[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

You've got the easy, visceral, cruel reactions of Keitaro and Mari, stung by the way they found out and scared of what else they might not know about Takumi.

I think this might be the core of the disagreement we're having on this? I really can't imagine any "what else they might not know" that would get Keitarou and especially Mari to react in a negative enough way to actively push Takumi away without making it look like they've just arbitrarily decided none of the previous 30+ episodes of Takumi being grumpy, but never shady counts. It wasn't too long before this that Mari was giving a relatively glowing evaluation of Takumi's fundamentally good nature to Yuuji. There's a lot of trust built up between them by this point, and it would logically take a lot to test it. Kusaka would have to be spinning s*** out of nothing, and since, as I've pointed out, he likes to work the truth into his lies, that isn't really his style. I feel like that approach would've taken an absurd amount of fine-tuning to not just end up feeling even more contrived than what we got.

Quote:

The way you equate "constantly injuring yourself" with "heroism" makes me suspect that you, too, are a graduate/survivor of the Ryusei School. It's all clear to me now, Fish.

Look, I'm just saying, it's a common theme! How much did I talk about Yuusuke getting horribly injured during my Kuuga write-ups? How often was Eiji sitting around in bandages during OOO? How many times did Sento give an inspirational speech while picking himself up off the ground after getting beaten up in Build? I'm not saying you have to repeatedly injure yourself to be a hero, I'm just saying that if you are a hero, it tends to happen a lot!

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I think this might be the core of the disagreement we're having on this? I really can't imagine any "what else they might not know" that would get Keitarou and especially Mari to react in a negative enough way to actively push Takumi away without making it look like they've just arbitrarily decided none of the previous 30+ episodes of Takumi being grumpy, but never shady counts. It wasn't too long before this that Mari was giving a relatively glowing evaluation of Takumi's fundamentally good nature to Yuuji. There's a lot of trust built up between them by this point, and it would logically take a lot to test it. Kusaka would have to be spinning s*** out of nothing, and since, as I've pointed out, he likes to work the truth into his lies, that isn't really his style. I feel like that approach would've taken an absurd amount of fine-tuning to not just end up feeling even more contrived than what we got.

Yeah, I feel like it wouldn't have been a huge stretch. In general, if you've known someone for a while and they've hidden a massive secret from you, something that feeds into some of your fears and prejudices, I think it's easy to wonder what else they might be keeping from you. Everything about Takumi's reveal is played as WAIT WHAT HOW, and they aren't doing super great even before Mari shares her suspicions. (Keitaro in particular is barely holding it together, and that dude loves Takumi.)

Like, I think they could've leveraged some of Mari's feelings about Sawada to fill the gap of what the murder mystery contributed. She just got briefly killed by someone she trusted who was an Orphnoch. If they'd played with that idea for a little bit, rather than letting it sublimate into I'm Swallowing My Fear To Help Takumi (a plot point I really liked!), I think you could do a lot of the same stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Look, I'm just saying, it's a common theme! How much did I talk about Yuusuke getting horribly injured during my Kuuga write-ups? How often was Eiji sitting around in bandages during OOO? How many times did Sento give an inspirational speech while picking himself up off the ground after getting beaten up in Build? I'm not saying you have to repeatedly injure yourself to be a hero, I'm just saying that if you are a hero, it tends to happen a lot!

cool cool but they managed to turn on their belts at least once before that tho right

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Like, I think they could've leveraged some of Mari's feelings about Sawada to fill the gap of what the murder mystery contributed. She just got briefly killed by someone she trusted who was an Orphnoch. If they'd played with that idea for a little bit, rather than letting it sublimate into I'm Swallowing My Fear To Help Takumi (a plot point I really liked!), I think you could do a lot of the same stuff.

