[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 35 - “BEYOND R - A MONSTROUS RAIN APPROACHES”



Part of me wanted to just repost everything I wrote for Episode 31, because this one is basically that one, but for Terui.

Like, this has got to be a living nightmare for Terui, right? A young woman who reminds him of his dead sister, terrorized by Isaka, and Terui is powerless to protect her. Short of anyone asking him questions or the Fuuto P.D. banning detectives from wearing leather, this is as bad as it could possibly get for Terui. He wants revenge on Isaka to assuage the survivor’s guilt he feels, and now he has to watch a young woman get terrorized so bad she becomes an Aztec snake bird god, all while Isaka becomes more powerful in the process.

But where this version of 31/32 pivots is that it’s not at all a story about finding the validity of yourself within a group, or letting your weakness be a strength for others, it’s a Terui story: this one’s about him becoming even more fixated on his goals, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. It is a story of the beneficial aspects of near-psychotic obsession…?

I mean, we’ll see where it goes in the second part, but I honestly don’t mind if this thing just lands on Shotaro’s aphorism about men finding strength within themselves as long as they have someone to protect. It’s good because it’s a more admirable trait of Terui’s, different from his introductory bloodlust. This one’s about Terui wanting to keep someone else from having to suffer, and stopping Isaka for good is just a way of achieving that goal. It turns Terui into a hero, instead of a vigilante, and hopefully that’s okay with Shroud.

While we don’t get more of Shroud’s backstory (beyond hanging out in forests and renting dirtbike courses, totally good clues to provide), we do get Isaka’s, and it’s okay. He’s been a guy hyper-obsessed with gaining power and admiring Dopants, so his backstory is… that he saw a Dopant and admired it so much that he became hyper-obsessed with gaining its power. As revelations go, it’s, y’know, not one, but as we’re clearly in a climactic story for the Weather Dopant, we might as well cross our I’s and dot our T’s. Still, even if it doesn’t fundamentally change the way we look at Isaka or Saeko, at least they’re finally making a move on a definable goal – namely, getting the Terror Memory from Ryubei, somehow at some point.

(I… am using “definable goal” somewhat loosely, it would seem. It’s still a step above randomly providing Gaia Memories to strangers and observing the results!)

Mostly, though, this is a Terui spotlight story, so everything else is either an obstacle he’ll need to overcome (Isaka, himself) or something that exists to burnish his heroic bonafides (Team Double, Nagi). Much like Terui himself, this is an episode that needs an almost obsessive focus to work, and it’s fitting that folks like Shotaro and Philip are left to stand around commenting on Terui’s worldview. If they got more involved, they’d just end up asking him questions, and, well…

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-OH HO HO IF IT ISN’T THE TRIAL DIRTBIKE TRACK. I haven’t exactly missed it, but I love how much of an insane closer that shot is for a story of soul-scouring anger and inescapable terror. Shroud might as well have taken him to a roller rink, or a laser tag course. I love the tonal incongruity of it so so much.

-Best gag in the episode is Nagi calling Terui a pervert as a scheme to get out of his grasp. It’d probably work on almost any dude, but it is incredibly effective against a stern dude wearing a full-body red leather outfit. Bonus points for Shotaro and Akiko trying to wriggle out of the angry crowd’s accusations that a cosplay detective and shoe-wielding middle schooler are also perverts!