[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER DEN-O EPISODE 15 - “BATH JACK PANIC”

It’s for sure my favorite mode of Kamen Rider, when someone who’s making a dumb choice in their life isn’t treated like a villain to defeat, but a person to be helped. Even though the bike thief took multiple people hostage, there’s a need to hear him out when he’s confessing that things just got away from him. When the bath house hostage becomes the next hostage taker (!), everyone’s still like How Do We Help This Guy So This Doesn’t Happen Again. It could come off as the show not taking the stakes seriously, but it feels to me like it’s just how a hero should work. Monsters need to be detonated, people need to be helped. That’s it. That’s the formula.

And it’s a good one! I could watch a million episodes about Kamen Rider casts working together to figure out how to get someone back on the right track (sorry), which is a thing that bothered me a lot about the last two stories. 13/14 didn’t have a human interest story at all, really, and 11/12 put all of the improvement on the victim, not the perpetrator. Here, it’s two guys who are clearly making rash decisions that they instantly regret, and it’s up to our heroes to improve their fates. Getting to see basically the entire cast coming together to juggle this bizarre set of circumstances and potentially save several lives… yes? Forever, please?

Eh, "monsters need to be detonated, people need to be helped"? Aren't previous shows have a lesson about how it's not about it being a monster or human, but rather about the morality any living beings have regardless of the species type of them? And also, "monsters need to be detonated, people need to be helped" seems like something that always happened since Kuuga in heisei era, that in your review of episode 2, Den-O is a relief for you that this is a progenitor of phase 2 traits (that I disagree because of what you say exactly here, helping people always happen in those Rider series), about how the monsters aren't only about them being detonated (where usual Imagins here are still getting that treatment, except for the main 4 taros). It's right that people need to be helped, and I also agree about even if they did something wrong (dumb is about brain, not heart, someone like bike thief here has trouble on heart to commit crimes, though dumb can apply if he did disastrous part of committing crime without thinking straight, I mean for dumb part, many of the heroes are also dumb, like Gentaro in Fourze). I hate letting someone who made crime getting away scot-free, but I'd into helping them get back on the right track, that isn't letting them go (there's audience who, due to sympathy, white washes them and use that headcannon as an excuse to let them get away and blaming anyone who objects to them), but giving them treatment, just not overboard (like anti-heroes who kill anyone who does bad stuff, snuffing out any kind of light that may ever show in that person).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It helps that this particular story has so many fun moves to it. The hostage-taking happens incredibly fast, and then it’s just one insane turn after another as Hana and Airi get involved, Ryotaro keeps leaving and returning, the Imagin try and contribute to various levels of effectiveness (Ura: Very! Kin and Ryu: Not So Very!), and the whole episode keeps the plates spinning perfectly. I cannot believe how packed this episode was! It’s like night and day from the last two slogs of episodes. This thing was dynamic and clever, from first to last. Breathtaking in its humor, its empathy, and its craftsmanship. A massively entertaining return to form.

Hana chooses to instead be a hostage instead of far easier way that can potentially come from her super strength, which kinda flip-flops between her being restrained, then her KOing the thief with super strength, then go back to being a hostage. Though I wonder if Hana is immune to bullets or not (albeit the gun is fake), for Hakamada threatening her with gun. Ryotaro is the one who takes full charge here, having learning from how the Rider system work from previous fights, with him going to investigate the Takonoko Heavy Industries. Urataros' long range is effective in fighting an Imagin that is based on a whale, while the other 2 are short ranged. Ryutaros is another long ranged one, but dunno about how the gun lasers will proceed through the water. Urataros is handy that the rod can pull away.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Best Airi episode for me, I think. It’s the comedic twist on her kindness from 7/8, where she’s sweetly oblivious to whatever danger might be occurring. (The bit where she’s walking into a scene of a man pointing a gun at Hana and she just goes Oh Hana’s Here Hi Hana! Best underplayed reaction for comedic effect ever!) There’s just the power to her tranquility that takes a tense situation of men making terrible choices and transforms it into a scene of everyone enjoying lunch together. Insane! Could never work on another show, but I bought it 1000% here.

Airi being oblivious is just like Ryotaro, like siblings, from the first episode with Ryotaro not knowing anything about the Rider system which is a contrast from him here. Airi with her power of tranquility to defuse a tense situation may be the "helping humans who take the wrong direction" thing you talk about? I think her contribution here is the most prevalent implementation of that so, "could never work on another show" is quite a lie like the other Rider shows?