Kamen Rider Revice, Episodes 21: Lay Down My Life, Entrust My Feelings
This one technically closes out a three-week-long Hiromi-centric string of episodes, and the next one is back to regularly-scheduled two-parters, so you guys are getting a single episode this time around. And... and for the most part, I kind of like the concept of giving Hiromi a whole arc to deal with his whole 'transformation device is tearing away at his life' thing. It's just that, on both counts, the climaxes for both of Hiromi's story kind of drops the ball. Last episode I complained about how utterly simple the idea of 'oh hey let's just kick the belt off' is, and spoiling the ending of this one... Hiromi dies by falling off a cliff. It's so transparently done that he's not really dead and is just gone for like, a handful of episodes. But even Saber had the decency to have Kento be sealed in the Shadow Realm or whatever to make his death at least believable in-universe. It's especially jarring because of how we've been having gravestones and civilians being killed to turn into Gifterians over the past couple of episodes, so this particularly transparent way of not killing off Hiromi just kind of feels like they were obligated to pull another Lazer/Rogue/Jin/Espada almost-mid-season 'death that will be reverted'.
The focus of episode 21 revolves around the mystery about the 'demon' within the Demon Driver, while Olteca is seemingly captured but basically pulls a Loki in... well, literally pretending to be captured abroad a Helicarrier. There's something pretty well-done, I feel, with the Igarashi brothers confronting George about him foisting the dangerous Demons Driver on Hiromi. For his credit, George does apologize for it, but I do kind of like that we're not going back from the fact that George is doing some shady things in the name of the greater good.
But then our heroes are distracted by Director Akaishi and George talking about the mysterious Gifu statue, and we get to see that Vice, naturally, has some convulsions being near such a font of powerful demonic energy. This is contrasted with Sakura's story running concurrently.
And I suppose the Sakura B-plot was foreshadowed quite a while back of the mysterious basement in Sakura's classmate's house, and turns out that Weirdo Stalker Guy is actually part of another different organization called 'Weekend'. Since the show's been dropping pretty heavy hints that Fenix is not what it seems, it's clear that Weekend's going to be the slightly more morally-right shadowy organization. Sakura's been the one that's the most detached from Fenix, since she got her driver from a different source, and, well, we basically meet the faces behind the Liberal Driver now... it's just that, well, Weekend comes off as pretty unlikable and flat from the get-go. For all of Fenix's faults, at least George and Akaishi are hamming stuff up. There's admittedly a pretty neat sequence where Weekend does a pretty cult-y thing of making Sakura feel like she's kinda obligated to join them, which I thought was creepily nice.
Sakura ends up going to the Deadman base, beats up Aguilera with a simple finisher -- which felt abrupt, and I love that it's actually part of the show's story since Sakura notes that Aguilera's Queen Bee form is much weaker than how she remembered it to be. Sakura and Ikki have a conversation about it, but turns out... everyone's been duped, because the real Gifu stamp was with Olteca all along.
Hiromi actually resigns, though we don't really spend that much time with him in the first half of the episode. He very nearly beats the shit out of George, but I do like the implication that he's realized that he simply can't continue being a Kamen Rider without a repeat of the climax of the previous episode. He ends up bumping into Akaishi and finding out that he's evil all along. Akaishi and Olteca... just use the real Gifu stamp and cause a swarm of minions to rampage around the helicarrier, forcing Hiromi and Daiji to scramble and stop it from crashing and killing everyone.
Apparently Olteca's whole plan is to get to the Demons Driver and gain access to the demon within it. Olteca transforms into Kamen Rider Demons, and basically overpowers poor Daiji -- the implication being that Olteca's Deadman body is more suitable for the driver. There's a pretty funny/cool scene where Olteca just uses the mogura genomix to send out a blast to knock down Ikki and Sakura before they can transform.
This all leads to an epic last stand as an untransformed Hiromi unflinchingly shoots Olteca-Demons with a gun, with no way to transform. Olteca punches poor Hiromi, before fighting against Revi, Vice and Jeanne... and Hiromi dies telling everyone else to watch out for Fenix before Olteca blows him away from the cliff in a gigantic cloud of dust. Again... the idea of it is good. Even with Hiromi's relatively minimal role in this episode, I felt like the idea that even after retiring from being a Kamen Rider, Hiromi still wants to be a hero and that's ultimately a nice message... (I really do think that we should definitely have had a lot more Hiromi scenes this episode, but since this is immediately after a Hiromi-centric two-parter, I'll take it) but the execution? And especially honestly how rather unimpressive the cliff-explosion was? Yeah, not a huge fan.
The episode then continues with an admittedly pretty fun sequence of Demons-Olteca using his spiderwebs like whips to fend off Jeanne and Barid Rex Revi/Vice, but Olteca uses a Scorpion/Batta transformation to do a rider kick that knocks all three out in one go. It's no Sting Dystopia, but it's pretty neat. As Gifu continues to pulsate, we get to see not only Vice but also Genta (???) reacting to the pulsations... and Sakura goes off to join Weekend.
And... again, this feels like such a huge, epic moment, shouldn't it? The introduction of a new faction, one of the major antagonists steals one of the secondary drivers, said secondary character apparently dies... but I don't know. I like the story beats a fair bit, but the whole Hiromi-fake-cliff-death sequence just really rubbed me the wrong way.
Random Notes:
- I breeze through the Weekend plot, but Sakura does get a pretty great extended scene beating down some costumed Weekend minions without even transforming.
- I love that after casually beating the shit out of a half-dozen spies, Sakura's reaction to Weekend is "but it's a weekday?"
- Daiji, Ikki and Sakura are basically in a sliding scale of trusting Fenix to Weekend in that order. Still, the show does a really great job at emphasizing how the Igarashis love their family a lot that I don't even buy Daiji betraying the Igarashis out to Fenix at this point in the show.
- I know it's his catchphrase, but "I will lay down my life to land this ship" is pretty forced.
- To be fair, Sakura initially rejecting Weekend's offer, only to find out that despite their obvious sketchiness, they do have some valid points and ultimately goes back to talk to them after seeing how terribly things went for the good guys in this episode... I do like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment