[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 46



Aaaaand it seems like we're finally at an end for this storyline. I've got some complicated feelings about it.

The big negative for me is how backwards-looking this whole string of episodes was, from full-on flashback episodes to so, so many old mysteries that got dredged up. This never struck me, especially in the fantastic midsection, as a Solving Mysteries type of show. I know there're a few big mysteries teased out in the beginning, backstory stuff that set up the current status quo for our characters, but that all felt largely abandoned as the show hit its stride. Spending so much time on how Shouichi feels about a character who's dead before the show even starts, or the time a bunch of nobodies met each other, or very long explanations of how two characters who are very dead once knew each other, it all feels like time misspent. Worse, it created conflicts that felt inorganic, irrelevant plot points getting in the way of established character development. A lot of these episodes felt like they were from a much earlier draft of Masked Rider Agito.

There's an, as it would turn out with this episode, much bigger positive for me. I mentioned in a completely different thread how there are a few things Kamen Rider does as a franchise that I enjoy. It's a set of cultural lessons the show's imparting to children, and they're different from the kind of lessons American shows try to impart. One of the big ones is about heroism and power. A lot of American shows run a variation of the Spider-Man "with great power there must also come great responsibility." A character receives power, they misuse it, they realize they need to be more responsible, that's how you learn the importance of heroism. (Gaim does a version of this, which I found interesting.) Kamen Rider shows, as a whole, flip this dynamic, so that With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power. A character, powerless, shows courage and heroism, so they are rewarded with power by the universe. It's a standard setup for primary Riders. So it was awesome to see that be the crux of this episode, that the newly de-Agitoed cast throws themselves in front of the imperiled Mana, only to see the Agitosity they'd lost fight to return to them. It's a great theme to build an episode around, and it plays out tense and exciting. It feels appropriately epic as Shoucihi punches the Agito force out of the Spooky Man, with all three Agitos banding together as the Agito Club Shouichi had wished for. It's a super strong conclusion to a plotline that ended much better for me than it began.

Didn't end great for everyone, though! Kino's dead, I guess? I assume it's from getting drilled by that Unknown, but maybe it's just that his arc ended? He atoned for his attacks against Ryou and Shouichi, he took responsibility for his actions, he helped Majima believe in himself, and he was finally at peace. It feels weird for him to die just a few episodes before the finale, but it's not like he's been around forever, either. It felt... I don't know, it felt like the show saying Someone Has To Die for the story to feel huge and impactful and it might as be Kino. I didn't love how it happened, but I think it's fine that it happened.

The Shouichi and Mana stuff, I'm glad that's over. The resolution feels as much of a shrug as I'd prefer, an acknowledgement that the outcome of the storyline was the point, not the motivation. Mana gets a Your Dad Wouldn't Want This talk from Uncle and a Being An Agito Is Hard talk from Ryou, and then she's all Team Agito again, and I still don't get what the show was doing with her in this storyline. It still feels wildly out of character, but it's over now, and that can be that. I don't want to dwell on it anymore than it seems the show wants to dwell on it.

In keeping with The Ending Almost Made Me Forget How Dumb The Journey was, that sequence of Houjou bursting into the Team G3-X trailer to be Hikawa's eyes, beautiful. Thrilling and surprising. Hikawa deciding that his hysterical blindness when operating a machine of death was a minor handicap, nothing to worry about, crosses the line for me from Hikawa's usual stubbornness and martyrdom into recklessness and stupidity. How could he not tell Ozawa?! How could he think this would work?! It immediately fails, nearly killing him. Houjou saving the day, I mean, that buys the show a lot of my goodwill, but the decisions made to get there are dumb.

So, yeah, mixed bag on this storyline. It felt, story-wise, beholden to a version of the show that no one wanted to make anymore. Deep secrets and elaborate mysteries that don't matter to the present at all. It ended up eventually saying something interesting about heroism in general and the characters in specific, but I'm not sure the path to get there was that great. Happy to move on!