[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 43 - “THE O CYCLE - ELDERLY DETECTIVE”



Wow, what a rapid recovery this show can make! After the last two episodes bored me to tears, I thought this one was an all-around winner. Fun stakes, clever exposition, great gags, and some genuine drama for Shroud. Perfect episode, maybe!

It helps that the Dopant Dilemma is both straight-forward in its consequences – a kid got turned into an old lady; that's bad – and absurd in its context. Like, there’s just this scumbag selling aged revenge? And he’s just at some table under a bridge? It’s such a flavorful antagonist that almost anything that would come out of it would be an improvement over last story, and it’s all the right mix of seedy and horrifying. This guy doesn’t care about anything, so everyone’s at risk. The Old Dopant is like a Terror Dopant that’s also sort of short-sighted and lazy, which is the perfect level of threat for a W two-parter.

And the story with the little kid… like, it’s a solid problem to solve to begin with, but it gets so much better when it sprawls out into this story of stage moms and traumatized children, because it’s looping in the larger story of this episode, which is the collateral damage that comes from selfishness and rage. Both of the little girls are getting victimized by this story: Miyu, for getting turned into a granny; and Kumi, for witnessing her mother’s villainy. Whatever Kumi’s mom thinks she’s getting out of this, the consequences make it all too horrible to be comfortable with, and bound to cause bigger problems down the road. This thing’s about people putting into motion revenge, and how uncontrollable that ends up being.

Which is to say, Shroud.

Shroud’s a ridiculous character, whose single-minded devotion to killing Ryuube through hate AND ONLY HATE is so tiresome that even Philip can’t help but roll his eyes at her continued insistence that Shotaro isn’t hateful enough to be part of Double. She’s a dumb character, and she’d need to be at least 20% less theatrical to come back into the range of feeling like a real character you could take seriously. Luckily, this episode correctly decides that Saeko is maybe the best Sonozaki going right now, and gives her the task of selling Shroud’s Machiavellian bonafides, which almost instantly makes Shroud weirdly compelling. The idea that Shroud has ulterior motives is self-evident – her name is Shroud – but the idea that she’s been creating monsters specifically to build more furious heroes is… it’s pretty great? It’s the best possible motivation for an opposing force in a noir-inflected Kamen Rider show, to have her be just as monstrous as Ryuube, but In A Good Way Maybe Question Mark. She’s unconcerned with anything other than getting her revenge, and little things like “enabling Isaka’s serial killing” are just the cost of getting the job done. Sometimes little kids have to get turned into old ladies, and sometimes a young detective’s family has to get flash-frozen.

The steadiness of that theme of collateral damage makes sure that there’s no fat on this thing – every single scene is helping tell the same story, and it’s a great story. (Saeko and Terui in a scene is CHEF’S KISS.) Assured storytelling in a compelling package, from bell to bell. It’s so great to see this show be this good, this close to the end.

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-This thing is also SO FUNNY. The old man gags with Shotaro are a blast, turning Makura into a reliable source of laughs, but the FangJoker fight is, like, peak Takaiwa. Nothing is more fun to me than that dude playing two different roles through two different halves of his body. Crazy to think that a tense fight scene can still find room for such a clever bit of physical comedy.

-We’re also seven episodes from the end of the series, so it’s time to remind everyone that Akiko has a huge crush on Terui. While that’s rarely my favorite thing (she is her most childlike when she’s trying to get Terui’s attention, and it’s just sort of creepy), I like how this episode continues to subtly imply that it’s more reciprocal than Akiko thinks. The bit where Akiko has a picture of them together, and Terui’s like Don’t Question Me… I mean, he’s just being bashful! He likes the Chief! I don’t know if this was ever going to be show where they got real romantic about it – god knows those two ain’t the characters for it – but I like how the steady accrual of small details actually makes their relationship feel like it comes from someplace other than the clear blue sky.