[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 13



Late-night Kabuto for me, so let’s see what we’ve got to talk about.

(Holy shit, today was like two days worth of work. Tons of packing and shipping; every in-store holiday purchase required hand-selling and one-on-one work; every goddamn computer process broke down at some point; and ordering from three distributors instead of last year’s one or two just to get in a last-minute restock before Christmas was a colossal pain in the ass. If this episode’s coverage is either way too short or way too mean, today is the culprit!)

I thought this one was… fine. I respect what it was trying to do, but it just never clicked for me?

Like, this episode’s two threads are both about the same things: unintended consequences people thought they could ignore, hidden identities, and a destructive need to avenge an earlier slight. Structurally, I can’t really kick about it. It’s just… I don’t know, maybe talking about it’ll help figure out where this one failed to live up to its potential for me.

The main thread focuses on Yaguruma (fresh off detonating his entire reputation due to his rivalry with Tendou) and Kageyama (who believes in nothing but himself now -slash- is a sneering asshole, in a nice repudiation of Tendou’s worldview), but there’s a little bit with Kagami that I loved for what it was saying and hated for how quickly it moved on from saying it.

Kageyama’s new, shittier attitude (he’s such a condescending prick to Misaki!) is because he believed in two mentors that self-destructed. Yaguruma let his rivalry with Tendou interfere with his ability to harness TheBee Zecter, putting Kagami in place to take over. But then Kagami bailed after just one day, choosing Kabuto’s friendship instead of his role as TheBee. The rest of the episode is really about how much Kageyama wants Yaguruma to suffer for failing him, but I feel like the show missed a much better story by ignoring Kagami’s responsibilities?

I mean, the big theme in this episode is Unintended Consequences People Thought They Could Ignore, and the problem is that the ZECT side of things opts to make that all about Yaguruma and Kageyama. The thing is, doing a ZECT story that doesn’t focus on Kagami is a massive miscalculation. ZECT only ever matters if their stories focus on Tendou or Kagami, and this one really doesn’t. Tendou and Kagami are in the ZECT plot, but it’s just fundamentally not about them. Having half the story be about how two supporting cast members feel about each other… no? It’s too much time to devote to them. Shunting Kagami to the side of a ZECT plot is like throwing away the beef patty of a hamburger to make more room for onions. Yaguruma is interesting because of how Kagami feels about him, or how Tendou feels about him. Same thing for Kageyama. How Kageyama and Yaguruma feel about each other, it’s just too slight to build a story on.

Worse, it misses the key way to include Kagami, namely that Shadow dissolving is all Kagami’s fault. The gap between Yaguruma losing TheBee Zecter and Kagami getting it is, like, four seconds. Shadow’s still up and running when Kagami’s in charge, and then he quits the next day. After that, yeah, Shadow’s boned! It is objectively Kagami’s resignation that dissolves Shadow! I get that Kagami’s betrayal of Kageyama is less of a deep wound than Yaguruma’s, but it would not take a lot to make this episode more about Kagami bearing some responsibility (and therefore guilt) for how he abandoned Shadow? And then I’d care more about the stakes?

(It’s worth mentioning that, with all of the twists and reveals in this episode, I’m honestly not sure what the status of Shadow actually was. ZECT is treating the deaths of Shadow operatives as a consequence of Shadow no longer existing, but then Kageyama says it was a ruse to find out who the mole is that’s… I don’t know, leaking former-Shadow identities to the Worms? But they’d only be former Shadow members if Shadow was dissolved? Which it maybe wasn’t? I honest to god have no idea what the strategy is by Kageyama, so I guess I’m also less competent than he’d hoped.)

And the stakes… I just don’t give a shit about a bunch of no-name dudes being menaced by an insane number of Worms? It’s, again, all stakes that matter to Yaguruma and (I guess?) Kageyama, which is not something I watch this show for! I watch for Kagami and Tendou, and Kagami was a sideline dude for this whole plot.

Tendou’s integral to the second thread of this story, but I wasn’t really into that one too much yet. It’s about exposing what happened seven years ago with Hiyori and The Boy In The Belt, and in this episode it’s all teases. Tendou’s being subtly evasive (him telling Juka that when he said he went back to save Hiyori, he really meant that he went back to save all of humanity, which includes Hiyori… man, Juka, come on) and Hiyori’s having a disturbingly high amount of PTSD flashbacks, so stuff is about to come to a head. Unfortunately, it takes literally the entire episode to come to a head, leaving more discussion on this topic for next episode’s post. As it is, there really wasn’t much to talk about? It’s all tension, and no release.

This episode… I know it sounds like I hated it, but I honestly just thought it was fine. I appreciated that both threads were about the same things (Hiyori’s rage at Kabuto’s failure is pretty much Kageyama’s barely-concealed rage at Yaguruma’s failure), and there were some small beats that were pretty charming. (A+ for Gon resolving the last two-parter by telling Tendou that Daisuke was acting too naive and that he deserved a beating, sort of low-level shitting on Inoue’s melodrama.) But the stakes of the story just never mattered to me, and the episode excluded the only guy in the main cast who actually cares about ZECT as an organization. Baffling choice, and one that kept this thing from ever becoming that good.

But, maybe that’ll change in the next episode, as Kagami is outed as the mole!!!!!!!even though we know he definitely isn’t

A QUESTION

Watching this episode had me wondering what the hell ZECT’s budget looks like. There’s no shortage of cool gear (they made Kabuto a new BugZapper or whatever, a nice thing to do for a guy they’ve been actively trying to murder) or dudes in armor, and yet… I mean, Kagami’s division of ZECT frequently met in an empty office, like they were squatting. This time we have Tadokoro sitting in a giant room, at a giant desk, with absolutely nothing on it. Even when Goro meets with Misaki or Kagami’s dad, the only thing in the room is a chair! They don’t even have working lights most of the time! So, my question to you is this: Is ZECT frugal, or broke? Are they keeping their employees working part-time pizza delivery gigs because Worm-hunting doesn’t need full-time employees, or are they just too cheap to hire a real workforce and provide benefits? I don’t get how this militarized organization of nebulous authority works!