[DreamSword]

Long before I even started Kabuto, I knew about episode 46.

It's one of those things in my particular circle of toku fandom that's kinda hard not to hear about with how infamous it is. And especially after Die's' review of it.

Heck, said review kind of became a running gag around these forums for a while; The whole "Tsurugi goes to France" thing. So many people having such an adverse reaction to this particular episode got me prepped to see the worst.

Which is why I was very disappointed to see that not only was the episode nowhere near as bad as what its reputation lead me to believe, but that Die's' intense hatred of it also made no sense to me; Coming across as confusing at best and hypocritical at worst.

Now, before I keep going, I want to preface everything I'm about to say with this: I am by no means trying to attack Die directly. I'm not saying that he's stupid, not allowed to have his opinion, or anything like that. In my mind, I'm complimenting him more than anything, because I feel as though his past review gives a good springboard for discussing both this episode and Kabuto itself.

If you want the short version of my thoughts on episode 46, it's that just like Ex-Aid, its "death on Christmas" is infact rather forced, but everything else about the episode honestly felt like a step up from the usual Kabuto fare to me. This being any sort of breaking point feels odd when Kabuto has continually let me down for almost the entirety of this run. Like, yeah, Tsurugi is my favorite character in the show, but him being killed kinda felt par for the course.

As for some more detailed thoughts, well, again, using Die's' review as a springboard...

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 46

Uh, no.

No to this entire episode.

No to a story that ends with Tendou honoring someone's request for suicide because they were too disgusted to live with themselves, with the complex truth of their existence.

More specifically, Tendo is honoring Tsurugi's' desire to kill all of the Warms.

See, one running theme throughout Kabuto is the idea of honoring legacy and, more specifically, someone's' memory.

The fact of the matter is that the Scorpio Warm isn't the original Tsurugi in a literal sense. And both him and Tendo trying to do right by the boy who died trying to save his sister lines up with past episodes of the show.

Episodes like 40 (which Die found brilliant, by the way) and the Gatack two-parter hit on the same idea with the Warms of the week that they highlight. Kagami still honoring the little boy whom the Warm was imitating via bring forth the moonbow and Daisuke allowing Warm Reina to die on her own terms(don't forget that she specifically asked Daisuke to kill her)...

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No to a story where Tsurugi wallows in self-pity and self-loathing, where the arc of it is He Hates Himself And Wants To Die And Then He Dies.

...And it's not really any different here. Sure, a big part of Warm Tsurugi's' motivation is the awful truth, but the other part is him carrying out the exact mission he, under the influence of the original, has had since his introduction: The extermination of the Scorpio Warm.

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No to a story that lets Tendou execute someone in front of a grieving friend, and playing it as some noble act, his unshakeable character and deep kindness.

The episode is by no means demanding you agree with the philosophy of him or Tendo; merely showing how they decide to deal with the situation at hand. The directing makes it very obvious that despite Tendo's' own proclamations of wanting to exterminate all Warms, he still hesitates when it comes to Tsurugi, and that what he says to Misaki in the end is more the case of him doing his best to try and make sense of it all, rather than showcasing any sort of inherent justice or moral grandstanding.

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No to a story from the creator of Faiz, a show about self-acceptance, that is all about how sometimes who you are inside is terrible and needs to be destroyed.

The third act of Faiz also unironically took the stance that all Orphenoch had to die in order for humans to live, so even taking this episode at its most ugly interpretation wouldn't be that out of left field for Inoue.

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No to a story where Tsurugi wanders into this ocean, longing for death, as the tackiest images of Misaki smiling are layered over, making me laugh at Tsurugi's initial suicide attempt.

It's the show not only what's on Tsurugi's' mind, but also what motivates him to come out of the ocean in the first place. There's a reason he went back for the bracelet afterward.

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No to a story where Kagami's explanation for why he never told anyone why Tsurugi was a Worm was that he hadn't gotten around to it yet, not that he felt something for a friend, or that he was afraid of what would happen to Tsurugi, or literally anything that spoke to their bond.

Between this and the stuff about Tendo, Die really doesn't seem to grasp body language very well. Because all of those other angles he listed? Not only are they prevalent within this episode itself via the way that Kagami acts here, but by the very same way he acts regarding Tsurugi's' real identity throughout the entirety of the show.

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No to a story that assumes that Tsurugi could be a sociopathically capable supervillain at the drop of a hat, despite dozens of episodes as evidence to the contrary.

No to a story that thinks you can make Tsurugi a cold-blooded killer after spending a season making him the sweetest puppy of a Rider.

It doesn't. His entire act was a ploy. And that is made incredibly obvious.

Tsurugi also has been shown to have no mercy when it comes to Warms. Remember the episode where he liked a girl, only to immediately kill her the moment it turns out she was a Warm? His character is consistent here.

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No to a story that only acknowledges the depression of Hiyori through Tendou's internal monologue, because Hiyori never once appears in this episode.

Not the first time.

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No to a story where Tsurugi's dastardly plan was to crush all of the Zecters in an industrial press, something that not only doesn't work, but obviously was never ever going to work because these things are from space.

Yeah, that was part of the point. Tsurugi's' real plan was for the Riders to exterminate all of the Warms in one go. Having the Zectors be gone would kinda ruin that idea.

