[Kamen Rider Die]

So, Switchblade’s yearly Best Of thread rolled out last week. It’s the second one I’ve seen, having started on the boards late in 2019. And, for the second time, it’s one I haven’t participated in.

I really want to, someday. The problem is, I don’t watch any currently-running shows, and I probably won’t for a while. (Like, my schedule clears up around late-2022, at my current pace of getting through shows.) All of those categories, they’re pretty much all about the current shows. I don’t really feel like I can contribute to that discussion, what with me living within early-2000s toku for the last year. Not super relevant to the discourse, you know?

The other problem is that my memory is nowhere, and I don’t do much in the way of behind-the-scenes trivia. I couldn’t give a Best Of nearly anything, since I regularly forget the plots of shows I watched a month ago. I routinely need to look up names of characters from shows I spent months watching. (There was a point in the last few days that Fish Sandwich mentioned “Shinji”, and it took me a few seconds to realize that was the title character from Kamen Rider Ryuki, a series I watched in its entirety.) Not only do I not watch current shows, I can’t remember anything from the shows I did watch.

But, it’s the end of the year, and I’d like to do something that… I mean, not “celebrates” it, eff this hell year, but maybe something that acknowledges the fun I’ve had on the TokuNation boards in 2020. So, here’s some brand-new thoughts on the shows I’ve watched this year, in a little piece I’m calling:

KAMEN RIDER DIE TALKS ABOUT THE FIRST THING HE REMEMBERS FROM THE KAMEN RIDER SHOWS HE WATCHED THIS YEAR

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First off, let’s talk stats. Not counting responses on the boards, I wrote 525 pages this year on Kamen Rider shows. (There was a Build V-Cinema I covered, but that was only three pages so I’m not going to mention it other than right here.) That is 245,650 words, or the length of a shorter Fish Sandwich post about Kuuga. I kid! I kid. My only hope in writing so much is that I’ll eventually hone my sloppiness into something approaching Fish’s precision.

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AGITO (53 pages, 25833 words)



Maybe it’s because I just posted that picture recently, of Hikawa being terrified at having to talk to Shouichi, once he knows Shouichi is Agito, but I do love that plotline. It’s sort of got it all, for me and Agito? There’s some really funny Houjou stuff, some great Ozawa stuff, some charming Shouichi stuff (he’s trying so hard to not make it weird for Hikawa!), and a whole runner of Hikawa being incredibly weird about things.

It took me a while to warm up to Hikawa. I wrote him off as Ichijou #2, or Nijou, for a good stretch of episodes. But as the show went on, Hikawa’s story wasn’t Ichijou’s at all. He wasn’t a squared-jawed hero that was Dedicated To Justice. He was a stressed-out ball of neuroses, desperate to prove himself and failing due to his desperation. He was so insistent on What A Hero Is that he not only disbelieved Shouichi’s identity in this storyline, but he took forever to see his own heroism in this series. So much of Agito ended up being about making peace with yourself, accepting your shortcomings and celebrating your strengths, and Hikawa’s story is key to that theme.

Also, man, this scene kills me:










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RYUKI (86 pages, 42941 words)



I have thought about this shot of Reiko straightening cutlery probably once a week since I stopped watching Ryuki. It’s heartbreaking, her performing this invisible act of kindness for a man who’s already dead, but it’s something that becomes more and more definitively Ryuki as I keep remembering it.

Reiko at the restaurant… she hated Kitaoka to start with, and he earned every bit of her hatred. But over time, she paid attention to him, considered his viewpoint, watched him change, saw him grow, and decided he was worth giving a shot. As she’s waiting for him at the restaurant, unaware that he’s never going to arrive, she sees that his silverware is slightly askew. She knows that he’d hate that, that the first thing he’d do is straighten it and make some crack about the subpar service… so she adjusts it for him, saves him that little inconvenience. It’s a gesture that Kitaoka’d never even be aware of, never knew she did it for him, but she does it anyway. She knows him enough to do this for him.

And, like, that’s what the whole show is about? It’s a show that crams in more Riders than any show had before, specifically to explore how difficult it is to understand people, how impossible it can feel to empathize with their motivations, what kind of heroism it would take to sacrifice your happiness (or life) for someone else’s sake. (There’s a reason that we spend so much time with journalists on this show!) Every character in the show wants something specific. Spending time listening to them, trying to hear what they’re saying… it’s work. It can take months, if ever, to see things through someone else’s eyes. But the results can be meaningful, enlightening. And there’s a little scene of a woman straightening the cutlery of a man she used to hate that illustrates that beautifully.

