[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 30 - “THE KING, A PANDA, AND BURNING MEMORIES”



I am not normally one for exposition episodes – especially DOUBLE exposition episodes – but I think this one worked as well for me as it possibly could. There’re still a few flaws, namely a Shark Panda Yummy climax that feels completely irrelevant to what’s actually going on in this story, but I liked how this episode worked to reveal a couple of its major mysteries.

Like, we are definitely moving into a new phase of the show’s conflicts, and you need to lay a couple cards on the table to better understand exactly how screwed our heroes really are, and in which precise direction the screwing is coming from. It’s all well and good to have Maki and Kazari plotting while Ankh Lost exists in the shadows, but the only way the conflict can move forward is by understanding what’s at stake, and what’s at risk.

The Ankh backstory exposition does a nice job of filling in blanks via Ankh’s confession and Kougami’s research, but the real value is less about the past and more about how it informs the present. (That said, I like the reveal that the snarky and selfish Ankh of today was actually betrayed by an OOO it trusted 800 years in the past. Fun subversion, and great way to give Ankh’s modern day guarded nature a tragic backstory.) While we needed a couple details to confirm what we basically knew already about the two Ankhs, the bigger deal is what Date and Gotou have been trying to learn via their corporate subterfuge – namely, that Eiji’s increased power as OOO is maybe prelude to insanity and petrification.

I feel like every good Kamen Rider show should treat its hero’s power with wariness. It’s the core (or Core) theme within this particular show, that wanting something – anything – too much is what destroys people, so it’s crucial that Eiji’s seemingly benevolent usage of incredibly powerful and dangerous Medals has imminent and terrifying consequences. The trade-off to using combos to defeat evil is that he’s now at risk of becoming evil... or at least of becoming a monster, which is maybe worse. That’s a more thrilling potential story than the somewhat predictable and standard problem of Ankh being an inevitably selfish jerk, even if that story also sounds pretty fun.

But a show like this needs more conflict than just the existential dilemma of maintaining equilibrium with our desires, so it’s also time to figure out exactly how bad Maki is.

Pretty bad, as it turns out! While his origin is rooted in abuse and trauma, he’s still a guy who murdered his sister rather than lose her to marriage, and then used that murder to rewrite her personality in his memories. It’s a cool twist on his whole thing about Endings Mattering, because it allows for a complication where the Ending offers not finality or completion, but interpretation. Maki’s sister being dead means he can create whatever version he wants of her in his mind, to flatter whatever version of himself he wanted there to have been. That’s a more nuanced motivation than just wanting everyone to be dead, and it gets me more excited to see where this is all heading.

And it’s for sure heading somewhere, as this episode’s concluding shot has the trio of Kazari, Ankh Lost, and the now officially evil Dr. Maki heading off with an army of Candroids and one Hieronymus Bosch-esque Greeed painting to go enact some villainy. Great way to establish a new status quo!