Kamen Rider Revice E01-04 Review

Kamen Rider Revice, Episodes 1-4

Okay, yeah. New year, new Kamen Rider show. I... I didn't realize that Revice is also an anniversary show, so it has homages to previous Rider designs in its forms -- although not quite as blatantly done as Decade or Zi-O. To prevent burning out too much, I basically decided to take a step back and do batch reviews of the third entry in the Reiwa era of Kamen Rider shows, so these will be a lot shorter and less in-depth than my previous forays into show reviews. 

Episode 1: Family! Contract! The Devil Whispers!

As with most Kamen Rider shows, the first episode is really intent on making a bombastic first impression. And I do feel like this quasi-sci-fi vibe fits the franchise a lot more compared to the very fantasy-based Saber? Anyway, it's a mixture of tropes we've seen before in Kamen Rider -- the bad guys are unleashed from Kuuga-esque enigmatic ruins (this time from South America), while the Rider technology is developed by a secret science-quasi-military organization called Fenix, who had been combatting the monsters.. They even have their own Helicarrier! We also very quickly see the Deadmans' leaders -- a trio of colourful peeps who dress in Mexican outfit that, uh, work in some sort of nightclub? All of this information is given to us over the course of less than three minutes, which has got to be some sort of record in exposition. 

The rest of the episode involves the introduction of our main character and his quirky, loud family, who runs a hot springs. Our main character Igarashi Ikki is the eldest son, and... okay, I really didn't care too much for any of the loud comedy between the Igarashis and their customers, but I also started off disliking Hiden Aruto's jokes and really loved him at the end of the show, so maybe it'll grow on me. More importantly, Ikki's younger brother Daiji is promoted to being a captain in Fenix, which is where the two sides of the cast are conjoined. Throughout it all, though, Ikki keeps seeing a mysterious, floating 'inner demon', Vice. Vice is going to be our Momotaros equivalent, although he's not as instantly-nice as Momotaros is. 

During a huge ceremony held by Fenix that celebrates the promotion of their new members (including Daiji), we get a bit more exposition about the Vistamps, only for the Deadmans to attack. One of the Fenix commanders attempts to use the Revice Driver, but the Driver rejects him and instead creates a new monster. Daiji also gets cold feet at using the Driver. Which, of course, is where our hero comes in. Vice quickly rattles off how Ikki needs to make a contract with him to save his family (Ikki's mom actually gets tossed around and bloodied up a little!) but when Ikki's contract causes Vice to manifest in the real world, he proceeds to get ready to consume Ikki's mother himself. I actually really like this -- I'm sure Vice will be lovable later down the line, but I'm happy that he's actually nominally evil in the beginning. 

So, of course, Ikki uses the belt to transform -- Ikki turns into Kamen Rider Revi, and Vice turns into Kamen Rider Vice. They're pink! The fight is pretty high-quality, although all first episodes always are. We quickly establish some ground rules, like how Vice will die if Ikki dies. We get the two Kamen Riders using their new weapon, Vice apparently likes to make fourth-wall-breaking jokes, and they do a double-stamping kick to blow up the Rex and Mammoth Deadmans... but afterwards, Ikki immediately gives back the Driver, not wanting to have anything to do with the crazy superhero world. 

I actually like this twist a lot -- that for the first couple of episodes, Ikki really doesn't want anything to do with all this nonsense. I don't think we ever really had a reluctant main Kamen Rider outside of Faiz? But while everything did feel a bit rushed and all the side-characters do feel like ciphers, I do like the dynamic between Ikki and Vice, and how they're not actually buddies by the end of the first episode, but are more like reluctant allies. Pretty neat. 

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Episode 2:The Devil is Just a Bad Guy!?

The main conflict of this episode is whether Ikki wants to actually become a Kamen Rider or not -- and, understandably, he still is very leery of Vice. We do get something that we haven't really seen too much of in the past couple of series, in a victim-of-the-week whose negative desires end up being the catalyst for a monster creation. Olteca of the Deadmans ends up escalating the conflict between an aggressive golfer and his caddie, causing the creation of the Kamakiri and Megalodon Deadmans over the course of the episode. 

