[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZI-O EPISODE 45 - “2019 - ETERNAL PARTY”



It is darkly funny to me that the only reason we learn any information about Swartz’z plot is because Tsukasa shows up to investigate.

Like, that’s sort of cute, how bad Team Zi-O is at some basic superheroic investigation, but it’s also sort of everything wrong with the Swartz plot in this story. Even setting aside that we’re in an Everything Falls Apart episode, our heroes have been almost exclusively reactive for the longest time. What precisely Swartz wants and how he plans to get it are total question marks, and no one in this story besides a special guest star seem to have any thoughts on how to find out. Without a plan of attack from our heroes or an enunciated scheme from our villain, we get some good emotional beats and solid fight scenes and cool cameos that never seem to add up to forward momentum, which is incredibly ironic for the Another Drive story. If I watched this episode in isolation, I’d’ve thought there were at least a dozen episodes left to go, not four.

And it’s a shame, because I generally enjoy a good Everything Falls Apart episode. There’s basic character conflict stuff that’s been papered over with exciting adventures and vows of support, so it’s time for those arguments to get out in the open.

The big one is, naturally, the one between Sougo and Geiz. It’s their incompatible worldviews, which become more relevant the closer we get to a finale. Geiz doesn’t believe people can change, because he’s seen real horrors. When someone shows you who they really are, you don’t need to risk your safety to ask follow-up questions. You protect innocents, and you destroy monsters. Sougo’s someone he can get behind because Oma Zi-O doesn’t exist yet; it’s a paradox that allows Geiz to have his friendship while still feeling like a dedicated soldier.

It’s a stubbornness that normally comes off as a hilarious pessimism, until Sougo starts to see it as a depressing lack of empathy. Watching Geiz tell Heure that he’s a villain, the end, no forgiveness, get out… it’s like nothing Sougo ever did made any impact on Geiz. Sougo’s been fighting monsters to give everyone a chance to build a better future for themselves, while Geiz has just been fighting monsters. When Geiz throws Oma Zi-O’s destruction of the future back in Sougo’s face, it’s clear that these two aren’t on the same page, if they ever were.

Since we’re in the middle part of a three-parter (at a minimum!), this plot is left nicely open-ended. While Tsukuyomi is still openly conflicted about the Time Orphans’ value to Sougo’s development and/or defeating Swartz, Geiz’z feelings are left a bit more ambiguous. To me, he reads as embarrassed by his lack of emotional growth, and how he’s let Sougo down. He’s not built for protecting people, or seeing the good in people. He’s a grim executioner from the future, and he feels like that’s where he should’ve stayed.

This is an episode that maybe doesn’t do a great job on furthering its series arc – Swartz’z stuff is just a Shrug Emoji with a single-feather earring – but really works as a discussion about the difficulty of honestly examining your past in order to articulate a better future. Characters like Heure and Sougo take big risks to become better people, while characters like Ora and Geiz succumb to the gravity of their pasts. Even Sougo’s school friend from (I think) the Ex-Aid story shows up to touch on this theme, where he’d rather be trapped in a fantasy world than deal with his disappointment in the real world. (I mean, it’s not a great metaphor: Swartz kidnaps and brainwashes the guy, he’s not exactly an example of Informed Consent.) This is a series that wants to talk about how we need to work to make our best futures possible, so it’s nice to have a late-stage episode that shows how difficult of a lesson that can be for our heroes to apply personally.

Especially when it gets you murdered! Yeah, Heure dies in this one, probably. (Deaths are ambiguous on most Kamen Rider shows, doubly so for a time-travel show with multiple timelines.) Even though I didn’t guess that Another Drive was the Paradox Roidmude (another movie villain!!!), I still correctly surmised that Ora would gladly turn on Heure if it ensured her survival. I imagine most folks won’t care too much, since the Time Jackers rarely felt like three-dimensional characters, but I thought the last couple episodes did a lot to make Heure feel like a character who deserved the chance that Sougo was offering. Seeing him get cut down by what he thought was a friend, all because she couldn’t see a way where they could be more than the villains they were… like, that’s a nicely poignant death scene.

I liked a lot of pieces of this episode? It’s darker, which feels appropriate for an episode full of Dark Riders. Eternal’s back, and that’s always fun. (He’s also responsible for Surprise Drive, helping to tie together the Drive elements.) I always liked Aqua’s fluid fighting style. I’m a sucker for Tsukasa just going The Rules Never Apply To Me, and then jumping ahead in the story to solve the mystery. It’s a good middle episode of a three-parter.

It just doesn’t quite feel like we’re in the endgame? I feel like you could’ve done this exact story ten episodes ago, which is the last thing I want to feel as the show is winding down. Good stuff, but there’s an inescapable lack of momentum.