[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 40 - “CONTROL, A BIRTHDAY PARTY, AND A VANISHING ANKH”



The middle part of this episode, though.

Team OOO goes to the Evil Neighbor house, but it’s full of controlled cops. Eiji won’t risk harming innocents in pursuit of the Yummy, so Eiji and Ankh have to wait around outside until the Yummy comes out. But they can’t go back to Cous Coussier – controlled cops, remember – and they’ve got no idea when the Yummy will reappear since they don’t know what its food is, so they just… hang out. They’ve got nothing to do, nowhere to be, and it’s summertime.

It’s the best little section of TV any series could ask for, giving the show room to cash in all of the investment the audience has made over the last year to create something so beautiful and melancholy. It’s all grounded in Ankh’s desperate need for control (like in the title!), where he needs to always keep others at a distance through cruelty, or threats, or intimidation, but it’s all just him trying to be the one that decides who can be hurt, so he can make sure it isn't him. Ankh clearly cares about this dumb family of morons he’s collected, and like he says, he doesn’t give things back. He hates that Eiji and Hina know him well enough to see through him, and it’s the blaring subtext of the best scene in the best episode of this show. (Sorry, 39, you had a good run!) Ankh still wants to be seen as the ruthless Greeed that’d kill any of them if the mood struck, but everyone knows that isn’t true anymore. It’s been a year, and too much has changed.

The best shows have this moment, around this time. It’s this realization that The End Is Coming – not some global apocalypse engineered by a genocidal villain, but the natural consequence of time, and Toei’s production schedule along with it. Kamen Rider OOO is only a couple months away from ending, and the middle of this episode really lets you sit with it. Another show might’ve held this off until the penultimate episode (possibly with a game of catch), but this one really wants you to feel the turn in the narrative. We’re at a point so removed from the beginning as to be facing a completely different cast. All of the battles and victories have forged bonds that don’t need to be spoken about to be recognized, which makes it even more poignant when the show decides to highlight them like this. There’s value in processing our journeys, and understanding what we desire. Ankh cares, Hina cares, Eiji cares; you care.

(I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I really like how this episode gives Hina room to talk about why she’s letting the status quo proceed, but then her answer is basically just Vibes. It’s so smart of this show to just let Hina enjoy her pseudo-brother without trying to define it or excuse it. It’s nice to have her brother around in some form, even if that form is Ankh, and Ankh is letting her have this time with her brother, so maybe he’s not so bad after all.)

The rest of the episode is a typically brilliant collection of fun fights and large-scale plotting – the wacky couple, Lost Ankh’s shocking cliffhanger victory, Satonaka negotiating a better salary to work at Gotou’s pace – but it’s the middle, and how it breathes in 10 months of exceptional storytelling to breathe out 2 months of trying to hold onto a thing as it's disappearing, that really made this one perfect for me.