EPISODES 34 ~ 40
There are interesting ideas and character moments spread throughout this batch of episodes, but they're all either spread too thin or suffer from the show just not wanting to commit to anything when the finale is still fairly far away. I find the stuff with Ren to be the weakest parts of these episodes, which is sad when the show favors him so much and gives so much focus to him. All of that attention, and he really acts out of sorts here, like the writers don't know their own characters.
Shell-shocked at the news about Eri, Ren's keeping to himself and being argumentative again. Tired of the tension, Sanako throws Shinji, Ren and Yui out of the house until they sort things out, and you can really understand her frustration -- we're already growing tired of it from what we see as viewers, imagine living with this shit!
Despite the mood of the trio, they take a pleasant walk and wind up at an amusement park. OK. How does Ren go from, "I need to hate your guts, Shinji! So...you suck because you won't wash dishes!" to being talked into participating in a wholesome activity like bumper cars? It's shit like this that makes characters look like they have MPD! Yui gets into the spirit and enjoys rides, while Ren loses himself in the moment enough to recall times at amusement parks with Eri. (Eri had a story about not liking merry-go-rounds as a kid because she was afraid she'd turn around and her parents wouldn't be there. So Ren honors that story by making it come true for Yui, as she's on a carousel and her two good friends are no longer there when she makes the turn.)
Ren decides it's a good time to challenge Shinji to a fight and...I really don't understand why Shinji accepts, it doesn't seem like something he'd do. But he does, and he manages to put up a good fight, courtesy of his newly acquired Survive Card, and I like that Knight is taken aback in shock to discover he has that card. (It would have been nicer if Shinji surprised by debuting this form in an episode with a better reason for them to fight.) I just assume Shinji's thinking is that, as long as he puts up a good fight, maybe he can get through to Ren how wrong it is to be fighting a buddy.
It's always been a mystery to me why Kanzaki gives Shinji the Survive Card. Isn't Shinji a hindrance to the Rider battle? Wouldn't Kanzaki's goal be met quicker without him? But I guess, maybe, that even if Shinji gets an F in terms of Rider Killin', he does a pretty damn good job at Monster Killin', so *maybe* that's of some value to Kanzaki? Ryuki's still storing up energy. IF Shinji happened to be the last Rider standing, the one to face Odin, maybe that would be enough for Shiro's goal? Maybe the power coming from somebody pure like Ryuki would be even better (to give Yui)?
I've always been conflicted about how to feel about Ryuki's Survive form. I like it more than Knight's, but it has the same problem of making the "face" of the helmet look smaller by extending the visor portion. The pointed shoulders also seem strange to me. But I LOVE that he has the antennae. I've mentioned before that I think it's really clever that Ryuki, the show's biggest hero, is the one to have the classic red Rider bug eyes, so to finish off that classic look by giving him the antennae is just great.
Ren and Shinji beat each other to a pulp and Yui can hear the sounds of their battle -- clashing and shouts. I guess they fight to a draw, and Ren moves on, in a stupor, looking for the next Rider he can challenge. When Kitaoka's out and Asakura's arrested, he's approached by Kanzaki, who suggests a particular person he'd like Knight to fight (he goes unnamed, but I assume Tiger and/or his group), before Ren successfully goads Kanzaki into fighting. Kanzaki's still pretending like Odin's a separate person, but that's who Knight ends up fighting. After taking a beating from Ryuki, Knight takes a *massive* dose of pain from Odin, before reflexively striking him as Odin's moving in for the kill, stabbing him with his lance. Odin fades and Ren flips his lid, presumably about the fact that he's killed him, but...WHAT ABOUT SCISSORS?!?!?!? Oh, well. I guess I'm the only one who remembers Scissors, and the way that Final Vent used to mean FINAL Vent, and not just something that could be walked off, as is the case so many times in the later portions of this show.
I think it's interesting that, and a nice touch, as Ren makes his first "kill," a tear is shown escaping Eri's eye -- her good man has lost his way -- and she wakes up shortly afterward. But I think it's a shame that the show never stops to let it sink in for Ren that he might have just killed Yui's brother...! That's something big to overlook. No, he just continues on his blind quest to fight, even trying to track down Asakura as he's moved from jails. Now, Yui and Shinji say that they think that Ren knows it's too late to save Eri, so I think this has all been basically Ren with a death wish (again). Maybe he had hoped Shinji would have found it in him to defeat him and put him out of his misery. Certainly he thought Odin might have been able to, and he nearly did, before just a natural desire to survive kicked in...
