[DreamSword]

Episode 20

One of my favorite episodes of Spider-Man: The Animated Series is one where Peter, as Spider-Man, visits a sickly girl in the hospital, and talks to her about how he's only human like everyone else, and imparting hope into her that anyone can rise up to meet the challenges that life throws at them.

Meanwhile, one of my least liked episodes of Kamen Rider Revice are a two-parter in which a mother trying to save her deathly sick child is painted as a bad person and that the correct course of action was simply sick back and have faith that one day her child in desperate need of surgery will just magically get better through sheer will power.

Thankfully, despite having elements of the latter, this episode is far more in line with the former, and I really, really dug it.

The premise being that a child who's in need of immediate heart surgery makes a call out to Bima in the hopes that his hero will be able to save him without the need of a surgery that's noted to be a coin flip in terms of survivability.

And while premises like this are things I'm usually a sucker for regardless, especially in terms of their real life parallels, the ultimate message that Ray as Bima imparts onto Dion(the child) is one that is every bit as practical as it is heartwarming: Faith and courage are things that are absolutely needed in order to live life to its fullest, but even so, everyone has big fears and obstacles that life will throw at them, and waiting around for others to save you while taking no action of your own isn't going to result in much of anything.

Even heroes like Bima get scared, and even they can't always win every single battle, but if they gave up and ran away, nothing would get solved. Not only is the message itself a very realistic one, but I loved the touch to Ray's' character that tied into it; At first, Ray is simply saying all of this just to impart some hope into Dion, but the message ends up getting thrown back at him when the Crow Monster shows up. In a bit of an ironic way, Bima gives the lesson to Dion, who then in turn ends up imparting that same lesson onto Ray. And because this is Toku, it ends up resulting in a wicked powerup.

God Helios not only looks cool and grants Bima the power to fly, but it can also speak English! Like, I get the possibility that its early showing in the episode itself was probably just Ray's' own inner voice talking to him, but I do find it funny to think that Helios spoke English this whole time and just no one noticed.

Speaking of that scene, this episode featured some surprisingly cool cinematography, with shots such as Ray talking to his reflection and the hospital room being adorned with Bima merchandise and crayon drawings.

All in all, I think it's safe to say that this new writer has for sure found his voice and how he wants to impart it into BIMA, and I fully support it.