[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 32



Hey, let's see if I can figure out why this one didn't work for me.

It didn't, really. At all. It wasn't bad (maybe?), it just... it just wasn't saying anything I cared about. It was like if they'd decided to do an entire episode where characters gave impassioned speeches about semaphore. No matter how elegantly it's done, or how hard the actors try, it's just a topic I don't have any interest in?

A lot of it, maybe all of it, is down to the new information about Hiyori and Tendou's relationship. I hate in the same way I hate stories that reframe tales of accidental heroism as Chosen One narratives by revealing a character's secret history and Very Special Person status. It takes choice out of the equation, renders a story about someone's personal journey into destiny; inevitability.

It's like that with Tendou and Hiyori's bond. What was previously a story about two people that overcame their own weirdness to find something within the other, a story where you can make a family out of the people who are always there for you... now it's just a story about Tendou gaslighting Hiyori. And, like, I get why he didn't tell her the truth about their relationship. Even if she'd've believed him (she wouldn't've), telling her that she's his Worm half-sister (or whatever) means telling her she's a Worm, and that would be incredibly dangerous for her. He needed to keep it a secret for her safety. But now it's this semi-gross story about a dude keeping secrets because a woman can't handle the truth, a decision he makes 100% on her behalf, and... I mean, it's not a story about two people finding something within the other. It's a story about Hiyori finding something of herself in a friend, and Tendou protecting his sister no matter what.

There's an... an asymmetry to it that I really dislike. It's not about common ground, or friendship. He's withholding the key elements of their relationship, and it robs their story of so much choice. He's not protecting Hiyori because of her kindness, her vulnerability, her talents, her brusqueness, her her her. He's doing it because She's Family, and I find that less interesting. So much less interesting.

And to take that reveal of Hiyori being a Worm and do an episode that's half filling in blanks and half Tendou's Very Big Feelings (for a change!), I don't know. It's an episode that doesn't leave a lot of room for Hiyori, in a story that's ostensibly about Hiyori? It makes her a problem to solve, emotionally and narratively, rather than an active character in the story. (One of the biggest emotional parts of the story is Tendou and Kagami yelling at each other about Hiyori! A scene she's not even in!)

The details of her history... I guess they work? There's presumably a ton of detail yet to be explained, because what's here makes the barest amount of sense. Why were those two Worms there before the asteroid hit? Why copy and kill Tendou's parents? What the hell were they doing for the next however many years? It's all stuff that's not exactly pertinent to Tendou and Hiyori's story, but the absence of it made it difficult to concentrate on the rest. It's definitely a set of answers that raises twice as many questions, which is I guess the mode this show is in now.

Even the plot at the end... it leans real heavy on things happening for barely defined (or completely undefined) reasons. Hiyori gets a psychic call to go to Area X (thankfully the call didn't take her to the more distant Area Orpheus, or she'd still be walking), where she unlocks the Man In The Mask, who is Another Tendou. Not a huge shock, since the combination of a mask and the Law Of Conservation Of Actors meant that whoever was under there was someone already on the show in another role, and Tendou was the most likely suspect. There's basically no other details given here; who he is in relation to Tendou and Hiyori, why he's in a basement, what he wants, etc. It's another question.

I found this one... not good. It took a story, a pairing, that I was really invested in, and scribbled SECRET DESTINY over all of the nuance, all of the characterization. It took a smaller story about two people and made it epic, washing out the decision-making in the process. They were people, now they're plot.

A QUESTION

I'm definitely going to miss pre-32 Hiyori. What's your favorite Hiyori moment from the first 31 episodes?