[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 28 - “D WAS WATCHING - LIFE-OR-DEATH TWIN MAXIMUM”



It’s the episode where Terui officially joins Team Double, and I thought it was a remarkably nuanced journey for him from Grim Executioner to Grim Executioner Who Will Also Bring You Back To Life.

No, I kid. I like how this episode took its time in moving Terui from his oft-stated desire to get vengeance for his dead family at all costs – up to and including sacrificing his own life – to someone who acknowledges his duties to the living. This was… not a small movement! Terui’s insistence on the primacy of his own pain has been one of his three character traits (alongside not asking him questions and wearing nothing but leather) since his debut, and any story that asks him to consider the effect his vendetta is having on both his friends and the people he was given power to save is going to need to do its homework.

And I felt like this one did? So much of the last episode was about reestablishing that Secondary Rider Accel hasn’t quite dropped his motivating trauma, so much as he hasn’t been in a position to remedy it. As soon as Isaka is taunting Terui with a chance at killing him, we have to start grappling with Terui’s homicidal fixation, and maybe figure out a way to explain things to him in a way that redeems his humanity and sense of duty. Centering it on Lily’s parallel sense of familial obligation is a great start, but putting Terui into the role of Apoplectic Half-Boiled Detective is the clincher. Him accidentally parroting the advice he shrugged off from Shotaro? It’s one of my favorite things from his debut story, him realizing that Shotaro’s weakness is actually a strength, and making it a part of this story feels like a worthy bookend to Terui’s emotional growth. He’s able to finally understand that sacrificing himself doesn’t please the dead, it wounds the living, and he owes it to his friends to be the man they believe in. It’s less him discovering his own sense of justice and heroism, and more him reestablishing his obligation to the people who depend on him. It’s not his But Why Heroism; it’s his Oh Right Heroism.

In an episode so (rightfully) devoted to Terui’s struggle to look past his own pain, this is not one that gives the rest of Team Double a ton to do. Both Philip and Akiko are here to try and talk/beat some sense into Terui, which is mostly a fruitless struggle. He needs to come to his own conclusions, and they’re only here to question him. And, y’know, we are all aware by now of how he feels about questions. So, as a result, it’s mostly the Terui Personal Growth Episode, guest-starring Team Double. (I mean, Shotaro’s recuperating for the majority of this episode, so he’s even more of a guest-star!) They do a good job, and the arguments they bring up are necessary, even if Terui pretty much disregards them all for half an episode. Some cute moments – Akiko’s ribbing of Terui’s inability to admit he cares what happens to Lily, Philip’s expertly-delivered receipt for Terui’s earlier punch – but it ain’t their spotlight.

This was an episode all about Terui living for the living, instead of dying for the dead, and I’m glad it was done as thoughtfully and deliberately as it was.

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-Ha ha, tea with the Sonozakis! I have not been loving the Isaka/Saeko stuff, which might also explain why I don’t really remember any of it. He’s weird and devious, she’s completely smitten, and the whole thing arguably has less chemistry than even the Akiko/Terui “relationship”. I loved seeing how Kirihiko navigated a nest of vipers in the most delusional way possible, to his immediate embarrassment and eventual demise, but the Isaka/Saeko plotting… I just don’t care? It would maybe help if there were some sense of what exactly the two of them were even usurping at this point; some plan or goal that they’re coopting for their own power. Instead, it’s just a nebulous power struggle percolating underneath Saeko fawning over a serial killer, and I care way less than that description would suggest.

-On the other hand, I appreciate how, perhaps in lieu of a coherent strategy or motive, the Isaka storyline with the Sonozakis is the place where the show just gets incredibly weird with its randomly included nudity and eroticism. If it’s not a monster suit getting slobbered over, it’s one of Saeko’s suitors taking their clothes off to please her dad…