[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER BLADE EPISODE 26

This time on Kamen Rider Blade: Sloth Style prepares for his opponents! Blade gets a new suit! And Team Blade gets a new dad!



It's always weird to me, when we see the actor's face under a Rider's helmet. I never think it's the same guy in there, after the Henshin. I think of the suit and its inhabitant as being a separate lifeform, something that's replacing the person who Henshined. Like, I don't think of it as a suit of armor surrounding Kenzaki, I think of Blade appearing where Kenzaki was.

So to see Kenzaki's face after Sloth Style pummels Blade and Garren, that's a pretty big way to start the episode! It's a level of damage the franchise doesn't go to that often, making this fight seem like a smart one for the heroes to bolt from. Definitely sets the stakes for what's going on.

And, what's going on is that everyone retreats to their corners for the rest of the episode while Sloth Style calculates the best way to destroy all four Rider, and we get to know Shima, Team Blade's new dad.

Shima's back from Tibet, where he allegedly assisted Karasuma in... ssssoooome way. He at least took an incredibly awkward/hilarious photo with him, and that's good enough for me. (The way the Team treats the photo as both Proof Of Life and Seal Of Approval is adorable. Karasuma is the most absentee dad ever, and he's hung around the sketchiest weirdos, but the Team is willing to bring Shima into the fold the second they see one photo of the two of them together. God bless their abandonment issues.) He's here to, basically, bundle together a bunch of story threads around his finger, and point out a direction for the show to take.

I don't love Shima so far (too much mystery), but I like the idea of what he can do for the story. As great as the cast is when they're firing on cylinders, they've definitely felt like they've plateaued after introducing Mutsuki. There isn't a... I don't know, a goal, or a plan, or a sense of how to resolve the season's threat, and we're halfway through the show's run. They're tackling Undead when they pop up, but it's pretty haphazard. Meanwhile, you've got more powerful (and interesting!) Undead appearing more or less daily, and Chalice's mystery is becoming more pressing... it's a bunch of stuff going on, and the Team feels phenomenally ill-equipped to deal with it.

I'd prefer the characters generate a solution internally, but I'll accept an outsider's kick in the ass this once. Shima being an Undead creates a connection between Chalice's mystery and the main group. Shima as a mentor-figure gives Tachibana some warnings and insight for Mutsuki's The Spider In My Brain Is Telling Me To Fight But That's No Big Deal weirdness. Shima as a man of empathy and sacrifice forces Kenzaki to reexamine his motivations. It's... he's doing a lot this episode to get things on a track.

Varying levels of success, if I'm being honest, though.

The Tachibana stuff is the briefest, but it's nice to have someone helping him out. I'm more worried for Mutsuki than I am of Mutsuki, and it's mostly from how bad Tachibana is at giving Mutsuki the help and support he needs. For all the ways Tachibana was this kid just a few weeks ago, he doesn't seem to have the tools to keep him out of trouble. It's all judgment with Tachibana, no kindness. It's all don'ts, you know? Shima doesn't take Tachibana to task the way I feel like someone should (although it's not like Karasuma was any better at controlling Tachibana than Tachibana is at controlling Mutsuki, so there aren't a ton of good mentors to point at), but it's nice to see someone tell him that he's making things worse with/for Mutsuki.

Chalice's story intersects with Shima, which was something I really wasn't expecting. The Team Blade stuff is usually parallel to what Hajime has going on, so him being in a scene with Shima, Kotaro and Kenzaki felt like a really big deal. It's a little bit more with Chalice's Secret, which I'm still just backburnering in my brain until there's more to talk about, but I just like the idea of Chalice's Secret also being a Team Blade problem. That was not a guarantee before Shima arrived!

Kenzaki, though... I don't know, I wasn't really feeling his big hero moment. It didn't feel personal enough, to me. Finding a new level of heroism by dedicating himself to saving people, it doesn't feel like a huge revelation? First, it's a pretty boilerplate Kamen Rider sentiment, caring about people. Low hanging fruit, motivation-wise. Second, he already had a fascinating, personal motivation. He saw people suffering before, his parents, and couldn't save them. So he vowed to fight to save people whenever he got the chance. It's also thematically tied into what the show spent a long time talking about, how we process grief. This, it really only works if you think Kenzaki has been doing this all out of a sense of obligation, and I just don't think that's true? That was always his deflection, not his core drive. He'd say I'm Just Doing My Job, but we knew better. I think we've seen multiple occasions of Kenzaki going out of his way to protect people rather than just fight monsters? Like, that was what the whole episode was about before Leangle showed up, with him and Chalice trying to work together. It's a generic statement of intent from Kenzaki at the end of this one, and I wasn't a huge fan.

Love the new suit, though! It's the gold. I think the gold on the new mask is way, way cooler than the silver. The wing cape, another fun change. It's got a regalness without being cumbersome, which is a super fine line when it comes to suit upgrades. This, it feels more powerful without looking overdone. Really dug the new suit.

Overall, a pretty good episode. Shima is a great plot device that I'm not sure about as a character. Things are feeling more... concentrated, focused, which the series really needed at this point. There's a Head Down Do The Work sense of storytelling in this episode, and I was interested in the story they were telling. A pleasant rebound from last episode!



Next time on Kamen Rider Blade: Leangle on the warpath! Shima I Guess Maybe under fire! And probably two episode write-ups on Saturday because I'm busy all day Sunday!