Stay the ride alive: Ryuki 33-36
The Mirror’s Magic (Yasuko Kobayashi): Previously on Kamen Rider Ryuki: Crack abounds as Toshiki Inoue writes two hilarious episodes, Asakura has an arc where he might or might not be a decent human being, and ditzy Megumi Asano joins the ORE Journal staff as a trainee reporter who has just seen Shinji leaving the Mirror World.
Megumi is still questioning Shinji on how he came out of that glass, and for the life of him, he can’t think of an answer. He asks her to keep it secret, but she wants to keep trying to find him out. Joy. When he returns home, he pulls Ren aside and asks for help, wondering if maybe it’s better to just be honest with everybody. Ren immediately starts teasing him and refuses to help, even though Shinji points out that he helped when the very same thing happened to Ren just a few episodes ago. Ren however argues that they’re even, since he deducted 500 yen from Shinji’s debt for that incident. That would be the price of a Kamen Rider Ryuki gashapon from Kamen Rider Decade (Keyblade not included). When I got it in 2011, it was about $6 US. That’s how much Ren is willing to pay Shinji back for helping him deal with a little kid discovering his identity, who proceeded to steal Shinji’s deck, nearly became a Rider, and then got traumatized alongside Goro watching Ren and Kitaoka fight. Nice to know we can count on you.
Meanwhile, at ORE Journal, Reiko returns from her interview (which may not have been in America after all-don’t ask me), utterly shocked. She pushes Okubo against the wall and makes him very uncomfortable as she asks him to believe what she has to tell him. After she explains everything that happened with Prof. Potratz, they look at the photos of the scenes of the disappearances with renewed vigor. Reiko suspects a connection between Potratz’s disappearance and the general weirdness behind Asakura. She shows Okubo the surveillance pic of Kanzaki and tells him what she learned about Shiro Takami’s death. Now, she’s managed to link Shiro Takami to the Shiro Kanzaki who disappeared from Seimeiin four months later. Even stranger, Kanzaki applied to Seimeiin right after Takami died at Ackley. Okubo agrees that the pattern is suspicious: The Schrödinger’s cat that is Shiro Takami/Kanzaki, who disappeared twice and may be alive or dead; Asakura, who is a fucking Houdini in their eyes, had Kanzaki drop by Kanto Prison; and Potratz, who knew Shiro, disappeared suddenly right in front of Reiko while trying to give her answers. Reiko feels something is unnatural about all of this, since people don’t vanish into thin air, and Okubo agrees that Kanzaki is at the heart of it all. In short, our supporting cast has more of an idea on what’s going on behind Kanzaki than our heroes do, though they don’t realize it. This is why I love this series.
The next day, a Monster electrocutes a bank robber and hauls him off for dinner. Shinji is reporting on the scene, but he’s interrupted by Megumi. He suddenly senses the Monster and tries to run off to fight, but Megumi catches him before he can henshin. So he pulls the old “Look, a diversion!” redirection and runs, but he loses the Monster in the Mirror World. Don’t worry; he’s able to defeat it at the end of the episode. Honestly, the goings on with the ORE staff are really the focus of this plot before the next arc kicks off. Having taken a potty break from running after Shinji, Megumi suddenly comes to a realization in front of the mirror. She runs into him again and says she’s figured it out and is going to expose him at work later. When they return, Reiko and Okubo are still focused on the case, and Reiko decides to head to Seimeiin for answers. With all of this going on, Shinji wonders if maybe it would be better to tell them everything, though Shimada has no clue what he’s talking about as he mulls it over. Then Megumi walks in. Dressed in a sparkly magician’s assistant outfit. And calling herself Princess Megumi. Shimada has totally met her match. She pulls out one of those iron maiden-like boxes magicians use to cut people in half and puts Shimada inside, apparently cutting her in half and then making her disappear before reappearing. Megumi asks Shinji if this is what he’d done, relieving the hell out of him. But Reiko walks up to the mirrors, holding the photos, realizing just how many reflective surfaces were around when she investigated or experienced disappearances.
