[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 40 - “CHANGE IMAGIN WORLD”




Kai! Kai.

A serious villain could never work on Den-O, but a Kamen Rider finale needs a serious villain. The contradiction of that, finding a resolution to it… maybe the best idea Kobayashi has ever had.

Kai is a hilarious villain who thinks he’s serious, doing horrible things in the most lackadaisical way. He’s ruthless in pursuing his goals, but willing to have a conversation about why he’s pursuing them. He’s cunning in his strategies but generous in allowing opposition. (That look on his face when Deneb scans him for a ticket! And Kai just lets him!) He’s a villain that, on a long enough timeline, you could absolutely see joining the cast as a hero. He’s got the same limitless charisma that Ryotaro’s actor has, but calibrated differently.

It’s his weird sense of camaraderie. Kai, Ryotaro, Yuuto, they’re just a group of guys caught up in this weird scenario, no different than someone you’d sit next to on a long train ride, or a co-worker. In fact, Kai totally treats Ryotaro like a co-worker in this episode. Their scenes together, the energy in them, you’ll recognize it if you’ve ever hung out after work with folks, gotten a drink or something to eat. The shittalking, the shared boredom, the gossiping. Kai’s whole pitch to Ryotaro is what every late-night after-work bitch session revolves around: Let’s Laugh At How Stupid Our Job Is. He’s a villain that thinks this is all pointless, all subjective, all irrelevant. The idea of caring about what happened to Yuuto is baffling to him, hilarious. He’s trying to prove a point to Ryotaro that caring about any of this, trying to save people or mourn them or prevent Kai’s plan, it’s stupid. It’s a villain who is attacking self-determination and empathy with moral relativism and apathy. Kai is the absolute best villain this show could have.

And Ryotaro rises to the challenge in this incredibly weird episode. Like, the show is not subtle with its thesis statement here. The new timeline is objectively better without Yuuto being in it. Literally everyone is living a happier life. (Well, probably not those two women with Ozaki. I don’t know them, but they can do better!) Every single person is better off… but that would mean giving up on Yuuto, and Ryotaro can’t abide by that. The idea of trading lives is abhorrent to him, inconceivable. Yuuto did exist, he is remembered, and Ryotaro will work to save him. That’s it. It’s an argument grounded entirely in faith, in the belief that no one deserves to be forgotten. The suggestion that the world is better without someone in it has at its core a flaw that Ryotaro can’t overlook: what about the person being forgotten? How would they feel? As long as the argument assumes that’s not worthy of consideration, you’ve lost Ryotaro’s support. He’s meeting Kai’s What Aboutisms with certainty, conviction. Yuuto lived, and he deserves to be remembered.

It makes for an episode that’s largely just that dilemma, and Ryotaro’s feelings about it. It’s nothing that needs him to work at solving it. The timeline ends up reasserting itself, putting everything back where it was an episode ago. There are no real consequences to Yuuto getting killed, since Yuuto just pops back up. It’s a weirdly circular episode, for how it’s Kai going Memories Are Dumb and Ryotaro going Memories Are Actually Great and that’s sort of it. Really great performances, and some well-shot action, but it all works more as a thought experiment than a dynamically plotted episode of tokusatsu. Clever, but maybe too clever? I don’t know. Kai’s great in this, Ryotaro is an awesome Den-O, that’s plenty for one episode.



THE BAGGAGE CAR

-Hey, you’re right, I didn’t talk about Zeronos’s new Cosmic Rust Form! Beautifully designed sequence, and probably a crucial piece of this story’s puzzle… except, AS PER GODDAMN USUAL, I’m not sure exactly what happened in this Yuuto development. He’s burning up a new memory to power up Zeronos, but I can’t tell from this montage if he’s burning up his memory of Airi, Airi’s memory of him, or both of their memories of each other. That matters! It matters a whole lot! I wish this episode nailed it down more, but I feel like it’ll get elaborated on next time. (That is basically how every major Yuuto storyline works.) Meanwhile, I thought it was really pretty? I just don’t know what it means yet.

-I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hated this episode’s theme song. I guess it’s the DenLiner Imagin singing parts of it now? It’s horrible. It’s menacing and brash in a way that is antithetical to this show’s vibe, and I hope it was just some one-off goof for this alternate reality. Listening to the theme song was always a delight, and this was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

-Deneb on the DenLiner as a cook is fantastic. Deneb as, like, Den-O’s assistant manager is the best. He’s so good at his job in literally every timeline!