[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 33 - “2005 - REJOICE! RESOUND! REVERBERATE!”



“Someone's gonna find us out
And eventually it'll all come crashing down around us
Ten years ago we drove around and wondered what to do with the rest of our lives
Turns out when you burn through decades nothing much survives”

-We Cut Corners, “Ten Years”

I mean, look: I get it.

Kiriya is a lot of people’s least-favorite character in Hibiki, if not the Kamen Rider franchise as a whole. (Maybe even all of fiction!) He’s, at best, a callow youth with daddy issues that helps a show about raising children explore how best to engage with troubled kids. At worst, he’s an unsympathetic drag on a show that never needed his help, and a distraction from more compelling plotlines.

I kinda love him, though?

Of all the ways an anniversary show could try to create an epilogue for Hibiki, I think The Next Generation is the way to go. Hibiki himself ain’t coming back, which also sort of counts out Asumu. (Like, you could check in on Asumu and see if he’s a doctor or teacher or whatever, but you can’t put him in two episodes of Zi-O unless Actual 2005 Hibiki makes an appearance.) So a look at a more grizzled Todoroki is perfect, as is trying to answer the question So Is Kiriya Still The Worst Or What.

And he mostly is! He’s pretending to be Hibiki, complete with the Hibiki Salute that I assume killed Switchblade stone dead in 2019, leaving his ghost to haunt these boards and remind people that Hibiki was a 29-episode series. It’s terrifically fake, Kiriya’s bullshit. He’s mostly just torturing Team Zi-O, making them do a bunch of physical training in order to distract them from hunting down Another Hibiki.

The way he’s screwing with them is what kept me from seeing Yuuto in the performance, which I admit was pretty tough. (I've seen way more Yuuto things, and way more recently.) Kiriya’s always vacillating between Unearned Self-Regard and Mopey Bitterness, and the middle-ground of those swings is him snickering at someone else’s misfortune. He’s still so childish, you know? He’s petty, and a liar. Todoroki warns Tsukuyomi that Kiriya’s just a failure who dragged his apprentice down with him, and the episode mostly bears that out.

But.

The thing I liked best about Kiriya was that he was so much work for Hibiki. Asumu was a bright, sensitive kid with a ton of people rooting for him. Kiriya was a little shit who kept weirdly failing upwards. But kids like that maybe need a mentor like Hibiki more than a kid like Asumu, and that’s a worthy point for a show to make. There was always, for me at least, the idea that Kiriya wasn’t irredeemable. The version of Kiriya that everyone hates, that didn’t really go anywhere. That’s the part that Todoroki knows, and the part that gets the spotlight in this episode. But the part of him that could maybe be better, find the humility that eluded him, that was always peeking around the edges in Kamen Rider Hibiki. There’s an explanation to Kiriya’s actions – his post-show history – that I’m really anxious to hear. Todoroki may have written Kiriya off, but like Hibiki, I sure haven’t.



…

C’mon, I’m not gonna do you like that. I'm not going to write about this episode only in ways that flatter everyone's least favorite Kiriya/Hibiki. I will talk about some non-Kiriya stuff, too!

Tons of great Kamen Rider Hibiki callbacks in this episode: Todoroki’s one guitar song, and the way his fight music was full of shredding; a brief camping scene; that shot of Heure leaping backwards into a tree is I’d swear the type of shot they used on Hibiki; the word Makamou, which I love; and all of that training, which is as much a Hibiki callback as the Echoing Oni screens in the pre-credit sequence. This episode did a terrific job of evoking Hibiki throughout, and I couldn’t’ve been happier.

Even the little (very funny!) runner with Woz trying to figure out how to celebrate Sougo’s birthday – which is coming up in only three days for all of us! – feels of a piece with Asumu’s relationship with Hibiki, and how hard it can be to tell the people we admire how we feel about them. It’s easy to be over-the-top or theatrical, but it’s hard to be real. Woz’z incredibly charming attempts to Make The Biggest Deal are, as Tsukuyomi, exactly the wrong way to celebrate Sougo. They’re the right way to celebrate Zi-O, but not Sougo. The ability to see past the hero to the person underneath is, again, a pretty big Hibiki theme!

This was completely what I wanted from a Hibiki tribute. Todoroki doesn’t do a whole lot other than look grizzled, but I’m okay with that. This was a story about Kiriya’s frayed bond with his apprentice, and how the world views Kiriya, and that’s enough for me. I’m curious how this’ll reflect on where Sougo’s at in his journey, though. I’d think it’s going to be a look at how these Kamen Riders won’t just exist as fun Heisei Dads like Shouichi; mentors kinda got their own stuff to deal with, emotionally! I guess I’ll find out in a couple days!