[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 33 - “FRIENDSHIP, RAMPAGE, AND THE BELT LEFT BEHIND”



After a story that hinged on how difficult it is to support Eiji, when all he ever wants to do is support other people, here’s that story again, but with "(derogatory)" at the end this time.

Kitamura! What an insanely, compellingly weird dude he is. An underclassman of Eiji’s from high school who convinced himself that Eiji was his best friend in the world, a guy that only Kitamura understood, while Eiji’s like I Think We Maybe Went To School Together. It’s a completely lopsided… I mean, I wasn’t even going to say “friendship”, I was going to say “relationship”, but even that feels like it flatters Kitamura too much. Eiji genuinely doesn’t remember anything this guy is talking about, to a level that would make even the rampant amnesia sufferers of Revice be like No Wait This Rings A Bell. Kitamura’s a hero worshipping weirdo, and clearly the villain of this piece.

The thing that makes it sort of perfect, though, is that he’s also saying all of the Frank Grimes-esque stuff about the cast that anyone not steeped in the heroic sacrifice endemic to tokusatsu would say: Ankh is absolutely bad news; Eiji’s friends are dangerous to him; Eiji is squandering his potential by hiding from his desires; it’s weird that Date just assumed that any random bag of groceries should contain the correct ingredients to make oden. (Okay, Kitamura didn’t say that one out loud, but you could tell he was thinking it.) Kitamura is a pushy, sociopathic creep who clearly thinks that he and Eiji are the only real people in the world, but he does want Eiji to be happy and safe. The things he’s doing are in service of what he views as friendship.

It’s just, y’know, not friendship. Kitamura isn’t asking Eiji what he wants, he’s dictating what Eiji needs. Friendship isn’t saying you know what will make someone happy and refusing to be swayed, it’s reaching out to someone and letting them tell you how you can help them. Ankh’s a manipulative jerk who is furious that Eiji’s possession by heretofore unknown Core Medals isn’t immediately benefitting him and only him right this second, but he’s also someone who understands that the Purple Medals 100% cannot stay inside Eiji indefinitely. Viewing Ankh as the thing standing in the way of Eiji’s happiness misses that friendship isn’t about forcing someone to live the way you want them to, even when it’d make them safer – even Ankh waits until a fight to trick Eiji into popping out the Purple Medals.

Having a ridiculous-yet-normal creep like Kitamura front and center – kidnapping Hina for a minute and trapping Ankh in a net and inviting Team OOO to play around in an unstaffed amusement park that probably violates any number of safety regulations – fits a story where a Bird Yummy somehow feels like the least weird thing in it. It’s an episode that feels unnerved from the start, with kinetic camerawork and unique dolly shots (not Maki; like, a camera on a track) giving even a semi-standard pre-credit Yummy fight a frisson of tension: That parallel shot as OOO and Birth attack the Dino Yummy! The profile shot as Kitamura walks Ankh over the net trap! Even as the show is grounding the story in a pre-OOO relationship from Eiji’s past, it’s letting the scenery and the cinematography elevate everything into the heated realms of melodrama.

I thought this one was excellent. Any story that transports all of Team OOO (sorry Chiyoko) to a new location, picks them off one by one, and has Eiji try to negotiate not just a series of off-season obstacle courses but also a parasocial relationship with a guy who’s just saying what we’re all thinking is going to be a winner. Marrying all of that to stellar direction and growing tension in the show’s core/Core partnership is what clinches it.