Kamen Rider Revice E28 Review: Friendship Speech

Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 28: Beyond Fear, Gale and Thunder! Believe In Yourself and Become One!

Okay, this one feels kind of like another mid-season finale, since there's a lot that happens here. With Jack Revice basically rampaging while Ikki slumbers in that weird headspace of his, George Karikazi shows up with a brand-new toy -- the Thunder Gale Vistamp. Which... has a little windmill on it. Apparently, due to Ikki and Vice's close bond, it means that this stamp would either erase both or cause both to survive.

George also transforms into Kamen Rider Demons in order to help Sakura and Daiji pin down the berserking Ikki, citing that he's going to surpass 'daddy' by not standing in the sidelines. It doesn't really make up for his manipulations that led to Hiromi's body being destroyed, but... close enough, I guess? We get a 3-vs-1 for a bit, and they manage to stamp Ikki's body with the Thunder Gale Vistamp...

And then we cut to Ikki's mind where he wanders into a weird, spooky version of the Happy Spa. The director is clearly having fun with the creepy angles and lighting, as well as zooming in to random trinkets scattered around in Happy Spa. We get to see Yukimi, Daiji and Sakura basically act like exaggerated caricatures of themselves, while two Giffterians are taking a bath and playing around in the paintings... okay, that last bit is just them having some fun in order to give us weird, trippy visuals.

In the real world, Gifu extends an arm towards Aguilera as she demands to know what her purpose is... and just straight-up bitch-slaps her. Poor Aguilera! Olteca shows up and talks about how Aguilera is no longer worthy of being Gifu's vessel, and he uses his stamp to merge with Gifu and turn into a brand-new Anomalocaris Deadman form. This fight happens in the real world and the episode cuts back and forth to Ikki meandering in his own mind. George gets to do a Batta genomix attack before the strain of using the transformation belt causes him to de-transform, which is neat. Will he also succumb to the same accelerated aging that Hiromi did? Olteca basically manages to tank everything that Live and Jeanne can do, beating them up while constantly regenerating. 

Meanwhile, Ikki meets with Vail-in-Genta's-body within his mind, and Ikki and Vail have a bit of an argument. Ikki notes that Vail's jealous of the Igarashi family's happiness, but Vail claims that Vice would ultimately transform into a demon like him... before Ikki faces off against Vice. Or rather, uh, Ikki's human actor wearing the Vice tokusatsu suit from the neck down. And with the little devil horns. "Vice" beats Ikki up a bit, but then Ikki gets to do... well, a friendship speech, essentially, but while it's nothing particularly spectacular, I feel like in this case it's kind of earned, with Ikki acknowledging Vice as the part of him that 'protects' him (like a protective alter in DID) and that it's going to be the other way around. 

This all leads to the debut of the Thunder Gale form, which... it sure is a colourful form. This is apparently Ikki and Vice fused together into "Revice" at last, and... okay, I don't know if it's just me, but visually, it's just... speed-blitzing and doing a rider kick, isn't it? Jack Revice and Holy Wing Live felt a lot more impactful than this.

But narratively speaking, Revice ends up beating up Olteca, and for the price of his failure the Gifu coffin just stretches out an arm and consumes Olteca. And as he dies, Olteca has a brief memory of his time with the Deadman trio. Gifu's coffin changes a bit, before teleporting away again. 

And we get a bunch of other sub-plots getting acknowledged in this episode, I guess. Aguilera is still wandering, confused what to do with life. Genta/Junpei regains his memories, and goes into hiding with Buu to sort out everything in his head. The Karizakis confront each other in Weekend's base, though George is still pissed off at daddy. Sakura and Daiji reaffirm their places in Weekend and Fenix respectively... and we get a nice little final shot of the three Igarashi siblings, apart but still a family. 

And... okay, there are parts of this episode that I kind of liked, and parts that were a bit... basic. Mostly revolving the friendship speech leading to an instant power-up that defeats one of the main villains. I don't know. It's not as simple as that, but after all the buildup of how Vice is slowly growing more and more wild, the backstory with Vail and the Happy Spa fire, the IMO far more impactful conflict between Kagerou and Daiji... I don't know. This episode is a very solid one, a very competent one and one that was still fun to rewatch. Lots of neat moments that does make it worthy of being a mid-season finale of sorts for sure! Yet there's just something that's just... kind of missing, y'know?

Random Notes:

• So the 'Thunder Gale' hurricane thing is meant to be a reference to Kamen Rider Ichigo's little spinning thing on his belt, right?
• Of course George's henshin pose is basically also Kamen Rider Ichigo's pose. 
• Jeanne's ponytail-whip-thing is still very weird, sorry. 
• "Great! ...HWATTT??!"
• I guess 'speed-blitzing' the enemy to death is a lot less impressive to me since Zero-One (was it Shining Hopper or Zero-Two that did it?), Accel Faiz and Drive all did similar things but with far more pizzazz.
• Oh, both Ikki and Vice can manifest IRL after de-transforming from Thunder Gale. That's new, right?