[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 36 - “2019 - FIRST LOVE, FINALLY!”



Yuko’s maybe the ideal character for an Inoue Heisei tribute. She’s messy. She’s shockingly cruel. She’s contradictory. Everything she does is according to her whims, and then she constructs a flimsy justification afterwards. Her ending doesn’t make a ton of sense. But she somehow ends up being memorable both in spite of and because of her flaws.

Like, Inoue Forever.

This wasn’t the best Inoue episode, despite maybe being the definitive Inoue episode. All of the major elements land, for the most part, but this story lurches between tones with a clumsiness that makes me wonder if this wasn’t supposed to be a three-parter and got cut down. Every moment this episode veered away from Yuko it felt like Inoue was blaming us for it, and so he punished us with the Ginga subplot. The end beat for this story is trying to balance pessimism with optimism, and I’m not sure it gets the mix right?

It mostly did. The death of Yuko is tragic, but it’s… like, the twist of Yuko not even being Sailor Girl makes the conclusion kind of difficult to parse. The episode wants to have its apple pie, eat it, and also have Yuri from Kiva come back for an unconnected guest appearance. (Which: HOLY SHIT! YURI! Such a perfect button for this episode!) We get to have Sougo lose his innocence a bit, but also have his childhood crush not be a murderer. The point isn’t really about Yuko or Yuri or whoever. It’s not really about the women, because Sougo doesn’t even know them. It’s about him loving an idea, and that idea dying… but also that idea never being gone for good?

Like, it’s a Kiva story, so it’s about Love. Sougo’s experience of love isn’t really a reciprocal one, because this isn’t that story. This one’s about him getting to feel heartbreak, to know that it can happen, and then learning that it’s not the end of his capacity for love. First heartbreak… man, that’s what it feels like! It feels like everything in you that can have faith and love in another person is wrung out, obliterated. But, you know, it isn’t. It could take a minute, or a month, or a year, or a decade. But it isn’t ever really the end of love, because that’s not how love works. It just comes back, blooming, renewed.

Yuko’s character wasn’t the point of Sougo’s story, but she was still an amazing one. A character who can justify any action by it being what they felt like at that moment? Boy, that gives you a lot of options as a storyteller. She can leave people to die, save them later, try to kill Sougo, die proclaiming his heroism, and it all plays as one person’s psychology. Nothing she did across this two episode stretch felt out of character or poorly motivated. It’s just, like, that’s Yuko. She’s a crazy lady who does whatever makes her happy. That’s pretty interesting to watch!

Less interesting was all of the Kamen Rider Ginga stuff, which: hoo boy. Dumbest subplot ever for an Inoue story? Maybe! Ginga falls out of the sky, goes on a rampage, and then gets detonated by Woz, resulting in a new powerup. It’s insultingly stupid, without even the Eff The Fans charm of someone just whipping the Ginga Miridewatch at Woz’z head. Ginga’s motivation is nowhere. Even as an entropy enthusiast, he just sort of wanders around, randomly blowing up causeways. His participation in this story is completely incoherent.

The episode can’t even keep the continuity of Ginga’s appearances coherent. There’s a bit where Woz and Swartz are fighting Ginga, and Ginga goes into some cocoon. Multiple scenes happen, clearly denoting that time is passing. Then Ginga breaks out of his cocoon, and Woz and Swartz are standing right where they were when the cocoon formed. Were– were they just standing there for a solid day?! Did the two of them go their separate ways and then rush back, just in time for Ginga to bust loose? It’s lazy writing/directing/editing/production, but so is everything else about Ginga.

But, just like last time, I kinda love how sloppy and stupid this episode could be, even as it created something singular in Sougo’s crushed crush. It’s never just Good or Bad with Inoue, and that’s so fun to experience. It’s like love, you know? It’s good, until it’s bad, but it's always worth the effort.