[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 12 - “EELS, THE WORLD, AND THE GRAVITY COMBO”



EELS:
It’s very funny to me that this episode opted to begin their title with the brief debut of the new Candroid. The Eel Candroid isn’t really integral to defeating or even really stopping the Yummy – it’s just the new toy. I’d’ve rather the first thing in the title just been New Toy and cut to the chase.

Some of it is that I don’t really care about the Candroids on an entertainment level. I like them just fine on a thematic level – the power of desire packaged and resold – and on an aesthetic level – coins, vending machines, etc. – but I just think they’re sort of hokey on an entertainment level. They exist as the Necessary Role-Play Item for the series, and I just generally don’t think much about those because I am not a Japanese child who wants to pretend to exist in the world of Kamen Rider OOO. That is not a failing of the show! Show does a good job spotlighting the toys for children! But I sort of bounce off of that part, in a way no different than the Gochizo of the current year’s Rider. The Candroids… man, I don’t care.

THE WORLD:
I care about narrative, though, and this episode was stuffed with it.

Of the two main threads from last time, Gotou and Tsukuba, I feel like the Gotou one comes off the best; the most legible and explicable. (Which, if only half of a Yonemura plot is going to land for me, I’d rather it be the half with the guy who’s sticking around for the rest of the series!) Gotou’s story is that he thinks too big, and misses the way his desire overshadows his motivation, leading to ineffectiveness and jealousy.

Gotou wants to save the world, and views anything short of that to be both inefficient and shortsighted. He’s got a big mission, and folks like Eiji who can’t see the value in it are wasting their potential and standing in his way. But in discarding the small, hard work that Eiji’s doing to protect people, Gotou’s forgetting that he wants to save the world specifically to keep those very people safe. Eiji’s inability to see Gotou’s big picture is only because his dedication to helping people right now in the moment doesn’t give him the distance to think bigger. Gotou’s top-down approach was never going to bring results, because you’ve got to put the work in at a base level in order to effect massive change.

Which brings us to Tsukuba, and… I think there’s one twist too many in his story? After last episode’s seething jealousy over being overlooked after years of blogging abroad, this episode drops the bombshell that Tsukuba never went anywhere. (Other than Thailand, I think, because I’m pretty sure Eiji said he ran into him there.) Tsukuba wanted to be famous so he could shove it in the face of the bloggers who looked down on him for wanting to be famous (?), so he faked his entire blog.

It’s a bonkers twist, and it turns this from a neat parallel with Gotou’s story of chafing under a lack of recognition and striving to be in the spotlight, into a story where a massive fraud wanted to get famous despite being a massive fraud. I don’t think that works? At all? It’s got something to say about valuing the result more than the process – same as Gotou – but, like, it makes a lot Tsukuba’s story from last time too pathetic to invest in. I mean, yeah, no shit a book publisher turned you down: your whole blog is made up! Tsukuba isn’t some guy who let his need for the spotlight warp his core values, or turn him into someone he wouldn’t recognize. He’s a serial fabulist whose core desire has been to show up the people who correctly tagged him as a massive phony – this is a guy that never had an animating principle beyond faking it until he made it!

It’s not a twist that helped this story land for me, nor did it feel like it entwined Tsukuba’s arc with Gotou’s. (The opposite!)

AND THE GRAVITY COMBO:
Speaking of landings, it’s SaGoZou!

While I appreciate how this episode specifically called back Gamel’s Yummy from 9/10 as a potential way to ground this Yummy so OOO could finish it off, I think Eiji says it best when Ankh demands Eiji collect the Medal Combo from Gamel: “Don’t make it sound so simple!”

Ankh’s plan/”plan” counts on Gamel randomly showing up alongside Uva, when the show hasn’t shown them working together before – like, what if Mezool came instead? – and then Eiji somehow holding off multiple Greeed and a flying Yummy to quickly extract THREE Core Medals from Gamel. It’s a plan that requires both happenstance and luck in order to succeed, which isn’t a plan so much as it’s a wish. Ankh wished for this to happen, and it did. It’s not the tightest writing I’ve ever seen, is what I’m getting at.

But it’s a great suit, which I feel like I’ll never stop saying about the Combo suits on this show. The silver and black is nothing less than gorgeous, and I love the oversized punchers. The heaviness of the suit’s top half sells the power of it, and the suit actor imbues it with animalistic contours thanks to some typically great posturing and movement. SaGoZou is a terrific suit, even if its deployment is a little half-assed.

Which is sort of this two-parter for me! The details are half-assed, the first part sort of drags, and the Tsukuba twist is unnecessary, but the core narrative about doing the work instead of looking to the result is pretty pretty great. (I especially love how collaborative and gracious Eiji is in this episode to multiple people who think living his life would make them happy. Eiji has been through some terrible stuff, and he never throws that in anyone’s face. He just does the job!) Solid two-parter, despite itself at times.

Just like Gotou!