[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 27 - “D WAS WATCHING - INVISIBLE MAGICAL LADY”



Stylishly-shot action and a leggy dame in/as peril? SAKAMOTO!

I mean, as recurring motifs go, I don’t want to kinkshame the guy or nothing. She’s a magician, so her episode-length fishnets aren’t exactly uncalled for. It helps that Lily’s a fun character for Team Double to assist, more integral to the story than the usual client that drops off a case and leaves. She’s someone that, despite her invisibility, is a constant presence in the story. She gets little moments with all of our heroes, to varying degrees of acceptance. (I really loved how much Terui INSTANTLY hated her. He’s got a type, and it’s more Akiko-shaped.) She keeps things manic and bubbly, right up until the point they turn impossibly tense.

Because this isn’t really a Dopant Mystery story at all. Lily’s for sure here for a mixture of comedy and thematic resonance, but this is 100% a story about Terui and his frequently deferred but increasingly inevitable Grim Vengeance.

As Akiko notes midway through, we are very quickly back to dealing with the debut version of Terui, not the more recently accommodating one that smirks at how much Shotaro does not want to be at a group dinner with him. (Terrific background acting.) This Terui is boiling over with unresolved grief and rage, and could care less about his duties as either a Kamen Rider or a detective. He’s here to execute a killer, and is fine with whatever that may cost him. He’s doing this for his family, after all.

Which is why it’s nice to have the tonally opposite Lily story act as a parallel to what Terui’s doing to himself. Lily became a Dopant to save her family’s legacy, because she has to bear the awful weight of surviving a tragedy that killed her parents. She did something incredibly dangerous, because she didn’t see any other way to honor the family she lost. Meanwhile, we’ve got Terui, who is ready to get himself killed in order to avenge a family that’s gone, in spite of all the living people who care about him. In each instance, their guilt at surviving a tragedy drives them to disregard their own lives.

(I mean, it’s not really a one-to-one thing. Lily’s trying to live up to her grandfather’s dreams for his family, while Terui is on a mission of violent revenge. Still, I feel like there’s enough overlap there to commend the episode’s attempt at thematic storytelling.)

The tension is exquisite in the second half, as Terui calls out Isaka for battle, and thankfully so is the action. You don’t book Sakamoto to shoot an episode of soliloquies and staring – you book him to handle the two debut fights of the newest, toughest lieutenant the Museum has to offer. The fights are clever in their staging, with the Weather Dopant laying in crisp, devastating strikes at leisure, acting as a counterpoint to Accel’s animalistic frenzy. Worse/better, the Weather Dopant is just way too powerful for either Rider to handle solo, at exactly the point in the story where Double can’t get Accel to cooperate. (Well... to be fair, every single story since Accel's debut has had the two Riders come to blows for one reason or another, so maybe Philip's hope for teamwork is less realistic than he'd like to think.) The Weather Dopant on its own would be a tough fight, but it’s even more devastating against two Riders that can’t work together.

It’s just a terrific episode of wacky Sakamoto tropes that slowly give way to self-sacrificing adults and kinetic fight scenes… the other Sakamoto trope!

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-Hey, it’s that one lady from Fourze! I think! I honestly don’t remember her being a good actor, and… my opinion hasn’t changed greatly. I don’t think I’d go as far as Akiko, but her work was… adequate?