Unfortunately, while Shinji’s been flailing and while Reiko and Okubo have been piecing together the puzzle, stuff has happened to the rest of our main and supporting cast. Yui suddenly becomes weak at the shop and drops a teacup as she collapses, dizzy. Unbeknownst to her or Sanako, she’s beginning to disintegrate, much like a Rider who’s been in the Mirror World too long. One of Kanzaki’s mirrors breaks as he senses this (to be perfectly honest, I don’t know if it’s cracking to alert him or if he’s psychically cracking it as he discovers this, but given events in the finale, I’m leaning toward the latter), so he goes to visit Kitaoka. He asks if Kitaoka’s still in the fight, calling him out on not doing much. Kitaoka explains that his strategy was to let the others kill each other off first, but Kanzaki reminds him that the doctors only gave him another three to six months to live. Meanwhile, Goro notices Asakura lurking on the property. Kanzaki next visits Eri and somehow causes her vitals to go haywire, and she has to fight to stay alive. This is one of the more confusing aspects about Kanzaki. I can fully understand the whole control over time and over Mirror Monsters, but…he’s able to control reality. There are things that he cannot change, which we’ll see him come face-to-face with at the end, but he has some amazing psychic ability that lets him warp reality. It’s not explained, but he clearly does. Ren races to the hospital and watches helplessly as the medical team tries to stabilize her. But the doctor pulls him into the office to look over her brain scans and gives him the bad news: she’s dying. She’s out of time, and she will die within the next few days.
Yui is still feeling dizzy, still unaware that she’s disintegrating. Kanzaki looks at the painting he’d rescued in episode 28. Kitaoka collapses at his desk. Asakura returns, and he and Kitaoka prepare to fight. And in Room 401 of Seimeiin University, we see a new Kamen Rider, Tiger…
The Battle of Friendship (Yasuko Kobayashi): As you can tell by this title, this is the big one. Shinji senses a Mirror World presence and finds Kanzaki, who tosses him a Survive card (Rekka-firestorm). He tells Shinji it’s for when he fights other Riders, as he wants Shinji to use this power to overwhelm them, and he warns him that he’ll have to fight with a stronger power soon. At the same time, Yui wakes up, hearing her brother swear to protect her. Shinji returns home to find Ren still sitting on his bike, staring at his deck and clearly troubled. He won’t explain anything, though, and gives Shinji an unreadable look as they head inside, where they find a large stack of dishes waiting for them.
The escalation of the fight that breaks out over this is great, beautifully portraying all three of the characters involved. Ren tells Shinji to do the dishes, though Shinji asks why. Ren says something rude to try to end the conversation, but Shinji keeps pressing on. This begins to set Ren off, and he throws a towel at Shinji, telling him to do it. This is usually the point where Shinji just does whatever Ren tells him to do. But now, he’s a stronger person and really sick of taking this shit, and he throws the towel back at him. Yes. Shinji. Shinji’s the one who escalates this. The one who doesn’t want to fight. Meanwhile, you’re watching Ren’s fight-or-flight instinct in action, and it’s symbolic for the rest of his arc. He can’t run away anymore, and he has to fight. As they continue throwing the towel back and forth at each other, Yui watches until Shinji ends up breaking some dishes. She asks why they have to fight, and Shinji once again escalates the confrontation by calling Ren a child for his temper. The fight becomes even more physical when Ren stops at the door, and Shinji storms over and says that even though he doesn’t know what’s going on, Ren is constantly acting cool and shutting them out to go on alone. It finally gets Ren confrontational, and he grabs Shinji by the shirt and pushes him back into the shop, asking if it’s better never to shut up the way Shinji acts. The two are about to come to blows, and finally, Yui steps in. They’ve grabbed each other by the shirt, and it’s clear someone’s going to make the first swing if she doesn’t break it up, so she splashes them both with water and tells them to stop. And at this point, poor Sanako walks in to see that something bad just went down.
