[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER AGITO EPISODE 47



Aw. bless. What a delight this one was. The cast moves on from the recent darkness, the show reinforces its themes, and we encounter the final villains of the season, the, uh, Zodiarts?

The one bum note for me on this episode, and I hate a little that I always seem to bring these things up at the start, is the whole thing with Hikawa's mysterious blindness. We got a couple episodes of it occurring, a doctor saying there's nothing wrong, Hikawa nearly getting murdered, and now... it's gone. That's it. What caused it? No answer. What cured it? No answer. Great! GREAT. A plot that went absolutely nowhere. Jesus.

Aside from that, a real winner of an episode.

It's nice to see the show putting some thought into what's next for Shouichi and Ryou. It's definitely tied into the themes of finding a place, protecting it, and finding careers that allow them to feel useful and a part of something works along those lines. The idea of them being motivated by Kino's death, I mean, not sure I see that, but it's still a strong premise for an episode. There's also some fun symmetry at work, the ways the plots mirror each other. Both of them have jobs fall into their laps, both of them have friction with women at work, and both of them try to apply their unique brands of heroism to solving regular human problems. Shouichi offers sympathy and support, while Ryou offers gruff honesty and maybe a little bit of negging. It's weird to see them doing the hero thing outside of saving people from monsters, but I really enjoyed it. It's something this show can be great at when it wants to, that thing of letting character relationships carry the narrative. The last however many episodes seemed so plot focused they missed what was special about Agito. This one, it's got room for Shouichi and Ryou to just talk, for Shouichi's goals and Ryou's need for normalcy to feel like stories worth telling. It's smaller stakes, but I think that's way more in this show's wheelhouse?

The big plot stuff, though, I am pretty into it. Spooky Man tells Truegami that since he got punched in the face, humanity's got to go. On the one hand, feels like a bit of an escalation. On the other hand, it's totally in character for a god to go from, like, You Are All My Children to How Dare You Humanity Is Cancelled. I really do love that all it took was Shouichi laying hands on him for a star to get pulled down to wipe out human civilization. That seems several orders of magnitude bigger than we've seen as the show's stakes, but it's so insane (an entire star!) that I like it. It's just crazy enough to work!

Before that star gets here to wipe out humanity, we've got some new Unknown at work. It's not totally clear who's what and how they all work or whatever, but I like the one who shows up at the end here. It's a little weird that there's a bunch of constellation iconography at play, since that's not really been the show's motif, but the Eagle Archer Unknown is pretty boss. I love the fight song that plays over the end battle, too. It's a great little fight between Gills and the Unknown, nothing on the scale of the last few episodes, just a fun rooftop fight. It's like the rest of this episode, comfortable in executing the basics and confident in hitting what it's aiming at.

Yeah, I dug this one. Nice to be enjoying Agito again.