[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 32 - “A NEW GREEED, THE VOID, AND THE UNSTOPPABLE COMBO”



In retrospect, the whole Sakata/Suzuka plot was a real I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This Story sort of situation. Suzuka never shows up again after her single appearance last episode, there are no more Ankh Yummies after the one that got detonated at the end of 31, and Sakata’s only around for a single scene with Eiji and the gang. It’s Sakata being like Welp Guess Helping People Is Bad, which prompts Eiji to talk more about his own experiences with trying to solve things with money, and how it can have horrifyingly unintended consequences. That’s the extent of the Sakata story’s use: giving Eiji a reason to talk about money being the wrong way to help people.

(It’s… I feel like I’m sort of diminishing what Eiji’s saying, or even potentially misconstruing it. It’s just a very weird way to apply Eiji’s intended lesson of trying to do good for the people in front of you, rather than trying to do massive societal good that you can’t control – basically a lot of the same friction Eiji used to have with Gotou – because that’s kind of already what Sakata was doing? He wasn’t randomly dispensing money to the world or throwing it from the atmosphere like a Yummy, he was just giving a bit of cash to a family who lost a major provider. He kind of was doing exactly what Eiji was saying, in reaching out to a single family that he knew needed help. The idea of anonymous money being worse than going to them and seeing if they needed help with, like, their laundry or whatever… it’s weird. It’s weird that this family got money in the mail and it made some woman go into debt and quit her job! I don’t think Sakata was misguided! This is like buying someone a sandwich and then they used it to burn down an orphanage – I think you were still okay to buy them a sandwich!)

But now that we’ve got Eiji’s tragic backstory of accidentally funding a civil war – who among us, etc etc – we can also get Eiji’s tragic backstory of having his failure and guilt turned into political capital by his dad and touted as heroism. It’s the sort of thing that could definitely sour you on not just money and privilege, but also wanting anything more than what you can grab with your own hands. Eiji’s lack of desire isn’t nihilism exactly, nor is it guilt, but it’s some weirder amalgam of the two that creates a drive outside of wanting something for yourself and into wanting to reduce the world down to a manageable psychological radius – a new kind of anti-desire.

Which is why half of the Purple Medals chose him, as explained in the THIRD consecutive exposition scene. (No wonder Suzuka didn’t get to show up again, she probably couldn’t explain anything new about either Eiji’s history or mechanics of hidden Core Medals!) Eiji’s ability to control OOO combos is based on the same thing that attracted the Purple Medals: he’s a hollowed out being, and they needed somewhere to live. The idea of Eiji’s ambivalence toward his own life and reluctance to prioritize himself in any situation becoming an apocalyptic scenario that the entire cast has to confront and contain? Very cool. (It’s so bad and such a threat that even Ankh expresses some brief, minor concern over Eiji. This is some endgame shit!!!) It’s sort of exactly the right metaphor in an episode all about reducing your actions to what’s right in front of you; the apocalypse as a friend who needs looking out for. When you can save the world by letting the guy who never puts himself first know that someone is putting him first, you are on the right track with your season-long plot.

I thought this episode was a huge step up over 31, but it could only really be. The Sakata Yummy stuff probably could’ve been jettisoned from that episode and replaced with a different way into Eiji’s story without really missing anything. (I mean, maybe you need the Purple Yummies to be in both episodes instead? So there’s a monster fight?) But when the show finally divests itself of a plot that was mostly taking up space -slash- being really weird (I don’t get why the mom quit her job!!!), it nicely centers Eiji’s sacrificial heroism as probably the most dangerous threat this show has ever faced. Not bad!