[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 10 - “FISTS, EXPERIMENTATIONS, AND A SUPER BIKE”



FISTS:
We haven’t really seen Eiji lose his cool so far in the series. He’s generally shown to be laid back, occasionally melancholy, and frequently frustrated. (Ankh, for that last one, 1000%.) But we haven’t seen Eiji really lose it on anyone, especially to the point of throwing a punch.

And, y’know, he still doesn’t really hurt anyone; he’s still not that guy. His punch into the wall is just his way of showing Doctor Maki the depth of his misconception about Eiji’s easy-going demeanor. Eiji’s an easy-going guy because he likes people, and he likes spending time with them. Eiji’s upbeat because it makes him happy to get to know people, to bring them into his life. As a result, the only true enemy a guy like that could have is someone for whom life is merely an obstacle to a useful death.

Eiji’s only real enemy could be a guy like Maki.

EXPERIMENTATIONS:
He’s a good one, as far as natural nemeses go. The Greeed exist on an almost metaphorical or psychological level – their role is as unknowable avatars of humanity’s worst impulses. Kougami’s an interesting option for an adversary, but he’s more someone that believes in wondrous possibilities so much that he wants to drag everyone into his bright future with his own two hands; he’s a dangerous zealot, but his goal seems optimistic.

Maki’s a different breed. He’s the inverse of Kougami – where Kougami celebrates birthdays as the hope for something new, Maki thinks of beginnings as less relevant than endings. For Maki, a life is just an unfinished story, and unfinished stories aren’t worth reading. He’s the natural enemy of a guy who won’t stop reaching out to people: a guy who thinks reaching out is robbing lives of significance.

All of that maybe sounds layered and intense, but the performance is a nice balance of foreboding and goddamn ridiculous. Maki’s a cold, unfeeling scientist with a puppet on his arm, and its the only thing Maki makes eye contact with when he talks. As potential archenemies go, he’s a little hard to take seriously. But he’s operating in the right register for this show, and his idiosyncrasies slot in nicely with Benevolent Yet Shady Birthday-Obsessed Industrialist and Ice Cream-Addicted Sneering Bird Man. Maki’s weird, but weird in a way that’s creepier than the other two forces in Eiji’s life that seem to treat human life as fungible.

Kougami has had employees die due to his schemes, but it never feels like the lives are lost intentionally. Ankh has loudly opted to not help people who need it, and argued that some Yummy victims did it to themselves, but he hasn’t yet crossed a line and intentionally endangered someone irrevocably. (I mean, besides Shingo, continuously.) (Unless I’ve forgotten someone? Maybe!) With Maki, he’s a guy that's willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone in order to further his goals, because people dying is inevitable and natural. Sure, maybe not by the hands of shark monsters, but what’s the difference?

AND A SUPER BIKE:
Plus, when he gets all the data he needs, he’s fine with supplying OOO with new Medal System tech to clean up the mess. Like a new Toridevendor!

I admit, I completely forgot about this bike upgrade. When I saw “AND A SUPER BIKE” in the title, I was like, What? Does it fly or something? Was that a thing it could do? After seeing the Candroid-assisted form change, I still have zero recollection of this thing. I can only assume it shows up just a couple times more. (It feels like a Cat Combo bike, and I don’t think we get a ton more Cat Combo stories.) It’s a CG creation, and that means I’m almost immediately checked out on it. It’s fine. The rule with Mezool conclusions seems to be that OOO has to summon a new CG power to defeat the hordes of creatures, and this one’s a Cat Bike.

Knowing that one of the powers of the Toridevendor is that it can better harness the power of the Cat Combo to lessen the strain on Eiji, it actually makes sense that the show debuted the Cat Combo in the previous episode, because the With Bike part is its final form. I don’t love it, ‘cause I don’t love that CG bike, but it makes more sense.

Not really a huge episode for the Greeed (Mezool, Uva, and Gamel never even leave their base, Kazari is totally MIA) or the Yummy victim (he’s an evil mad bomber what bombs at daylight, the end) or even Ankh (a floating hand that says My Actor Was Needed Elsewhere This Week), but a great episode for giving Eiji an opponent that challenges his view of the preciousness of human life.