[Fish Sandwich]

EPISODE 42: "Battlefield"

These two episodes are directed by Osamu Kaneda again, and as soon as this one starts, it's obvious why. Kuuga can be a very relaxed show, but here, it's nothing but action right out of the gate. Everyone is hot on the trail of Go-Baberu-Da, a brutal buffalo with a surprisingly cowardly approach to killing Linto. He makes a point to block off all routes of escape in crowded structures, leaving him free to to do his thing with the added benefit of making it harder for anyone who could stop him to get in. I gotta say, I think these last few Go guys are starting to get lazy. I mean, Jaaza basically outright said on her blog or whatever that the actual "game" part of the "game" they're playing is completely trivial to them, and they just want to hurry up and move on. Makes sense for the guys with the highest rank, I guess, but still. You could at least put some creativity into how you slaughter people. Or, well, you could also not kill people. That's a pretty good option too!



The way the plot here is structured is pretty interesting. Not only does it start at what would be the climax of any other episode, but the police have explicitly been dealing with Baberu for a few days already. It completely skips over most of the setup almost any other episode of the show would do to get us right to all that glorious action, and man is it exciting. First, Kuuga catches up to Baberu on the Beat Chaser, which means a small but welcome taste of trial action before he dismounts the bike. From there, it's an intense battle that puts Yuusuke on the ropes in more ways than one. There's a great little character moment that continues to build on his recent struggles, where Baberu takes a second to compliment Kuuga's strength, saying his fists would probably be able to kill a ton of prey. Yuusuke is visibly shaken by this, and is about to charge at Baberu in a moment of anger, but he holds himself back for a second and lets Baberu come to him. It's a nice reminder of the conflicting emotions he's dealing with in-between all the exciting action.

And the action is really exciting! Kuuga gets a nice Mighty Kick in there, but it doesn't even work to annoy Baberu, who brushes it off, and unveils an ability to change forms just like Jaaza last time. His comes with a big hammer that he starts smacking up Yuusuke with, leaving visible dents in even Titan Form's armor. This far in the series, I have to say I really love how brutally and how often Kuuga gets beaten up. How do I put it? It's fun how fun it isn't? Like, Yuusuke sustains these massive injuries, and spends a lot of time rolling around on the ground having trouble even drawing breath properly, and all of that does a great job to reinforce how serious the stakes of the fight are. If Yuusuke messes up too much in any one of these fights, he's going to die, and you really feel that watching some of these scenes. The only thing that saves Kuuga here is Ichijou shooting Baberu with another special new type of bullet that serves to stun him long enough for Kuuga to do the now standard trick of loading the Grongi onto the Beat Gouram's horns to drive off to somewhere safe.

Once he gets to a nice big open quarry, Yuusuke decides to try out, for seemingly no particular reason, something Enokida suggested to him. He transforms to Rising Mighty while on the Beat Gouram, allowing Gouram itself to be imbued with the golden power, which... gives Bandai one more thing to sell toys of! Obviously it also gives Gouram the extra power to be able to finish off a monster again, but three random extra pieces of gold slapped on an already busy bike design honestly isn't that exciting, and the show seems to know that, because it treats the whole thing with a bit of a wink and a nudge. Yuusuke tells Ichijou over the radio after Baberu is destroyed that the "Gold Gouram Beat Chaser Combo Ramming Attack" worked great, and all Ichijou can say in response is that's a really long name. This show obviously has things against both announcing attack names and shilling merchandise in forced ways, so I think Yuusuke doing (a terrible job of) the former is a subtle indicator they kind of felt like they were being made to do the latter in this one. No deep origin, or great buildup. It's just... Rising Beat Gouram, there it is! And there it goes, too, because this is its only appearance! Combined with Ichijou's smile, it's a cute, tongue-in-cheek way to wrap up half an entire episode that was pretty much all adrenaline, all the time.



Yeah, that's right, we're at the commercial break already. That's how long that went. Everything's like totally backwards right now, it's nuts. Things start feeling a lot more normal from this point on, though. Nothing reminds me I'm watching Kuuga quite like a long scene of characters in a room talking to each other about things. And this particular scene of characters in a room is like an all-star gathering of the main cast. Yuusuke, Ichijou, Enokida, Tsubaki, Sakurako, and my main man Jean have all gotten together to share their latest updates on Kuuga and the Grongi with each other, and it's pretty great. The only way it could be better is if Pops was there serving tea and completely misinterpreting everything everyone was saying as being a reference to some song or something.

