[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 23 - “L ON THE LIPS - SINGER-SONG RIDER”



I think I just fundamentally like these sorts of stories – stories of singular obsessions and small-scale disasters – better than apocalyptic threats and bloodthirsty monsters.

There’s just something more appealing to me about watching Shotaro and the rest of the gang have to solve some low-stakes mystery, with an obsessed fan, a deluded performer, several Celebrity Guest Judges, and two pissed-off idol singers. It speaks to the community of Fuuto more than any rampaging psychopath, because it’s about the interconnectedness of every random citizen, and how their hopes and dreams change the fortunes of each other. Some lunatic with a vendetta (hero or villain!) creates a set of stakes that are simple to parse, and direct to confront: a villain needs to be stopped or more people will die. A mystery like this one… it’s not the end of the world if Team Double bails on it. The Liar Dopant’s a problem, but more in the scammer sense of things. No one’s died yet, or is likely to. But the pursuit of truth and justice becomes more intriguing for how optional it is here. Team Double throwing itself into a story where maybe four people are going to live slightly better lives, and that’s it… I don’t know, I really like that. I like how much harder the story has to work to make those stakes feel worth pursuing.

It usually means the story has to get uniquely weird, and boy does this episode deliver on that front. This episode leans into all of its singing cast members, for sometimes tenuous (but always fun) reasons. Multiple songs this time out, and if they aren’t particularly appealing to me, I can definitely appreciate the ridiculousness of The Masked Singers just hopping on stage to test a Philip theory. And SPILK! How can you not love an episode that invents a horrible new form of music, and gives it the dumbest possible name? It’s all batshit ideas this time out, but every single one of them adds detail to a story of delusion and desperation, which is thankfully not lost on Shotaro.

That’s maybe my favorite touch in this one, how both Shotaro and Akiko immediately see the similarities between Jimmy’s deluded grandiosity and Shotaro’s cosplay detective nonsense. It makes Jimmy into less of a constant joke, by suggesting that Jimmy’s naive bluster is a product of his vulnerability and sensitivity, just with zero self-awareness. (I love when this show lets Shotaro be sort of pathetic!) Like, Jimmy’s never annoying in this, despite how horrendous his music is. He’s sweet in how dumb he is, how blinded by optimism he is. Shotaro’s got that same thing, where his cosplay detective stuff is charming in how ridiculous it is, instead of being aggravating. Setting these two up in one story is such a fun idea.

Again, I just like these dumb little stories that don’t, like, matter. I don’t know if they’d all the time work (I think you need the stories of killers and death in order to make the series-long stuff land?) but I like getting a couple episodes where the resolution is less about defeating one homicidal adversary, and more about figuring out the best way to improve a stranger’s life. That’s real Kamen Rider storytelling to me.

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-Yeah, the songs in this one… not my thing? Just not musical genres I’m super into. I’d be curious to hear if y’all found them to be good or memorable.

-Terui briefly wears a black leather outfit over a blue t-shirt, and it felt viscerally wrong to me. It was Player 2 Terui, and I wanted to write a strongly-worded letter to Toei circa the year 2010 and ask them to restage that scene with the correct Terui costuming.

-Adding Terui to the team for W Cave scenes necessitates using its multiple levels for staging, and that’s so nice to see. It makes these largely expository scenes into something more visually dynamic.