[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 5 - "WON'T YOU LET ME REEL YOU IN?”




It's a funny story, but it's not a Ryotaro story, and that just sinks it for me.

Like, the main characters for this episode are one of the Airimirers (harrrrrrd passsssssss) and the newest Imagin, Urataros. They're both slimy jerks, and I'm not rooting for either one of them. Ryotaro spends the majority of the episode unconscious, and the team of MomoHana are left cut out of most of the story, playing catch-up. There're fun gags (that Ore Sanjou pose!) but it all feels like filler, and it's happening so early in the series. Just a let-down, this one.

It doesn't help that we've got so many unpleasant or half-baked threads to cling to. The soccer kid is a cowering mess for most of the story, and there's nothing about him that's really able to be dug into. He blew a big kick in a previous soccer match, and now he... something? We never get to hear what his wish is, but I'm betting the lesson he needs to learn is that sometimes the best thing you can do on a team is support another player, he says as he gestures towards Momotaros' inability to take down the Crab while the Brand New Imagin waits on the DenLiner.

(There is a moment that cracked me up in that kid's story, though. He's in bed at the hospital, and he looks under the covers at his bedsheets and sees something that alarms him, which made me worry Wait Which Coming Of Age For Boys Lesson Is This Story About To Be. Luckily, he only saw a puddle of sentient imagination monster sand, so we were saved from an intensely awkward story.)

Meanwhile, there's the thing with the Airimirers trying to get in good with Ryotaro, to get in good with Airi, which just ends up being them getting played by Urataros. But, man, we spend so much time with those doofs, and I don't understand why. They are aggressively unsympathetic, and I could not care less about their agenda. Any episode that spends time with them is going to lose points with me, and this one spends so. much. time with them. Do these guys have fans in the viewership? Am I missing some crucial detail that renders them enjoyable? Fill me in!

That leaves the debut of Urataros, and his feud with Momotaros, which... this plot needed some sort of balancing influence between these two self-involved lunatics, and the lack of a Ryotaro or a Hana in their plot makes it too chaotic and broad to feel much connection with. Without Ryotaro involved in the struggle, it's a comedic subplot stretched out to full-length. It's two caricatures in a tug of war, and I don't care enough about Urataros yet for a non-Ryotaro Imagin plot to work. I care about the Imagins because of their relationship with Ryotaro. An Imagin story that Ryotaro is largely absent from just fundamentally doesn't work for me. Without that core, it's just a noisy episode of people I mostly don't care about, doing things I mostly don't care for. There's laughs, but no heart. Pretty weird for an episode with so many declarations of love!



THE BAGGAGE CAR

-Urataros! He's a non-stop schemer, and I definitely did not warm to him in this episode. Am I supposed to? Momotaros was instantly charming, with his high-energy idiocy, but this new guy is just a creep? Like, he's a worse version of an Airimirer, and I can't think of a more brutal insult than that. Bold choice to make him a central character of this story!

-Seriously, though, some quality gags in this episode. The thing with Airi calming an Airimirer by informing him of Ryotaro's thrice-yearly examinations at a hospital, the gag where an on-the-go Hana explodes out of a cupboard, Naomi egging on Urataros and Momotaros to fight, that stellar gag about Momotaros needing more room to get his hero pose off... I mean, I didn't like this story, but it's still a pretty fun episode.

-The Crab Imagin had an interesting exchange with Momotaros, where he's confused as to why Momotaros is stopping him from murdering a child. That idea, of how the various Imagins get along... I do like it, and I wish there was a way to tell that story with Ryotaro more in the spotlight. Like, the Crab trying to talk sense into Momotaros is clever, and the feud between Urataros and Momotaros is clever, but it doesn't feel like Ryotaro has skin in the game, even though he literally does.