[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 43

You might think that because of my blatant obsession with Hiyori, I'd have at least some memory of this one, but you'd be wrong if you did. I mean, I remember the concept of Dark Kabuto showing up, and that's the extent of it. It's another time where I can't even tell you if I hated these ones or loved them or whatever else. It's a total blank slate for me on a rewatch.

And while I can't give any fun personal history with the episode, I did rather like it!

As has been mentioned, these episodes mark the directorial debut of Takayuki Shibasaki, who had been one of the assistant directors on Rider going back to Kuuga, even getting personally recommended by Nobuhiro Suzumura to succeed him as chief assistant director during Faiz. Like most directors who were working on Rider two decades ago, he's still on it all this time later, and it's not hard to see why when this episode so clearly displays the passionate ambition of someone who wants to leave a good first impression.

The vaguely comic book style split screens are clearly the big party trick here, and they're surprisingly natural in their use, despite being so unlike the usual way the show is filmed. For those scenes of the big Worm attacks, I think it's actually serving a practical purpose, too, allowing the show to condense what would ordinarily be a much more dull process of showing the attack followed by talky reactions from Misaki and Tadokoro into one quick thing, speeding along to the more interesting parts.

And there are a lot of interesting parts to this episode. It's likely that much of this is just the actors all being so comfortable in their roles by the end of the series, but everyone turns in some pretty strong performances here, with the highlight being Mizushima playing Daguv— er, Dark Kabuto! He's playing Dark Kabuto! But it's a pretty shockingly close character he landed on for Tendou's evil counterpart, right down to prominently wearing white clothes. Maybe I like him so much just because he reminds me of Kuuga, but I thought he was a ton of fun, and brought a lot of great character moments out of the genuine article.

I don't have much to say there that Die didn't, so allow me to do the And Then This Happened work for him by mentioning how much I loved the twin Kabuto action in this one. There is a ~lovely~ amount of focus given to the Masked Forms here that made me extremely happy to see. It's outright used to visually signify Tendou's arc, only Casting Off for the first time 19 minutes in, after Kagami has talked him out of his funk. Like he's literally throwing off his baggage. That is exactly the kind of smart use of toy gimmicks I like to see, and the action itself is awesome too. Much as I appreciate the continued prominence of Masked Form, I like that the show is still making space for Kabuto to just do his basic, very simple and controlled fighting style. Hyper Form is cool, and after seeing its epic cannon mode last episode, I'll begrudgingly admit the Perfect Zecter is too, but their scenes lack the characterful understatement that defines Tendou so well, and it's harder to get into that when it's the only thing Kabuto does in an episode.

Heck, I even really enjoyed the brief scenes with Gatack and Sasword. Nothing too complex or interesting to say for them, I suppose, but I don't hate the whole cheesy concept of a monster who can match and mimic the techniques of the Ri— hey, wait a second! Dark Kabuto is just Daguva, and purple guy is just Gadoru! How many other things are they taking from Kuuga? Man, no wonder this one is such a winner for me! Anyway, yeah, purple guy doing a Rider Kick being like, the biggest deal for some reason, that was great. I'm a sucker for everything going on there, right down to getting to see Sasword fighting at night again, which feels weirdly nostalgic at this point.

It's just a fun episode that feels good to watch? There's heavy endgame drama all over the place, but it doesn't have the sort of suffocating sense of the tension being cranked way up that often comes with that. It IS more tense, but the nature of Dark Kabuto's personality especially still lends it a kind of looseness that fits the show very well. It's dramatic without being overbearingly so, and I loved that balance.