Kamen Rider Revice 12 Review: Love Cobra

Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 12: Weakness is Strength? The Invincible Jeanne!

A very fun episode! Sakura's story, I feel, has been handled and paced a lot better than Daiji's -- probably because it wasn't stretched for so long, and Sakura actually has the agency to grow as a person whereas Daiji's story is more 'save him from his evil alter-ego'. 

After the cliffhanger from the previous episode, Daiji and Ikki quickly drive off the Deadmen, but turns out that dr. Haitani (that's the name of the evil doctor!) and his Planarian Vistamp allows  him to basically duplicate his Vistamp and create contracts on his victims, while he himself remains able to transform into the Planarian Deadman at any time. Sakura, of course, bears the brunt of not only Daiji's admonishment, but also her own disappointment at her lack of strength. 

Among the Deadmen, dr. Haitani basically formally joins them, but rubs Aguilera the hell of a wrong way by saying how he could maybe replace Giff. Aguilera goes off to talk to Sakura again, and the dynamic between the two of them is so interesting! Aguilera continues her rant about how Sakura is weak, and how the weak has no place to talk... while Sakura keeps flashing back to how her younger self has her ultimate goal as being 'unbeatable'.

While the Planarian Deadman fights against Kamen Rider Demons and Live, Sakura sulks on a playground. After a bit of a talk with his parents, Ikki goes off to talk to Sakura and proves why he's the big brother of the bunch -- he clearly understands Sakura enough to know how to get through to her. He tells Sakura that he's not there to stop Sakura from fighting -- he's there to stop Sakura from fighting half-assed, basically. Ikki kind of pinpoints Sakura's problem, in that she refuses to admit her own weakness and just insists on saying that she's strong instead of, well, being strong. 

 

There's some huge battle against the Deadmen going on in the background, certainly, but we do get some pretty well-shot and well-acted scene of Sakura continuing to try her belt in her dojo and failing to do anything. I'm never a big fan of flashbacks, but here they are used very effectively to show how everyone, from Daiji to Aguilera to Sakura herself has been putting her down... before she literally breaks down and starts sobbing about how "I'm weak". This acknowledgement is what causes her inner demon to materialize, and later she walks into the battlefield with a badass entry, giving a huge speech about how she's accepted her weakness and she transforms into Kamen Rider Jeanne. 

What follows is a pretty damn cool sequence of battles. And... and the director of this episode most certainly really like Jeanne a lot, and she has such a better debut than Live, essentially soloing the massive Deadman horde. While all of this is going on, we get to see the true form of Sakura's demon, which has been exclusively shown as an ominous shadow and it's... Lovekov, this adorable giant plushy with stubby hands, sad snake eyes, and she just makes "rabu rabu" noises. I love this thing, it's freaking adorable. Lovekov spends basically the entire battle getting beaten up by the Deadman goons, and it falls to Vice to run around and make sure she doesn't get herself killed. 

A very, very great episode as far as action scenes go. They gave Jeanne a very, very long extended action scene, and I think a good part of why it's so fun to watch is that we don't get the CGI-abomination 'remix' forms that I've been tuning out for the past 11 episodes. (Olteca and Julio also show up to give Revice and Live cool opponents). 

Sakura does her finisher kick on Saeko, burning through her contract and saving her. And while dr. Haitani gets away for the moment, he and Sakura does share a mutual glare, and I do hope that the next couple of episodes builds up on this antagonism. Speaking of antagonism, Aguilera none-too-subtly hints at how she's happy that Haitani fails. 

The three siblings finally end up resolving their conflict, with Daiji apologizing to Sakura and... well, him convincing Fenix to pay for Saeko's child's medical bills probably helps a lot, too. The episode closes off with Vice bonding with little Lovekov, who is absolutely adorable... especially when she breaks her rabu/kobu Pokemon speech to insult Vice. 

Random Notes:

• Interestingly, while I had thought that it's George that gave Sakura the driver, he absolutely goes super-duper ballistic and angry at the appearance of a driver that he destroyed.
• Hiromi randomly delivers his backstory -- that he's bullied as a kid. As a Kamen Rider, it seems that his fate is also to be bullied by the monsters before the Igarashis show up. To be fair, though, in this episode he basically knocks himself up trying to use multiple Vistamps at once.
• Aguilera also gives us her backstory, being essentially someone who's raised in the Giff cult, but I'm not sure how reliable this account is. 
• Planarians are flatworms that are infamous for being able to regenerate its entire bodies after being sliced into small pieces, hence why dr. Haitani is able to duplicate the Planarian Vistamps.
• I have been wondering if any of the non-Revice riders are based on any specific previous riders, but turns out that between Evil, Jeanne and Demons, they fill up the 'spider, snake, bat' trio of classic Kamen Rider enemies.
• Jeanne has a pretty cool-looking ponytail that she uses as a spinning whip.
• It's honestly kind of understated, but I think this episode shows off the family dynamic between the five Igarashi family members the best.