person who deserves to live. He sees an adversary, an obstacle, someone who hates him and his friends for no reason. He answers humanity's prejudice with more prejudice.

But then you get Yuka, despondent, adrift. She reached out to Lucky Clover to find some refuge from a world that hates and fears her, but they'd kill Keitaro if he tried to stand her way. She can't let that happen. She has to expose herself as an Orphnoch to save his life, dooming her to one more friend who'll turn his back on her, one more terrified look.

But he isn't scared. He sees her fear, her self-loathing, her sadness, and he reaches out. He holds her. Not to trap her, or to bring her down. To lift her up, to liberate her. To remind her that she is loved, and she deserves love.

To give her the safety to dream.

--4--

I don't want to make it sound like this whole episode was a grim meditation on one woman's tortured existence. (I mean, it was, but it wasn't just that.) It's also a pretty thrilling action-adventure episode, with some fantastic fight scenes.

The Yuka/Kageyama fight was exceptionally well done, with some dynamic camera moves. I already posted it, but that single shot where they switch out Kageyama for her Orphnoch form? Insane! That's all done in-camera! But it's also key to the storytelling, where the danger comes from how quickly these things can happen. It's not Kageyama showing off, declaring her actions. It's an example of how quickly and easily she could kill Keitaro, how important it is for Yuka to defend him.

The other clever choice in their fight is how little fight music it uses. It gives a weight to the fight, makes it seem more brutal. It isn't... it makes it feel like Yuka's struggle is never-ending, that her fights don't ever stop and start. It makes the combat grueling, eternal. Really smart move.

--5--

OH MY GOD THIS PERFECT BEAUTIFUL SHOW.

Another high point for the series, at least in how it worked for me. I generally don't care that much about world-ending plots or whatever, but centering the idea of whether two lifeforms can coexist peacefully on one sad, broken teenager? I could watch a million more hours of that. I don't know if I'd ever get tired of seeing this show peel back the layers of Yuka's character, at least when it's done this well.