[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 20 - “FINAL ANSWER 2040”



Weirdly didn’t connect with this one?

There’s stuff in it I liked. The idea of abandoning the conflicting ideologies of Geiz Vs Sougo for something that synthesizes the two into a form of, like, Aggressive Caring is a pretty great repudiation of the ways Wozez are trying to dictate the terms of success. I liked that Mondo never has a tearful I Forgive You Dad moment, since his dad (doing some terrific Hideaki Anno cosplay) never once earns it. That guy was screwed up before Mondo came along, and their lack of a relationship doesn’t need to be a drag on Mondo’s happiness. It’s a refreshingly mature attempt at catharsis, where you can’t change the past, but you can make sure your future isn’t anchored to it.

But everything with Sougo and Geiz and Woz and Hat Woz still feels too nebulous to care about: a philosophical struggle that no one can directly articulate, and a physical struggle that’s stamped Not This Episode. (It doesn’t help that Tsukuyomi is given basically nothing to do in this story, playing Time Mom to two teenagers who can’t seem to get along. She acts as a sounding board in two identical scenes! And that’s it!) The tone of everything is rich and foreboding, but the details never quite cohere into an addressable menace.

It’s hard to maintain a feeling of inevitability over the long term, and we’re four episodes into Hat Woz’z machinations with very little to show for it, narratively. It seems bad, but everything else about this story is a pretty standard Team Zi-O adventure. No one on Team Zi-O’s side is doing much to solve or eliminate the threat of Hat Woz, or even confirm that he is a threat. He’s more forceful in this story, as far as openly manipulating Geiz to get what he wants, but no one’s like He Has To Be Stopped. Even his villainous move at the end of creating the Quiz Miridewatch, thereby going against Geiz and Sougo's wishes, doesn’t really cause any problems?

Which… what? We’re told a number of times in this episode that robbing Quiz of his powers would also rob him of his memories, including the catharsis he came to 2018 to obtain. But then none of that happens? Woz creates the Quiz Miridewatch, and Mondo’s like I’m Just Going Back To The Future Now To Tell My Mom The Good News. Isn’t– isn’t that exactly what we were told couldn’t happen? And hasn’t ever happened before? I genuinely don’t understand how this episode could end in the way it did. Even setting aside the continuity of it all, it gives this story zero stakes at the end. What in the hell were they all fighting over for the last 20-odd minutes?

This one, yeah, it mostly didn’t work for me. I still liked how the story pushed back on binary conflicts, but I just can’t seem to care about Hat Woz and his vague sense of machiavellian menace. He’s like his stupid book: anything can happen at any time, for any reason, so nothing he does matters.

Good episode for Sougo and Geiz, though!