Kamen Rider Black RX Episodes 29-30

EPISODE 29

This episode marks the debut of Kyoko Matoba, a teen girl whose parents are killed by Crisis, so she decides to try to develop The Force in order to get her revenge. Seriously! And Reiko and Koutarou encourage this madness. I'd probably hate this story and gripe more, but the girl is played by a likable and sympathetic actress who I've seen in other stuff and thought she was good in. (For toku fans, she played Jiban's waaaaaaaaay underage girlfriend in Jiraiya.)

Dasmader -- for the moment -- has encouraged Crisis to NOT be stupid for a change, and they're all kinda working together towards another plan that's half-Bond villain, half-Dr. Evil -- that is, they destroy a ton of water plants, taking water for the Empire while also controlling what the Earth gets, which creates some Pro-Crisis people just out of necessity. I've read too many terrifying articles about the threats of droughts and water shortages, so I find plans like this actually good and diabolical.

The Padawan girl's father was in charge of one water facility and gets killed in one of Crisis' attacks. There's a lot of scenes of dead factory workers -- at one point, Reiko joins Koutarou as he's surveying the damage, snapping pictures to his horror. She replies it's her job and she needs to show people how evil Crisis is. Sumikawa's performance here is really good, as she at first can't even look at the bodies, but then summons the will to photograph them, tears in her eyes.

This episode ends with RX randomly and suddenly untransforming in front of Reiko (and new pal Kyoko). Reiko has one of those typical "I kinda always knew" reactions, but...eh, if you're going to have a hero hide their identity from their girlfriend, be writing towards something that will pay off. On one hand, it's nice that it's now in the open, on the other, though, we could have been spared some stupid episodes with some stupid contrivances if he had just 'fessed up earlier. So, Reiko vows to join the fight and it's, like, finally! Too bad we know the show's still going to shortchange you, though, Makoto Sumikawa.

And also, the biggest shock of the show, is that the Sahara parents appear in this episode and AREN'T cartoonish or annoying...! How'd they manage that? They appear with other panicked crowds trying to get water, and rather than force in some comedy or exaggerated acting as usual, they act...normal.

Random note:

While I like Kyoko and actress Megumi Ueno, I'm watching this episode and wondering why they wouldn't just bring back Yuuko from episode 8? I know she was meant to max out her powers when RX told her to attack him, but she already at least has had special powers, AND she has ties to Crisis. It's strange to me to bring in this ordinary girl who's trying, pretty much out of nowhere, to develop powers for the sake of revenge, and nobody bats an eye at how strange that is. Have it be Yuuko trying to get her powers back to help or something. I get what they're going for with Kyoko, but...maybe just depict it in a less weird, rushed and silly way. She wants revenge, fine. Have her train or something. Have her be like one of the reckless '70s Riders and let herself be captured and transformed by the villains and escape before the brain surgery.

Or maybe...have it be Reiko who loses someone and decides to become more active and have a bigger role? I'm not letting go how disappointed I've always been at them misusing Makoto Sumikawa! (I guess I should take this time to say: yes, I know in RX she goes by the stagename Jun Kouyamaki. But she's mainly always been known as Makoto Sumikawa, and even now goes by that when she's making public appearances.)

EPISODE 30

A continuation of the previous episode. Kyoko continues to try to develop special abilities for the sake of revenge. Again, Koutarou and Reiko just stand by and cheer her on and...what?! I can picture this scenario working. It's sweet that the girl wants to develop powers to avenge her family, but we -- and the other main characters -- should probably doubt her. It sounds crazy. But then, to everyone's surprise, she does! I mean, done well, that could be kinda cool. But, no, here's Kyoko standing there, holding her arm out, trying to raise the X-Wing from Yoda's septic tank, while Koutarou and Reiko encourage her. Such is RX.

Despite the incredible odds, Kyoko shows promise -- she telepathically tears some leaves from a tree and cracks open the ground as if she's calling a Shugouzyu. But that's not good enough for her, dammit! She wants more power, ARGH, ARGH, ARGH! So she continues to just hold her hand out and see what happens. She begins praying to her deceased dad for power, and a power that has something to do with the water he was proud to have a job of overseeing, and she finally develops an ability to summon water! Now that she can make water from nothing, she offers it to the citizens who were ready to deal with Crisis, which tanks Crisis' plan of lording water over the desperate townspeople.

As she walks town to town to give people water, Maribaron is accompanied by an odd little group of masked jesters and dancers. In the hopes he can follow them to their secret lair, Koutarou knocks out one of the masked clowns and takes his place. Maribaron immediately sees through this, so it was all pointless, and I feel like just another way the show's trying to damage Koutarou's image. He has a full-on fight while still dressed as this ridiculous soldier/clown thing. It just seems so unlike Koutarou, so far from the character and Black. It's the kind of dopey thing befitting a comedic Kenji Ohba character, but just isn't Koutarou.

Reiko shows up during the fight and tries to attack Maribaron, but isn't successful. We later get a montage of her karate ass-kickin' in a forest, training, and she's later able to successfully fight off a couple of those Jason grunts and guard Kyoko. The episode ends with Kyoko and Reiko offering to join Koutarou in his fight against Crisis, and I'll commend the show for having him just immediately accept them, no questions or protests made. Just a few Rider shows ago, we would have gotten some patronizing "Women don't belong in battle" speech, while an ossan fills his pipe, but, no -- here, Koutarou accepts them as comrades and warriors.

Which brings me to something. Now, I don't remember this show well, so it might change from when I'm typing this and hit those episodes. But...I don't remember the show making much use out of either Reiko or Kyoko, in terms of taking on Crisis. For all of my griping of how they've misused action actress Makoto Sumikawa, I like the idea of building towards her becoming more involved, but it would have been nice if the show had built towards this from the start, and if it was something that had happened a dozen episodes sooner. The show right now is in the weird transitional phase of trying to set up its end game. We got the new villain who's lighting a fire under the other villains' asses, their plans are meant to be stepping up and Koutarou's become more exposed, but he has gained new allies. He has Joe, Reiko, Kyoko, possibly Sela, if she returns. He has a neat little team backing him up... (I now understand why Black Fang referred to them as Koutarou's Bat Family in a comment on one of my Black posts. I'll just refer to them as the RX Squad.)

I don't remember them doing anything with that, though. And I'm guessing it's because they decide to bring in the old Riders for the final arc, which I always thought was a huge, huge mistake, even before this latest realization of mine that they were replacing a team of Koutarou's own that the show was building. I guess it's something I'll get into more when I hit those episodes...if I hit them. Pretty much every time I finish an RX episode, I'm like, "Ugh. I can't do it anymore!"

Random note:

Robo Rider refers to himself in this episode as "The Prince of Flames." Why the change? And -- what?!