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Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider W (and watches Fuuto P.I.)
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03-23-2024, 03:08 PM
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Kamen Rider Die
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
KAMEN RIDER W EPISODE 45 - “WHAT K DEMANDS – THE DEVIL’S TAIL”
I think it’s appropriate, in what’s our second-to-last W story, to embrace reluctance. Learning the truth means having to confront and/or embrace it, so isn’t ignorance maybe something to cling to instead?
It’s a good penultimate story for a noir mystery superhero series, even if it robs the show of the fun, looser vibes of a traditional Dopant Dilemma. (I mean, this thing kicks off with Team Double Is Hired By Lady Indiana Jones, so it still left a little room to goof around.) There’s a safety in the status quo, and what comes next can only alter it. Maybe it’s okay if Philip never learns the truth about his past, and can just make up something that lets him feel safe? Maybe it’s okay if Shotaro just protects Fuuto around the edges, rather than confront Ryuube and risk everything? Maybe it’s okay if Kyoko doesn’t open the Evil Tail box, and convinces herself that the admired museum curator isn’t a USB drug metaphor kingpin and global supervillain? We’re in a noir mystery, and that means the truth is frequently more dangerous than a lie.
Which is exactly what happens, right down the line. Every answer we’re given puts our cast in greater jeopardy, but they’re not all equal in narrative weight. For one, I don’t love the revelation that Shotaro has been subconsciously avoiding a confrontation with Ryuube because of the Terror Memory’s evil fear powers. While it’s fine if that’s the case, we already had a perfectly good explanation for why Shotaro didn’t launch an assault on the Sonozaki compound:
he’d immediately be killed.
The various Museum lieutenants in residence were generally enough to make a frontal assault foolish, and the Terror Dopant was exponentially more powerful. Frankly, the thought of attacking Ryuube has never even come up in the show past their first run-in, and that’s because it was obviously a non-starter. To say that Shotaro’s been avoiding that dude because he’s petrified… like, maybe the series could’ve included a single scene of everyone being in favor of fighting Ryuube, and Shotaro being against it? Maybe once?
But the revelation that Philip is just the Earth’s memory of Raito… I like that better? Beyond being a wrinkle that doesn’t ask us to square some weird circle, it makes the Sonozaki family’s utilization of Raito into something a bit more sensible. Ryuube didn’t see Raito as anything more than a tool, because Raito was
already dead
; what came back was a glorified Gaia Memory, so who cares? In retrospect, Wakana’s between-scenes dismissal of Philip makes a sort of sense – if Ryuube told her the truth about Philip, she’d probably also see him as less than human. (It’s a stretch, though. Doesn’t exactly redeem Wakana’s abrupt turn, even if it maybe sketches out a rationalization for it.) Also, man, to drop this thing directly after the movie where Team Double fights a reanimated child that was just like Raito? Brilliant.
We’re in a story that’s largely about setting up the final pieces for the finale three-parter, as well as tying up whatever loose ends remain for our year-long narrative, but the episode allows most of that exposition and revelation to come alongside a few good fights (Mick! Twice!) and a substantial atmosphere of dread. Nothing’s dispensed in a dry or analytical way; it’s all bombshells, straight through.
I like that this show wanted to give everyone a little moment of fear, right before the end. It’s natural, and it’s dramatic, and it’s suitably noir.
—
DIE-A MEMORIES
-Hello, movie fallout! Is this maybe the only summer movie that leads in on one episode, and leads out in the next? Usually these films are treated as an optional side story that slots in Somewhere In The Early 40s Maybe, but this one is locked in place. Neat to see.
-Kyoko is a fun character, and I’m glad that it’s not the easy gag of Shotaro lusting after the pretty new client. They got friction, and not the possibly-romantic kind. Kyoko just immediately gets on Shotaro’s nerves, as two pulp archetypes are bound to do.
-It honestly never occurred to me, but clearly neither Double nor Accel ever knew that Mick was a cat, not a cat-man. Terui gets
so mad
when he finds out that he’s had multiple stalemate fights against a housecat, and it’s great.
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