But once Eri wakes up and the news is delivered to Ren, he visits her briefly before handing her over to Yui's care -- he wants to go out and keep fighting! It's this turn that I really just roll my eyes at. The Ren that began this show was supposed to be cool and logical, and I think *that* Ren would have stayed with Eri for as long as she's awake. It's an understandable motivation that he decides to avoid Eri so she doesn't find out what he's been up to as a Rider, but still frustrating in that he's keeping up with this "gotta fight 'em all" mentality rather than stay with Eri. Hiding his Rider status doesn't matter much -- it manages to be blown in a couple of scenes, anyway. (Though it's cool the way Dark Wing sees Eri and is like "Hey, I remember you," and Ren has to call him off.) And once this stuff with Eri's over with, Ren's just back to talking about fighting to win, making speeches that he doesn't care if everyone in the world becomes his enemy as long as there's Eri...
But then he's quick to help Yui once she's being targeted. And, yeah, that makes sense, because Yui does mean something to him, he's always showed concern for her, but...if this brief time he just spent with Eri was supposed to harden him again, strengthen his resolve to fight, then...wouldn't it have been interesting to see him now struggle with what to do with Yui? I think it's a missed opportunity to not have Yui more involved at this point. The way Ren's reacted to times that Yui's been in a crisis is similar to how he acts with Eri -- I'm not saying he's in love with Yui (shut up, Inoue!), but she's probably the second person he cares most about. So imagine if something happened to where he had to try to turn against Yui, if she became an obstacle between his goal of saving Eri. Imagine if Yui had become a Rider at this point, dammit! Imagine if Yui had found out that Ren might have killed Shiro! (Like, he finally sees Kanzaki again and is just like, "Oh. So I didn't kill you." Not, "What?! I'm glad I didn't kill Yui's brother, but I did still kill someone, and it tortured me for a bit and made me feel like I lost a piece of my soul, but...whatevs. What's up, Shiro?")
I assume the time he spent with Eri is supposed to remotivate him, but...I feel like it was a chance to have him mellow out for a while. He gets to see Eri, she requests that he stop being a Rider if it's for her. Maybe he chews on that for a while. Maybe he just backs off -- there's no problem with writing a character out of the main storyline for a bit. Have Ren ride off somewhere, travel and collect his thoughts; I find it tiresome at this point to just have him go back to his old "fight me!" speeches. It might not be as horrendously torturous as a fighting anime when it gets repetitive, but that's not something you should want to risk being thought of in the same sentence as.
I haven't even mentioned the ridiculous stuff with Asakura in these episodes. Now, I think some of it is born of "this guy is a serious villain, but we need to sideline him a bit otherwise he's going to kill everyone by episode 37" and I think some of it is to make him as extreme as possible in comparison to a new character, which I'll get more into in a minute.
Anyway, remember the tense cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode, with Asakura ready to attack? Another fake-out. Goro whisks Kitaoka away knowing Asakura's near, giving us the moment I often make fun of -- Asakura breaking into Kitaoka's place and helping himself to all kinds of eats. It's probably something that read funnier than it plays, because it's just kind of silly. (Though it's nasty when Asakura drinks a glass of raw eggs. That had to be Hagino's idea.) The main purpose of the scene is that Asakura manages to hear a message on Kitaoka's machine saying where a meeting of his is tomorrow, so there's gonna be no escaping Asakura then.
From a silly scene to a cool one, this leads Asakura to reveal his knowledge by just standing in the middle of the road, waiting for Kitaoka's car. Apparently having seen enough horror movies to know the proper way to behave in this scenario, Goro floors the car, but Kitaoka stops him at the last minute. (Is the implication he doesn't want Goro to have blood on his hands? But the real answer is: Asakura's a big villain the show can't afford to lose!) Kitaoka prefers to respond to Asakura's challenge the Shiro Kanzaki Way and takes it to the Mirror World. After their fight as Riders, things get weird...
Kitaoka flees to a dead end, chased by Asakura. He then gets on the ground, begging to be spared. He then makes a call on his phone and...police surround and take Asakura in. I'm not even concerned with how Kitaoka knew to arrange all of this, no. My problems are...there's no way someone like Kitaoka would put on this little act. He's not going to pretend to be weak in front of anyone, let alone his top enemy. But the worst part is, Kitaoka's said previously that there isn't any point in getting Asakura arrested again, because he'd just escape again. But here he is putting on a show to get Asakura arrested again. Time to kill, show? We spend four or so episodes getting Asakura to and from jail and he ends up just loose again.
