[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 38 - “VISITOR X - IN THE NAME OF THE MUSEUM”



This was an episode that was largely about moving pieces around, and providing crucial character information, but I think I more appreciated how it tried to maintain a consistent theme beneath all of those revelations.

Like, I dug that everything came down to that Sokichi quote about the peril of indecision, and how not making a decision is probably worse than making a bad decision. Philip, Wakana, and Neurotaki are all characters that want to have everything, and can’t quite bring themselves to… Wait, no. I don’t– I don’t really think that theme carries across like I want it to.

Philip’s story is definitely about indecision. He doesn’t want to abandon his friends, but he can’t leave Wakana when she’s so scared and vulnerable. He needs to get off the fence, even if it means making a drastic change to his life. But the other two characters? Wakana and Neurotaki? They know exactly what they want: to escape from the danger of the Museum. They’re stymied – Neurotaki, by a Dopant assassin; Wakana, by her and Philip forgetting that cell phones are a thing – but they begin this story with a clear and actionable objective. Hell, Neurotaki actually gets what he wants, by seeing that his family got by fine without him! I wish this thing was held together by a common theme, but it really isn’t.

Without that, it’s still a solid enough character study for Philip. He’s not usually presented with a huge decision to make, generally deferring to Shotaro’s half-boiled sentimentality or Akiko’s boisterous certainty. Philip gets put in a position where he alone is responsible for deciding between Wakana and Team Double, and if his decision seems inevitably walked-back due to the show having another eleven episodes and a summer movie left to go, it’s a scenario that at least makes sense for his character. He’s already concerned about Wakana, and finding out she’s his sister just makes his desire to protect her even more compelling.

And that’s the big reveal of the episode: Philip is the son of Ryuube, and the brother to Wakana and Saeko. As I’ve watched this show before, I can’t pretend it was some bombshell, but I appreciated how it was quickly digested by the team and allowed to impact the unfolding adventure. This wasn’t some cliffhanger swerve, it was a data point that helped add weight to an immediate dilemma. I like when that happens!

The reveal of Philip’s history also comes with the added wrinkle of Wakana choosing the Museum over freedom, and this was a plot point I’ve sort of been dreading. I never liked it originally, because it felt like too big of a change for Wakana. She was minutes away from leaving forever alongside Philip, and now she’s some black-clad executioner that’s fully devoted to Ryuube’s designs. All of that changed for her in an afternoon, and it was initially hard for me to reconcile.

(I am underselling it. It actually ruined the end of the show for me.)

On a rewatch, I feel like I can be a little more generous to what the show’s doing with Wakana. Her leaving wasn’t a Kirihiko-style morality clause, where the reality of what the Museum is up to became a line he couldn’t cross. She’s running away from home because she’s scared of her dad. She’s seen what’s happening to Saeko, and feels like she’ll be next. That’s it. She’s a scared child, and she’s trying to run away from her problems. (I mean, reasonably so! Definitely feels like a good reason to leave town forever!) Once Ryuube explains her importance, and plays to her ego and need for safety, it makes sense that she’d choose to stay at home. He only needed to stop creeping her out, and she’s inevitably going to stay where it’s comfortable.

Where I have not grown more generous to what the show’s doing with Wakana is how she immediately tries to kill Philip. It’s such a gigantic change to her character from the last EVERY EPISODE that I don’t think the show can possibly come up with a reason why she wouldn’t be slightly more sensitive to Philip’s predicament. (There’s maybe a read on it where she’s angry that Philip never showed up at the train station, but neither of them ever mention it, and it’s not like she joined Ryuube out of spite.) I get that Wakana’s all in on being the main Museum heavy, but I feel like there could’ve been a bit more nuance to her change. Although, it’d arguably be out of character for this show to provide any nuance to a change in Wakana’s portrayal, so maybe I should at least be applauding their consistency.

Not an amazing episode, thanks to a preponderance of Major Developments and not quite enough work done to tie them all together thematically, but still solid for how it worked on Philip and Team Double. There’s a lot asked of Philip’s actor in this one, and he nailed all of it. Being able to buy everything Philip does… that salvaged a bunch of stuff I had harder time buying into. We’ll see how I feel as this series aims towards its finale!

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-I genuinely hated the end of this episode originally. FURIOUS at it. 37 gets me to care about Wakana’s psychology, and then this one has her go full fratricide while Philip and Shotaro are stuck in traffic. I hated the suddenness of it, and I still don’t love it.

-I cannot believe that we still need to have Jinno and Makura knocked out before anyone can Henshin, but, hey – at least we get Jinno AND Makura again!

-Seriously, why can’t Philip just call Wakana and have her wait? Or why can’t Neurotaki just tell Philip his Terrible Secret over the phone? Lazy writing!