[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 45



--1--

Look, we’ve spent a lot of time in this thread talking about the big emotions behind the recent episodes, how considered and breathtaking some of the character arcs have been, the ways the cinematography and sound design elevate the material, whatever.

Let’s finally talk about stuff that matters.

HOLY SHIT DID FAIZ JUST USE ACCEL TO PULL OFF FIVE OVERLAPPING CRIMSON SMASHES ON THE BAT COWBOY ORPHNOCH

I mean, the balls of that move! Sickshooter (the Bat Cowboy Orphnoch) had been beating on Delta for, I don’t know, an hour? Faiz was outside of town (great cell reception in a secret science cave, though) and had to travel all the way back into the city to join the fight. (Did Rina hate Kusaka so much that he wouldn't be her first call?) But despite Sickshooter having Delta on the ropes for forever, Faiz rolls up, tries out a couple moves, then just humiliates this dude with one of the most amazing displays of force I’ve seen on this show, and that’s in an episode that also sees Kitazaki get his worst whooping to date.

It… FIVE OVERLAPPING CRIMSON SMASHES.

DID ANYTHING ELSE HAPPEN IN THIS EPISODE?

NO! NO, IT DID NOT! POST OVER!

--2--

ugh okay fiiiiine

This one was very plot-heavy, in ways that I didn’t really love. There’s stuff that felt very focused on cause and effect, and then there was stuff that was like Oh We’ve Only Got Five Episodes Left After This One.

Because I am merely a thin layer of skin that envelopes feelings about Kamen Rider, boy did the Keitaro stuff land in this episode for me. It’s tangential to what else is happening in this episode, definitely epilogue material, but it’s more-or-less what I watch this show for.

I mean, what do you do if you’re Takumi, watch your friend be miserable because he thinks a girl he liked never cared about him? Or tell him that she got murdered by a cop ambush that you inadvertently led her to? These are awful choices, and I don’t know that I can blame Takumi for keeping the truth from Keitaro.

(Incidentally, second Kamen Rider series in a row where someone misses out on a first date due to dying beautifully. I wonder if anyone who gets stood up in these series just assume their date died. Just, like, text if you’re going to be late. Folks are right to worry!)

My favorite thing about the storyline is that, while Takumi's our POV for it, and his knowledge of Yuka's fate hangs over him like a cloud, the show never loses sight that it's Keitaro's grief we're supposed to be focusing on. He's the member of Team Faiz that'd be most damaged by Yuka's disappearance, and Takumi shouldn't usurp that role.

The show handles Keitaro's arc well, letting him try and shrug it off and focus on the positive, before just breaking into pieces. I mentioned before that it’s tough to watch Yuuji lose his shit, but, like, do not make me watch Keitaro cry. I can’t take it! He is a pure snowflake of optimism and friendship and he isn’t supposed to suffer this way! Bad show! Bad!

--3--

Yuuji’s reaction to Yuka’s death is a lot more relevant to the plot, in so much as he goes on a rampage that ends up crushing Minami’s mad science initiative. (I mean, probably not. Minami got a hell of a death scene by laughing at Yuuji’s assumption that the Orphnochs scored a victory over humanity. Probably more to come on that front!)

It’s a plot that has some fun beats to it, mostly in how long the show keeps Yuuji hidden. As soon as he deduces that Yuka’s dead, we don’t see him until the last few minutes of the show. There’s a lot of tension in not knowing what Yuuji’s up to, and it’s a strength of the episode.

One quick thing I thought was funny, though. For a show that’s got a reputation for miscommunications and teased-out reveals, it’s hilarious that both Takumi and Yuuji immediately figure out that Yuka has died. I’m not saying the show didn’t do the work to get them to make the connections, but it’s real funny to me. Like, now they can put the clues together? Cracked me up.

The down side, for me, is that Yuuji’s story seems like it’s going to intertwine with Orphan Daddy’s.

--4--

Hey, Orphan Daddy’s back.

Between him and whatever is happening with Teruo’s story, that’s where this episode started to lose me. Both of those, plus whatever horrible thing that Minami discovered about Orphnochs… I don’t know, my heart isn’t in it. (Much like Minami’s heart isn’t in him! Too soon?)

It’s all the stuff I was complaining about before, where it’s all shit coming in from the outside, while homegrown plots like Keitaro’s grief and Yuuji’s rage get pushed a bit to the edges. This late in the series, I don’t feel a ton of enthusiasm for trying to suss out what weird thing Teruo is, or what shocking thing Minami discovered, or why Orphan Daddy’s returned now and recruited Yuuji. They might be cool stories, maybe, but the way they get brought up in this episode didn’t do it for me.

The Teruo storyline, like, what? There’s a sliver of something interesting there, about Kaido, but then it’s all Anti-Orphnoch Lasers or whatever and I kind-of zone out. It ceases to be something that’s telling me anything about Kaido, or (god forbid) Rina and Mihara, and becomes some big Mystery for the show to focus on, like the Ryusei Massacre. That shit is not exactly what I recommend about this show!

Same thing with Orphan Daddy. Save a couple moments back in the teens when we got some backstory, and the one episode where he unhelpfully tells Kusaka to just keep fighting and everything’ll work out, this dude is just a question mark in a bandana. I don’t really care about him, because the show hasn’t really given me cause to care about him. They’ve barely even remembered that I’m supposed to be curious about him in the last dozen episodes. He pops up in the Kitazaki fight, but it's all OP Boss stuff and an air of mystery. Nothing to get me emotionally invested, and barely enough to want to see his story developed.

Like, there are five remaining main protagonists for this show (six, if you count Kusaka, which I do not) and the time we spend with them in this episode runs parallel to the plot elements like Orphan Daddy, Teruo, and Minami’s Machine. I feel like the show keeps dragging me away from the characters I care about, to sit through scenes focused on currently siloed plots. Like, I’m sure it’ll get more relevant for our cast, but it felt so incongruent this time that I wasn’t loving it.

--5--

Real ups and downs in this one. The Keitaro stuff was a home run, the Yuuji stuff (brief though it was) came out strong, and FIVE OVERLAPPING CRIMSON SMASHES is a hall-of-fame idea. The rest of it, all of the Getting Us To The Finale stuff, clunky. Real clunky, and not my favorite look on Faiz.

We’ll see if it improves next time!