[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER KUUGA EPISODES 36 - 39



An exceptional four-part epic, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on the Grongi Megaplot, and only a few bafflingly weird diversions. It’s one of my favorite Kuuga stories so far!

There’s a lot to unpack from these four episodes. They touch on nearly every character and every plotline, with everything shifting into a very The Finale Is Coming Up Pretty Soon gear. Let’s see what we’ve got:


GRONGI
Obviously, the meat of this story. I’ve said before that I think the Grongi culture and mission is my favorite part of this series, and this story showed off why. The struggles of the different Grongi are stylishly shot and have an aggressive, unpredictable energy to them. With so much of the Grongi endgame shrouded in mystery, it’s difficult to predict what they’re going to do next, and I love that. There’s a lot of formula to Kuuga, so these weird characters doing weird things for weird reasons is exciting in a way that the rest of the show just isn’t for me.

Some of it’s the disposable nature of the Grongi. There’re no guarantees that Bat Grongi isn’t going to murder Acid Claw Grongi early in the story, or vice versa. That makes me way more dialed into their fight than I was when they fought Godai, since I’m pretty sure Godai isn’t going to die. Uh, again. But, yeah, when Bat Grongi’s in a fight with Acid Claw Grongi or Commander Grongi, it feels dangerous and exciting to me.

It helps that the Grongi scenes still have the most visual flourishes to anything in the show. I mean, hell, look at this awesome sequence from the end of Episode 37:








So cool! Crazy exciting! That standoff has drama for days, and then it just escalates in the beginning of Episode 38. Rose Grongi is one of my favorite characters on the show, and that’s with her barely doing more than walking around and looking placid. She’s mysterious and powerful and everything this show does right with the Grongi Megaplot in one character. I still feel like I’m only getting, like, 40% of what the Grongi are up to, but I love how that part of the show is progressing.


NAGANO
All of the Sakurako (and Ichijou, for a bit) investigation stuff in Nagano, it was fine. Useful to let the high-tension Grongi stuff get to cut away for a minute, but a whole lot of stalling to tell us… honestly, I’m not sure. Something about the Kuuga symbol being a Grongi character instead of a Linto character, and a bunch about the symbol maybe having two or three or four horns. I don’t know. It looked interesting, it was a nice break from the Grongi scenes, but I don’t know what I was supposed to have learned. Oh, other than that the building Sakurako and Ichijou walk up to when they get to the university…



...is Section Zero’s HQ from Wizard.



It’s been weird watching Kuuga, since I’m not seeing all of the reused locations I adored/tolerated from the Neo Heisei shows. Kamen Rider Stadium! Kamen Rider Quarry! That creek near the mountain! The creek under that one bridge! The giant pedestrian walkway! The little bridge over the sanitation waterway or whatever! All of my “favorites”! But here we are, 14 years before Wizard and it’s Section Zero’s HQ! Reused locations? I am home.


JEAN/ENOKIDA
Who… who is rooting for Enokida to get together with a wet noodle of a man like Jean? What sin has Enokida committed (other than being a terrible mother and maybe a mad scientist) that has her spending time with Jean? I’m not a fan of shows punishing characters for no reason, so I’m not sure why this plotline is being addressed.


POLE POLE
Uh, Kanzaki shows up to say that Yusuke fought for people as a kid. And there’s also another three or so scenes about nothing. Nothing. Like, Minori, Pops and Nana are such worthless characters at a story level that they have to have Kanzaki, just, like, pop out of a floorboard to enable anything of interest to happen at Pole Pole. Jesus. That place is where story goes to die.

I think that’s everything? This isn’t the best story they’ve ever done on Kuuga (I mean Pole Pole scenes, plural, and Jean scenes, plural), but I think the Grongi Megaplot part of these episodes was exactly what I want out of a horror-themed Kamen Rider show. The monsters have goals and conflicts beyond the Rider, the bodycount isn’t too ludicrous to care about, the heroes are always in the mix somewhere, and there’s both a cathartic victory and a terrifying cliffhanger. An exciting phase for Masked Rider Kuuga!