[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 23 - “INHERITORS OF THE WILL”



It’s nice to finally learn something concrete about what Yoko’s vanished mom was like. We’re about halfway through the series, and the closest we’ve come to learning anything about the disappeared parents of Yoko and Hiromu are the original 13 Years Ago flashback, and then the one fantasy sequence for Hiromu. Yoko… like, I didn’t even know her mom was a single parent! That feels like new information, and it probably shouldn’t be!

Getting an episode where Jin can’t say he banged Yoko’s mom because this is a show designed to sell toys to Japanese children is a pretty fun way of adding more detail to Yoko’s defining trauma and singular motivation. It’s not just Yoko suddenly deciding to tell a story about her mom after six months of a TV show, because Yoko was too young to have any stories before her mom disappeared. It takes Jin to try and make Yoko’s mom feel vital enough as a concept to care if Yoko rescues her, and the clear attraction Jin has for Yoko’s mom makes his relationship with Yoko all the more dramatic.

(I’m just going to call her Yokaasan, to make things easier on me. If the show wanted me to call her something else, they could’ve used her name at any point in this episode!)

Making Jin an accidentally worried dad to Yoko is a neat twist on his mentor-y status with Hiromu and Ryuji. It’s a little patronizing to see Jin get overprotective for the one girl Buster, especially once the story really gets cooking, but it’s both understandable – he can’t bear the thought of letting Yokaasan down by not keeping Yoko safe – and exactly what the episode ends up being about. It’s not really a story about haunting lost loves or secret hyperspace disintegrations or ulterior motives or attraction (actually wait it is about attraction in a way), it’s a story where Jin needs to learn that the women he cares for don’t need him protecting them; the thing that he admires about these women is their strength, so he shouldn't stand in the way of that. It’s a great lesson in general, and it’s specifically great to see it in a toku show. These franchises are sometimes not great about treating the lady characters as capable and powerful!

The rest of the episode, the non-Jin/Yoko stuff, it was fine. It’s a lot of goofy physical comedy that never quite grabbed me, and felt a little padded out. I like the idea of Go-Busters and Buddyroids being taken out of action in a comedic way so that Yoko and Jin can bond, but the reality got a little same-y. They fall over a lot! That’s the gag! It was fine.

Mostly, though, I was here for Jin and Yoko. I like any story that treats Yoko as more than just a kid sister, and marking her 17th birthday with her telling a paternalistic Jin that not only does she not need his protection, but she’s more than capable of protecting him? That’s a hell of a birthday present.



IT’S TIME FOR Enter and Escape!

I think the new separation of duties is a nice way of evolving the routine of this show, while playing to each character’s strengths. Enter gets to do his Big Picture plotting, while Escape gets to run and gun with the Busters. It’s win/win! Unless you’re Enter, and you have to deal with Escape’s gun-crazy antics and Messiah-enabling recklessness! Then maybe it’s lose/lose!