I think my problem there is that I don't think the situation with Sawada can be compared to Takumi in that manner. Mari got killed by Sawada after he spent several episodes actively expressing his desire to kill people and talking all about how stupid and dumb all his old friends are. Usually both at once. I guess maybe if once the truth was revealed, Takumi immediately started actively trying to push everyone away by pretending he felt that way? Which would then completely eliminate all the stuff you liked with him trying to do the exact opposite of that for once and being rejected anyway?

I just don't think there are a lot of easy answers to this one.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I think my problem there is that I don't think the situation with Sawada can be compared to Takumi in that manner. Mari got killed by Sawada after he spent several episodes actively expressing his desire to kill people and talking all about how stupid and dumb all his old friends are. Usually both at once. I guess maybe if once the truth was revealed, Takumi immediately started actively trying to push everyone away by pretending he felt that way? Which would then completely eliminate all the stuff you liked with him trying to do the exact opposite of that for once and being rejected anyway?

I just don't think there are a lot of easy answers to this one.

I guess I'm not comparing them so much as trying to link together two plotlines for efficiency's sake?

The Mari plotline with Sawada, she never really deals with it? Sawada turns on her, kills her, and then the next scene she has with him is all about trying to save Takumi. I feel like there's a middle section where she needs to process what happened to her, and while Takumi has been revealed to be an Orphnoch seems like a pretty dramatically fertile place to do that? Like, making Mari's trauma be about how she was betrayed and didn't deal with that, I think it's a two birds/one stone situation? Mari being screwed up while Takumi doesn't know how to deal with her being screwed up, that's the part of the story I thought worked, and I think they could manage that with what was already going on at the time.

I don't know, I don't mean to rewrite the show. This is just how my brain tries to deal with a couple simultaneous things that I thought the show could do better with.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

This is just how my brain tries to deal with a couple simultaneous things that I thought the show could do better with.

And that's more than fair! I absolutely can't fault anyone for wanting a story with as much fat trimmed off it as possible.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 EPISODE 40



--1--

I do like the new suit! As a Ryuki fan, I dig the silver chest plate over the red bodysuit. I’m a little surprised that they went with that color scheme the year after Ryuki aired, but maybe kids didn’t notice? Still, it’s a very cool look that has an energy to it that sells the concept of Unbridled Power or whatever. It’s a neat design!

And, shit, what an action sequence to debut it! If I was a kid in Japan watching this, I would be begging a parent to get me that toy. It’s strong enough to handle the deadliest Orphnochs, it’s got a giant sword, it’s got shoulder cannons, and it’s got a jetpack. It’s the coolest Rider that’s been on the show so far, and it cut a train car in half.

Incredibly fun opening for a show!

--2--

My favorite touch in the episode, though, was how the appearance of Faiz Blaster (yes?) affected Kitazaki. To explain why, I’m going to go slightly off-topic.

Let me talk about Orange Cassidy.

(I was at that event, it was phenomenal.)

Orange Cassidy is one of my favorite wrestlers right now. He’s in AEW, which is my favorite wrestling promotion right now. When AEW was set up at the C2E2 convention this past February, and we (me and my business partner) were there for one day to do a bunch of business stuff, we absolutely spent an hour of that precious time standing in line to get a photo with Orange Cassidy.

The thing with Orange Cassidy, though, is that he’s the most low-energy wrestler ever. That’s his gimmick. He slowly walks to the ring. He rolls in under the bottom rope. He wrestles with his hands in his pockets. His superkicks, normally aimed at an opponent’s head, connect weakly with their shins. It’s like watching someone wrestle in slow-motion.

And the crowd eats it up. Ever minor movement is treated with a roar, like it’s the most impressive physical display of all time. It’s hilarious. Being in the crowd for an Orange Cassidy match is electric.

But there’s a thing that happens in each match, where, out of nowhere, Orange Cassidy turns it on. He gets fired up, he starts sprinting around the ring, leaping through the air like an acrobat. The joke, said by the announcers, is that He’s Going To Try.

