[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER BLADE EPISODE 14

This time on Kamen Rider Blade: Garren defeats the Category Ace, but is defeated by Trenchcoat Mastermind! Kenzaki and Hajime spend some quality time in the woods! And Dr Ladyfriend dies because she finished the puzzle that represented death!



There's a pretty even split in this story: one-half a Tachibana story, one-half an Everybody Else story. Can you guess which one I preferred?

The Tachibana story is definitely the bigger deal, so let's tackle that one first.

I didn't love it!

I'm struggling to get Tachibana's entire story in my head. I'll have an episode where I can see the arc of it, understand the psychology underpinning it, and then the next episode the show is like Nope Here's His Actual Deal. Like, thought I eventually got a handle on it from last time, where he's so committed to being strong that he can't do anything but Be Strong. It's not a thing that gives him joy, it's a thing he can't stop doing. In this episode, though, he's super excited to be strong enough to die historic on the Kamen Road or whatever, and it's giving him a bone-deep contentment that nothing else can match. And, I want to say he's lying about it. I want to say that's all bullshit he's spewing at Dr Ladyfriend when she's begging him to be weak and boring. (I'm paraphrasing, but her pitch is... it's a little dull? He's telling her he wants his life and death to mean something, and she's putting in a good word for bland domesticity with a woman who'd give up her medical career to sit around with Tachibana. I'm not sure which of them is more deranged!) But, like, he is fully, actively into leaving her behind and kicking Undead ass.

Which he does! With the power of positive thinking (and gallons of mind-bending prehistoric psychotropics), Garren defeats the Spider Monster and seals a Category Ace. It's a pretty big checkmark in the column of Let Weird Scientists Do Weird Science To Your Emotions, if I'm being honest.

But then Tachibana has a change of heart, and... man, I'm just not seeing it? He thinks back to Dr Ladyfriend begging him to be less awesome and powerful (again, paraphrasing), and he decides that he can't give Trenchcoat Mastermind an Ace that could be made to power a new Rider. He has to fight against the man who brought him back from pain and despair, because there shouldn't be any more Riders. Because being a Rider is a horrible, dangerous burden. I... what?!

Tachibana has spent every minute of this episode up until this turn saying (and thinking!) that he loves having this power, that he won't give it up for anything. And then he does precisely that to stop a thing that everyone told him about and he completely didn't care about for the last few episodes. I don't... DOES HE CARE ABOUT BEING POWERFUL OR NOT, SHOW?!

Like, I'm totally okay with Tachibana changing his mind and spurning Trenchcoat Mastermind. I just don't understand why he did it now, for these reasons. The timing seems pacing-defined, as in I Guess We Should Do This Now, and the reasoning is so unsupported by the text as to be completely invented for this scene. They might as well have said he wouldn't give the Category Ace to Trenchcoat because it was too far of a walk to hand it to him.

If the show is trying to say he doesn't care about power anymore, I need to have a bigger reason than yet another bland appeal by Dr Ladyfriend. If the show is saying he never really cared about power, there's too much internal monologue and external dialogue to support that. If the show is saying he does still care about power, then I can't imagine why he'd give it up now, for these reasons.

But, hey, we're lucky in that that's only half of the episode.

I liked the other half a lot!

It's a lower-key story, which is nice. It's small. It's mostly just Hajime and Kenzaki, as Kenzaki nurses him back to health. There's a sweetness, because Kenzaki is a sweet boy. He's attentive and considerate, but he's also inquisitive. He wants to know more about Hajime, wants to understand him. Hajime's grumpy about it, but he's also a little confused by it. He still doesn't really know how to let people in, and he's not in a position to run away from Kenzaki like he did from Haruka and Amane. That gives Kenzaki a little time to wear Hajime down, get him to stop being quite so monosyllabic and resentful. (I mean, he's not not resentful. He's still Hajime.)

Eventually Kotaro and Hirose show up, and... Kotaro actually makes some good points? He doesn't want Hajime anywhere near Haruka and Amane, no matter how different Kenzaki claims he is. Kotaro mentions all of the weird stuff that's happened around them recently, and, yeah, that stuff was all Hajime's fault! Monsters are definitely using Haruka and Amane to get to Chalice, as witnessed by this episode's subplot of Amane and Haruka being kidnapped by a monster to get to Chalice. Kotaro's being a small amount of mean about it, but he isn't even a little wrong!

Hajime heals up enough to leave, and there's a cute moment where Kenzaki wants to ask him to team-up. He can't even get the request out, though, because he knows it isn't going to happen right now. The look on Hajime's face is all Time And Place My Dude. This is not someone who is looking to join Team Blade today. But, there's an agreement that Kenzaki is a good person, and Hajime owes him. It's not a friendship, but there's a decent chance that Hajime won't murder Kenzaki now. It's progress!

So, that's our episode. Did the Tachibana turn in this one (his fourth or fifth turn to date) work for you? It didn't feel out-of-character to me, so much as it felt like maybe I've been getting his character wrong all this time. I'd love to hear other people's takes!



Next time on Kamen Rider Blade: Tachibana wants revenge for the death of Dr Ladyfriend! Amane and Haruka are still being menaced by a monster! And there's a brand-new Driver!