Kamen Rider Revice E11 Review: Sakura Awakens

Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 11: Why Does the Invincible Sakura Need Power?

I think I really don't have that much time to watch television episodes nowadays, so I'm not going to try and force myself to "I need to watch two to four episodes in one sitting just to get a review article" out of it. In the next year I think this might be how I do things with TV? We'll see. I intended on having entire seasonal reviews for some of the CW superhero shows as well, but that might take some time as I figure things out IRL. I do have some articles that are slated for December, but turns out that I have a lot of stuff to do these next couple of months. It'll be interesting. 

We start off this episode (and arc, I think?) with a fun little montage of our heroes fighting a bunch of Deadmen in different locales, and apparently we've got a set of ten stamps all collected and stuff. Meanwhile, Olteca goes off to scout a 'saviour' type guy with a flat mask who talks about anarchic equality and stuff... but that's clearly just going to be a villain-of-the-week, so I'm much less invested in him than I am Aguilera scouting for Sakura. 

And it's interesting. Sakura's huge motivation is for her family to remain whole, as well as what she's going to use her karate powers for... something that Sakura's mother rather innocently tosses out, noting that her power is useless if she's going to be irresponsible like skipping class and stuff. Of course, Sakura being a teenager, brushes off everything with 'lay off, I'm fine'. Things are not fine, though, when Sakura gets a rider belt mailed to her. The show hasn't been giving Sakura that much of a spotlight, since it's all about Ikki and Daiji in the past couple of episodes, but it's an interesting easy shortcut for her to match up with all the problems that's tearing her family apart. 

She gets distracted in her karate classes, seeing visions of Aguilera and failing to watch her power... and ends up seeing that the assistant instructor in the karate dojo has a Vistamp in her bag. Sakura follows her and sees her palling around with Olteca to rob a bank, but, of course, she's got the reason that she's stealing money for her son's surgery. Aguilera quite literally beats Sakura and tosses her around, before mocking her that simply saying that she wants to save people is easy, but useless when Sakura has not enough power. Aguilera wants to trick Sakura into joining the Deadmans so she could have the power she wants. 

Meanwhile, Ikki and Daiji fight a big pink tentacle Deadman robbing a bank. They do a double rider kick and a double transformation, always neat to see, and they fight a constantly-regenerating pink Deadman that turns out to be a planarian! Those are very, very cool animals! Ikki and Daiji's fight has Revice showing off their Megalodon and Brachiosaur forms, while Kamen Rider Live gets to do some finishers while he's kind of baffled at his older brother's sheer energy. We get the CGI Brachio-remix form which... uh... it's not as stupid-looking as the others?

Sakura ends up following assistant instructor Oomori around and finds out her reason for working with the Deadmen -- she needs money for her son's surgery. She tells this to her family, bringing up the fact that Oomori needs this for her son... while Daiji is just kind of against using the Vistamps or allying with the Deadmen for anything evil, while their mom is just rather understandably angry that her daughter just got beaten up. Again, monsters are running around blowing up buildings and tensions are high, so the conversation that results -- Daiji and Mama Igarashi telling Sakura to stay at home because she doesn't have enough power -- is kind of a natural progression. Oh, if only they knew Sakura has been struggling with her powerlessness, right? 

Sakura's internal flashbacks to other people telling her about her powerlessness ends up awakening her own internal demon, and... again, just like Daiji's own envy towards his brother, I feel like this was done and executed pretty damn well. 

Turns out that Oomori is being essentially influenced by the host of the Planarian Deadman -- the shady cult influencer in the beginning -- who sends her to attack the only doctor capable of performing her son's surgery... except she's being duped into attacking a radiographer, and in desperation as Fenix comes in to arrest her, she enters the Phase Two contract and transforms into Planarian-Phase-Two. It's an interesting bit where the cult leader basically modifies the demon contract to make Oomori enter a contract with his Planaria demon... pretty neat stuff, and it keeps the Planaria cult leader for a subsequent episode.

Ikki and Daiji just go in to fight the powerful Phase Two Deadman, of course, because what else can they do? But we've seen how Sakura is always more focused on the emotions of the smaller people, and she ends up transforming into Kamen Rider Jeanne with the Cobra Vistamp to stop Oomori herself... except her transformation doesn't actually happen, her belt fails, and Ikki ends up taking the blow to protect her. 

It's obviously just the first part of a two-parter, but it's a really fun one! Daiji is pretty great and Ikki is fun, but I really do hope that the Sakura arc doesn't rely too much on a completely-evil demon half, and we actually see her struggle with her own inner conflicts. Pretty fun episode all around. 

Random Notes:

• George has an off-handed remark about how doing a remix form before he calibrates the Vistamp could be dangerous. Actual foreshadowing, perhaps? 
• Kamen Rider Demons shows off another genomix, this time using Ikki's Condor Vistamp. He grows a pair of purple wings that reminds me of Jin from Zero-One. I guess they are sharing Vistamps, which shouldn't be surprising, really. 
• The monsters that are quickly defeated in the opening montage are reused monsters from Lupinranger vs. Patranger. I actually watched that show! I don't remember these specific Ganglers, though, unfortunately. It's been a while. 
• The Deadman is a Planarian! That's one of the more obscure animals and I really do like it. The phase one version if particularly cool, I think, with the pink stuff just looking like a slipshod wrapping (or is it the true body of the creature coiled up into a mass?) with a bunch of creepy golden masks strewn about its body.
• As of this episode, it's actually not certain whether it's Aguilera or George who sends the Justice Driver to Sakura.