That’s pretty much what I thought about, as Kitazaki lost his shit after narrowly escaping Faiz Blaster. He’s a bored combatant, slacking off during fights because he doesn’t feel challenged. But now, now that he was whipped so soundly, He’s Going To Try.

I’m looking forward to it!

--3--

This episode, though! I mean, if you can tell by how much of this episode I just spent talking about a North American wrestler, this episode didn’t really land for me.

There’s ways I’m trying to talk myself into finding something positive, but I don’t love talking myself into liking something. I didn’t like this one, you guys.

It’s pretty much all because of how the show centers itself, and what Mari and Takumi are dealing with, on the Redemption Of Sawada.

Like, that is a gamble. That is a character that has earned basically zero sympathy, and he gets the sad death scene. That is the emotional crux of the episode, and the only way it works is if you feel Sawada’s death is something to avenge. And, I don’t?

It’s a very Kamen Rider thing, to take someone responsible for atrocities (Sawada has killed so many people) and say Well He Was Just Confused And Hurting. And, sure, Sawada didn’t ask to be made an Orphnoch. And Sawada was having a difficult time navigating his human emotions with his Orphnoch freedoms. But he killed so many people. He killed Mari. I don’t know that he ever apologized for any of that? Ever?

So that part of it, for me, completely didn’t land. I was not looking for the show to redeem Sawada, and its attempt made a whole lot of false assumptions about how that character made me feel. As a way of unifying Mari and Takumi’s story, though, it worked a little better, with a couple huge caveats.

Honestly, though, the scene of Mari and Takumi just talking in the church was doing all the work for me. If they hadn’t interrupted it for the fight, it would’ve made this episode a winner. I liked that it neatly closed off the storyline about acceptance by leaving it up to Takumi. Mari can accept him, but Takumi has to feel like he deserves that acceptance. He has to hear Mari say he’s her friend and a good person, and he needs to feel like those statements are valid. I think that scene gets 75% to where it needs to be in its truncated form.

The rest of that storyline concludes with Sawada’s death, and what Sawada trying to redeem himself means to them.

The big problem I have is that I barely understand why Mari is so desperate to see Sawada redeemed. If I squint, I can see it as similar to Takumi’s hopes for Sawada earlier in the series, that it proves something about Takumi that Mari needs him to know. But, still, he straight up murdered her! Unapologetically! And she’s still assuming he’ll turn a corner! WHAT DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO DO ON THIS SHOW TO GET MARI TO DROP THE -KUN HONORIFIC?! Having her show this much blind faith in terrible people who have abused her and her trust… I don’t see it as a laudable character trait!

But, the point Mari’s trying to make is a good one, that it’s within Takumi’s power to be human instead of a monster. It’s a choice he gets to make. Sawada wasn’t a monster because he was an Orphnoch, he was a monster AND he was an Orphnoch. Just being an Orphnoch doesn’t make becoming a monster inevitable. It’s all just choices.

Or, that’s what I want to take out of that death scene, because the alternative is that Mari was willing to forgive both a weeks-long killing spree and her own goddamn murder because a boy who had a crush on her back in school helped out a friend of hers once. God, I hope that wasn’t supposed to be what I got out of that scene.

--4--

Still, at least wasn’t as hilariously (hilariously) stupid as the Delta stuff with Mihara and Rina.

It… I cannot take a single thing that happened in this plotline seriously. It’s ridiculously overwrought and so ludicrously high-stakes (Rina gets hit by a truck to save the Delta Gear that Mihara threw into the street!) that it’s practically a parody of a Hero’s Journey story.

Rina’s speech to Mihara, about how they have to fight to make a home, is mercifully brief, but also totally bizarre. People keep saying that Mihara has to fight to build a home, but I’m not seeing any proof of that. When Kusaka was saying it, you could (reasonably!) write it off as manipulative bullshit. Because, y’know, Kusaka was saying it. Here… is Rina brain damaged? Is that the excuse? Because I’m pretty sure Mihara has a literal home to go to, and a job. Just let the man quit being a superhero already. The Delta Gear works for literally anyone. Let Mari wear it, for chrissakes. There are so many people in Japan who are allowed to live normal lives, let Mihara be one of them already.

