[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 16 - "ROARING ONI"



"I wanna forget how convention fits
But can I get out from under it
Can I gut it out of me"

-Spoon, "The Underdog"

There's a fundamental flaw to the mentor/apprentice relationship. A mentor is there to teach an apprentice, but they can only teach what they know. They can bring an apprentice up to their level, but that's as far as they can take them. Not only does a mentor need to know when to step aside, but an apprentice needs to know when to surpass their mentor. If the mentor and the apprentice can't recognize those moments, you're in a situation that's destined to fail.

Luckily, the cast of Kamen Rider Hibiki is, to a person, smart and generous and perceptive. This is an episode where mentors need to hope for more for their apprentices than they had themselves; and where apprentices need to be able to see beyond what they've learned, to reach for their own successes.

It's a moral that trickles down through all three partnerships amongst the Oni, and it starts with Zanki and Todoroki.

That's right, Todoroki. Todoyama takes the stage all on his own (I love that the music motif is so present in this episode that Todoyama's solo mission is referred to as his 'debut'), with him trying to find a way to be the Oni that Zanki always has been.

Which, that's the trick. Todoyama sees all the ways he doesn't measure up to Zanki, all the things Zanki does that he can't, and he fails as an Oni. He's patterned himself so intently after Zanki's (admittedly awesome) style that he can't see what his own strengths are, what he can do better than his mentor. He needs to see what Zanki's achieved as not so much the ceiling to reach for, but the ledge to launch off of. The show tells us this a bunch of times, but my absolute favorite example is what I used as this episode's screencaps. Todoyama's practicing, swinging his ax the way Zanki always taught him, but he keeps falling over. And then as he goes to pick up his ax in frustration, he switches his grip. He holds it as Todoyama, not as Zanki, and he's faster, stronger, more accurate. He's taken the lessons of his mentor and drawn from it what he needs to win, supplementing it with his own instincts. Now, he can fight as Todoroki. Now, he can be his own kind of hero.

The Ibuki/Akira team takes a run at this moral by addressing my favorite detail: Akira doesn't ever go to school. They're too damn busy fighting monsters, and she's too damn good at it. But while Ibuki has been training her to be an Oni, he wants her to have a fuller life than he had. He wants more for her than he got to experience, and that means making time for her to go to school. His mentoring, it's not just about preparing her to be an Oni. It's, like Zanki, about preparing her to be a better Oni, a better person, than he is.

Which is a great way to start talking about the Hibiki and Asumu stuff, which, man. Man. Completely not where I thought it was going, and I loved it for that.

Everything in the last few episodes has been leading to Hibiki taking Asumu on as his apprentice and training him to be an Oni. Everything in the storytelling, everything in the franchise, everything in the history of storytelling. It's all pointing towards a formal Mentor and Apprentice relationship. That's the next step in the story.

Except, that's not Asumu, and it's not Hibiki. When Asumu asks to be Hibiki's apprentice, it just feels wrong. It feels perfunctory, like it's the only reason these characters would have to interact. But Hibiki sees that Asumu doesn't really want to be an Oni, and Hibiki isn't really looking to step down as one. It'd be them going through long, arduous motions for no reason other than inertia, and that'd be lame. There's no reason why these two characters need that relationship.

They mostly don't need it because there's no reason to put a label on their friendship. Telescoping out from that joke where no one knows how to explain to Ibuki what Asumu's relationship is with Hibiki, their connection is broader than the professional roles of the other four characters. Hibiki isn't looking at Asumu as someone he needs to mold, he's looking at Asumu as someone he gets to see grow. He doesn't want to see Asumu give up on his options just to be an Oni, and he doesn't want Asumu to settle for Hibiki's life. He wants him to try things, train himself, and know that Hibiki'll be there if he needs someone to guide him.

Like a compass.