[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 21 - “THE RETURN OF T - THAT MELODY DOESN’T SUIT A LADY”



This one was… not great. It’s methodical in its build-out of Detective Kujo, but it’s all in service of both a plot that’s blindingly obvious, and a theme that’s sort of unnecessary.

Let’s do the second one first, as we always do.

I don’t know if the second story we get with Terui in a lead role should be The Perils Of Seeking Vengeance. Like, it would be nice if the show let him have a single other characteristic before immediately contrasting him with a potential love interest that is compromising her integrity in order to hunt down the people who stole her happiness and killed someone close to her. I think it’s maybe okay to save that until Episode 23, maybe? At the earliest? I mean, Terui isn’t going anywhere, and we ended the last episode with him being confronted with the horrible cost of his crusade vis a vis almost murdering an innocent woman in broad daylight. His vendetta hasn’t gone anywhere, and clearly isn't going anywhere, so maybe we can get a two-parter that’s a little less His Only Deal, you know?

It doesn’t help that we spend a ton of time to set up Detective Kujo’s backstory, lost love, and cast of victims in the first half of this episode. (For a story that feels like it’s going to tip too much into The Terui Show, this one goes all in on The Kujo Show.) It’s all sort of bland, and not exactly distracting – it’s pretty apparent from Kujo’s first appearance, right after the Triceratops Dopant splits, that she’s the mystery murderer. Everything after that just feels like it’s delaying the inevitable, and it doesn’t help this episode’s deliberate pacing. Tons of info to set up the motivation of a two-episode character, and it just doesn’t feel like time well spent.

It’s sort of an overall problem of this episode being overstuffed. Kujo’s given a ton of setup, and then Terui’s given a bunch of scenes with Kujo, and it all… again, it’s all too much, too soon. We just met this guy, and now he’s having a doomed romance that’s about His Only Deal, with the remaining Double cast left to orbit two other characters’ stories. This thing feels like it should’ve been a Kamen Rider Accel TELASA mystery around the summer movie, not two in-series episodes of Double directly after Terui debuts.

It’s not a total waste, though. The action’s strong, Mick shows up, Terui and Kujo have genuinely good chemistry, and I absolutely love that Shotaro’s way in to this story is that he just wants to humble Terui, the end. There’s some fun around the edges of this one, but the ratio of Fun to Kujo’s Life Story is way out of whack. At least they didn’t drag out the reveal of her being the Dopant past the cliffhanger?

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-Like, I swear it’s not just me remembering how this one goes – it is SO OBVIOUS that Kujo’s the Dopant, and it made me roll my eyes when Shotaro’s like The Most Likely Suspect Is The Dead Man, Not The Alive Woman Who Spent Two Minutes Angrily Defending His Honor.

-We check in with Wakana and Saeko… and that’s basically all the scene was. Not a great use of two fun characters, but I’m surprised they managed to shoehorn them into this packed episode.