The main topic of discussion ends up being Tsubaki's work analyzing the corpses of Gooma, and all of the other Grongi killed by Daguva. Because they weren't blown to pieces like the ones Kuuga takes out, it was actually possible to analyze them thoroughly. The good news is that means the police might finally get some useful countermeasures against them out of this. The bad news is that, without any remaining doubt at all, the Grongi are functionally identical to Kuuga. They aren't monsters with human forms, like you might've assumed. They're basically just regular people who have magic stones in their stomachs enabling them to turn into immensely powerful, animal-themed forms... exactly like Yuusuke. There's a lot I really love about this. Some of it is thematic, and it's probably best to get into it later. Some of it just how very Kamen Rider the whole idea is. Having the monsters and the heroes both come from the same place is a franchise tradition, and the ways Kuuga works stuff like this in while still having a completely original spin is awesome. Not so awesome is how much credence this lends to the theory that Yuusuke is going to become like Daguva. Tsubaki's been worried about this, in a way, since episode 5, and this only makes him more so, but Yuusuke tries to reassure him, and the others all join in. The whole scene started off as a serious meeting, but by the end, everyone is laughing at Ichijou making puns. Again, I love what the show is doing here. It's inching ever closer to an inevitable darkest hour, but the worse things get, the more emphasis there is on these basic moments of human warmth and camaraderie. They become more important.

The other thing to mention here is that Mika is back in Tokyo yet again, this time for a flute competition, which is being held at a building owned by some big corporate CEO dude who seems to have made a lot of enemies. When a guy sits in a poorly lit room chucking darts at a picture of you, it's probably not a good sign. And when that same person shows up to your building at the same time Mika arrives, and starts inching closer towards her while menacing music plays, it's another kind of sign entirely. The sign of a cliffhanger!

THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

Some pretty reckless use of the thumbs budget again this time. Take special of note the fact that, like in episode 40, Yuusuke even uses both hands at one point.






Total thumbs up count: 81+8 = 89

EPISODE 43: "Reality"

The resolution to the cliffhanger from last episode is another one where it basically just turns out it was no big deal at all. Masahiko, the guy with the grudge against the building's owner, was just giving Mika back the necklace of shells she got from her father before heading in himself. I really, really love that subversion, actually, and we'll come back around to why in the end. There are many super interesting choices this episode makes, and one of them is in what it focuses the plot on. There's a token Grongi talking scene, and a brief bit in the middle where Yuusuke turns into Kuuga when he feels Daguva's presence again, but that's pretty much it for supernatural elements in this story. All the climactic battles, all the impossible murder mysteries, that all happened last time. It's taken care of already. This is a story about reality.

With things having calmed down so much now that Baberu is gone, everyone is enjoying the free time. Yuusuke is off to the preschool again to help Minori out and generally be a cool guy who's good with kids. Happy times all around in these scenes. There's genuinely no other location in the series where Yuusuke in more in his element. Some great attention to detail, too, with a goodbye note on the whiteboard from Keiko, since she's off to go have a child. It's a great little bit of continuity to include, and it further emphasizes the sort of celebratory mood of the first part of the episode. Yuusuke eventually leaves to go attend Mika's concert, but not before Minori expresses her hope that hearing Mika's performance will put a smile on the face of Ichijou, who's also going to be there. After all, Ichijou's a stern guy who doesn't smile that much, right?

