[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 17 - “HAPPY NEW WOZ 2019”



They’re kinda throwing a lot at us this episode, aren’t they?

We get the very fun intro of Kamen Rider Shinobi (he re-uses Ex-Aid’s shoulder pads, so he’s now my favorite suit on this show) in the cold open, which feels like it’s going to be the central mystery for this episode: How is Sougo in 2022? Why is there a brand-new Rider, when Zi-O’s supposed to be the final Rider? What’s this new guy all about? Where are all the floating video screens and rampaging ninjas, now that all of us are in Shinobi’s year?

But then the episode goes PSYCH Dream Sequence, and we’re into a completely different Rider mystery. It’s still about Shinobi; but the 2019 Another Shinobi version, created by the Time Jackers.

Everything with Another Shinobi… it’s fine? It’s a cool monster, but there’s almost nothing to hang onto, narratively. It’s just some mystery for the Team to solve. Beyond Sougo’s prophetic dream, there’s no real emotional stakes to the Another Shinobi plot.

Which is for a good reason! It turns out that the Another Shinobi story is also not the important story for this episode. The important story for this episode is the introduction of Kamen Rider Woz.

There’re a lot of good choices to Hat Woz. (I’m sure he’ll have some other name on the show, but that hat is doing a ton of heavy-lifting as far as He’s A Different Woz is concerned. He’s Hat Woz, probably until summertime episodes start.) Some of it’s in the conception of the character. The idea of him being from a future where Geiz wins is just so goddamn smart. It immediately puts a rift in the Geiz/Sougo partnership, just after they became maybe actual friends in Episode 16. Hat Woz represents a future where Geiz was right. How can Geiz continue to support Sougo’s path to power, when there’s a behatted Geiz fan saying that the world is saved by killing Sougo? Why would Geiz gamble on Sougo’s dream, when Geiz’z dream could come true instead?

There’s also the flip of Hat Woz writing the future, instead of Woz’z chronicling. It’s a fun way to look at history aficionados. Woz was someone who viewed history as a cool story, rather than people’s real lives. Hat Woz takes it one step further, viewing history as actual narrative, a story that he can bend to his uses. It’s sort of saying something about how people bend history to their own purpose (Woz), but sometimes they just rewrite it entirely if it’s more useful (Hat Woz). It’s not an idea that gets 100% fleshed out here, but I like that it exists.

Honestly, it’s an episode where virtually nothing gets fleshed out, and that’s more or less okay. This one’s all about insane curveballs – stuff the show can spend another dozen episodes unpacking and exploring. But it made for a slightly disjointed episode, with at least two Here’s The Real Story reversals in the first 12 minutes. It makes for an episode that sort of feels flabby in the first half, with narrative dead-ends; and then feels overstuffed in the finale, posing a whole bunch of fun questions that I’m interested in, but it’s a cliffhanger. I’m really into the questions this show is posing (and Geiz having his own hype man is, like, chef kiss), but I wish the episode hadn’t saved it all for the very end.

Also, I really like that Kamen Rider Woz is a smartwatch. That’s a brilliant design choice.