[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE EPISODE 37 - “INEVITABLE CLASH! THE DO-OR-DIE DEMON RECAPTURE MISSION!”



I don’t want to jinx it, but I feel like this Daiji story is working out pretty well?

We finally slow the story down a bit, with a few deeply-needed dialogue scenes to nestle in alongside the now fairly standard wall-to-wall fight scenes. (This show really loves its action, way more than it likes providing context or nuance to that action. Sort of a big problem for the series!) Specifically, we get to spend a couple scenes delving into Daiji’s humiliated and hollow embrace of Akaishi and Giff. After a few episodes where Daiji’s seemingly-absurd dedication to being a Henchman With A Heart Of Gold to the show’s big bads was gaining clarity, it’s only here where it finally snaps into focus.

Basically, it’s because DAIJI.

For all the ways Daiji’s changed and grown over the last 30-odd episodes, what this story presupposes is: Maybe he didn’t? The destruction of Kagerou is emblematic of Daiji’s dramatically-rich failings in this storyline; namely, that he’d defeated his own self-loathing, jealousy, fear, resentment, and pessimism. The thing is, as literally every other character has learned over the course of the series, that’s not stuff you defeat, or destroy. It’s stuff you carry around with you forever, and treating it like some invasive organism that’s tricking you into being bad or weak – that’s just self-deception. It’s refusing to take responsibility for your shortcomings, and therefore refusing to examine the triggers that increase their potency. Daiji hasn’t grown by defeating Kagerou; he’s actually avoided the personal growth that everyone else has fought for over the course of the series.

Even joining Akaishi in service to Giff… it’s the exact same shit that led him to Fenix! It’s someone giving a structure to his imposter syndrome by telling him how to make the world comprehensible, so long as he fully buys into whatever he's told; it’s rules and morality that exist in their own continuum, where outsiders are simply unaware of the real threats; it’s crucially a thing that lets him feel power and authority over Ikki, because that rivalry never ever ever went away. All of the weird pragmatism Daiji leans on in this story is just the same mixture of righteousness and resentment that colored his character when the show started. Literally nothing’s changed, which is sort of great?

I can see that regression being a bummer for folks who either didn’t like the earlier version of Daiji, or really liked the newer version of Daiji. It can feel abrupt, or poorly-motivated, mostly because (as noted earlier) this show is not super great at budgeting enough time for scenes that enhance and/or explain character motivations. But I feel like it’s all there, his reasoning and recriminations? He’s weak, and his weakness was papered over by no one asking too many questions about the self-loathing, fratricidal psychopath’s sudden self-improvement. He’s tried following in the footsteps of this show’s former Fenix commander, by giving up everything to safeguard innocents, but he’s forgotten the last thing that dude told him before getting detonated off of a cliff. I don’t recall it myself either, exactly, but I’m pretty sure it was something about not trusting Fenix?

I don’t know, maybe we can ask Hiromi himself in the next episode.