I mean, I’m ranting about it, but it was gloriously stupid. Just jaw-droppingly ill-considered. My compliments!

--5--

This show is in… oof. It ain’t in a great place. There’re things that work great (all the Mari and Takumi stuff sings, the Kaido/Yuka skit at the orphanage was funny), but the show keeps adding layers to the Ryusei School story that compare unfavorably in my mind to Agito (that Rina speech is 100% the Agito theme and is totally misplaced on this show), and it keeps backgrounding strong characters (Yuuji is a no-show, there’s the one Kaido/Yuka scene, remember when Keitaro had stories about him) to clutter up with a plot that doesn’t have an emotional weight to it.

I feel like I’m watching a great concert with a killer setlist, and then two-thirds of the way through the band’s like Hey Let’s Just Jam For The Rest Of The Night. It’s real frustrating to feel like the wheels are coming off of this thing, you guys!

[FreshToku]

The end of episode 40 is probably one of the most memorable visuals of Faiz, having all three Riders in one place and standing side-by-side. It's also the moment Takumi truly comes back into being Faiz, doing his whole proper transformation pose for the first time in what, a months worth of episodes? It still sticks with me to this day, especially since they played the special version of the theme song to make you as hype as possible right before the episode end. These cliffhangers are too cruel!!

I'm not entirely fond of how we got to that point though. I already had some minor issues here and there with Takumi's crisis, but having the last step that pushes him all the way towards being a hero again being Sawada's 'tragic' death? Eeeeeh... If you're going to have that, maybe rearrange events so it doesn't feel like it was the clincher to this whole arc. Like, have Mari and Takumi's really sweet talk come after Sawada's death, and it would feel a lot more like both of them had come to a conclusion about themselves from the event. As it is, Sawada's death kinda overtakes the previous scenes and it almost gives the impression that Takumi is rushing into battle in honour of him.

Plus Mihara's reason to be there is not compelling and almost nonexistent. Plus plus in the back of my mind, I was still waiting for Kusaka to be confronted by Takumi (or anyone, really) over his mountain of misdeeds. What I'm getting at is that the big moment of 'All the riders are finally together to fight the bad guys!' even if it is just an isolated moment, has so many caveats. ...But I still get really hype about it!? Both the first time I saw it and even now. It makes you look forward to them wailing on Orange Kitasidy!

Faiz Blaster is cool. He gets a briefcase-shaped machine that unfolds into a big gun and sword. Eat your heart out, G3-X.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

The end of episode 40 is probably one of the most memorable visuals of Faiz, having all three Riders in one place and standing side-by-side. It's also the moment Takumi truly comes back into being Faiz, doing his whole proper transformation pose for the first time in what, a months worth of episodes? It still sticks with me to this day, especially since they played the special version of the theme song to make you as hype as possible right before the episode end. These cliffhangers are too cruel!!

I just... I really like that it was Takumi's choice to become Faiz again. He didn't do it because he had to, and he didn't do it because he was allowed to. He did it because he finally believed he deserved to. I like how that gives him some emotional agency, if that makes sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

I'm not entirely fond of how we got to that point though. I already had some minor issues here and there with Takumi's crisis, but having the last step that pushes him all the way towards being a hero again being Sawada's 'tragic' death? Eeeeeh... If you're going to have that, maybe rearrange events so it doesn't feel like it was the clincher to this whole arc. Like, have Mari and Takumi's really sweet talk come after Sawada's death, and it would feel a lot more like both of them had come to a conclusion about themselves from the event. As it is, Sawada's death kinda overtakes the previous scenes and it almost gives the impression that Takumi is rushing into battle in honour of him.

