[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OUTSIDERS EPISODE 6 - “LOVE & PEACE AND THE DIMENSIONAL SAVIOR”



Folks, it’s the holidays, and while there’s historically plenty to enjoy – gifts, loved ones, trying to explain to a child why Lazer was just murdered – it’s also a time of obligations, and having to spend time with people you might normally avoid. This is the time of year where you get cornered by the unpleasant relative at a family gathering, or a coworker’s obnoxious spouse at a work event. So it is with me and my tokusatsu viewing, as I reacquaint myself with the I Went To Bluesky To Avoid Having Conversations Like This With People Like You streaming series better known as Kamen Rider Outsiders.

God knows I remember next to nothing of the preceding episodes, which is probably the ideal way to experience this slipshod and exhausting collection of Special Guest Stars and atomized, hilariously unconstructed storytelling. Every character appearance here was a little surprise, since I couldn’t tell you who formed the main cast of this show, aside from the Orphnoch King. (Love that guy. MVP of this show!!!) Where previous episodes might’ve disappointed me by jettisoning whoever showed up last time for whoever the scheduling gods decreed would -slash- could appear this time, a (blissful) lack of memory left me up to the whims and fancies of this singular installment, and that’s just about right. Outsiders should never, under any circumstances, be watched consecutively. It’s just not built for rigorous examination, or meeting expectations, or sort of generally leveraging its diverse cast in any sort of legible or logical way.

Which is kind of amazing? If you can just stop giving a shit, in the same way this show mostly never did? Like, the scene of the episode for me wasn’t the very cool Zein/Zero-Three fight, even though I love me some Takahashi Shows Fighting Each Other stuff. (Geats Buster QB9 versus Rampage Gatling, yes, I am a tiny child that geeked out over that, I am not immune to the base appeal of this series.) It wasn’t Misora from Build, doing her twenty minutes of filming on a greenscreen and never interacting with a single other character but somehow still managing to imbue a ridiculous plot with grace and humanity. It wasn’t the ZeroLiner showing up for a beat, to release even more nostalgic chemicals in my brain. No. It was none of those.

My favorite scene in this episode was Gai asking Kuroto to help them defeat Zein, and Kuroto saying that he was going to do something else instead and some other characters will probably solve the central problem of the series. Like, that’s it; that’s this whole show. Characters randomly wandering out of the action because they couldn’t even tell you why they were in it before, while people craving some sort of catharsis are left impotently shaking their heads as we never seem to progress anything that would feel like a multi-episode story. When half of Foundation X turns against the other half, or Brain has an entire unseen sidequest but reappears just long enough to get flung into oblivion, that’s all distilled into one scene of Kuroto forgetting what the story is because he’s impossible to corral into a larger narrative. He’s a Special Guest Star, and those guys only work at the speed of cameo appearance.

(I mean, I say all of that, but there’s a 1000% chance that Kuroto’s Tokimeki Bridal game will prove crucial to the defeat of Zein and Evol-X. Which, man, those two! Lame! Henchman Evol and the scientist from Foundation X that wasn’t one of my favorite New Japan Pro-Wrestling guys? That’s what we’re landing on with twenty-odd years of Kamen Rider continuity to play with?)

Beyond that, beyond marveling at the ultimate Outsiders scene being one character telling another that they will not be participating in the remainder of the episode, I thought this was a weirdly straightforward and solid installment of a misbegotten patchwork series. I can only assume that the impending final episode lit a bit of a fire under the production team to try and illustrate some quantifiable stakes and/or consequences, so why not a random combination of Yuuto belatedly realizing that He’s The Baddie and then one of the background guys saying that it’s all about overpopulation(?!). I don’t like or care much what’s being said, but I sort of appreciate that something’s being said? We have two bad guys, we have a few scattered… I want to say “heroes”, but Ouja’s still lurking around, so – “protagonists”? Or “cast members”? Sure, okay, one of those. We’ve got some defined stakes, we’ve got some Kamen Riders, let’s see if we can land this thing in one more episode.

We’re all counting on you, Orphnoch King!!!