[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 12 - “V FOR VENDETTA - RAGING BEAST”



The thing with Shotaro is… he’s maybe not the best lead character?

The failure of the previous episode, as I thought more about it, is that it put way too much of the narrative on Shotaro’s back. Philip was doing his dumb Idiots Don’t Catch Colds research, Akiko was worthless, Kirihiko was barely involved, the other Sonozakis were absent entirely, and there was only one City Of Fuuto scene (which was terrific). The monster plot felt thinly sketched-in, with both victim(s) and perps coming off as ideas rather than characters. That left Shotaro to carry the plot and the story, and it’s just asking way too much of a cosplay detective.

The value of Shotaro is that he acts as a way into all of the things that work in this episode: booksmart partners and scheming crime lords and duplicitous creeps and teasing informants and enraged victims. This one works because it has all the stuff the previous episode didn’t have. It lets Shotaro exist alongside so many fun details, instead of making him cover for their absence.

And those details are, without exception, incredibly fun. Like, the scene with Saeko and Kirihiko! Where he thinks he’s cracked the code on something that’ll win Saeko’s respect and solidify his place in the family hierarchy (basically, making him more valuable than Mick), and she’s like We Already Found Out That Was Worthless? Amazing. So fun to watch her destroy his ambitions and not-so-subtly remind him of what a disappointment he’s been as a husband/flunky. And that’s just the first thing that was more delightful than most of last episode – we also got a fun Queen/Elizabeth scene (Queen teasing Elizabeth about maybe hooking up with some art creep!), Philip handling the investigation into Sachi’s motivations, a couple fun monster attacks, and a few intriguing twists.

If there’s a thing that doesn’t work in this episode, it’s that those twists are maybe a little too convoluted. Sachi being the one who’s motivating this story, through the applied rage of her brother… that’s all fine. (It sort of makes the brother incidental to the overall plot, since he’s not a factor in this episode, and Sachi would’ve just killed those dudes anyway. There’s maybe some narrative value in viewing her vengeance like a virus, but it’s not really a thing that passes through multiple characters. Kouhei wants revenge for his sister getting run over, while Sachi wants revenge for that AND a completely separate thing that Kouhei never knew about.) But there’s a bunch of stuff that comes up in Sachi’s explanation/confession that’s just weird and coincidental – they can show it a hundred times, but it never feels logical or believable that she’d shove the Virus Memory into her arm instead of diving out of the way of an oncoming car. (Also, the Memory seller just happened to walk down the stairs when she saw her fiance cheating on her? What?) I appreciate that the story got significantly more complex than Family Vengeance, but it’s stuff that maybe would’ve worked better spread out across both episodes.

But that’s a small complaint, honestly. I’d always rather a story be too convoluted instead of too straight-forward. While some of the later details were distracting, the bulk of the episode was assured and packed with entertaining moments. I wish it had been the same for the first part of this story!

—

DIE-A MEMORIES



-Not much in the way of future teases or memories in this one, but I did sort of recall that the sister was the Dopant at the beginning of this episode, despite the show pointing in the immediate direction of the art creep.

-Zero Nazca or other Sonozaki monster suits in this one! FAILING GRADE!