[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 26 - “ANKH, THE RING, AND FULLY-LOADED”



Man, I’m really with Date after this episode! I don’t know who in here I’m supposed to be rooting for besides him: The boxer with CTE that’s okay dying? Or is it Eiji, who is potentially destroying his body by using Combos, and needlessly exacerbates his injuries by fighting when a doctor expressly tells him not to? Which guy that's slowly killing themself is the one I'm supposed to be happy for at the end? Both of them? One of them? No one here is making good decisions!

The Eiji thing is… I don’t know, standard heroic Kamen Rider stuff that also feels short-sighted and frustrating. There’s nothing in here saying that Birth couldn’t take care of this threat himself – Birth is literally built to finish off Yummies – but we still get a heavily-injured Eiji risking his life while, y’know, heavily injured. He’s at a way greater risk than Date would’ve been, and it all feels too foolhardy, too precarious. Like, him showing up to protect Ankh? Good! Him continuing to hang around for the fight after Ankh is safe and Team Birth arrives? Bad! Dumb! Dangerous!

But again, that’s this genre. Heroes fight beyond the promise of safety in order keep the rest of us safe. It just, a) completely didn’t seem necessary, and b) is looped in with the boxer storyline to create something sort of repellant?

I can kind of squint and see what the boxer storyline is talking about. A life lived in safety that denies your desires is more dangerous to your well-being than a risky life lived in pursuit of your desires. Basically, don’t be afraid to chase your dreams. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s that life is uncertain? (i have a very hard time seeing the positive message in the boxer story!) But, like, this guy has legitimate brain damage. His life is already going to be horrible. Is this show seriously suggesting that him dying in the ring (possibly every single match!) is going to be a better life for him than, uh, not risking his life to pursue his dream of sporting glory? This is horrible! This is a horrible message. Okamura acts at the end like he just needs to do some rehab on his hand and he’ll be good as new, but that was never the real problem. He cannot take any more hits to the head; you cannot rehab CTE. It is not heroic for this guy to risk his life for a sport! Beyond the fact that literally no humane governing body for boxing would allow it (so, probably only 80% of them), think of what it would mean for any of his opponents to fight against a guy this close to death. You think they’re agreeing to kill this guy during a boxing competition, just because he wants a meaningful death?! This is horrible.

So, yeah, sort of tainted the episode for me! No one learns anything, all self-destructive behavior is either rewarded or ignored, and we don’t even find out where the Yummy actually came from. I really disliked this episode!