[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 40



Inoue Forever.

It's stupid, how well he's able to distill the themes of this show into both a rollcking adventure replete with magical kitchen tools and flavor as a declaration of self; and a harrowing journey of one woman's final days, the terminal velocity of a dream. How does he do it?!

Because, god, yeah, it's just like that Dark Chef two-parter: literally everything Kabuto's about, it's in here. But it's also everything Inoue ever wants to talk about, because he's honestly just that good?

Like, right away we get Daisuke assuring Reina that she's not a Worm, or a Worm who thinks she's Reina. She's just.. her. Reina is Reina. It's an obsession with Inoue, the ways people measure themselves against others, chafe under expectations, fret about how others see them, worry about the parts of themselves they don't understand. He literally did an entire series about a Rider learning to stop judging himself. (Two, if you want to say that was a theme of Agito, which I wouldn't fight you on.) His answer to those stresses is always the same, and it's self-acceptance. Don't worry about how the world sees you. Don't think of yourself as too much something or not enough something else. You're you, and that doesn't need to be qualified.

It's... this episode is so minor. The threats are largely psychological, not physical. It's monopolized by this sweet relationship between Daisuke and Reina, how he doesn't even give a shit if she's actually a Worm. The only person in jeopardy is the memory of Reina. But it feels massive. It feels like a series finale. And it's only really about how we learn to live with ourselves, which is maybe the most important lesson there is to learn.

So many things in this story that could feel vestigial, or a distraction, are just different parts of the same journey. All of the stuff with Tendou missing Hiyori, it's echoed in Daisuke's scenes with Reina. Daisuke even says lines from some of Hiyori's most famous scenes, telling Reina that she can do it, that he's by her side. It's two stories that are about how it doesn't matter what someone is, the negative parts, the things they hate about themselves. If you really care about them, you'll find some way to support them, work to help them care about themselves. Hiyori being a Native, Reina being a Worm... none of that really matters. What matters is how you feel about them.

And that's really all this episode is trying to do, which I love. There's almost no plot to speak of. A bunch of little incidents create some dynamic action scenes, but the only objective is to let Reina have a moment of self-expression before Worm Widow snuffs her out for good, and then the reveal that Worm Widow can't even really get rid of Reina.

That idea, that we can never really close off those parts of ourselves, it even comes through in the slightly-wacky Yaguruma plot, taking the place of last episode's tonally incongruent but thematically relevant Tsurugi plot. Here, it's Yaguruma seeing some sadness in Reina, something he thinks of as Who He Is, but he quickly finds himself reverting to TheBee-style Yaguruma heroism in the need to defend her. It's goofy, with him totally forgetting that he's Sponsored By Whoever Makes Leather Pants now and not some corporate do-gooder; and it's poetic, because the arc of it is just the all-time repeating story of Yaguruma Is Full Of Shit And Kageyama Starts To Despise Him, but now in leather pants; but it still lands because it's looped into this theme of not being able to ignore who we are, with Yaguruma still craving the love and self-respect he'd claimed to despise. Much like Reina's never gone for good, Yaguruma is still the egotistical hero somewhere underneath all of that S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders cosplay.

But Reina is gone for good, at the end. She gets her chance to sing on stage, partially. Worm Widow takes over in the middle, but keeps singing anyway. She can't even really explain why, but Daisuke already knows. It's Reina, still in there, always. But she doesn't deserve to be buried alive, and even Worm Widow knows that. She fights Daisuke, hoping to end the pressure to recognize Reina's memory. She loses, because she probably didn't want to win anymore. She's trapped with two half-lives, and she can't put them together in a way that makes sense to her. She's pushed away a part of her she needs to survive, and the loss of it is too much. She finds some acceptance, though, at the very end. Reina's feelings for Daisuke, giving her some solace for her final moments, become a window into an existence that surprises her. And then that window closes.

It's a tragedy, something Inoue excels at. He writes some beautifully flawed characters. Monsters who want to be heroes. Heroes who want to be monsters. People fighting for their voices to be heard. Ending an episode with a hero fighting a monster so a person's voice could be heard by the monster, because every hero and monster are just parts inside people who want their voices to be heard...

INOUE FOREVER.

A QUESTION

The Tsurugi stuff in this episode, that's something I have a hard time finding room for, thematically. It's funny, though, with him fully onboard with his two favorite people dating. I don't mind it myself, Kagami and Misaki. I think they've got some pretty solid chemistry. What about you? Do you think Kagami and Misaki would make a good couple?