[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER MAJADE WITH GIRLS REMIX



I spent a whole lot of this special thinking it was fun, but not really about anything. Where the previous three-part Girls Remix story really grounded itself in the formation of the team, and how that gave a disparate group of boy-adjacent characters and stories a place to let female perspectives find connection and fellowship, this one takes as given the existence of female internality and objectives, letting the special just sort of be a really solid one-off adventure for Legend Ladies across the last 16 or so years of Kamen Rider. There are way worse reasons to make a TTFC special, and I’m happy enough with the more nostalgia-bait intentions of a Girls Remix reunion/expansion. The new characters are a delight, even if I really miss some of the inaugural cast (Poppy!!!), and their usage overall felt fresh and dynamic. It’s a fun little chase story, punched up by frequent battles both in and out of costumes.

(Like, I pretty much just assume that Sakamoto filmed a fight between Marika and Nozomi, and then figured out a story that could be told around it. That fight alone is worth the price of admission, and sort of validated as many of these Girls Remix projects as Sakamoto can talk Toei into.)

But then we get into the reveal that Marika’s a resurrected cyborg or whatever, and where I’d normally feel robbed of a chance to really interrogate that character’s problematic history because she isn’t really her anymore, I think the fact that some lunatic brought her back to support someone else’s story is kind of the perfect adversary for these women? Marika is their weird boy-adjacent backgrounds run amuck, weaponized into zealotry and fawning worship. The little scene in the middle where Reika swoons over her brother and Rinne beams over her dad… like, that’s just the diluted version of Marika’s nonsense! There's kind of no reason for them to just randomly go Aren't The Men In Our Lives Great one scene after meeting each other, unless it's to kill Alison Bechdel's friend stone dead. The way those two characters reflexively elevate the men in their lives is kind of the starting point of valuing the men's success more than their own, which is Marika's entire existence. Marika is a character that exists to deify someone else – anyone else, judging by every usage of her for all of media – at the cost of her own narrative. Trying to defeat and/or rehabilitate a character like that is kind of the ideal mission for Girls Remix to undertake; Girls Remix is the helping hand Marika never got in life.

I don’t know if the rest of the special really lives up to that admittedly subjective interpretation of its conflict's thematic significance or thought-out storytelling. (It doesn't help that Marika is supporting a woman this time, despite all of the King talk.) Characters appear and disappear based on clearly budget and schedule reasons – Sophia nopes out after a couple scenes, Hana ditches half of the fight for nebulous reasons, and there’s zero story reason for Sachika to show up at the end. While it’s fun to see Chiharu from Zero-One back, despite apparently leaving her husband and changing her name, I don’t know that there’s enough here to really care about her weird-ass plot, but I’ll assume it’ll improve over subsequent episodes. (Too much left unresolved here! And was that a Wizard portal that sucked up the new Driver?) The million little continuity details and callbacks are nice – Akiko nodding towards Fuuto PI, Clotho getting name-checked, Sophia’s terrifying cooking getting a sound effect – but that’s the laziest part to ever compliment. It’s all fun and nostalgic, but it’s a little clunky for how it tries to create an adventure around that core.

Still… I sort of don’t mind a lot that there maybe isn’t an explicit Reason for these characters to be together, because Kamen Riders Help Each Other Out is the reason. The girls-only aspect is a neat marketing hook, but the storytelling isn’t obligated to foreground that. Where Girls Remix started as a refuge for overlooked women – and would’ve been a lifeline for someone like Marika – it’s okay if it’s evolved into just a club for heroes instead. Sometimes representation is just solid entertainment, you know?