[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 48



It only took them forty-eight goddamn episodes, but I'm sincerely overjoyed that this show is actually spending some time on the plot point that, hey, maybe Yui should get a vote in what happens to Yui?

I've mentioned it a few times, but Heroic Men Make The Decisions To Keep Women Safe is... it's not my favorite look on Kamen Rider. I don't find any dramatic value in stories about dudes unilaterally declaring what needs to be done to protect women, and I certainly don't find it to be a heroic attribute. Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's just a type of storytelling that was still the expectation of audiences in that time, but it's rough watching some of the Mirror World stuff in 2020.

Like, the show seems to get it, here in the end, that it's not just Shiro who's being an asshole to Yui. And, yeah, he's a colossal prick here, probably at his most villainous. Even when Yui's like I Would Rather Die Than Be Saved This Way, Shiro feints towards reconciling before going Ha Ha PSYCH I Need You To Live No Matter What I'm Sending You To Your Room Happy Early Birthday. There's no ambiguity to what he's doing. It's wrong, and it's so wrong that it actually starts to change the minds of Shinji and Ren.

Well, Shinji faster than Ren, since Shinji's already realized that he can't save Yui through fighting. He's able to take his lesson from last week, that seeing her friends fight because of her is destroying her faster than her Mirror Malady, and use that to try and find another way to help her. Ren sees her pain, but he's gone so far on saving Eri at the cost of his soul that he can't really consider Shinji's view that maybe, just maybe, Yui should get to decide what's a reasonable cost for her life. (To be fair, Ren's argument introduces the idea that a life contains possibilities, while a death doesn't. It's a way of suggesting that Yui could get over the enormous guilt of all her friends killing each other to keep her alive, which, I can certainly see Ren thinking that.) Shinji rides off to confront Shiro, to try and free Yui, while Ren grumpily commits himself to winning the Rider Battle. It seems like, despite some new ideas, we're back to the standard Shinji/Ren debate.

But there's a great swerve in this one, and it's because of a Kitaoka/Ren scene. I really enjoy these, and they're a rare delight in this series. There's something so simpatico about Kitaoka and Ren, the way they seem too cool for feelings but you know they're just hiding them. That their motives in the Rider Battle may be selfish, but they're growing as people, and it's largely thanks to the example of Shinji. Kitaoka asks after Shinji, leading to a quick crack that he got over his crisis so fast because he's an idiot, and just as Ren's about to defend Shinji as an idiot but a great person, Kitaoka cuts him off. Kitaoka already knows it. And, he agrees with it. The fact that Ren and Kitaoka, terrible men, have become slightly less terrible over the last year, it's because Shinji offered them another way to live. To value people, to value caring about people, to fight for noble causes and offer hope. They may not always feel like following that example, but they're starting to be aware of it as a path.

And I like that scene as nice bit of writing and acting, but I love it for how it changes Ren's mind, gets him to fight Shiro alongside Shinji. It's not that Ren doesn't think Yui should live, or that he's sworn off fighting in the Rider Battle. It's just, if Shinji believes in it, and Shinji's the best of them, maybe what Shinji fights for is worth Ren fighting for, too. I'm really into that version of Shinji's heroism, that awful people can start to gauge their decisions by how Shinji behaves. That what Ren discounts as indecisiveness, as an inability to commit to a goal, is Shinji's boundless empathy and hope, his need to never stop trying to help everyone, all the time. It's Ren viewing Shinji's flaws and seeing their benefit, and I really like that that's how the episode brings them back into partnership.

I still don't love how it took this long for Yui to assert some level of autonomy for her life. I get that we're supposed to find Shiro's goal selfish, his methods abhorrent (shit, I hope we're supposed to), but it's still a story where Yui's a pawn to such a degree that even the heroes need to have their eyes opened. It's not, y'know... it's just a frustrating construction to the story, for me. It's nice for our heroes to figure it out in the end, and I'm into the idea of Yui getting to feel integral to the conclusion of the series on an actual character level, but I wish they didn't have to take so long to figure it out.