[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 44



A lot of unresolved business starts getting put to bed with this one, and, man, it's just like episode 42. It's a lot of stuff that would've mattered a ton twenty or thirty episodes ago, but right now it feels perfunctory, and a little dull.

We already knocked off the Akatsuki-gou storyline in an underwhelming way, so now we've got a drawn-out look at what really happened to Mana's dad and Shouichi's sister. (Those are two different people, for the record. I don't want anyone thinking that was the episode's reveal. It would've been way better, incidentally.) Mana's dad's murder... like the Akatsuki-gou, it's something the show needed to address, but it's not something I'm terrifically excited for. It just feels like the show has moved so far beyond those mysteries, the backstories, into something grounded in current choices and present-day struggles. Finding out the convoluted chain of events that led to Mana's dad's death, it's hard to muster much enthusiasm for it. Especially since there're so many red herrings, coincidences (oh, Shouichi just happened to walk by the dead body, that's why he's in Mana's vision), lies, and dramatic pauses that occur just as someone's about to stop obfuscating and start telling the truth... honestly, it's exhausting. I might've been into finding out who murdered him, and why, if it was conveyed in a more entertaining way. Instead, it's so goddamn drawn-out that, at this point? I would confess to killing Mana's dad if it would resolve this storyline once and for all.

The Yukina plot, pretty much the same thing. She had Agito powers, and she knew Mana's dad and Truegami, none of that's a surprise (well, her Henshining was a neat reveal), but we still don't have an answer to So Did She Kill Herself Or What. It's, like the other plot, it's a lot of spelling out things I don't care about anymore. There's nothing here that's shocking, there's nothing that makes us reconsider anything we've already seen. It's just information, and I didn't care about much of it. Unbelievably ready for this show to put these played out mysteries away and get back to involving the whole cast in new, fresh stories.

(To that point, all that happens this time out is that Ryou moves a powerless Kino to safety, then eventually gets his Agito robbed by Spooky Man. No Hikawa, no anyone from Team 3G-X. I hope they're having fun with their weeks off!)