[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by LeviathanBlossom

I somehow managed to completely forget that this was the episode where Kagami saw Tsurugi turn into a Worm. (The very brief mapo tofu contest? That part I remembered, haha.) It is also slightly more grounded than I remember it being; I think, if I were to describe it now, it would be Kamen Rider Kabuto But Turned Up To Eleven.

Tho with all the hilarious spectacle - and there is so much to enjoy - my favorite bit is still the Kagami and Tendo conversation about Maybe This Rider Won't Be A Lunatic conversation And then everything slowly (?) descends into madness and shenanigans ensue. Man, this one was so much more fun to watch knowing what was coming

Yeah, it's an episode that very smartly starts with this ridiculous exposition about secret chefs who use their powers to control humanity and a powerful piece of cutlery that can only be wielded by someone worthy, so there really shouldn't be any surprise about where the tone of this one goes.

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Originally Posted by LeviathanBlossom

I am, by the way, reliably terrible at blood draws. I have never in my life gotten a vein on the first try, which tends to make patients cranky. I really, really cannot blame them.

Were you the lab tech during my trip to the ER last year, who needed seven attempts on two different arms to find a vein? If not, you're doing okay!

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Originally Posted by Sunred

Only thing I have to say is mapo tofu is the best.
One of my favorite Chinese foods. If there was a top 5 dead or alive ranking for Chinese food mapo tofu should be number 1.

Everything on display in this episode looked delicious, so my compliments to the (probably incredibly overworked and resentful) set dresser and props team!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This one is just amazing. It's the best kind of dumb comedy, because it's very smart about being very dumb. That's just as much in the writing, too, but I honestly believe this whole thing would've fallen apart without the very specific skillset Ishida brings to the table.

It's an incredibly assembled episode. There's so many ways the jokes could've failed, or the performances could've shot past each other (Jiiya and The Dark Chef are on completely different wavelengths, narratively), or parts of the story could've felt inessential (the ZECT In A Van Go To A Lunch scene, the one actual Kamen Rider fight scene), but it all feels... there's a brashness to it all, a feeling like if this one scene has weight, no matter the scene, all of it has weight.

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Originally Posted by catwhowalks

They are also the two episodes of the entire franchise that I loathe the most. It feels like an entirely different show. A really bad one. Like if these had been the first episodes of Kamen Rider I had ever seen, I would have assumed the entire franchise was a massive dumpster fire and never taken a second look at it again.

Which, yeah, this is the flipside! If one scene doesn't work for you, absolutely none of it does.

I think this episode is as Kabuto as anything else in the series, but I get why it might not work for folks. Any time there's a Comedy episode of a Kamen Rider show, there's going to be folks that don't dig the jokes, or don't feel like it's treating its world/premise/stakes seriously enough. (I can still buy Kagami Outrageous as a cunning mastermind, despite his fascination with Evil Cooking or whatever, but I can see how it might undermine his threat for other viewers.) I think the core of the episode is still true to the world of Kabuto, though, even if the tone is not what you're looking for.