[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 43 - “LIGHT AND DARKNESS TWINS”



I’d imagine this one’s entertainment value depends entirely on your appreciation for (or, less charitably, tolerance for) Yuuki’s whole thing.

Like, I want to applaud this show for leaning into Yuuki’s mounting absurdity to devise an episode whose first-half conceit – that a deranged Yuuki is gleefully cartwheeling through school, vandalizing people and property alike in the good name of Space – is the most believable fake-out ever broadcast under the Kamen Rider banner, but at the same time that sort of doesn’t portray Yuuki’s performance and character development in the best light, if you’ll pardon the pun. The only reason the first chunk of this story can work is that Yuuki’s become such a bonkers character over the last 40-odd episodes that we can all sort of see her tagging a few dozen schoolmates in order to celebrate space. It’s not a million miles away from praying to a rocket for guidance, or bringing Hayabusa everywhere (even though I love that puppet), or cramming space books haphazardly on library shelves, or whatever else comes to mind when you think back to Yuuki’s comedic highlights. This is an episode that really foregrounds how overblown Yuuki’s performance has gotten, and I don’t know if that’s making lemonade out of lemons, or just hanging a lantern on an unavoidable topic.

It’s kind of funny, if nothing else, that this episode drops in a tiny tidbit that Yuuki has been driven insane by cosmic whisperings since she was a child, retroactively framing every burst of Yuuki Yammerings as “Oh, so she was just going cosmically crazy according to some astrological phenomenon, not some increasingly goofy kid.” Again, it’s a choice! Maybe not a great one, but one that can feel logical in light of where the character’s at. There’s more to come on that front, and Yuuki’s backstory with Gentarou, but it’s interesting to see so much work being done to refocus Yuuki’s energy and passion into something possibly nefarious and manipulated.

The whole episode’s pretty much consumed with Yuuki’s backstory, in ways small – hints of her history with Gentarou, and why he doesn’t remember pivotal events – and large, namely finally meeting Yuuki’s parents! And, if you asked me to choose one Heisei all-star to pop up as one of Yuuki’s parents for a montage where the Joujima family participates in a bunch of culturally-appropriative and borderline-disrespectful dinners… well, it’d be Chiyoko, obviously. But if you asked me to choose a second Heisei all-star to pop up as one of Yuuki’s parents for a montage where the Joujima family participates in a bunch of culturally-appropriative and borderline-disrespectful dinners, it’d be Doctor Maki, ably demonstrating the over-committed buffoonery that helped shape Yuuki into one of the least defensible members of the KRC, somehow dropping below Ohsugi. (He’s great in this episode! I love his manic cop nonsense!) In an episode that does not lack for characters going over the line into parody, Yuuki’s mom and dad feel like they’re dropped in from the broadest HBV, for a scene that’s only a minute long, but is still interminable and basically not funny. (It’s just mugging and accents! There’s no jokes!)

At least Gemini is fun? I thought Gemini was fun. I didn’t love the daddy/daughter stuff with Sagittarius at the end – I just feel like the energy of this story is all wrong for his flavor of villainy? – but Gemini herself is the best part of this episode, allowing for a couple of tense and chaotic action sequences, with enough physical comedy to balance against the threat of an insane Yuuki; or, more insane? I don’t know. Gemini is a fun foe, regardless of where she comes from or how it might imperil Yuuki.

And that’s sort of where I’m at at the end of this one: I sort of don’t care what happens to Yuuki? That sounds harsher than I probably mean it, because I do like the concept of Yuuki, the stalwart friend to Kengo and the boisterous heart of the KRC. But this one? The crazy girl who’s either more crazy than we knew or less stable than we hoped? I don’t really care about that one! I hope defeating Gemini brings back the Yuuki I used to care about!