[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

That fight at the end, though! That was no joke.

If that’s all you recall from this one, it’s probably going to stick in your brain as a good episode.

Ah yes, the "Time Vent" defense. It's been a while. I nowhere near as interested in saying this was some amazing episode, especially with the albatross of "there's like 4 episodes left why is this story not tighter?" hanging over it, but, you know, you can have some fun with it! I'm am totally cool with spending a ton of time with Murakami, especially watching him gradually lose his usual cool almost completely by the end. The dude is a super fun character, and after doing some thinking about it, he might be the first main Heisei villain to truly be a character with presence? He's not an enigma like Agito or Ryuki's main bad guys, and he didn't take forever to show up like Kuuga's. Knowing what was coming up here, it even made me realize he set an important precedent, because by using the Delta Gear, he's technically the first big bad to become an evil Kamen Rider, since Odin was just Kanzaki's meat-puppet. Of course, he got the belt just in time to get fired, so he can't join the club of evil CEO Riders, but still. Murakami was maybe a pretty significant character in the evolution of the franchise, so maybe just let him have this one?

It's definitely not a coincidence that the fight scene at the end goes so big, by the way. This episode aired on December 21, so they wanted to make sure all that merch was flying off the shelves. I don't think Rider makes it a point to do this that often, but I know Sentai regularly does a similar thing where you'll suddenly see old mecha combinations that haven't been relevant for months in the lead-up to Christmas.

Also, this episode has Kusaka spraying Kaidou down with a hose like a petty child, which is even more proof it's not all bad! TV-N's translation is still pretty choppy though. He's telling Kaidou and Takumi there that they'll eventually be resented by both humans and Orphenochs for trying to exist in the middle, not that Takumi and Kaidou will resent them, which is way less pertinent to the themes of the show. Also!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

「あなたはお払い箱なの」

And of course, I couldn't leave everyone hanging after teasing this line from episode 46 earlier. The short story is that Smart Lady just told Murakami he's been fired. The long story is best explained by someone smarter than me!

But since I'm here right now, and this is a weird enough flub to warrant elaborating, the gist of it is that Smart Lady used an idiom that literally means "payment box". The etymology of that apparently has something to do with Shinto purification rites and wordplay, if you're wondering, but that's the part someone else would be better at telling you. To be fair to TV-Nihon, I didn't know this word either until I had to go look it up, but from what I can tell, it's not something that would ever be used literally, and even then, I don't think "piggy bank" would be an appropriate translation.

The fact that Murakami is out of a job is probably obvious enough anyway, but this line makes Smart Lady sound like... actually I'm not even sure what this sentence implies, but it's way off the mark!

This one isn't something that will really affect your reading of the plot all too much (unless you have some deep theories about this line I'm now crushing), and I try not to go out of my way to complain about those, but this error is so bizarre I feel like you'd appreciate the explanation.