Plus Mihara's reason to be there is not compelling and almost nonexistent. Plus plus in the back of my mind, I was still waiting for Kusaka to be confronted by Takumi (or anyone, really) over his mountain of misdeeds. What I'm getting at is that the big moment of 'All the riders are finally together to fight the bad guys!' even if it is just an isolated moment, has so many caveats. ...But I still get really hype about it!? Both the first time I saw it and even now. It makes you look forward to them wailing on Orange Kitasidy!

Honestly, I get why Takumi doesn't confront Kusaka, and why he probably never will. Takumi is generally pretty okay with people having a bad opinion of him, and I don't think he's too busted up if Kusaka (who is a notorious asshole) tries to give him shit.

It's the Mari stuff that I find more mystifying. That lady... I was always thought she was the sensible one, you know? Real hard for me to get right with how the show has her acting in this episode.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It's the Mari stuff that I find more mystifying. That lady... I was always thought she was the sensible one, you know? Real hard for me to get right with how the show has her acting in this episode.

I think the idea is just that she really does think of everyone from the Ryuusei School as family? Looking at it that way, I think it's at least a little understandable where she's coming from.

Honestly, I feel like you're being harsh on this episode? The way I see it, and I think the way it plays out supports this interpretation, the whole point is that Sawada was that awful. Right after the Faiz Blaster fight, Kusaka confronts Takumi, telling him he still can't be trusted because there's no telling when he'll completely become an Orphenoch like Sawada, which of course plays perfectly into Takumi's fears, and causes him to walk off again. The thought that even if he's a good person now, he could just cease to be that way, and end up like Sawada, it's exactly why he refuses to have any faith in himself.

So when Sawada, a guy who spent his entire run on the show actively trying to throw away his humanity, turns out to be incapable of fully doing that in the end, when he realizes talking to Mari that Sawada is going to fight Lucky Clover to save him, that's where everything finally becomes clear to Takumi. If a guy who sunk that low, and did that many awful things can still have even the slightest part of him that's still worth saving, maybe it's not that crazy for Takumi to believe in himself after all. And then he stands up.

The scene afterwards where Sawada actually dies, it's definitely kind of a bonus at that point, but I don't see it as some black mark on the episode. I don't see the takeaway as him needing to be "avenged", per se. I just explained Mari's reaction, and for Takumi, again, a lot of this is just about witnessing that part of Sawada that's still worth saving. And of course Takumi would be sad about failing to do that. That's what makes him Takumi, and why it was so irrational how scared he was of himself, something the show makes a point of with the "you're a victim here too" moment between him and Sawada earlier. If the show tried to get sappy and it didn't land for you, I guess that's that, but, I don't know, I feel the story being told here is perfectly solid.

...Aside from the stuff with Mihara, admittedly. I think you've gotten to a point in the show where I'm no longer coloring your opinion prematurely by pointing out that one of the big problems with Mihara's plotline is that it completely refuses to connect meaningfully with the other main characters. The fact that he debuted right as Takumi quit being Faiz and the status quo went down the drain means he's never really had time to develop meaningful relationships with most of the cast, and the show doesn't seem too interested in correcting that mistake. It'd rather just have him and Rina off in his own world, with only the occasional phone call from Kusaka dragging him back into the story, and, as much as I genuinely don't not like Mihara, man does it not work!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

--3--

This episode, though! I mean, if you can tell by how much of this episode I just spent talking about a North American wrestler, this episode didn’t really land for me.

There’s ways I’m trying to talk myself into finding something positive, but I don’t love talking myself into liking something. I didn’t like this one, you guys.

It’s pretty much all because of how the show centers itself, and what Mari and Takumi are dealing with, on the Redemption Of Sawada.

Like, that is a gamble. That is a character that has earned basically zero sympathy, and he gets the sad death scene. That is the emotional crux of the episode, and the only way it works is if you feel Sawada’s death is something to avenge. And, I don’t?

