[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 31 - “RETURNING A FAVOR, A PLOT, AND PURPLE MEDALS”



It’s a very Part 1 Of 2 episode, with a whole bunch of interesting ideas that don’t really add up to much more than that. It’s solidly done, for an episode that reintroduces Uva, debuts the Purple Medals, spends some time with Team Greeed, and wraps it all up in a Yummy Dilemma that’s directly commenting on Eiji’s potentially apocalyptic helpfulness, but it all feels a little too much like the setup for next episode’s statement.

And I’m not sure how disappointed in that I want to be? There’s nothing really wrong in this episode; to the contrary, it’s a brisk installment that deftly balances foreshadowing with a present-tense conundrum, while never losing sight on how this all affects our core cast. But it still has that problem of not really being fully about its topic or theme yet. We’re given some truly enticing things – Maki and the Purple Medals, Uva’s payday loan scheme (?), Sakata’s desire to help out someone who once helped him – but it's all stopped at the point where this would maybe cohere into something resonant, instead of just entertaining. Every plot is an ellipsis, rather than a period or an exclamation mark.

Which is, y’know, the Kamen Rider template, especially in this era. They’re almost all two-parters, and Part 1 is usually chock-a-block with cliffhangers. I’m not sure why this one hit me so weirdly. It’s maybe exhaustion with this type of format? You see enough of this scheme and you start to ache for the deviations. It maybe feels more exhausting for how many parts of this episode are tantalizing teases of things we’ll discover later, rather than a complete statement on anything. I want something to talk about, to think about, but everything here feels like the discussion comes tomorrow.

Yeah, man, I don’t know! Despite an episode of weird mysteries and a fun couple of kids caught up in a pleasantly absurd scheme of bafflingly unpredictable consequences (Sakata gave Suzuka’s family money anonymously, and it drove them to ruin???) that accurately describes Eiji’s main personality flaw -slash- deepest fear, I just… I feel like there’s nothing here to talk about yet? Is it just me? Did you guys get something out of this episode?