[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 8 - “SLACKING OFF, HAVING NO DESIRE, AND TAKING A BREAK”



SLACKING OFF, HAVING NO DESIRE, AND TAKING A BREAK:
Not even worth separating those three out into different sections, because they’re all talking about the same thing. Like this episode!

Probably not going to be my favorite OOO two-parter, despite how much I enjoyed this installment. (I really enjoyed this installment.) The Uva stuff is dispatched more or less before the opening credits, Gamel abandons his plot halfway through, and the Yummy never feels looped into anything that’s going on. (Eiji could’ve been fighting literally any monster for any reason, it’s ridiculously perfunctory.) There’s really only one story in this episode worth discussing beyond an It’s Funny To See Ankh Harrassed By Children level of identification, and that’s the Momoko/Takeshi one.

It’s one of those cute toku stories that never really seems like a toku story at all. The Yummy is briefly inspired by Momoko’s violent frustration with her shiftless husband, but that’s nothing she really has to directly confront. OOO is necessary to save lives and defeat monsters, but it’s really Eiji who’s necessary to hear out two frustrated people and try and help them see how much they still care about each other.

And he does that in a supremely OOO way, which is by reaching a hand out, and not much more. Eiji blunders his way through his discussions with Momoko and Takeshi, frequently making terrible comparisons that reduce the complexity of adult relationships into misguided metaphors about summer vacation and overeating. (I mean, good for the intended audience, but sort of disappointing for Eiji’s maturity.) Eiji never quite gets what’s happening between Momoko and Takeshi on a relatable level, but he pushes back on both of their assertions that Takeshi has lost his desire, instead helping to reframe things as guy who needed a reset and a woman pushing him to put a date on that reset's conclusion. Eiji’s role isn’t to solve their problem, it’s to help them see that they both want to solve their problem. After that, after he’s given them a hand, they can solve it themselves.

It’s, again, very cute. I like stories where the resolution is reached due to the decency and humanity of the Kamen Rider, rather than its powers or transformations. It just… I sort of also like the powers and transformations? And when every part of the episode feels like it's telling the same story? Instead, with this one, we get elements that are randomly discarded throughout the episode, like the production team couldn’t remember why they ever cared about them in the first place. I guess that’s at least thematically fitting?