Admittedly, he's not doing a whole lot to dispel that image as he gets ready. He's carrying out the task of cheering Mika on in his typically formal manner, buying a nice bouquet for the occasion, and generally being a little stiff in social scenarios. Such as when he gets to the building and happens to meet up with an old coworker of his who's currently acting as security for the event. He's makes some casual cracks with Ichijou about him finally getting a girlfriend and whatnot, but of course Ichijou just responds completely seriously to everything he says. He's equally quite serious talking to Mika before she goes on, filling her in on the latest news about #0 completely honestly and openly. I love how thoughtful you can tell Ichijou is being by thinking to give her a status update on that, and I equally love the whole idea of Mika kind of gradually finding herself. She basically says she gave up on helping out the research team in Nagano because she realized she just didn't have anything to really contribute, and this sudden interest in playing the flute is her new way of doing something that would make her father proud, since it was something he encouraged her to do. With only a few major appearances, there's this real sense of Mika growing up, and something really sweet about the sort of "it takes a village" attitude we see the main cast applying now that her father is gone. Ichijou's not as good at expressing it as Yuusuke, but you can tell he cares a lot about seeing to it she's happy. No one made him come here, after all. What's more, Mika manages to get Ichijou to lighten up when they bond over their preferred method of eating manjuu, getting him to crack such an earnest smile that Mika is surprised to see it.



Right after this, Ichijou has to run off, however. That guy from earlier, Masahiko, was indeed coming to the building to get his revenge on the CEO. Masahiko is currently holding him hostage on a rooftop with a gun to his head, and the situation is looking tense. Turns out Masahiko was a longtime employee for the company who lost his job after some corporate downsizing happened. Clearly he didn't take that too well, and Ichijou isn't going to sit by and let this play out. It's as cop show as things have ever gotten as Ichijou pursues him all the way down from the rooftop to the ground below, heading outside the building's entrance, where Masahiko takes another hostage, having had to ditch the CEO, in an attempt to get Ichijou to back off. It seems like a standoff for a moment, but Ichijou waits for the perfect opportunity, and shoots the gun right out of Masahiko's hand for maximum TV cop style. Having disarmed the criminal, he rushes over and restrains him by force as civilians run by in panic. Truly an action-packed, gritty ordeal. One that happened in full view of Mika, on her way out from her performance.

All of this was pretty traumatizing for her. She can't even look Ichijou in the eye when he comes over to ask if she's alright. Ichijou leaves her in the hands of Yuusuke, who just now got there after getting held up searching for Daguva. Ichijou says it's because he has to write a report on what just happened, but I think it's obvious part of it is him reading the room. Yuusuke sees Mika back to the train station, and she explains why she was so scared. It wasn't even really about a criminal being there. It was because of how frightening Ichijou was going after the criminal.



Only a little bit before that, Ichijou was so jovial talking to her. He was friendly, and kind, and all kinds of words that seem so impossible to reconcile with the man in the street violently subduing that criminal. Yuusuke, who has been having this exact problem with himself lately, tells Mika something that's clearly informed by his own internal struggle. That side of Ichijou exists. It's real. No matter how unpleasant or scary it is, it's there, and there's no helping that. But Ichijou's smile is real too, and there's no getting rid of that either.

This is a story about reality, and this is one of the boldest, most poignant morals this show ever delivered. Kuuga is a show with very clearly defined sides of good and evil, but it's also a show with a lot of nuance. To do this story that says we all have parts of ourselves we don't like, ones we wish we could ignore, because of what we think they say about us as a whole, that's pretty daring. To then further say that, in spite of all of this, we can't deny those things, and that acknowledging them doesn't mean we should stop acknowledging the things about us that are good? Well, that just shows why this series is so beloved all these years later. This is a very complicated lesson to give to children, but it's also an important one, and that's why I respect this episode so much for tackling that head on.

Framing it around the actual child of the cast was a smart move to that end, and I appreciate details like Masahiko's characterization, which further plays into that central theme. An ordinary human is the main antagonist, even given the same ominous music cues as the Grongi. He's the villain, but he's not a monster. He's not much of a stone cold criminal, either. He held a gun to a man's head, and even shot another one in the leg, but the whole time, there's nothing on his face but pure fear. He doesn't necessarily want any of this. He convinced himself to carry out this plan for revenge, but before all of this, he was just a regular old employee, and we see from that gesture of returning Mika's necklace that he's not without compassion. The world is complex sometimes, and that's what this episode captures so well by pushing all the actual Kamen Rider material off to one side. It's another beautifully done drama that stands among Kuuga's best episodes, in my opinion.



THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

Sure enough, the show needs a break after that last one.

Total thumbs up count: 89+0 = 89