Ikki is very much reluctant to sign the contract that Daiji brings to him, but when someone is in trouble, the brothers go out to help. Except, of course, the team-up between Ikki and Vice are... not very smooth, shall we say. Vice tries to attack bystanders halfway through the fight and later also ends up egging the golfer victim on, and it's only with the aid of a power-up device -- the Eagle Vistamp -- that Ikki is able to drag Vice back into fighting alongside him. The Eagle Vistamp transforms both Riders into a new form (based on Kamen Rider W), which proceeds to combine into... well, a rather terrible 'eagle' form that's obviously just two men stacked on top of each other. At multiple points in the fight the CGI is blindingly obvious. 

In the final fight of this episode Ikki outright rebuffs Daiji and Vice, fighting Deadman grunts without transforming, essentially refusing to use his transformation powers if it means that innocents will get hurt. Vice ends up getting so frustrated at seeing Ikki get harmed that he makes a contract with Ikki to not hurt humans -- a bit of a simpler way to force the evil teammate to do good things, but eh. This time, they turn into a bad CGI T-Rex that's still obviously two men stacked on each other. At least the rex does a rider stamp? 

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Episode 3: Hostage Trouble, What To Do Brother!? 

This one focuses a bit more on Daiji, which I do like a lot -- he's essentially upstaged by his older brother in terms of being able to protect the world from the Deadmans, but Ikki is extremely reluctant to actually do the whole superheroing business. Their younger sister Sakura and her friend Ayaka gets kidnapped by the villain-of-the-week, a hired gun who wants to use Ayaka to demand random from her rich mother. All this is done thanks to the plan of the Deadman Julio, a.k.a. the hat one. 

I do like just how utterly angry Ikki is throughout this episode -- he's so pissed that his family is being hurt! We do get a bunch of neat action sequences, but ultimately the focus of the episode are Daiji and Sakura. While Ikki and Vice mostly just fights the bad guys, Daiji struggles with what he can do to protect his little sister -- though I'm a bit baffled that he manages to teleport from the hostage situation to the Not-Helicarrier and then back again in the timespan of Revice fighting against Julio. 

Daiji's solution is to actually hand over a Vistamp. And when the bad guys betray them, Daiji tosses a new power-up to Ikki. This is the Mammoth Vistamp, representing Kamen Rider Den-O. They sure turn into a CGI mammoth on CGI train tracks. Meanwhile, Sakura manages to escape from her bonds all on her own, karate-beatdownsthe hired gun, and escape with Ayaka. Unfortunately, all of this ends up building up Daiji's own self-image issues, because it really didn't feel like a victory for the middle sibling. Nice usage of the side-characters. 

There's a bit of a weird, irrelevant subplot of someone trying to buy and demolish the Igarashi bathhouse? Didn't care about that. Did like the obvious but well-done twist that the hired gun isn't the actual Deadman 'host', but it's the angry Ayaka, who's full of resentment against her mother. Typical Sentai/Rider twist, but it's done well. 

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Episode 4: Not Enough Love! A Dangerous Devil is Born! 

Probably the episode that got me sitting down and going "well, Revice is really off to a great start". One of the biggest problems that I had with many of the newer Kamen Rider shows is that the main character often-times feels... flat. Like, okay, generically heroic, protecting everyone's dreams or smiles and whatnot. (Aruto's probably the one exception to this among most recent riders) There are exceptions to this, of course, but generally? Yeah. But I really do like how Revice plays with the twist of an old formula of conflict from Faiz... the hero doesn't really care about being a Kamen Rider, not really. And this episode doesn't quite have a perfectly written conclusion (everything does end up a bit convenient) but Daiji's argument with Ikki does really make a lot of sense. Ikki's happy-go-lucky nature and his 'bathhouse first' laid-back mentality drives Daiji up the wall because, well, Ikki's the only person that can transform and protect people from the Deadmans. Toss in some internalized projecting on Daiji's part because he can't transform and is basically treated as an errand boy, and the conflict between the brothers is actually well done. Some pretty great raw-emotion acting, too. 

Admittedly, I really do think that the episode does make Daiji's faults a bit more prominent compared to Ikki's, but perhaps that's because I agree with Daiji's point-of-view a lot more. 

