[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 36 - “BEYOND R - LEAVE ALL BEHIND”



Okay episode.

I wish I liked this one more? It doesn’t really do anything wrong, but a lot of its conclusions are either things I felt like landed better before (Terui’s heroic turn in… I want to say Episode 28?) or are things I was never particularly invested in (Saeko’s feelings about her dad). It’s an episode split between the Sonozaki family and Terui, but neither of them completely held my interest.

Let’s talk about Terui first, since this is his Upgrade Form story. Like I mentioned last time, I’m good with them landing this story on Terui’s protective feelings for Nagi outweighing his hatred for Isaka. While Shroud’s here to yet again get it wrong, I don’t feel like this story ever really tried to say that Terui’s motivation was anything other than saving that girl from Isaka. There’s no conflict in Terui, which makes his attempts to tame the Trial Memory come off less like a spiritual awakening and more like a fairly standard training montage. (And, look, I’m just saying: a guy who turns into a motorcycle should’ve been able to run that track on his own power.) It’s nice to see him succeed, and his victory over Isaka is pretty glorious, but this all felt like a semi-perfunctory Time To Close The Book On Isaka story, not anything that required a reexamination of Terui’s psychology. Not exactly the same as Shotaro having to reckon with the power of his weakness, you know?

And then there’s Saeko choosing Isaka over her family, and it’s… shot well? I liked how it all looked, and I like the escalation of tension within the villain group just as the heroes are becoming more powerful, and I like the idea that Isaka is – like Terui – finding a motivation beyond where he started from, but I kind of don’t care a whole lot. Saeko’s scenes with Isaka have always been too one-note for me (and that note is There Are Kids Watching), and I don’t know that she’s ever been portrayed with enough nuance to care about whether she feels like she gets enough respect from her crime-boss father. Isaka, meanwhile, is clearly just counting the 9.8 scenes until he’s offed, so his threats against Ryubei are a nice nod to an overall goal that is basically never ever going to happen. So much of the middle part of this episode feels like it’s killing time until Terui is allowed to leave the track, even if it’s the best version of killing time that I can think of.

It sounds like I hated this episode, but I really didn’t. It’s fine. The debut of Accel Trial is super cool, and this whole story is a gigantic win for the most appealing version of Terui. It just – it never felt like it had any fun twists on it, and so much of the Sonozaki side of things featured the inner lives of characters I was never terribly curious about. It’s a solid episode, but something this important to the character of Accel should’ve probably managed better than “solid”.

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DIE-A MEMORIES



-Accel Trial!

-Not many Upgrade Forms are actually slimmer than the Base Form (not counting, uh, all of Kabuto and Ex-Aid?), but I really like it here. It sells Speed in such a simple way, which is very fun. The blue is also an easy flip from Accel’s red. Just a couple clean decisions that result in an attractive suit.

-I love that there’s a yellow mid-form change that doesn’t actually do anything… yet.