Kamen Rider Revice E49-50 Review: Personal Conflict

Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 49: At the End of the Battle... Only the Demon Remains; Episode 50: Family to the End, Until the Day We Meet Again

With two more episodes remaining, Kamen Rider Revice ends up being pretty much... predictable, in a way. It's clear that we're setting up for a huge confrontation between Ikki and Vice, and... and the confrontation is kind of obvious in how they were going to set it up. Ikki's memory loss leads to episode 49 being a melancholic sequence of just Ikki trying his best to live with his family despite not remembering anything about them -- leading to genuinely heartbreaking moment as Ikki tries his best to integrate himself to what to him is a bunch of strangers laughing and... well, being a family while he feels left out. For what it's worth, George apologizes though it's honestly brushed off pretty quickly.

Again, it is kind of interesting that the two final episodes of this show is so... family-centric. There are action scenes spread across the two, of course, with the obvious fight being between Vice being the 'final demon' for Ikki to fight. Or, well, pretending to fight, anyway, because I don't think anyone for a second really buys episode 49's cliffhanger that Vice's actually secretly evil all along. But so much of the two episodes, particularly episode 49, focuses on Ikki trying to adapt to his new life as an amnesiac, and later on living together with Vice. It's necessary to make what comes next feel poignant. It's obvious as all hell what they're trying to do, to get all the emotions and whatnot flowing, but... again, sometimes obvious narrative tropes aren't bad. 

As Ikki and Vice hang around in a random house provided to them by George, Vice eventually comes to a realization that Ikki's contract isn't exactly complete because he still has a single family member left -- Vice himself. And as Ikki goes around trying to adapt to civilian life, it takes an impressive 15 minutes out of a 20-minute episode runtime for Vice to finally unleash his plan, which is to (pretend to) run amuck and beat the shit out of everyone. 

Again, it's not something that the audience will really believe, and, hell, even with all the blood (on a non-V-Cinema episode! Shocking! Even if it's later revealed to be ketchup!) and seeing Vice beat the shit out of Genta's Kamen Rider Destream, it is interesting to see Vice ham it up as the original glutton demon that he was in the first episode, trying to make it all seem like it's an act so Ikki can mercy-kill him. Through the admittedly convoluted (though not as much as some other earlier Rider shows) logic of the contract, if Ikki's final transformation causes him to forget about Vice, it will cause the amnesia-contract null and revert Ikki's memory of everyone else... other than Vice. Again, a little convoluted, but it's easy to see where the show-writers are going for. 

And as episode 50 rolls on, it's just a full-on emotion fest. Again, I don't think I like the plotline enough to actually shed tears for these characters, but the voice-acting on both Ikki and Vice's parts are earnest enough for me to believe that, yes, all the emotions are running around and are so high on everyone's part. Ikki ends up confirming that Vice is his family, and the two eventually reach an agreement to not waste Vice's final resolve. 

We go through basically a rundown of most of their forms (though not all -- these Reiwa-era peeps have too many bonus forms) as screens of their memories slowly disappear one by one. There's a nice little nod that everyone that's around posing as the wounded civilians are all the guest-stars-of-the-week from previous episodes. I'm... not a biggest fan of Daiji and Sakura's talk about how facing your inner demon is a major part of maturation -- the concept is most certainly sound in real life, but with how the demons are actual real characters here (and both Kagero and Lovekov still hang around) it does ring a bit hollow. 

Admittedly, the fight scene does drag on a bit too long, although that might just be my own misgivings at the 'Remix' form and their terrible CGI models and the fart joke, but, again, the actual farewell as Vice finally is about to go to another form and starts turning into dust in Ikki's hands. They go for a tearful goodbye... then Ikki forgets about Vice. Genuinely well-done acting there, again, despite the convoluted story about the amnesia contract which I still don't like. 

Oh, and that is the context behind the eyeball from the opening! That's actually cool how they integrated it into the episode proper.

The final eight or so minutes of the episode is devoted to just epilogue. Which is, all things considered, kind of neat especially considering the messy final episode Saber got. We get to see some characters basically doing their nonsense (mama Yukimi has her own not-Youtube channel). And... not everything makes sense? Daiji (and former villains Kagero, Hana and Tamaki) rebuilding Fenix as an organization called Blue Bird to replace it is neat. Sakura and Hikaru going back to school is understandable, though Sakura's utterly out-of-nowhere career choice to enter medical school is... suspect. Social services, psychology, even karate, sure, but this just feels random. Hiromi gets George to actually visit his father's grave, and Ikki gets a career at soccer or some shit. At least Ikki's soccer career has some basis in that two-parter episode, y'know? And the episode ends at a quasi-optimistic role as far as Vice's return goes, with Ikki channeling Vice and finding a Vice duck at one point. 

But ultimately? Yeah. Yeah, I do like Revice a lot. It did stumble a bit near the end, and the Remix forms at the beginning of the show is a bit painful... but the middle portions really do end up being very charming and had some surprisingly genuinely well-written characterization. Ikki and Vice, perhaps by virtue of their dynamic of being two people, also avoid the 'generic hero protagonist' trope that tends to make so many main Kamen Riders feel rather basic. It's kind of clear that the writers kind of have a rough idea of how to structure the arcs of the show, and ultimately while I didn't like the amnesia plot personally, I felt like the show truly committed to it and gave us a suitably dramatic ending to the show. It makes Revice's final two-parter feel so different from most recent Rider shows, especially since we're dealing with the main character's own personal conflict and literal inner demons instead of spending the final episode to defeat some final form big bad. Good stuff. 

Random Notes:

• Since the body of the review is talking more about the two-parter in question, I do really wonder just how much got lost in the rush to the series' end. I guess the Giff-defeated episode really ended up being pretty unimpressive to me, and George's stuff still feels kinda rushed, so... I don't know. Coming off of Saber and Zero-One, I don't think the Reiwa era really does have a good track record at a well-paced ending. I guess this is a decently done one, all things considered? I think if the Giff final episode had a bit more pizazz and finality to it, I probably wouldn't have had such a weird taste in my mouth reviewing these two last episodes. 
• Episode 49 has George and Hiromi share a bath and splish-splash each other, and later go on parfait dates while they argue about the pronunciation. Okay.
• Is Sakura's med-school literally just a joke about how her catchphrase is 'muteki' and Ex-Aid's final form is Muteki Ex-Aid? 
• Also, Olteca is in prison. I... I really don't know why the 'rescued' him and felt the need to show it in the show itself? Obviously the real-life reason is to bring Olteca as the antagonist of some spin-off or other, but man it feels like a Chekov's Gun that isn't fired within the show itself... whatever hypothetical spinoff with Olteca surely could use its own screentime to show Olteca surviving?
• That very obviously-a-real-soccer-player cameo really felt off and was utterly unnecessary. 

What About Geats?:

• Oh yeah, and there's a final scene of Ukiyo Ace walking past Happy Spa and pulling out his driver and apparently scanning and getting the Revice collectible... which I'm sure isn't going to actually show up in Geats or be relevant at all. I guess they didn't have the suit ready or something? 
• If you probably noticed from my reviews in the recent months or so, I'm... kinda burnt out a bit? I'm watching Kamen Rider Geats weekly, sure, but I don't think I can keep up with reviewing it weekly. Depending on how much I like it, I think if I review Geats, it will be on a monthly or bimonthly basis.