[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE EPISODE 34 - “DEMON CALLING TO DEMON”



At times, I sort of appreciate the primal nature of the conflict against Giff, when applied to an anniversary season of Kamen Rider. He’s a blank slate, with nothing but his various acolytes to sketch in his threat, his objective, his very identity. What we’re told by the rotating collection of sycophants and psychopaths that bend the knee to a yonic sculpture and a mute costume is hilariously boilerplate: overwhelming power, enslaved humanity, capitulation or destruction, blah blah blah. It becomes a sort of Ur Kamen Rider narrative, where the lack of prominence to the threat allows other themes to gain prominence; there’s frequently some global tragedy, but our family will always be the most important thing in our lives. The villain this year is every villain, but fifty years of Kamen Rider series are defined by the stuff around that – the goofy uncles and mysterious rivals and wisecracking puppets and empty cafes. Giff sucks to make everything else more fun by comparison.

All of that is a very long and debatably-favorable way of describing how inconsequential this episode’s whole GIFF’S GONNA KILL YOU vibe felt for me as a viewer.

There’s very little thematically to hang onto in the fight against Giff, which is a problem when a vast majority of this episode is devoted to making the threat of Giff an immediate and undeniable danger. (That little date scene between Sakura and Hana, though! Adorable! And they hate having those two goofs hovering over them like overprotective brothers!) For a minute I almost saw a correlation between Akaishi’s decision to let humanity suffer and survive under Giff, and the idea of an overprotective parent diminishing the freedom of a child in the name of safety, but I couldn’t make a good case for it. There’s really nothing on the family side of this story to act as co-commentary, and Akaishi’s too gleeful of a maniac to make a good-faith argument of his actions as beneficial to humanity. He’s just some bloodthirsty prick that wants to survive, and be at the top of whatever dregs of humanity survives Giff’s imminent wrath. He’s hollow and pointless, which is all I can ever muster for the Giff story on this show.

The stuff with Vail is a little more interesting, if only for the more personal stakes it evokes. (Why this show landed its big emotional cliffhanger on Akemi, a character whose only memorable attribute is A Doctor Who Wears Distractingly Short Skirts, rather than on someone who has contributed anything to the narrative, is beyond me.) Vail’s manipulation of Vice is simple, and provable: Demons are inevitably cast out by humans. Vail was abandoned by Genta, Kagerou was destroyed by Daiji, and we’ve watched any number of people get severed from their demons over the last 30-odd episodes. The idea that Ikki might eventually see Vice less as a buddy and more as a sickness… it sort of tracks? We’re not there yet, by any stretch, but maybe some day? Especially now that Ikki knows that teaming with Vice is destroying his memories? There’s a kernel of doubt in Vice now, and it’s all Vail needs to render both Ikki and Vice less effective as Kamen Riders.

Mostly, though, I like it for how it’s getting back to this show talking about self-care and psychological analysis. The idea of whether we’re better off destroying or submerging the parts of ourselves we don’t like, or if they’re things we need alongside us in order to live honestly – that’s way more interesting to me than some weird speech about reverse evolution (???) ever will be. Revice showed its series-arc hand a bit with this Giff-heavy installment, and it managed to both disappoint on a narrative level, while spotlighting the incredibly smart thematic work that makes this series unique. There’s a bland villain, but a fascinating cast of heroes arrayed to defeat it. Tonight, I’m gonna call that a win.