[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 10 - “WHICH MEMORIES DO YOU REGRET?”



In an episode that’s all about how a fascination or obsession with our past – the regrets, mostly, as the title indicates – can make us lose the grip on our present, and how that’s visualized through a kaiju literally vanishing the present, it's only right that we start this episode without our theme song and opening credit sequence.

I like that, as a choice to immediately destabilize an audience. This whole episode mimics the rhythms of Gridman Episode 9, where all of the hidden traumas of our cast (except Chise, sucks to be me) are brought to light through a kaiju’s special power. Almost everything about this episode is grounded, sure: Yomogi’s inability to tell his mom that he doesn’t want to have dinner with her new boyfriend; Koyomi wondering if things would’ve been better for him if he’d run off with his childhood girlfriend; Yume’s desire to better understand Kano. But it’s also all heightened in that dreamlike way – the animation is super exaggerated for most of this episode, eschewing the normal laconic energy of the cast for something far more evocative and melodramatic. Everything about this episode, from the very jump, is meant to unnerve you.

And what’s more unnerving than the questions of our past? While the modern-day mysteries of the kaiju and the plans of the Eugenicists would motivate most other shows, this one refuses to grapple with that plot, because none of its cast can fully engage with the present. They’re all wrapped up, constantly, in what they didn’t do, or didn’t say, or didn’t get, or couldn't keep. What’s great about this episode is the ways, both large and small, that it talks about how your past isn’t something you can every really resolve, like a mystery. It’s all gone, and you don’t get to turn it over more to look for real answers. All you can really do is make your peace with it, learn from it, and apply it to your present so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.

We’ll talk about the bigger way that this episode did that, but I really want to talk about the small way first. Koyomi! He’s been mired in the way his childhood friend (I swear to god I have no idea what her name is anymore; Yomogi only ever calls her “Supervisor”, and she hasn’t shown up in a bunch of episodes) offered him a chance to run away with her, and he turned it down. So now, in the kaiju, he says yes to her, and runs away. But it doesn’t… it hasn’t fixed him. Not even because it isn’t real, but because he’s still trying to hold onto something that won’t last. She doesn’t really love him, and this isn’t really going to work, and it was all a childhood fling that he has to stop obsessing over. Like the money flying around, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he closes his grip, he’s got to let go of it and get on with his life.

The Yume/Kano stuff is the main way this episode talks about its themes, and for something the show’s been building up to since its first scene, I thought what we got was better than I could’ve hoped. We don’t really get a solution to the mystery of what happened to Kano, because it doesn’t really matter if it was an accident or a suicide – she’s dead, Yume will always miss her, and that’s it. (While Kano directly tells Yume she wasn’t going to kill herself, I think there’s more than enough grey area to think that she’s lying to her little sister.) Finding out what exactly happened that night is irrelevant, because the larger issue was that Kano felt isolated, and Yume regrets not finding a way to help her, but now realizes that she has to find some way forward from that, including leaning on the people around her in a way that Kano never did. The two ankhs can detach, and link back up; it’s not being trapped by your past or suffocated by memory, but being able to find help when you need it.

The Gauma stuff, for me, was sort of whatever. I like Gauma just fine, but the more fantastical mystery of his ancient past is honestly the least compelling part of this show, and at times it felt almost inappropriate to put it up against the other plots from this episode. It's more compelling for me to watch a story about Koyomi’s regret, or Yume’s anguish, or especially Yomogi’s heroic efforts to be there for his friends, even if he couldn’t do anything more than be there.

Because, really, that’s the most valuable thing we can ever do, you know? Just be there for each other. And you can only do that in the present.