[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER REVICE EPISODE 22 - “BANGING ABOUT… ATMOSPHERE STAIRWAY!?”



I don’t know how people quit these shows.

I hear it a lot in these threads, that someone made it to Episode Whatever and bounced, owing to either a general lack of enthusiasm or a specific objection to a plot point/character/insert song. Despite this post’s opening sentence, I’d never say that anyone was wrong for dropping a show that they aren’t engaged with. It’s entertainment; if you aren’t being entertained, spare yourself the discomfort and aggravation. There’s nothing worse than watching a show that you can’t stand, just because you feel obligated to do so. You don’t. Quitting can be a victory for your mental health.

But I don’t keep watching these shows out of obligation. I watch them out of a sense of hope. I watch them because a show can be like Revice: turning in a series-worst story in Episode 21, and then pivot before the opening credits of Episode 22 into a story about Ikki and Vice going undercover as a comedy duo to suss out a Deadmans-related mystery. The way these shows constantly change and evolve – the malleability of the production team, and their willingness to take risks – makes it so I can never drop a show after a bad episode or two. Every horrible episode is literally a scene away from winning me over. Every failure could become a success, in time.

Which is not to say this episode was a home run! It was very fun, and clever about its storytelling, but it's still at least minorly bogged down by the stupidity of the recent Fenix/Weekend stuff.

Let’s get that part out of the way: completely insane that this show keeps Akaishi in charge of Fenix after freeing Olteca and crashing the helicarrier. I’m sure there’s some narrative handwaving that can remove him from suspicion – technically, Hiromi is the only one who saw Olteca and Akaishi team up, and he’s too Exploded Off Of A Cliff to tell anyone right now – but a) the show never even bothers with that, so thanks; b) Hiromi just “died” telling Daiji and Ikki that Fenix wasn’t to be trusted; and, most importantly, c) the audience knows Akaishi is a bad guy, so it makes every scene where Daiji can’t see how slimy and duplicitous this guy is into a scene where Daiji looks like a total mark. It’s unbelievably aggravating, as a viewer.

But that’s sort of it for the dumber elements of Revice? Everything else worked for me. I liked Aguilera maybe resorting to teaming with Olteca, because she needs to feel like she has a purpose, even if it’s with an untrustworthy scumbag like Olteca. (That, or she’s setting him up for a betrayal; either or!) I liked Tamaki trying to find shelter with literally his only other friend, Sakura. I liked Kagerou using Daiji’s confusion and anger over Hiromi’s fate to try and get loose again. I liked Lovekov finally, finally being in the opening credits where a star like her belongs.

Mostly, though, I liked the Zero-One-esque story that Ikki and Vice landed in for this episode’s main plot. (The director even dressed like Aruto!) It’s mostly light fun, with Ikki accidentally leveraging his buddy comedy antics with Vice into a cover story to investigate the Deadmans attacks around a famous comedy duo, but I very much enjoyed how it was talking about the different ways partnerships can work, and maybe fall apart. We’re at a point in their arcs where Ikki and Vice share a natural, almost unspoken chemistry. They’re supportive of each other, and excited to see where their partnership can go. But they’re in a story about a partnership that’s inexplicably disintegrating as soon as it got successful, and they’re surrounded by comedy teams that are jockeying for position when they smell weakness. It’s not really getting at any specific tension within the Revice team, but it’s nicely foreshadowing that successful partnerships can end when the power differential of the partners becomes too great to ignore.

Which, of course, gets exhibited in what looks to me like the Revice Berserk Form.

It’s a great form, even if I assume we’ll be getting an Elemental Dragon-style finished version of the new suit in a couple episodes. It’s Vice as a solo act, more powerful with the Rolling Stamp than Revice were as a team. I’m going to assume that the stamp is letting Giff have more control/sway over Vice’s darker tendencies, but the end result currently is a gleeful Vice absolutely obliterating two Deadmans while causing a troubling amount of collateral damage. (Still, pretty sweet wrestling moves that Vice breaks out in his solitary excursion!) There’s all this fun black ink coloring the combat, representing the darkness that’s being let loose in this new form, as Ikki’s nowhere to be found. (It’s also immediately made clear that this stamp didn’t come from George, so it’s definitely not a gift for Ikki and Vice.) It’s a menacing way to end an episode that started so brightly, but it all felt like a natural development of this story and these characters.

It’s such a pleasant surprise, this type of course-correction. It’s honestly not even a surprise at all. It’s why I can’t ever quit these shows – the knowledge that any episode could be better than the one before, even if they frequently aren’t in a given series. I like having my hope renewed. All it takes sometimes is for a show to remember what made it work in the first place.