Taking a break for a moment to look at the rest of our cast (and trust me, we’re going to need this break), let’s start with ORE. Reiko visits Seimeiin and spots Hajime Nakamura, last seen in episode 17. Recognizing him from the yearbook photo she apparently researched, she asks him about Kanzaki. He tries to deny ever knowing him, but she begs him as the only one left from Ejima Lab. But as with Yui, he completely shuts her out. Never one to be deterred, she decides to check out Room 401, where she’s blasted by a strange wind. There, she meets Professor Kagawa, who’s taken over the lab. He’s polite to her at first, insisting that it’s no problem that Reiko came in, since people tend to barge in on him all the time. The covered windows are to try to limit just how much of his research people see. He confirms that Ejima Lab had previously been in that room, and he explains that Kanzaki was a rogue student that Prof. Ejima could not control. But Reiko spots the mirrors and realizes that she was right about the connection, knowing these mirrors must have been integral to Kanzaki’s mysterious research. She’s about to touch one, but Kagawa suddenly turns cold and pulls her hand away, warning her not to touch.
And while all of this stuff was going on, Asakura arrived at Kitaoka’s only to find nobody was home-because Goro put Kitaoka in the car and drove off without explanation. The next day, Kitaoka is allowed to return home, and he begins preparing for a meeting. Goro warns him not to go, and Kitaoka points out that he knows Asakura was there the other day and so Goro spirited him away. In a really nice moment that betrays Kitaoka’s true humanity, he says he understands Goro’s concern, but he chooses to fight because he wants to, and so Goro instead decides to drive Kitaoka to his appointment. But on the road, Asakura shows up in the middle of the street. Goro starts to charge, intending to run him down. When he realizes that Goro is serious about this, Kitaoka jerks the wheel away and tells Goro that it’s not for him to kill Asakura. Yes, Kitaoka also has matured. And the two Riders go to fight.
Now, back to our heroes. Breakfast the morning after the fight is an incredibly awkward and silent affair. Ren, Shinji, and Yui mostly pick at their food and won’t speak or make eye contact with anybody. Sanako finally has enough and kicks them out of the house for the day. While they’re not sure what to do, it dawns on Shinji and Yui that this is the first time all three of them have gone out anywhere as a group-usually it’s just two of them with the other out. There’s a hilarious bit where a woman passes by them walking a dog, and Shinji is absolutely terrified and hides behind Yui, and they realize a few minutes later that Ren was keeping his distance from the dog too. Our heroes. They decide to head to an amusement park, Nihon-land, for the rest of the day. Now, there is a park in Shizuoka near Mt. Fuji called Nihon-land (or Nippon-land) HOW, and the area they’re at in Ryuki is heavily forested, but from what I’ve seen of the pictures of the real life Nihon-land, it’s a little kiddy-ish compared to what we see here. The one we see here I think is the same amusement park refugee camp from the later Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Lost. Either way, it’s out of the city.
This easily could be a filler episode written as an excuse to give the cast a vacation (Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie and Power Rangers Zeo “No Business Like Snow Business”), but Kobayashi always seems to turn these episodes into a character spotlight moment: in Den-O, Ryotaro follows Yuto to what looks like the exact same park for a really awkward discussion about Yuto’s and Sakurai’s motivations; in OOO, both times they go to an amusement park, it explores Eiji’s PTSD and his lack of desire; and in Go-Busters, we get a focus on Yoko as she tries to give the Buddyroids the best day ever when she learned it was their birthday. I think even Shinkenger and Power Rangers Samurai had a character focus on Kotoha/Emily in their amusement park episodes. And this is the case here. When Shinji and Yui are having fun, Shinji keeps having to tell Ren to have fun and teasing him when he starts seeming to. Even so, Ren sits out one ride and stares at his deck, still torn by the conflict in his heart. What does he want? His love or his friends? He can’t have both, and he sees that now. Kanzaki watches his agony with a smile-and this is the most disturbing part for me. He seems to enjoy watching Ren suffer. Now, granted, he knows that Ren’s going to make the choice that he wants him to make, but it doesn’t change what he did to get Ren to this point. He already put Eri in a coma, and now he’s killing her, just to motivate her boyfriend into acting. This makes it very hard to forgive him down the line, and it’s something I’ll discuss in depth during the Endpoint Analysis.