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No to all of it, to every scene, to every line of dialogue, to every maudlin staging, to every reasonable Misaki reaction that is obliterated in the face of manly suffering and laughable motivations.

No to this episode, forever.

Between this and [url=https://kamenriderdie.com/index.php/category-style-1/revice/kamen-rider-beyond-generations]his review of Beyond Generations[/quote], I've noticed that Die tends to just check out of something that he doesn't care for. And I'll admit that it's a bit concerning because all it results in is him missing alot of details that, to me atleast, are very obvious and then playing it off as the episode/movie's' fault rather than his media literacy. It's one thing to not like something, it's another to be disingenuous about it. It'd be like if I tried to claim that the entirety of Kamen Rider Geats was some tasteless allegory about slavery, or something. It'd be both out of left field, make no sense, and trying to fault a show for something it never does to begin with.

Again, I'm not sitting here demand that anyone out and out see episode 46 as anything brilliant. Heck, I myself don't like the episode. But being disingenuous never really sits right with me about anything. And it's why I very much hope that I myself don't come across that way whenever I talk about any of the shows/episodes/what have you that I don't like.

Case in point: Kamen Rider Kabuto in its entirety.

There's a quote from a video game called Folklore for the PS3, that I still think about ever since I first read it. It goes: "Memories are what make us who we are. So if someone else had your memories, then they would also be you."

It's a line that sort of comes and goes towards the very beginning of the story, and it very poignantly sums up many of the themes and ideas of the game itself, as Folklore ends up becoming a tale of identity, the importance of our past, and how people are shaped by their own perceptions of reality.

And I mean, I guess if you wanted to be generous, you could call Kabuto all of that. Though I'd personally say that it wasn't executed nearly as well.

I've made it no secret that Kabuto as a whole is just something that didn't connect with me throughout practically the entirety of its run. And while sure, I could go into some hyper-detailed rant about practically any given episode as to why, what it essentially boils down to is that, outside of Tsurugi, who even he himself isn't handled great, I essentially had nothing to look forward to when it came to this show.

I found practically every character to be underdeveloped and unendearing if not outright annoying, the plot makes less and less sense as the show goes on, and I just really couldn't ever get a proper handle on the show's' tone. I've said it before: I genuinely think that Kabuto as a whole would've been way better off had it been written as a comedy rather than a drama.

And I feel like I get it on some level: The very premise of the Warms themselves does make for a great angle when it comes to drama. Secret Invasion was a big event in the past for Marvel, afterall. But I more often than not found that angle to be entirely wasted on these characters that I didn't really care about. The only one coming even remotely close being Tsurugi which ends up a waste by the end.

Meanwhile, the only time I ever found anyone else in the cast even remotely likable was when the show played up certain character traits for comedy. That's not to say the comedy in Kabuto is anything super special, mind you, but it's a step up from the drama that never once hit for me. Heck, episode 45 showcases the only time I was able to stand the Hopper Brothers; which is when Tendo treats their latest gimp gimmick with an eyeroll and just leaves them be. Inoue somehow managed to get Tendo to make me laugh!

Because really, that's the thing. Stuff like the Hopper Brothers' over the top darkness obsession and Tendo's' perfectionism are things that I feel are way better treated ironically, and yet no, the shows presents them as extremely straight-forward for the most part. And to me, none of that is at all endearing. If anything, Yonemura almost seemed determined to make me dislike this entire cast. Which, if that was somehow the case, mission accomplished, I guess? Which begs the question that if the characters aren't anything to center on, does the show have anything else to cling to?

Well, certainly not its plot! I wanna quote one other post from the Kabuto thread, just to drive this point home:

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I'd be lying if I said the question of what the Worms even want never popped into my head, but I'd also be lying if I said I cared that much about getting an answer.

Well I do want an answer; You know why? Because it would not only present any sort of context as to why this war is being fought in the first place, but Kabuto also (un)fortunately had the idea of making many of the Warms important characters. Tsurugi, is a character. Reina, is a character. The little boy in the factory, was a character. Gaining any sort of insight into Warm culture would not only provide some context for the plot, but flesh out the characters that I'm so desperately trying to like. I'm not trying to demand that the plot or the characters be any sort of "deep" but, man, give me something, anything to find enjoyment in at the very least.

If my opening bit on this makes anyone think that I'm doing some sort of unfair comparison between Kabuto and Folklore, then I have another angle for you. Because the farther into Kabuto I got, the more I realized that, while it's not an complete 1:1 comparison, I had already seen a different tokusatsu that had done so many of Kabuto's' ideas alot better. And that show was called Kamen Rider Agito. A main protagonist who's good at everything. A bumbling secondary who can never catch up, yet finds success in his own way. Edgey extra Riders. A plot that makes no sense. All the baseline stuff is there. And yet Agito had one thing that Kabuto didn't: An actually likable cast of characters, which also helped to highlight how the plot basically didn't matter.

I've read some posts that claimed that Kabuto is Yonemura's' best work, and I'm sad to say that I can't agree. To me his best work will forever be his character work on Diend, with that movie the character got being the pinnacle of that effort. And it's such a shame that the great work he did with that character couldn't be reflected here, in his own show that he headlined.

In the end, I give Kabuto a 1/6. Tsurugi and Daisuke aside, I just couldn't get into it at all. And its only saving grace otherwise is that it at the very least isn't boring like I found Geats to be.