[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN SENTAI GORIDER - MAZE 2: ESCAPE



This is pretty much what I want every Legend Riders thing to be.

There’s a larger story being told - mysterious masterminds and unexplained resurrections and shocking but inevitable betrayals - but this episode slows itself down to allow for smaller performances and stillness; the weight of the space between fights.

(Although, the fights are so good in this episode! The camerawork is exceptional throughout, finding clever places to frame a group of heroes during massive brawls. There’s a Henshin for Ex-Aid in here that’s one of my favorite Henshins of all time:



So fun! So much fun in this episode’s action scenes!)

There’s a lot of respect for the various character arcs to which this series acts as a coda. The fact that Marika, Baron and Another Agito died means something. We’re not in some mode where everyone just keeps going through with their weird obsessions or their personal manias. There’s a slow realization that the purgatory they inhabit is, maybe, just. They all went crazy in pursuit of their goals, and it got them killed. That was the result, and it’s undeniable.

So it’s very sweet to see three flawed Riders gain a bit of perspective in their digital afterlife, and get to watch them walking back their deranged final days to the earliest moments of their motivations: the ends that they assumed would justify the means. Having Marika create a hero rather than be shackled to a lunatic; having Another Agito sacrifice for others rather than sacrificing others; having Baron become a leader by protecting the weak rather than dominating followers… it’s such a great final chapter for all of these characters. It honors the hard road they walked, while providing a strange redemption. It gets what made each of these characters worth revisiting, which is so rare in Legend Rider projects.

Even the Kenzaki/Emu scene hits on what made Blade such a fun show, and it’s not even the real Kenzaki! The speech “Kenzaki” gives to Emu is, honestly, pretty much the type of speech Kenzaki would give, thematically. It’s a speech that’s about how defeat can be learned from, and how the defeated should be allowed the dignity to learn from their mistakes. That’s about 110% a Blade speech?

This was all… god, it was so good. It got at everyone’s story (even Kiriya’s addiction to mysteries and pride in Emu’s hard-fought optimism!) and it continued the Celebrity Ex-Aid thing of arcing everyone from We Should Probably Murder Emu For Reasons to Y’Know Emu’s Okay to I Would Die To Protect Emu. His indefatigable helpfulness even got Kaito to open up for a fraction of a second! That is like playing the Ex-Aid themes on Insane Mode!

And, hey, speaking of games! We get the reveal in this episode that this is all taking place inside a horrifyingly unfair game! I don’t usually care much for these sorts of mysteries, but I liked how things were broken down for the audience in this one. The conclusions Emu comes to are sensible, and he’s the exact right character to pick up on the clues. It’s part of how perfectly paced this episode is, to have just the right amount of exposition to get us to start connecting the dots ourselves, instead of the usual bizarre leaps in logic and obvious plotholes.

I really enjoyed this episode. The characterization was spot-on, the action was gorgeous, and the mystery was compelling without being frustrating. Just a top-shelf Kamen Rider episode.