Shinji and Ren sit out another ride when Yui wants to go on the carousel. Shinji notes that Yui seems like such a kid for liking it, and that comment prompts Ren to start opening up about his past with Eri, and he admits that Eri hated the carousel. We finally get to see what Eri saw in Ren and more of why he’s so devoted to her. Carousels had always frightened her as a child because she couldn’t see her parents once the ride started turning. Then her parents died, and that remained a painful memory. Ren says, “We probably only had each other,” which indicates that his family is no longer in the picture for one reason or another, so two very lonely people probably ended up drawn to one another. Ren was all Eri had left, and she was the most important thing in his life, so naturally, he took this role as her protector seriously. After hearing this story, Shinji realizes that something happened, and it’s why Ren’s been acting off for the past two days. And now I have to give credit to the best director ever here-Mother Nature-as a storm suddenly rolls in during the episode. You can clearly see that it started raining on them in the middle of shooting, with puddles on the ground and Shinji’s hair soaked later on, and just as Ren finishes talking, fog rolls in and the wind picks up. It really adds to the atmosphere, and you can see why the director decided not to stop shooting. Remembering what the doctor told him, Ren reminds Shinji of his promise to fight him one day and asks him to fight now. Shinji is shocked and devastated that Ren is asking this, but he agrees. They leave the park, leaving Yui behind-which I think serves two purposes. First, it spares her feelings, since neither of them can stand hurting her, and second, it keeps her from stopping them as she always does.
Knight and Ryuki meet in battle, with Ryuki reluctant, which gives Knight the upper hand. Kanzaki watches from the mansion, insisting that this fight is all they can do for Yui. Yui tracks her friends down, but she can’t stop the fight. In a do-or-die moment, Ryuki begins to find the will to survive and kicks Knight away. He reminds himself that he promised Ren he’d fight, and he charges in seriously, matching Knight so perfectly that Knight has to pull out his Survive card. “Climax 5,” a remix of “Kanzaki Shiro” from EPISODE FINAL plays during this, really emphasizing how big it is. Knight Survive hits Ryuki, leaving him once again hesitant to fight back, and Ren just demands, sounding very much like Kanzaki, “Fight.” I’ll get on that a little more next episode, and I’ll really cover it in the Endpoint. Finally, Ryuki stands and pulls out his own Survive card, and the new ending theme, “Revolution,” begins to play. While I’m partial to “Hatenaki Inochi” myself, I do like this song a lot too. I think the importance of the shift to themes is that “Revolution” is Ryuki’s “Time Judged All.” “Time Judged All” from OOO is the theme of both Eiji and Ankh, moreso than it’s the theme of Kamen Rider OOO TaJaDor. The lyrics of “Hatenaki Inochi” are a little vague, though it does suggest that the second verse is about Ren. Still, that one’s treated as Shinji’s theme. “Revolution,” on the other hand, makes it very obvious that the second verse is about Ren. And this is something that I think first-time viewers have a hard time with-figuring out just who this show is really about. I’ll explain it more in the Endpoint, but the songs, particularly “Revolution,” prove that it’s not a story about just one Rider.