One episode is mostly devoted to just Asakura being switched from prison locations, which could have been cool, but...the show's at the stage of losing budget, so it's not pulled off as well as it could have been if it had the yen. I admire the effort, though, because there's lengthy scenes of car chases and collisions and I remember the days when Toei would have just hauled out a scene from a B-movie in their vaults to pass off, but they went and filmed it here. I wish the scene of Asakura fighting off several cops had better choreography -- it's a bit Will Sasso's Steven Seagal -- they film it to look more impressive than it ended up being. And Shinji gets no credit for hauling a dissipating Asakura out of the Mirror World and handing him back over to the cops! That's pretty cool.
These episodes, scattered as they are, also mark the debut of Groucho, Chico and Harpo as Kamen Rider Tiger, in what's the stupidest "mystery" of television history. There's no reason to have Kagawa, Nakamura and Toujou all have Decks to throw off characters in the show. I...it's just a fuck you to the audience, more silly-ass gimmickry and fake-outs, things they think will look cool in a teaser. Look how messy it is -- from trying to hide who's Tiger by giving them three Decks to introducing Alternative who...ends up being two of them, anyway. It's just pointless. Real brain buster who Tiger really is -- it's not the guy who played an Ultraman, who's just randomly hanging out in the background, it's definitely the older dude with four eyes, right?
Ah, Kamen Rider Tiger. Satoru Toujou. As messy as the introduction is, I like this character. He's so fucked up. If Asakura is a TV-14 Kazuo Kiriyama, then Toujou is a TV-14 Ichi the Killer...minus the perversity, but, still...that type of psychopath. (He even has the older mentor whose intentions are "noble," and tries to point this disturbed individual in the "right" direction, but they're unaware the level of crazy they're dealing with, and they create bigger monsters.) Ichi the Killer thought he was a hero ridding the world of bullies and wicked people, and Toujou thinks he's a hero ridding the world of people who only pretend to be heroes, people he deems to be wrong and selfish.
I think Toujou is another response -- a middle finger -- by the show's production to the idea that the show isn't "heroic." So, here's the show being like, "You want a hero? You got it. Here's a guy who thinks he's the best hero in the show...and he couldn't be further from the truth, because he has a head full of bad wiring." Toujou's a sickie. I think he might have more of a problem than Asakura. Asakura does horrible stuff, but he can be a manipulator, and he recognizes right from wrong, he just doesn't give a shit. He's a sociopath. But the characters of this show know where they stand with him! Toujou doesn't have the same dictionary as everyone else, he's operating on his own warped view of things, completely under the impression that he's not only in the right, but a good, normal, heroic person. He kills whoever doesn't fit into his take on the world. He's a psychopath.
And I like how actor Jun Takatsuki doesn't care about how creepy he comes across, he just goes for it. It's weird, since he played one of the goofier Ultraman protagonists, and maybe he's rebelling against that, but he commits to just being a total creep. From the way he's just lurking in the background initially to his phony friendliness with Sanako to the way he stares at Yui... Funny thing is, Takatsuki actually got some press at the time for appealing to some of the women viewers, so...
I think taking Asakura to such extremes in these episodes is to set him apart from Toujou, a way to make him the "bigger" deal. But it's kind of a mistake to go so big, because they end up making Asakura a cartoon, almost, when Toujou's such a surprisingly realistic nutcase, that it ends up making Asakura look bad. And Takatsuki's playing Toujou with just this quietness and subtlety. It's like comparing an outlandish, fictional killer like the Joker to a real criminal from one of Discovery's Murder Shows. (Toujou sheds some tears after he kills Nakamura and is later unsure if they meant genuine sadness when Shinji questions him. Sick. Bastard.)
Asakura made such a strong debut in this show. Remember how shocking he was? Unpredictable, violent. He was relatively grounded. He took kids hostage, he killed a Rider in his first debut. He killed his family! But the longer he's around, the more they feel like having him top himself. And now he's being wrapped up like he's Hannibal Lecter and even makes the Hannibal Lecter escape by switching clothing with his victim! It's just a little too much, IMO. If it works at all, it's only because of Hagino. To me, it's a shame to make a character that's been a regular for so long look bad in favor of a new guy who's not going to matter much in the end, but I DO like that Toujou, for no real reason, interrupts Ryuki and Ouja's fight to Final Vent Ouja, and that pisses Ouja off and makes him target Tiger. So, I like that the two nutcases become one of the show's big rivalries, even though I'd rather the show have remembered Ouja's initial beef with Ryuki.
