[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE EPISODE 48 - “PROOF OF RESOLVE! THIS IS JAPAN’S BIGGEST BUSYBODY!”



If Revice 47 succeeds over its plot by leveraging my bottomless love for the Igarashi family, Revice 48 fails by asking me to extend the same faith and goodwill to the misbegotten melodrama of the Karizaki family.

Like, the only part of this episode that worked for me, emotionally, was Ikki’s need to show George that his relationship with his father ended up being a positive for the world, and brought out the best in George. The way that it becomes Ikki’s personal responsibility, as one half of Revice, to show that Ultimate Revice is the superior technology because it was produced by father and son? That’s a fun hook for this show, and it helps make Ikki’s sacrifice more integral to the plot. It also lands a gut-punch of a climax, just off of that continuing need of Ikki’s to insert himself into any problem where he might even minimally be of use. I love that, just like the cast of this show loves it. Best part, by a mile.

I mean, mostly because the rest of this episode is devoted to mining pathos and sympathy from the Karizakis, which is as foolhardy a crusade as any Rider endgame has ever embarked upon.

Nothing in their idiotic backstory has ever even transcended I Hate It But I Can Ignore It. Karizaki abandoned his son to do mad science, but he felt so bad about it you guys. He stuck a devil inside his son to “watch over him”, despite the best case scenario circa 20 years ago being that it’d be a homicidal lunatic like Vail, and there’s literally no reason for Karizaki Sr to think that what he was doing would yield anything better. (It also, hilariously, never amounted to anything other than Chic popping out for a Summer Movie? Thanks, Daddy!) George has been motivated by his Daddy's legacy occasionally, but the show rarely seemed to make it a focal point of George’s motivation. (George’s character and motivation being a perennial moving target for this series did not help things!) Surpassing Daddy as a coping mechanism… it’s fine, but it’s Around Episode 36 Fine, not something that needs to occur over two of the last four episodes.

It’s just… I do not give a single shit if George forgives a man who was absent by choice, and regretted it on his deathbed. I think it’s healthier not to hang onto hate, but I don’t think George is harming himself by telling Ikki that one positive outcome doesn’t mean everyone needs to let parental abandonment roll off of their backs. Karizaki Sr loving the son he abandoned by choice doesn’t absolve the trauma of abandoning that son by choice.

It’s such a shitty story to tell, even if this episode had miraculously found a way to tell it with sensitivity and nuance. (Which it did not, for me at least.) Why in the world are we supposed to care if the flip-flopping mad scientist gets over his Daddy/daddy issues with his deceased deadbeat father? Beyond serving as a way to further illuminate Ikki’s character, which was incredibly welcome, why did this particular story need to be told? Why hinge Ikki’s greatness on the most reprehensible characters? Why not create a better story for Ikki to lose everything in?

Because that ending! So good! The polite smile on Ikki’s face as he wonders why these two strangers are calling him Brother and crying! HOLY SHIT! Gangbusters finale, and it walloped me in a way that George’s histrionics resolutely did not.

Well, whatever. Hopefully this Karizaki shit can now be done with forever, because I cannot tell you how invested I am in the Igarashis’ dilemma. One of my favorite endgame storylines of all time, no joke.