Flames surround the two Riders, and in a swirl of fire, the Drag Visor leaves Ryuki’s wrist and becomes a gun-like weapon. And yes, it’s a gun that transforms into a sword, which means it’s awesome < /Linkara >. Ryuki places the card inside, and the flames swirl around him, upgrading his armor to red and gold. Ryuki Survive swears not to die and warns his friend that there’s no turning back, no redemption, if he takes even one life. But Knight Survive insists that’s what he wants…
Enter Tiger (Yasuko Kobayashi): The Survives take to battle, and to be completely honest, Ren is completely losing his shit throughout the fight. Normally in a fight, he’s cool, collected, and most of all, quiet. You’ll hear grunts and an occasional “toh!” the traditional Kamen Rider battle cry, but he’s not one for screaming and charging like an absolute madman, which he does here. And way back when I reviewed episode 12, I said that Satoshi Matsuda did an excellent job at portraying quiet moments. Which was code for the fact that I really wasn’t a fan of his screaming throughout this episode. Playing Ren really didn’t give him a whole lot to work with in terms of ADR-as opposed to more recent Kamen Riders, who can’t seem to shut the hell up in battle, like Den-O, W, and Meteor-and I really can’t say anything about his voice acting ability. Maybe he improved by the time the Dragon Knight dub rolled around and he started voicing Len. Who knows? In any case, I’m willing to put the blame on the very sudden shift from depressed and quiet to desperate and loud, with almost no transition in-between. Anyway, Ryuki Survive is hard-pressed to keep up, his will to survive and to save Ren’s soul nearly overwhelmed by Ren’s desire to damn himself for the woman he loves. For the most part, desperation is allowing Knight Survive to keep an edge, but Ryuki Survive is forced to use Strange Vent, which turns into Knight’s next card, Trick Vent, once again evening the odds. Yui can still hear the battle and escapes under a tree, covering her ears until everything goes silent. Shinji staggers over, injured, calling weakly for Ren has he collapses. Elsewhere, where they can’t find him, Ren staggers away injured, knowing he can’t go back home to them and still haunted by the doctor’s words.
As for Zolda and Ouja’s battle, Zolda is forced to retreat when Ouja throws off his Final Vent. Kitaoka runs through the alleys, finally facing a dead end. He drops to his knees as Asakura catches up to him, begging him to spare him. Out of disgust, Asakura lets him escape, but it was all a ruse so the police could corner him. Kitaoka, ever the magnificent bastard, reveals that he purposely ran to this dead end and let himself get caught because there were no mirrors or glass nearby, allowing the police a safe capture. The police surround Asakura and, according to Kitaoka’s instructions, remove his deck before making the arrest. But Goro can’t help but note that Asakura let himself get captured pretty easily and wonders what he’s up to. They go to celebrate with Reiko, who’s explaining her theory to Okubo now that she’s seen the lab full of mirrors, but when she hears that Asakura was arrested, she nearly runs Kitaoka down trying to follow the story. Kitaoka is forced to give his flowers to Megumi and Shimada, who go with him and Goro to a karaoke parlor, where Kitaoka is clearly drinking himself to oblivion to forget the other three singing incoherently.
Back home, Shinji gets bandaged up, and he and Yui are worried. Yui reveals what she learned when she visited Eri off-screen, putting Ren’s actions into perspective for Shinji. Tearfully, Yui admits there’s no way Ren can win in time to save Eri, not with so many Riders still out there. Shinji then realizes that Ren knows that, and he tells her that he’s not going to be able to stop him. He knows that Ren will fight to the end, even if it means he’s going to die. Yui asks if Shinji’s just going to watch Ren destroy himself, but Shinji promises to find another way. He reasons that if he can end the Rider War, then that just might be able to save Ren, and he asks Yui to watch over Eri in Ren’s place.
So Shinji jumps the fence at Seimeiin and dashes into Room 401. Nakamura and Kagawa are inside when he barges in, confused and asking if this was Kanzaki’s lab. Nakamura begins to panic, but Kagawa calmly asks if he’s with Reiko, stopping his apprentice from kicking the reporter out. Kagawa asks what story they’re following for Shinji to come so early in the morning, but Shinji apologizes and promise to come back later. As he tries to make his exit, he crashes into another student, Satoru Tojo, causing him to drop his papers. As Shinji picks them up, he sees that they’re all about the Mirror World. Tojo snatches them out of his hands and Nakamura throws him out. Shinji pounds on the door and tries to get them to talk, but he senses some Monsters and runs off. The three researchers watch, intrigued when Shinji suddenly stops. They see Ryuki head into the Mirror World to fight, confirming Kagawa’s suspicions. Ryuki battles the Monsters, getting an unexpected save by Tiger. Going to Survive, he fights alongside the new Rider to defeat them. Shinji then returns to the building, seeing the researchers head back to the lab, realizing one of them is Tiger. He stops Kagawa and sees the Tiger deck. Kagawa reveals that Kanzaki sent those Monsters after them, and Tojo explains that it’s because they’re in Kanzaki’s way. Kagawa adds another reason: They know how to seal off the Mirror World. Shinji is in shock and offers to help, insisting that he wants to stop the fighting. Kagawa admits, though, that he can’t trust him yet and takes his students inside the lab. But Shinji takes hope from this revelation, realizing that there will no longer be a reason for them to fight, including Ren.
