[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 11 - “DECISIVE BATTLE”



Not just our first two-word title, but maybe our first ironic title, in that this one is very much a Part 2 Of 3 episode – where everything is about the consequences of past choices, and the consequences of future options.

It’s a solid episode, but largely in an “individual character moment” way, rather than a locked-down single episode story. While it’s compelling dramatically to have everything hung together by the cast's karmic balance – or a need to pay their debts, as Anti succinctly put it – it leaves the episode feeling like it’s carrying over the shocking events of Episode 10, while setting up the finale of Episode 12; it’s an episode that can’t really be talked about too much on its own, because it lives in the shadow of more important events.

But the way these characters grapple with, internalize, and move on from things is as fascinating a part of the series to me as any of the very cool kaiju battles (Gridknight really earns his place in this one!), so I still found plenty to appreciate in its middle-child status. I like the little beats, of Utsumi coming to grips with both the real-world trauma of the previous consequence-free kaiju battles, and his inability to be more than The Guy In The Chair for his friends because of that fandom; of Anti refusing to live by someone else’s morality or expectations, and determining his value for himself; and of Rikka opting out of a cycle of violence, and looking instead to friendship as something that’s always there if you want it to be.

The Rikka scene with Akane… sort of the best? (The Utsumi stuff was also really good; maybe the best scene in the series for that guy, not counting Episode 9.) Rikka just fundamentally refuses to see the world in the same way, or at the same register, as the rest of the cast. Where characters like Utsumi talk about retribution, or Akane views her actions through the Protagonist/Antagonist lens, Rikka just sees a sad, lonely friend who did a horrible thing, but not a permanent thing, and maybe needs someone to reach out to her before it becomes a permanent thing after all. It’s Rikka looking less at what Akane deserves, and more at what Akane needs, and I like a show that’s willing to put its dramatic chips on a scene like that. It’s asking a lot of the audience to care what Akane needs, but relevant to the entire story being told that it confronts the audience with it anyway. This show is so deeply about how connection is an innate thing that we have to remember, rather than construct, so a scene in the penultimate episode of Rikka reminding Akane that they’ve always been friends, and that it isn’t something Akane can discard when its inconvenient to her conception of herself as worthy only of isolation and vitriol… you’ve gotta have that scene there. You gotta let Akane try and wriggle out of her friendship by painting it as narrative contrivance, and then let Rikka argue that making it a story doesn’t make it any less emotionally valuable.

The Gridman/Yuta stuff… I feel like I want to leave that for next episode. Let’s see how that goes.