[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 31

It's not going to some bold statement that this is a very inquisitive episode of Kabuto when that the was first thing Die called attention to as well, but that only proves how inescapable the questions are in this one. It covers a range all the way from innocent fluff, like Tsurugi wanting to know more about noodles, to material as heavy as Hiyori having to question her entire existence, which is significantly less comical!

And yes, the huge focus on Hiyori naturally means I'm way onboard with this episode is doing. That consists almost entirely of moving the overarching Plot forward, which can make things trickier to dig into on a standalone level, but rest assured it's exciting to watch. I'm especially impressed by the structure the series worked out by hitting these huge revelations right as Tsurugi and Kagami strike up their weird friendship, seamlessly tying some previously separate plot threads together into a much more cohesive whole.

Oh, yeah, and this episode does mark the very first instance of Tsurugi talking about his best friend, Kagami, meaning Tsurugi is about to reach even greater heights of being himself than ever before. It's not hard to see why Kagami can't bring himself to write Tsurugi off as a monster when he's become so ~adorable~ in such a short time. Most of his displays of arrogance are now being delivered in the form of this sort of self-centered selflessness that's impossible to hate. Tsurugi wants nothing more than to bring joy to the people in his life by allowing them to bask in his own radiant glory, and the fact that he's proving so terrible at so many things creates such a rich character (figuratively; pretty sure the dude is still broke) who's never dull to watch. It's incredible to think how far we've come from those five minutes he was just some jerk who was good at sports.

Beyond that, I'm not sure I have any things I took away from this episode that I could really drill into at all. Like, one of my favorite things in here was just that a childhood photo of Tendou has him wearing a big origami kabuto helmet, which is so on-the-nose it's perfect. But there's not exactly much depth to be derived from talking about a quick sight gag, nor can I go into much detail about the action, which as always, looks great to this day. There are three shots in here of Gatack on his sweet hoverboard, coming to Kabuto's aid at the end, and they look shockingly not cheap when you consider how awkward that sort of thing often ends up coming off in Kamen Rider. What I most appreciated in the action this time, however, was just seeing Tadokoro barking out some commands in the fight in the middle, making good on that promise of renewed teamwork from back in 26, rather than letting it stand merely as some informed thing.

All around a comforting return to normalcy after a month's worth of episodes from Inoue. There's an overall feeling that it really is picking up right from where 26 left off in a lot of ways; getting back to business, as it were, but not in a manner that feels like it's throwing those last two arcs under a bus or anything. Just a real solid outing for the show all around.

[catwhowalks]

The reveal about Hiyori and Tendou actually makes more sense once you get the full backstory and the show has actually been setting this up since the beginning. There's a very good reason she didn't know. Even Tendou's constantly quoting his grandmother is tied into all this.

I fear I may have already said too much, but I think you'll around to it in the end. There's just a lot more going on there than a carelessly shoehorned in relationship.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Also, Tsurugi has no idea how food works and things "udon" must be African somehow. Never change, you sweet summer child.

His ability to instantly offer the Sudan as the possible home for udon proves that, at the very least, Tsurugi is the man who stands at the top of geography.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Usually Tsurugi backs up what he's talking, but this is pure big talk for him

It's also the noblesse oblige lesson that he's trying to live, where his nobility is shown through service and empathy. Offering to take on Kagami's burden, a sort of well-meaning condescension, that's a pretty standard Tsurugi response.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

What I most appreciated in the action this time, however, was just seeing Tadokoro barking out some commands in the fight in the middle, making good on that promise of renewed teamwork from back in 26, rather than letting it stand merely as some informed thing.

My favorite part of this episode was when Kagami's relaxing from his stressful conversation with Tsurugi about Hidden Truths and/or Eternal Friendship, and Misaki comes over the wire to say Hey There Is Still A Fight Happening Could You Go Help Kabuto. It's a hilarious acknowledgement of how these action scenes can frequently have these incongruent dramatic scenes in the middle of them, and how the world doesn't stop for an emotional moment. It felt self-referentially funny without breaking the fourth wall or anything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catwhowalks

The reveal about Hiyori and Tendou actually makes more sense once you get the full backstory and the show has actually been setting this up since the beginning. There's a very good reason she didn't know. Even Tendou's constantly quoting his grandmother is tied into all this.

I fear I may have already said too much, but I think you'll around to it in the end. There's just a lot more going on there than a carelessly shoehorned in relationship.

I hope I do!