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FAIZ (134 pages, 58362 words)



--1--

There are literally too many things I loved about Faiz, too many things I still laugh at, to narrow it down to just one thing. Faiz is… Faiz is a show that’s taken up permanent space in my brain. It’s almost definitely going to end up being my favorite Phase 1 show.

Some of that is because of the insane character work, like that shot of Takumi walking through the fence, from the final episode. It’s him liberating himself from all of the shame he used to feel, all of the judgment he put on himself. Here, he’s done with that, and he won’t let Yuuji drag him down. He steps through the fence as Yuuji rages against a world that’s wronged him, that’s lived down to all of his fears and suspicions. Meanwhile, there’s Takumi: boldly striding into a future he’ll face head-on, clear-eyed.

--2--

Or there’s the rich thematic work done with the Orphnochs. Faiz was a show about coexistence, about how a marginalized group expresses its needs, how a dominant group examines its biases and restrictions. It’s about what happens when a story isn’t concerned with survival, but with day-to-day living.

All of those scenes of three monsters, living together, circling around ideas like integration and identity, ideas about how much of yourself you should give up to fit in… it’s a series that’s doing so much under the hood, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched its surface.

--3--

Or there’s Kaixa, the memes that generated a man. If there’s any character in Rider history that deserves his own holiday, it’s Kusaka. There were points where I was convinced he’d crossed a line, convinced he’d transgressed in a way I could never find him funny again. (Hitting Mari is a tough thing to watch.) But that performance. It’s indelible, iconic. There’s just an unceasing barrage of fantastic deliveries, facial expressions that defy musculature, and unexpected twists on Antagonism that create something truly special.

--4--

Or there’s the Faiz Gear, a collection of toyetic trinkets that activated the dormant chemicals Ex-Aid left in my brain. Phones that become guns, bike handles that become swords, and bikes that become asshole robots… the mechanics of Faiz were so endlessly fun.

--5--

Or there’s the Faiz HBV, which is the one indisputable piece of greatness in the Kamen Rider canon. Lives are forever changed by its majesty, and it was to my utmost joy that it wasn’t even in the top four things I thought of when I thought about Faiz.

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BLADE (109 pages, 51355 words)



It’s that bench. It was never going to be anything other than that bench. I’m not even going to talk about why. If you haven’t seen Blade, I wouldn’t dream of ruining it for you. If you have seen Blade, you can’t even read these words through your tears.

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HIBIKI (86 pages, 39508 words)



“Mouth sounds, blood hounds, look what we've found
Some meaning on a scrap of tape
Are you burrowing through to some glowing core
Or shuffled off and side-tracked along the way
Breathing layers of paydirt and banner wavers
The clutter that is everyday”

-Superchunk, “Tiny Bombs”

It feels a little cruel, to say that everything after a premiere episode’s opening scene is a step down, but that’s just how good the introduction is to Asumu. The musicality of his existence, the rhythm of his routine, and the pure ecstasy of life… yeah, god, Hibiki does that in its first scene.

There’re plenty of ups and downs as the show progresses. Some thrilling moments of grace and beauty, and some tone-deaf moments of frustration and disappointment. But that opening is flawless enough to buy a rude amount of forgiveness. One of the best openings of any Rider show, ever.

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KABUTO (halfway done, 54 pages, 26424 words)



I think I recently said that the end of Episode 4 was something I don’t think Kabuto will ever top, and I still feel that way now. (A whole few days later. I know! What a resolute determination of quality.) It’s the episode that locks in so many things: Tendou’s tough love; Kagami’s Very Big Feelings; how the two of them try to navigate a friendship; and what Clock Up can do to render a normal fight iconic, evocative. I don’t really need to rehash my feelings about it. It was only a few weeks ago, and you can just tab back a few pages. Suffice it to say, this one still looms large over the series for me. A series high-point, and one I’m hopeful can be surpassed.

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That’s it! (Except for the Grease movie!) That’s what I can remember from the Kamen Rider shows I’ve watched in 2020. Looking ahead to 2021, the provisional schedule is:

January-February: Kabuto
February-May: Den-O (I think there’s a lot of movies and extra stuff?)
June-August: Kiva
September-December: Decade

Only four shows in 2021, as opposed to 2020’s five and a half, but Decade is a thing.

I can’t believe that I’m already charting out all of 2021. It’s you guys’ fault, just so you know. You’ve taken what was some weird lark, as I was midway through Ghost (it was a punishing first half!), and nurtured it with your kindness and generosity. Now I’m planning the second straight year of constant watching and writing. It’s insane. You guys are nuts for enabling this.

I love every single one of you, though. Thank you for helping me get through 2020, and I very much look forward to spending 2021 with you.

(INOUE FOREVER.)