[Kamen Rider Die]

Late to the thread this week, and it sort of sucks to show up and say this one wasn't my favorite?

It's sort of the peril of leaning into the hang-out vibe this show does so well, where I get to the end of the episode and go That Was Nice. Not thrilling or shocking or thought-provoking, but: Nice. We get to spend an episode with Tarou and Haruka running a mismatched buddy cop plot as delivery people, and it's good fun, but it feels almost too weightless to remember. The shift to an action-y tokusatsu story at the end feels almost grudging, with the Weird Train Kids Avatar Change lasting about four seconds and being abandoned between shots. The resolution is nicely dark, but it feels sort of disconnected from the episode at large.

(Like... the point is that New Villain Lady just executed a dude, and that's shocking, but it also makes a lot of the preceding story feel sort of unfinished? We have Saru Brother's take on what the Black Bear Thief was driven by, but we never really get a sense of his... anything. I don't know. Felt like half an idea to me?)

The cast is still great, though, so I get why the show is fine with two or three of them being weird for 20-odd minutes. Haruka is delightfully bratty, Tarou is an unpredictable leader, and Saru Brother (my subs have him as "Professor", and I'm not sure he's given another name) is an island of tranquility in a sea of insanity. The chemistry that any couple of them have could power an entire series, so getting three in one brief plot feels like it should be enough for an episode.

It wasn't for me, though? I don't mind it, really. It's okay to take the story down a couple notches in intensity. What's here is still poignant -- the ways the invisible parts of our society long to be seen, and the benefit to remembering we're all people. I just... I don't know. It left me unfulfilled, which is maybe too thematically appropriate to get upset about.