Secret histories for characters... it's never really my favorite thing on these shows? It's something where all the weight is in backstory, in versions of these characters we've never met and aren't invested in. Worse, it frequently needs long explanations and equivacations for previously-established facts that make Obi-Wan's From A Certain Point Of View defense look airtight and generous. It's a combination where I feel like the character growth stops, in favor of puzzle-box shenanigans. We're not pushing these characters forward, we're dragging them back.

But, you know, I'll try and judge it on its own merits. Sometimes these shows have surprised me (Build did some fun stuff with Banjou's backstory, how they dramatized it), so I'm hopeful that Kabuto will figure out a way to keep evolving its characters.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

My favorite part of this episode was when Kagami's relaxing from his stressful conversation with Tsurugi about Hidden Truths and/or Eternal Friendship, and Misaki comes over the wire to say Hey There Is Still A Fight Happening Could You Go Help Kabuto. It's a hilarious acknowledgement of how these action scenes can frequently have these incongruent dramatic scenes in the middle of them, and how the world doesn't stop for an emotional moment. It felt self-referentially funny without breaking the fourth wall or anything.

That was a fun beat, but at the same time, Kagami arriving to find Kabuto up against a single cowering Worm, begging for mercy really underlines how strange it was of Misaki to think Tendou would need help fighting a generic squad of goons.

Oh, and on the subject of slightly meta moments in the fights, I'd like to point out that my screencap of choice this time is from the beginning, where the first thing Tendou does, in this episode by Yonemura, is ask for clarification on why Kagami was being all Inoue in the cliffhanger last time and beating him up without even making an attempt to verbally communicate like a functional human being. It's a similar subversion to Drake's first clash with Kabuto – where the episode just sorta immediately discards the dramatic ending from the previous week to move on to the things it's actually interested in exploring. I thought it was rather cute.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 32



Hey, let's see if I can figure out why this one didn't work for me.

It didn't, really. At all. It wasn't bad (maybe?), it just... it just wasn't saying anything I cared about. It was like if they'd decided to do an entire episode where characters gave impassioned speeches about semaphore. No matter how elegantly it's done, or how hard the actors try, it's just a topic I don't have any interest in?

A lot of it, maybe all of it, is down to the new information about Hiyori and Tendou's relationship. I hate in the same way I hate stories that reframe tales of accidental heroism as Chosen One narratives by revealing a character's secret history and Very Special Person status. It takes choice out of the equation, renders a story about someone's personal journey into destiny; inevitability.

It's like that with Tendou and Hiyori's bond. What was previously a story about two people that overcame their own weirdness to find something within the other, a story where you can make a family out of the people who are always there for you... now it's just a story about Tendou gaslighting Hiyori. And, like, I get why he didn't tell her the truth about their relationship. Even if she'd've believed him (she wouldn't've), telling her that she's his Worm half-sister (or whatever) means telling her she's a Worm, and that would be incredibly dangerous for her. He needed to keep it a secret for her safety. But now it's this semi-gross story about a dude keeping secrets because a woman can't handle the truth, a decision he makes 100% on her behalf, and... I mean, it's not a story about two people finding something within the other. It's a story about Hiyori finding something of herself in a friend, and Tendou protecting his sister no matter what.

There's an... an asymmetry to it that I really dislike. It's not about common ground, or friendship. He's withholding the key elements of their relationship, and it robs their story of so much choice. He's not protecting Hiyori because of her kindness, her vulnerability, her talents, her brusqueness, her her her. He's doing it because She's Family, and I find that less interesting. So much less interesting.

And to take that reveal of Hiyori being a Worm and do an episode that's half filling in blanks and half Tendou's Very Big Feelings (for a change!), I don't know. It's an episode that doesn't leave a lot of room for Hiyori, in a story that's ostensibly about Hiyori? It makes her a problem to solve, emotionally and narratively, rather than an active character in the story. (One of the biggest emotional parts of the story is Tendou and Kagami yelling at each other about Hiyori! A scene she's not even in!)

The details of her history... I guess they work? There's presumably a ton of detail yet to be explained, because what's here makes the barest amount of sense. Why were those two Worms there before the asteroid hit? Why copy and kill Tendou's parents? What the hell were they doing for the next however many years? It's all stuff that's not exactly pertinent to Tendou and Hiyori's story, but the absence of it made it difficult to concentrate on the rest. It's definitely a set of answers that raises twice as many questions, which is I guess the mode this show is in now.

