[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 27 - “THE UNCONTROLLABLE DUO ESCAPE THE LABYRINTH!”



Cute episode, but, like, super duper minor.

And I don’t just mean this episode’s 17-year-old guest-star! It’s a mismatched comedy episode for a good middle section, where the well-meaning Ryuji has to wrangle the bratty Misaki during a Vagras trap, and it all feels like it’s going to be more meaningful or entertaining than it ended up being. Once you get past the surprise introduction of the Cageroid’s hostage being a flighty, self-involved teenage girl – and how that character type steamrolls the polite and earnest Ryuji – there’s kind of not a second move on this one? Ryuji eventually blows up at her when she casually mentions how little interest her workaholic scientist father seems to have in her, and it’s an utterly predictable beat that never really clicks with me in toku. Ryuji spent about 14 seconds with her dad, and now he’s yelling at her that all parents care about the wellbeing of their children, and HOW DARE SHE trivialize that. Ryuji doesn’t know either of these two! He’s way out of line! I don’t know that her dad trying to protect her from Enter makes up for him not being around day-to-day when she needs him!

(It’s… I loathe the trope where someone in toku is doing Very Important Work, and it’s everyone else’s job to suck it up and make do without them while also endlessly respecting them for their service -slash- inattention to their loved ones. I have never, ever liked it, and I feel like there’s a story in that vein in just about every series I watch.)

But, again, it’s whatever. It’s where this story was always headed, and I liked the rest of it pretty well. I like the basic problem-solving of the escape (not Escape, she skipped this one) from the maze, and I liked the sequence of Yellow, Stag, and Red slashing through infinite cages to detonate the Cageroid. The rest of the team exists to be in peril while Ryuji and Misaki have their buddy comedy, and said buddy comedy was enjoyably mismatched, right up until Ryuji told the kids at home to stop complaining when their parents don’t come home from work often enough. But before that! Pretty cute!



IT’S TIME FOR Directions!