I've always wondered just how Toujou got mixed up with Kagawa and Nakamura. I don't think Kanzaki would have given him a Deck if he knew he was part of the Kill Yui Task Force. It was a great idea to bring Nakamura back, especially as a renegade Rider, but I think they killed him too quickly. He was the one with ties to Kanzaki, I think they should have at least had a scene together. But, no, Kanzaki makes all of his grand appearances to Kagawa instead.
Ryuki mistakes Tiger for a friend and pays the price, being hospitalized. Suga plays Shinji's being so torn well in this episode, and I like that Shinji's not just thinking of Ren here, but everyone and everything -- it's all sinking in. He's been having his head filled with Kagawa's theories, but he just wants to do the right thing as he's always known it, but he also doesn't want Yui to have to pay. Kagawa's plan to close the Mirror World sounded so good, but not for that cost -- you can think he's naive, but he doesn't think killing one person's worth it, and certainly not Yui. What the hell has Yui done to anybody, you know?!
But what's Shinji's thinking behind this -- close the Mirror World, taking away Riders and the Rider Battles. Well, he knows why Ren's fighting, so is Shinji saying to just let Eri die? And not in a cruel or heartless way, I just wonder if his thinking is she's being taken care of, if modern medicine can't save her, then that's not the same as someone getting deliberately killed because of the Rider war. He thinks of Kagawa's words that it's more heroic to make one sacrifice if it saves a dozen peoeple, and he compares that to Ren, who's willing to sacrifice everyone for the one. I like when Shinji has moments alone with Yui, who has her own dilemma -- she senses unhappiness from her brother, so she wants to put an end to everything for his sake. Neither one of them has any answers, so all they can really do is push on and stick to their own beliefs. And this leads to one of my favorite moments...
Evil bastardmind Kanzaki targets Kagawa's family with his number-one hitmonster, Garudthunder, offering Kagawa a choice -- hand over his cosplay Rider Deck and have the monsters called off or continue to be a thorn in Kanzaki's ass as Alternative and have his family become Monster food. Toujou proclaims he knows that Kagawa, the true hero, will make the right choice. He lets Toujou get into his head! So he joins a Mirror battle and lets his family be targeted.
And it's a nice, big battle, with everyone involved. Ouja's newly escaped and PISSED to see Tiger, and they zero in on one another and fight in their own corner. Zolda shows up. A ton of gazelle monsters, hinting at the loser who's about to debut and is keeping tabs on the sideline. (Really? Again? We've already had creepo Tiger spying on Rider fights from the shadows.) My favorite moment is when Ryuki shows up, taking out a lot of the monsters everyone was having trouble with, and then revealing he saved Kagawa's wife and son. You can sense, even behind his mask, Kagawa is relieved, but Tiger's still yammering on about how Kagawa didn't care. (Kagawa's not long for this world. He recognizes the disturbing signs Toujou shows, his ease with killing, but doesn't do much about it.)
Even though I feel like it's a diversion of attention that could be spent on other things, I've always liked Alternative, and I think he's a cool, unpredictable addition. I liked having a renegade character with abilities who didn't care about Kanzaki's bull. I like his Kamen Rider-y look, Kagawa's spin on the Visors, I like that his homemade Mirror Monster can become his motorcycle! I remember some people on the forums years ago saying that they thought his monster looked a bit Jason Voorhees-like. I can see it, and I wonder if someone in the show did, too, because when he pops out to grab Yui, they do a freeze and zoom on Yui's screaming face that's really reminiscent of a couple of the early Friday the 13th movies. (I remember thinking it was pretty shocking that Yui was pulled into the Mirror World to be attacked like that, and cool the way Shiro sends Garudthunder to save her.)
I talk about horror too much on here, since I just compared Okamoto's performance as Ryuga to Jason, but I don't care. I'll do it some more. Naoki Nagase's performance as Tiger reminds me of a masked killer in a slasher, as well. He's just very still and kind of takes pleasure in and admires his handiwork. So he's got some Michael Myers vibes going.
I've always thought Toujou was an interesting character, but I always had a problem with this batch of episodes. I don't mind them as much as I did back in the day, but they could certainly be tighter, and some character motivations could be a little cleaner. I like when Asakura has a little more purpose than "Grr! I wanna fight!" and I really don't like how Ren's bouncing around throughout and after the Eri ordeal. (I'm not even going to mention further clowning up of Kitaoka by having him and Goro go on a drunken karaoke jaunt with Megumi and Shimada, while everyone but Megumi spends the next couple of episodes fighting the hangover.) It's like...this show wants to be fairly serialized, but the way they'll have Shinji and Ren take a step forward then two back is still a more rigid form of storytelling of old, because they're just stalling until the moments they're allowed to advance with them.
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