[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 22 - “THE RETURN OF T - THE UNDYING MAN”



Sure, it wasn’t a very good episode; and sure, it featured a ridiculous character turn and a garish conclusion where Accel gets a new toy for no real reason; but here’s the good news: at least no one involved learned anything.

Boy, this one was just a complete misfire for me. While the first part wasn’t great, at least it was trying to say something about Terui’s crusade through the arrival of Kujo. Terui’s warped his life to get vengeance for the dead, and Kujo’s doing the exact same thing. The tension of that, and the ways Terui both appreciates Kujo’s dedication while feeling alarmed by their similarities… I mean, it’s going to be fun to see that get paid off, at least. How does this show condemn Kujo’s vendetta while allowing Terui to work daily for his fateful confrontation with his family’s killer?

HA HA, who knows, because this episode sidelines Terui for a huge chunk of it, and then pivots Kujo’s vengeance towards a vague supervillain plot, complete with her going to work for the very organization she swore to destroy. Terui never articulates a better difference between their parallel outlooks than My Vengeance Is The Okay Kind, and Shotaro’s primacy in this episode robs the story of whatever spark it had in the first part. We just have Shotaro being half-boiled, and paying the price for it. Nothing that teaches anyone anything, at all.

It’s maddening, because it renders any time spent with Kujo as moot, since she just goes crazy in the end. Saeko explicitly states that overuse of Gaia Memories renders the user into a crazed monster, so we’re not even allowed the narrative weight of Kujo choosing her own fate. Nope, she’s a drugged lunatic, and that’s that. (I mean, you could say that she chose to use the Memory, and that was her downfall, but that wasn’t at all the story we were in for 75% of the story’s runtime.) Why bother with her tragic background, if she doesn’t give a shit about it in the climax, and there’s no epilogue where she reflects on it? Why make her complicated, just to flatten her out to Cackling Psychopath at the finale?

And that finale… boy, not my fave! Terui shows up just to be the grim executioner of the woman he barely shared a single scene with in this episode, and any empathy you might hope for from Team Double is left to Terui’s judgment. But then there’s a new cannon attachment for Accel? And he blows up the giant version of the Triceratops Dopant? And that’s how we end this story of regret and rage?

It just… it all feels like a massive waste of time. Kujo’s only value in the larger narrative is what she reflects of Terui, so it’s frustrating to see this pivot to a much less nuanced story of Shotaro being a well-meaning sap. (He just immediately assumes Kujo’s turning herself in, and does not investigate it at all! Wow! Great follow-through, bud!) There’s… there’s nothing here, which is such a weird thing to say after so much time spent on Kujo. Terui might as well have offed a random Dopant, and Shotaro just sort of shrugs everything off as an unfortunate but unpredictable outcome. And this wasn’t even a Shotaro story in the first place!

I really didn’t care for this conclusion. No thanks! Moving on!

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-I hate that Shroud appearance! So much! Completely dumb!

-There’s a minor thing that happens in the background that I want to mention. As Terui leaves the police headquarters, he passes by what looks like a man scuffling with a guard. I’m 99% positive that the man is Shotaro, but it’s never followed up on in this episode. (According to Jinno, Shotaro already came and left.) I… feel like this comes up in a later episode, but I can’t remember when or why. If you do, please don’t tell me just yet!