[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 2 - “RESTORATION”



I don’t… like, I don’t want to do that Kamen Rider Die cliched thing where I sort of handwave the actual toku action stuff in favor of really drilling into a metaphorical read of the iconography of the episode. The Gridman combat in this episode was awesome, and I loved Gridman Calibur as a new addition to the hero’s arsenal.

But.

All I really want to talk about is Rikka, and Akane, and the alternate hope and terror of adulthood when you’re on the cusp of it.

For Rikka, the kaiju are the terror of adulthood, of things changing, and of her friends vanishing. Tonkawa and Toiko don’t die – there’re no bodies, and whatever mourning took place for them was years earlier. They’re just, like, gone. They left. Rikka has to live on with her friends being gone, and nowhere to put that grief, because no one else in school remembers them. That’s a loss she’ll have to suffer in greater and greater amounts in the years to come, because that’s what growing up inevitably means – saying goodbye to childhood friends as your lives pull you in different directions. The kaiju that attacked the school last episode might as well have been Tonkawa’s parents getting a job in another town, or Toiko getting into a different college, or or or. Rikka will have to watch her friends vanish over time, and it’s as heartbreaking as it is unavoidable. It’ll happen, and she’ll never know when… like the immobilized kaiju in the skyline.

For Akane, the kaiju are the hope of adulthood – specifically, the dream of control. Akane as she is is a high school student, subject to the whims of adults and authorities and power. But if she were an adult, she’d have that power for herself. The kaiju are her way to exert influence on the world, and make it into what she wants, which is a child’s conception of adulthood. It’s power and control, rather than responsibility and service. The kaiju are a thing she can use to stop feeling powerless, the inversion to the unknowable fear of the future that Rikka has of them.

But then, in the end, the hope and terror of adulthood flatten out into days just like the ones before it. Rikka’s fear is alleviated by the new friends she makes as she mourns the loss of old ones – spending a day with Yuta, Utsumi, and Samurai Calibur (!!!), no different or worse than the ones she’d spent with Tonkawa or Toiko – and Akane’s dream of power is negated by a new teacher that still bumps into students because he isn’t paying attention, but at least says Sorry now in an unfulfilling way. The kaiju aren’t as apocalyptic as we’d fear, or as powerful as we’d hope; pretty much like being an adult.