[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 17 - “TARGETED TOWN”

Way more of this episode is handed over to Ibuki and Kasumi, who are basically the slightly-older versions of Asumu and Hitomi. They’ve known each other forever, they’ve got a ton of trust built up, and Ibuki can’t seem to move things to the next level.

I really liked how they fleshed out their relationship in this one. It’s her knowing what he’d like to wear, him deferring to her taste, her wanting him to be Oni Decisive in his everyday life, him trusting her to help raise Akira… it’s a really fun thread to the episode. It’s something that maybe wasn’t 100% necessary (was not asking for a lot of progression on this plot), but I had such a great time going on this dumb date with them. It’s relentlessly sweet and doggedly low-stakes.

This is my personal favorite arc and it's an Ibuki focus! I'm very invested in Ibuki/Kasumi. It's nice to see how much Ibuki values Kasumi's opinion and his determination to prove himself as an independent Oni and something even more important about his responsibility.

Kasumi helping Ibuki with new clothes may be another way Takeshi supports the Oni, since Oni literally burn through a lot of clothes due to henshins as Todoroki demonstrated in the previous episode.

Ibuki is the first Oni shown to fight in an urban area, which adds even more confusion to who's supposed to be protagonist. He's like somewhere between Hibiki and Shounen. The Makamou invading the city is a pretty big deal for the escalation of their plans.

The Disc Animals also get to show off their cloaking tech to move through the city unnoticed, another advantage over their origami predecessors. Still think origami are cooler?

There's a lot more to say about Ibuki but I'll leave that for the next episode.