The main villain of the story follows up well from episode 3, with Sakura's friend Ayaka being the true host of the Kong Vistamp, and Aguilera and her cronies are trying to set her up as one of many sacrifices to unseal their lord Gifu. Again, the familial conflict here is really well-done, and conflicts very neatly with Ikki/Daiji's own sibling rivalry without being a way-too-obvious parallel. Ayaka's story as the unfavourite of two daughters is done amazingly well in the relatively short period of time she shows up in, and you can believe that her frustrations would cause her to snap and become a full-on monster after her mother literally brushes off her kidnapping. This is still a Rider show, so Kamen Rider Revice ends up literally rider-kicking the corruption out of her... but not before an actual tearful confrontation with her mom. 

Overall, pretty cool episode. The whole fact that the episode really emphasizes "LOVE!" is kind of on-the-nose, but par the course for the heavy Den-O energy that the Ikki/Vice pairing has. (Oh, and the Pteranodon/Faiz form makes its debut here, it kind of just shows up) Not often that the hero's shonen-protagonist actually gets challenged and actually deconstructed. 

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Anyway, that's it for my review of the first four episodes of Revice. I was a bit mouthy, despite my efforts not to, but since this involves me talking a lot about first impressions and whatnot, I suppose I could cut myself some slack. I'll try to do anywhere between 4-6 episodes in every review, depending on the amount of stuff I have to talk about. 

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Random Notes:

• 
  The Fenix members are all kind of one-note at this point, although they have been peppering in some potential character arcs in the future. The most prominent non-Daiji member is George Karikazi, the main researcher who really likes peppering in English words into his dialogue. We've got the stern leader Wakabayashi Yujiro (played by Fukuda from Amazons) and the captain that screwed up in episode 1, Kadota Hiromi. 
• I didn't quite get the actually pretty cool conceptual flourish of having the monsters of the show be devils that like making contracts, while the gimmick device for the series are stamps -- i.e. the type you use to close contracts with. It's not until episode 4 when Ikki stamps the contract with Fenix that I really got it. 
• Revice is so gloriously bubblegum-coloured, I like it. 
• Does the jingle make by the Revice Driver remind anyone of Geiz Revive? It's not just me, is it? The finishers give a Zero-One vibe, though. 
• I do like that his 'motorbike' is initially just a bicycle possessed by Vice in episode 2. 
• Something that they had in the early parts of Zi-O and they dropped without explanation was that Sougo would mangle the catchphrases of the riders he's homaging. Now it's Vice's turn -- we'll see how long he lasts. 
• Okay, Revi's Eagle/Double form is clean as all hell. I also like Vice's Mammoth/Den-O form. 
• Yeah, the CGI-combined Buddy Up forms really don't look good at all, I'm sorry. I have a very high tolerance for bad CGI in tokusatsu shows, but I guess the combined forms in and of itself already doesn't look particularly convincing? Ayaka's Deadman form jumping around the city in episode 4 is also kind of distracting. 
• I definitely appreciate toning down the amount of Kamen Riders we get early on. Sure, there's a lot of toys thanks to each form giving us a Revi and a Vice form, but keeping the focus mostly on the Igarashi family does make these earlier episodes feel a lot less erratic compared to Saber's.
• Episode four shows off a gigantic amount of Kamen Rider merchandise in George's lab. I don't really know what this means -- if it's just shameless product placement, a nod to the fact that all of Revice's forms are Rider-based, or how it even relates to the other Rider series (surely Zero-One and Build in particular can't exist in the same universe as this one) but we'll just handwave it as our regularly-scheduled wacky Decade-caused multiversal clash. 
• The final episode of Saber acts as a rather light-hearted epilogue, where Revice shows up for a brief cameo. I wanted to do a separate segment for it, but really didn't have much to say about it -- it features a Batta Deadman, plus Revice's Megalodon (a.k.a. Decade) form. A lot of Mei/Rintarou shipping gags there, but otherwise not very notable.  
• Yeah, this is a much nicer way to review the series! Hopefully I won't get quite as burnt-out as I was with Saber.