[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO EPISODE 38 - “CIRCUMSTANCES, A PARTING, AND A TEARFUL BIRTH”



Or, the one where Gotou becomes a real Birth.

Structurally, I thought this was an exceptional episode. There’s a nice runner about the value in leaving something behind – Eiji and Gotou talk about it in regards to Date’s theoretical medical school (theomedical school), Date and Maki talk about it in regards to Maki’s apocalyptic intentions – that resolves itself both in Gotou’s heroic pledge to continue Date’s work as Birth as a way of honoring his perceived death, and then as Gotou actually doing that for when Date returns because this show wasn’t going to really kill off Date. (Another show, with another actor? Probably.) Every major scene creates a thematic framework for Gotou carrying on for Date, while giving Date pride in a job well done. It all works flawlessly as a storytelling premise.

Your mileage may vary on the value as entertainment, though.

For me… not a Gotou Guy? (That’s what his fans call themselves, right?) What’s here is a nice culmination of Gotou’s incredibly long and winding road to be a Kamen Rider, honoring every iteration of the skinniest pretty boy this franchise has yet held up as a heroic ideal. But it also feels sort of schematic, an outcome that might as well happen, with only 10 episodes left to go. We ain’t getting a legit third Rider, so why not let Gotou step up and carry the mantle of Birth while the clock slowly ticks down. His urgency to save Date, performance-wise, exists in the same narrow band of emotion as every other thing the actor did, so it never quite feels like Now It’s Personal. Gotou steps up because it’s about time he did step up, and the story he’s in is The One Where Gotou Steps Up. As Kougami might’ve put it, I felt it in my brain, but never in my heart.

On the other hand, big fan of all of the Date stuff in this one! The reveal that he’s only ever wanted the money to get life-saving surgery is a motivation that will definitely land for any American adult, where we would gladly fight ancient desire monsters to eliminate medical debt. But even with that less heroic motivation, he still was never really going to sell out Gotou or Eiji to save his own life. It was a scheme, as laid out in a scene that featured – if I remember correctly – seventeen different reversals of fortune. (I was sort of waiting for Maki’s doll to turn the tables next.) Date’s combination of exhaustion and resolve is like the anti-Gotou performance, where I believed everything he said, even when I knew from memory that it was bullshit. Or, thankfully, not bullshit – Date’s “confession” is just him saying he’d like to not die, he’ll do anything to get the money to do it, even fight OOO and Gotou… which is all completely true. It’s just, he’s doing it on orders from Kougami in order to trick Maki, a plan which doesn’t really make a ton of sense at any stage of the process. (Like, what was the best outcome of this plan? That Birth was gonna shoot Maki in the face? If this had just been a plan to get into Maki’s stronghold and run off with the Core Medals, I’d get it, but this is some Yonemura-level Eventually We’ll Stop Pretending subterfuge.) But it’s Date still not lying, even as he’s tricking his friends, and I sort of love that.

I loved all of the Date story in this episode devoted to elevating Gotou into Date’s role, which is as succinctly as I can describe my ambivalence towards this genuinely stellar episode. The writing is great, most of the scenes beautifully leverage 30-odd episodes of character growth (Date/Maki for sure, Kougami/Gotou in second place), but I don’t really care about Gotou as Birth. I just don’t! Like Gotou, I await Date’s inevitable return!