It’s a very Kamen Rider thing, to take someone responsible for atrocities (Sawada has killed so many people) and say Well He Was Just Confused And Hurting. And, sure, Sawada didn’t ask to be made an Orphnoch. And Sawada was having a difficult time navigating his human emotions with his Orphnoch freedoms. But he killed so many people. He killed Mari. I don’t know that he ever apologized for any of that? Ever?

So that part of it, for me, completely didn’t land. I was not looking for the show to redeem Sawada, and its attempt made a whole lot of false assumptions about how that character made me feel. As a way of unifying Mari and Takumi’s story, though, it worked a little better, with a couple huge caveats.

Honestly, though, the scene of Mari and Takumi just talking in the church was doing all the work for me. If they hadn’t interrupted it for the fight, it would’ve made this episode a winner. I liked that it neatly closed off the storyline about acceptance by leaving it up to Takumi. Mari can accept him, but Takumi has to feel like he deserves that acceptance. He has to hear Mari say he’s her friend and a good person, and he needs to feel like those statements are valid. I think that scene gets 75% to where it needs to be in its truncated form.

The rest of that storyline concludes with Sawada’s death, and what Sawada trying to redeem himself means to them.

The big problem I have is that I barely understand why Mari is so desperate to see Sawada redeemed. If I squint, I can see it as similar to Takumi’s hopes for Sawada earlier in the series, that it proves something about Takumi that Mari needs him to know. But, still, he straight up murdered her! Unapologetically! And she’s still assuming he’ll turn a corner! WHAT DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO DO ON THIS SHOW TO GET MARI TO DROP THE -KUN HONORIFIC?! Having her show this much blind faith in terrible people who have abused her and her trust… I don’t see it as a laudable character trait!

But, the point Mari’s trying to make is a good one, that it’s within Takumi’s power to be human instead of a monster. It’s a choice he gets to make. Sawada wasn’t a monster because he was an Orphnoch, he was a monster AND he was an Orphnoch. Just being an Orphnoch doesn’t make becoming a monster inevitable. It’s all just choices.

Or, that’s what I want to take out of that death scene, because the alternative is that Mari was willing to forgive both a weeks-long killing spree and her own goddamn murder because a boy who had a crush on her back in school helped out a friend of hers once. God, I hope that wasn’t supposed to be what I got out of that scene.

You deemed Sawada an irredeemable character not long after his introduction so I was curious to see how you would react to having your expectations subverted.

I don't think his death needs to be avenged. His killer was Kusaka after all who was in turn avenging Mari. He lived like a monster and earned the right to be killed as one. However, he died like a human, so I think he earned a little sympathy and a sad death scene as well. There was once a humanity to him. To Mari, it was a kindness, but to him, it was a weakness holding him back. No matter how many people he killed in cold blood, it still burdened him. Killing people didn't give him any satisfaction.

In the end, he couldn't throw away his humanity. He never wanted to become an Orphenoch in the first place. Just like so many of his Ryusei School friends, his backstory made him dysfunctional and impressionable. Smart Brain taught him how to be a monster, that he couldn't live as a human. Being a monster doesn't mean you have to act like one though, it's very relevant to the same problem Takumi is going through. While there are some, like Skateboard Guy, who were killing people without prompt, Smart Brain is most of the problem, coercing Orphenochs to kill when they don't have to or even want to.

Seeing Sawada hold on to his humanity, as he tried in vain to throw it away, was proof that Orphenochs aren't inherently bad people. Being one isn't a condemnation for Takumi, he's a human and a monster and he has the power inside him to choose who he wants to be. It's all about the sense of identity and self, which he's searching to understand. He defines himself by how others see him but here he learns that how he sees himself is also important. He might have no self-confidence, he might suck, but still....

He's Kamen Rider Faiz, a protector of dreams.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

Plus Mihara's reason to be there is not compelling and almost nonexistent.

That's the thing about Mihara. He's always there, even if he is irrelevant.