Even the plot at the end... it leans real heavy on things happening for barely defined (or completely undefined) reasons. Hiyori gets a psychic call to go to Area X (thankfully the call didn't take her to the more distant Area Orpheus, or she'd still be walking), where she unlocks the Man In The Mask, who is Another Tendou. Not a huge shock, since the combination of a mask and the Law Of Conservation Of Actors meant that whoever was under there was someone already on the show in another role, and Tendou was the most likely suspect. There's basically no other details given here; who he is in relation to Tendou and Hiyori, why he's in a basement, what he wants, etc. It's another question.

I found this one... not good. It took a story, a pairing, that I was really invested in, and scribbled SECRET DESTINY over all of the nuance, all of the characterization. It took a smaller story about two people and made it epic, washing out the decision-making in the process. They were people, now they're plot.

A QUESTION

I'm definitely going to miss pre-32 Hiyori. What's your favorite Hiyori moment from the first 31 episodes?

[Androzani84]

This is the one episode from this part of the series I have no comment on.

I will say that Another Tendou is a character you have free reign to call what you want, since the show and it’s media never call him anything. The credits call him “The Other Souji”, while many fans refer to him as “Souji Kusakabe” (after the surname he abandoned)

I will say that I like the explanation of Souji’s vendetta against the Worms. Yeah, giving him the same origin as Batman is slightly derivative, but it does give us a look at his mindset.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

I will say that I like the explanation of Souji’s vendetta against the Worms. Yeah, giving him the same origin as Batman is slightly derivative, but it does give us a look at his mindset.

Even this sort of bothered me? Thematically, it makes sense for Tendou to want to stop the Worms: he is all about helping people achieve, and they are all about stealing that achievement for themselves. Narratively, they already had a great reason for him to want to stop the Worms: it's what he's best at, and it'd be unconscionable for him to do anything less than his best at all times. Making his motivation They Killed My Parents... ugh. Uggghhh. It's like in one episode, they sanded down every interesting angle on this show.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 32

Die might be struggling with his feelings in light of recent plot revelations, which means that, A) Hiyori is still the most relatable character, and B) I'm going to swoop right the heck in here to say I hugely disagree that anything the show did here undercuts or devalues anything it's done so far.

The idea that this episode doesn't make room for Hiyori, especially, I have to question. Like, that big scene where Tendou and Kagami discuss their feelings about Hiyori is directly followed by a scene of almost equal length where Hiyori and Rena discuss Tendou, which already isn't sounding asymmetrical to me.

I've made it clear before how much I feel the show places priority on treating Hiyori's emotions as a proper, independent entity that doesn't only exist for the sake of other characters to react to, and how much I adore that it does that. That was very much the vibe I was getting from a lot of this one, to the point it only reinforced my already rock solid faith in the show's handling of her character. This isn't an episode entirely about how Hiyori feels, but it's not entirely about Tendou's thoughts either; it's a half and half balance of both, and that's what made this one work for me.

Small touches like the role reversal of Hiyori getting to be the one dramatically watching from a distance as Tendou make a visit to that same grave from back in 23 are great, and it's all those little things that start adding up. Maybe Hiyori's Very Big Feelings don't come across as readily because she still keeps them small on the surface, and largely nonverbal, but they're there all the same. I think my favorite moment in the whole episode is just when Hiyori is waiting in that chapel or whatever for Tendou to come back, and is about to greet him with a huge smile that immediately slips away when she sees it's Rena coming in the door. Moments like that are all over the place here, and it's everything I love about Hiyori. She's great here because she's always great and will always be great.

When it comes to Tendou, I... I mean, first of all, there are still things I can't say, but, crucially, while I understand how it could be a hurdle for Die, I don't feel the revelation of the secret connection between the two of them does anything to diminish the way their relationship has built up through the show. I'm not sure I can adequately describe why I think so, but... cooking is a huge deal in this show, right? So, think about frequently and how glowingly Tendou praises Hiyori's food, and then tell me if Tendou is the kind of person who would hand out that level of praise to someone solely because they're related to him. Him protecting Hiyori because she's his sister, and protecting Hiyori because she's Hiyori are not mutually exclusive concepts, in my mind.

Now, Die's made his personal distaste for these kinds of storytelling concepts very clear, and I don't want to dismiss that like he's not allowed to feel that way. I'm honestly worried I've already gotten a bit too fiery here, to tell the truth. Like a lot of disagreements I have with Die, I even, broadly speaking, can relate to where he's coming from. I'm very rarely a fan of stories that undercut the free will of characters with grand predetermined destinies myself – it's one of the reasons this franchise, that started with a monster rebelling against his creators' will to become a hero, holds such infinite appeal to me. For Kabuto, though... how do I put it? My shallow impression of Kabuto has always been that it's a bombastic melodrama, so these soap opera twists make sense to me; while Die, as ever, immediately starting locking on to all the subtle, smart bits of writing the show was doing, and doesn't want anything to get in the way of that stuff – the true core of the show's quality.

