EPISODES 31 & 32
Episodes that always seemed to me like a note came down from the network being like, "Um, yes, this Asakura guy? Can't he, like, be shown painting some flowers or playing with a puppy or helping some kids do their homework or something? Does he have to be so...evil?" And the boneheads basically listen! And then the follow up note was like, "Oh, and we still haven't satisfied our agreement with the owner of the boat we were loaned for Kuuga, can you work that in somehow?"
These episodes didn't need to be a two-parter, IMO. And they look to be money-saving episodes, so...it's not the strongest return after the string of comedic episodes. There's an interesting idea behind them, a strong moral choice for Shinji, but something about them just doesn't work.
So, Asakura's monsters haven't been fed and begin to target Asakura, who stalks a trio of Mirror Monsters who he thinks will make the best meal for his three pals. (These three Mirror Monsters are insect-based and colored red, blue and yellow. So they're kinda like a Sentai team. Fun fact: in 2002, the fandom saw the previews for these episodes and thought they were new Riders. I didn't think the designs looked good enough to be new Riders.) He follows Bee-Fighter to a ferry boat and continues to stalk them. When the entire crew and passengers of the boat save for one girl go missing, the mystery is...did Asakura do it to feed his monsters, or was it these new Mirror Monsters?
That's a kind of interesting idea, because it IS plausible that Asakura would just let his own monsters eat people to get them off his back. The show doesn't even really answer whether he's completely innocent or not -- I guess since his monsters were still attacking him, they hadn't eaten for a while, which means he didn't give 'em people, but...I think it's purposely a little ambiguous. Besides, people ain't as tasty as those CGI powerballs of amassed life and energy that a Mirror Monster would leave behind.
Maybe I'm making too much out of it, but it's kind of hard to not feel like these episodes are Kobayashi giving Inoue the finger. Like "Agito's biggest mystery was related to what happened on a boat? Oh, yeah? Well, here's a horror show that's solved in one episode. Oh, and my monsters are so vicious that nobody's surviving the ride." A scene where the attacked boat is investigated with the lone survivor being found is directed in a way that's reminiscent of the Akatsuki-gou passengers finding the Youth of Light. At one point, we're shown a passenger who's killed who looks quite a bit like Jun Kaname. So it's like, "The big hero of the boat rescue in your show, Inoue? Killed!"
The survivor, a young girl, is so traumatized that the only thing that perks her up is Asakura's presence -- he showed up shortly after her family and the rest of the passengers were killed and keeps her company and she misplaces that as his caring for her, when he was really just keeping tabs on the culprits, those Taiyou Sentai Bugvulcan monsters. At one point, Asakura's involvement is caught by the press, who realize he only faked his death, so it becomes highly publicized, and you want someone to just shake the girl and be like, "Haven't you watched the news?! Don't you have any Spidey-sense?! Asakura's a creep! He didn't help you! Shut up about Asakura! Let it go! ARGH!"
Ren and Kitaoka know what's up with Asakura's monster situation, though, and are fine with letting things play out. Honestly? Asakura's a better fighter than either of them, so it's smart to just sit back and let his monsters eat him for his neglect. The obstacle, of course, is Shinji. Not that he thinks Asakura's a nice guy or anything, but he sees how much he means to the girl. That he's somehow a beacon for this ill girl gives him a value to Shinji, makes him think that it's senseless to just let him die because it's convenient for the Riders -- he doesn't feel right just sitting back and knowingly take part in his death. Aren't they supposed to be better than that, value life more than that? It's an interesting question for our hero, whose morals are always put to the test in this terrible game started by Kanzaki, but one that I just don't think is fully cooked in its depiction in this episode. I also think it's a missed opportunity to not address the real hatred Asakura had for Shinji when he debuted; the show gets rid of that rivalry, which is a shame.
I like Shinji and all, but if I was Knight at the end, when Ryuki has Dragredder prevent Dark Wing from absorbing the energy so Ouja's monsters can have it, I think I would have attacked him, Water Boy-style. Knight just gives him a look, Zolda just walks away, mildly irritated that their best chance of being rid of Asakura is gone.
I once again have to point out how good Hagino is, though. He has moments where he shows that Asakura is amused by his monsters targeting him, but he also has moments where he's angry and yelling at them to hold off. With a lesser performer, Asakura would be very one-note -- the amused reaction is the one a performer would latch onto because, oh, doesn't it make them seem so crazeeeee!? We've seen dozens of performances like that, where the character is meant to be unhinged, but the performer just whoops it up and lays on quirks and it doesn't work, it's cartoonish. Hagino's performance is layered, never boring, and he makes Asakura more believable as a person. I also like that he never wavers and attempts to make Asakura likable; in the scene when the girl is handing him flowers, is attacked by Venosnaker, but weakly gets up to give him those flowers, some other actor would have played it in a way that made you think Asakura was, surprisingly, touched. Not Hagino. This show ends up sugar-coating a lot of things, so I have to assume that this is Hagino's contribution. He knows the character, and so he just remains unmoved by the gesture.
And quite the body count Reiko stacks up in her pursuit of the story -- she gets an American professor who knew of Shiro in America killed while she's interviewing him. (Shiro has him killed with Garudthunder.) The guy confirms that Shiro was working on weird stuff in America before he died a year ago, and this is all stuff that's meant to be spooky and mysterious and it's nonsense the show never follows through on. Is the implication that there's multiple Shiros -- Mirror Shiros? Is he really a ghost? What exactly "killed" him in America, but allowed him to return to Japan to complete his work in 401? The show's never clear on it, but I thought it meant that this "death" in the US is the moment when Shiro actually first enters the Mirror World, but who knows. It's just meant to sound cool and mysterious, and maybe you should be spending less time on hijinks and delivering some answers, show! And for him to be able to keep tabs on a situation like this, once again, makes him seem too powerful. If he can just haunt every place whenever he wants, kill whoever he wants, well...why doesn't he do that more often?
Heroism Watch: Shinji manages to save the nurse in charge of the girl from being THIS close to being killed by a Mirror Monster. A problem with this two-parter for me is that the actress playing the girl is kinda robotic. But I think the actress playing the nurse is sympathetic and makes the nurse just seem so kindhearted and caring that it makes me wish that SHE was playing the lone survivor who, in her state of shock, latches onto Asakura. I guess they'd be afraid to have the Mika character be an adult, because there could be romantic implications, and making it a kid makes it more innocent, but I think it would be more interesting with an older actress. The nurse's actress, Hitomi Hidaka, is recognizable as the leader of the Memory Police from Ultraman Nexus.
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