[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 9 - “REVERIE”



I pretty much only ever want to watch toku shows about how to be a toku fan.

This whole episode was, suitably, a dream for me. It’s an episode that elides the specificity of something like Episode 6’s exposition (for a very Episode 6 value of “specificity”) in favor of something more haunting yet illuminative, and that’s an episode-length exploration of how Akane’s toku fandom has curdled from supportive into suffocating.

It’s that duality that powers this episode – how toku is something that should be additive to your ability to engage with the world, not a substitute for it, but how easily those two things can change places when we’d rather escape into fiction than deal with the messiness of the world. Akane’s interactions with Yuta, Utsumi, and Rikka are all bright and upbeat, but they aren’t real, and they aren’t about the person she’s with. They have the shape of connection – replacing Rikka’s meet-cute with Yuta; geeking out over kaiju with Utsumi; spending time with Rikka – but they’re all just things to flatter Akane. They’re a story she gets to tell herself using them, a story where she’s the girlfriend, the crush, the bestie. It’s a world that exists for her benefit, following the rhythm of a story she knows by heart.

But that’s horrifying, you know? A world flattened of individuality, left to tropes and contrivance. (Akane’s face when Rikka accidentally calls out how coincidental it is that they live next door to each other! Shots fired at Akane’s friend-fiction!) Escaping into stories to a degree that you resent the world for refusing to follow the rules of fiction is the worst-case scenario for fans of anything, and it’s even more terrifying if that person is capable of punishing a world with kaiju.

But it’s reductive to say that toku fandom, or any fandom, is mere escapism. If Akane’s story is here to introduce the depths of loneliness that can come with loving a fictional world too much, the Gridman Alliance’s stories are here to offer an alternative to that reading by letting toku be a way of coping with the world, and using its lessons to more humanely approach our shared existence. Gridman isn’t there to save them, or punish their enemies, he’s there to be a part of their lives when they need to better understand themselves, and the world around them. None of the kids turn on Akane, or berate her for trapping them in her dreams while telling them it’s what they want. Yuta’s dedication to protecting people is something he’s doing for people like Akane, and you can tell how sad he is that she feels like this escapism is what’s best. Utsumi admits that he really does have feelings for Akane, but they can’t be the only thing in his life, even if she’s okay letting them be the only thing in hers. Rikka reaches the end of her patience with Akane, clearly frustrated by Akane’s treatment of friendship as nothing more than a fan club she can express false humility around. All three of these kids know that Akane has tried to dupe and divide them, but that plan says more about how isolated and afraid Akane is, than any vulnerability within them. It’s a plan about how alone Akane is, and that’s the saddest thing.

Any episode that wants to spend this much time not only humanizing its central sociopath, but using her psychology as a way to talk about how easily hardcore fandom (she knows every kaiju name!) can shift from being a bridge to connect with other people, to becoming a barrier to dealing with other people – that is going to be my favorite episode of a series.