[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI VOLUME 31 - "SURPASSING FATHER"



"Blame yourself blame your mother blame the sea
Blame a lover blame psychiatry
To never know what kind of man your father'd be
How you'd wished he'd kept a diary"

-Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, "Man O, War"

My dad died when I was two.

I never really got to know him, not in any way that'd make sense to an adult. I've always lived without that experience of having a father. It wasn't really something I thought about, growing up. It didn't drive me, or haunt me. Not having a dad was like not having a swimming pool or not having a dog. I knew that some people did, and I knew that it was something that I didn't. It was just... a fact, something neutral and indisputable. No emotional weight. It was me and mom, and that was fine. It was enough.

Until, one day, it wasn't. I don't even remember the first time I started to wonder what it would've been like to know my dad, to have been raised by him and my mom, together. Early 20s, probably. It just happened, this What If. We'd've never moved out of Virginia. He had a government job, and that wasn't going anywhere. I'd've gone to different schools, had different hobbies, followed different paths. Idle speculation, you know? A million things in your life could've gone differently, so it's nothing to really dwell on.

But it never really goes away, that curiosity. It builds, and grows. More often now, it's this thing of wondering if my dad would've been proud of me, if we'd've gotten along. It's not a given, from what I know of friends and their dads. But maybe we would've had a good relationship. We're similar, I've been told. My mom frequently tells me how much a mannerism of mine reminds her of my dad, or how the way I'll explain something is how he'd've done it. It's weird, feeling this echo in your life of someone you've never met. It's reassuring, at times, to feel like some part of them lives on in you. Other times, worse times, it's like something's been taken from you; some part of you that you're owed, that you've been robbed of. It's like a phantom limb, this loss that's still with you, forever.

All of which is to say, yes, I feel this Kiriya plot intensely.

I like this slightly different direction for Hibiki, one where it's doing less from the perspective of parents (Hibiki, Ibuki, Ichiro, Zanki) and really really really drilling into the idea of boys who need father figures. There's some very hand-waved monster fighting in this one (Dogwheel is a great suit with zero going on narratively), but the bulk of the storytelling is about Kiriya and Asumu feeling this absence in their lives, and how they try to fill it.

Asumu's story is the better of the two, if I'm being honest. It's more complete, for one, and Asumu's just easier to care about. The things it's tapping into, the abandonment, it's not really as relatable to me as the Kiriya parts of this episode, but it's so well-told that I bought it. I bought all of it.

I get why people might miss the earlier era of this show, and how pleasant it was. The Asumu plot from this episode is rough. It's this kid who feels scared of learning who his father is, and then learns that he's an awesome dad... to his new family. It's Asumu finding the strength to live with feeling like he wasn't good enough to make his dad stay. It's an irrational thought, as though his dad leaving was anything to do with him as a child, but you can see on his face at the end that it's going to be something he thinks about for a long time. He had his moment of proving to his dad that he was worth loving, worth respecting, and that's no small victory for Asumu. But his face at the end. Him sitting in the back of his mom's cab, realizing that this man lived a better life without him in it... that is a rough story. That is a sad story. It's great, though. I loved watching it.

(Real quick, though, huge praise for AsuMum in this episode. She's always always great, but she nailed the single mom energy in this one. She clearly knows that Asumu is going to learn things about his dad that are going to break his heart, but he deserves to know the truth, so she has to let him get hurt. Her handing him the dad's address without looking him in the eyes! Her showing up to drive him home! Her being like It Is Okay To Have Positive Feelings About A Man Who Abandoned You! Her taking him out for junk food! That is 100% how single moms make only children feel better!)

Kiriya's story is more open-ended, and occasionally Very Weird (he immediately challenges Hibiki to any contest whatsoever), but I get it. I get where Kiriya's coming from. There's this thing inside Kiriya that... it's like he doesn't know how he works. He's this collection of skills that mean nothing, in a life that he can't quantify. It's like he's taking a course that has no final exam. He needs to be measured, because he needs to show that he deserves his father's love and respect. But he can't ever get that, so he's looking for some dad, any dad, to feel like he's good enough.

I mean, it's weird. Hibiki is just, like, some guy that Kiriya fixates on. But it's also maybe something I'm surprised to see the show commenting on, which is how possibly detrimental it is for boys to find father figures in TV show superheroes. It's maybe a subtle critique of the earlier Hibiki phase's mission statement, that perfect heroes like Hibiki (for an approachably weird value of Perfect) are not doing young men any favors when it comes to providing examples on how to live.

Now, a) I don't agree with that, and b) I don't think the show agrees with that. But. I think it's a question worth exploring, if heroes like Hibiki create unattainable standards in the minds of the children watching them. It'll be interesting if the show continues to comment on it through Asumu and Kiriya.

Anyway, I loved this episode. I thought it was poignant and touching, for the ways it used absent fathers as an eternal wound in children. I get these two kids. I get what's driving them, and I thought the show did a phenomenal job telling their stories. I mean, this is an episode that juxtaposed Hibiki detonating a monster with Asumu building a doghouse to reclaim the sense of self-worth his father shredded by abandoning him, and the doghouse stuff was the more compelling climax. Really into this era of Hibiki so far!