It's like, we feel pretty differently about this episode, but I think our end-goals are pretty much the same? So yeah, I sympathize with the apprehension, but I still felt I was getting what I wanted from Kabuto with this episode. Hopefully my usual argument to the contrary can be at least somewhat reassuring.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The idea that this episode doesn't make room for Hiyori, especially, I have to question. Like, that big scene where Tendou and Kagami discuss their feelings about Hiyori is directly followed by a scene of almost equal length where Hiyori and Rena discuss Tendou, which already isn't sounding asymmetrical to me.

I mean, the asymmetry was more about how their emotional investment in the early stages of their relationship now feels uneven (it is weird if a stranger is like We Are Family), but to your point about the Worm Widow coming in to poison Hiyori against humanity... it's not a lot? It's a brief exchange where Worm Widow tells her that no one's going to like her because she's a Worm, and then she runs off. I like that it's presenting a devil on Hiyori's shoulder, after Tendou was trying to sell her that everything was going to be a-okay peachy-keen, but even that feels like it's more woven into the Worm plot than it is to Hiyori's personal struggle. Like, it's a scene furthering Worm Widow's agenda, not a scene that does a lot with/for Hiyori.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I think my favorite moment in the whole episode is just when Hiyori is waiting in that chapel or whatever for Tendou to come back, and is about to greet him with a huge smile that immediately slips away when she sees it's Rena coming in the door. Moments like that are all over the place here, and it's everything I love about Hiyori. She's great here because she's always great and will always be great.

That's a great moment, for sure. (Is the chapel they're in the same exterior the show used for the ZECT base where Gon was held captive? That's where I thought Tendou had taken Hiyori at first, which I found super bizarre.) I guess I'd disagree that there are enough moments like that? I felt like I needed to see more of this story from Hiyori's perspective, and the show immediately made it about Tendou's dilemma.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Him protecting Hiyori because she's his sister, and protecting Hiyori because she's Hiyori are not mutually exclusive concepts, in my mind.

But it muddies the water, and (to my mind) unnecessarily so. Tendou choosing to protect and befriend Hiyori feels so much cleaner, so much more important than if he's always known he would protect her AND then he chose to befriend her. Like, I can't see what their relationship gains, narratively or thematically, from making them siblings? For me, it subtracts so much intentionality for a frustrating amount of He Likes Her As A Person But He Was Probably Always Going To.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I'm honestly worried I've already gotten a bit too fiery here, to tell the truth.

Not at all! I figured this was one you were going to enjoy (there's too much Hiyori to think you'd be let down about it), and I'm sure plenty of other folks are going to agree with you. I don't think this was an objectively bad episode, really, but it did move the story to a place I don't feel as good about. That's me, and what I'm looking for in a story. I'm glad to hear when folks disagree!

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I mean, the asymmetry was more about how their emotional investment in the early stages of their relationship now feels uneven

I did understand those were separate points you were making, but I couldn't stop myself from being cheeky there anyway; hence why I was worried I coming on too strong this time. I'm being argumentative because I guess that's just a thing I do, but, to be as clear as possible about this, I think you presented a very concise and compelling case for how you feel, as always. I'd prefer if you were having a more positive experience, because, again, thing I do, but I don't truly think you were saying anything unfounded.

And, really, at the end of the day, any episode of Kabuto could be improved by placing more focus on Hiyori, including the ones that already do, so even there, we agree on the fundamentals.

Quote:

(Is the chapel they're in the same exterior the show used for the ZECT base where Gon was held captive? That's where I thought Tendou had taken Hiyori at first, which I found super bizarre.)

It definitely is, after going to check the episodes real quick, but they stuck a little cross on it for this one to make it at least 10% more holy! I mean, frankly, I thought it was more bizarre using that place as some secret ZECT outpost in the first place. Maybe the point was how unassuming it looked, but that was a Tasaki episode, and this is a Nagaishi one, and I've learned to trust the latter's instincts when it comes to filming locations. There's a really far away shot in the big fight where Kabuto ends up "killing" Hiyori where the camera is very clearly more interested in how pretty the rocks they're standing on and the docks in the background look than in the actual fighting. That's how you know the guy is passionate about these things!