Ren, however, has been running himself ragged trying to challenge other Riders. He despairs when nobody answers at Kitaoka’s, and then he learns that Asakura was arrested, leaving him with no options. He doesn’t notice that somebody’s been watching him every step of the way, with gold feathers falling from a nearby mirror. Bloodied and exhausted, he stops off to wash up in a park. Kanzaki appears before him in glorious lens flare, telling him that he doesn’t need to rush right now to kill the other Riders. He tells him not to force himself to fight. Yeah. You heard it here, folks. Ren tells him to stop shitting with him and that he doesn’t fight for Kanzaki. Kanzaki says he needs Ren to fight someone, but Ren insists on fighting him, believing that he’s Odin. And if you remember me mentioning back in episode 5 that Ren really isn’t the best at putting clues together, this time, it’s understandable. The series goes out of its way to make you think that Kanzaki is Odin, but the truth is that he’s not. Odin is never revealed on-screen, but supplemental info says that he’s some homeless guy that Kanzaki recruited-no word if he was Eiji Hino. Sure, call it a copout if you want, but I kind of like that it wasn’t Kanzaki. Kanzaki is the ultimate cheater. No way in hell is he going to risk himself like that. He’s going to cheat, and he’s going to grab whatever pathetic person he can to do his dirty work for him. He’s not a very good person.
Kanzaki warns Ren that it’s too soon and that he doesn’t stand a chance against Odin, but in the ultimate role reversal, Ren yells at Kanzaki to fight. Kanzaki’s reaction is pretty much “Your funeral,” as he vanishes, leaving behind gold feathers. Knight goes in to battle Odin, who asks if he really thinks he can win, since he choked the last time he had to kill another Rider ( episode 17). Knight affirms he will and goes straight to Survive. But it’s not enough, and Knight Survive is getting thrown all over the place. Teleportation makes a swordfight impossible, and even Final Vent is trumped when Odin flips upside down and attacks him with a sword, injuring him to the point he can’t maintain the form. To add insult to injury, Odin attacks with exploding feathers-not a card, by the way, in case you were doubting how much of a cheating bastard this guy is-while he’s down and makes it impossible to escape. At some point, Knight managed to scan Sword Vent and tried to start another swordfight, but Odin throws him to the ground, leaving him apparently helpless. He brings up his sword, ready to drive it into Ren’s belt. As a last-ditch effort to survive, Knight raises his own sword as Odin makes his move, impaling him before he can strike-a lethal blow made in self-defense. Both are shocked by the action, but as he disintegrates, Odin congratulates Ren on killing without hesitation and tells him to keep fighting. When Odin is finally gone, Knight looks at his hands, shaking-much as Shinji had done back in episode 14-and begins to scream in horror, with an image of Ren superimposed over Knight. At the same time, Eri seems to react to Ren’s pain, shedding a tear as she opens her eyes.
And Kagawa, Nakamura, and Tojo are all holding identical Tiger decks…
The Battle Ends (Yasuko Kobayashi): While Yui watches the doctors check on Eri, Ren practically falls out of the Mirror World and staggers away, completely oblivious to Kanzaki watching him from the background before walking away. Yui calls Shinji to tell him the good news, but she can’t get in contact with Ren. Shinji promises to find him before he starts a fight, knowing that Ren no longer has to fight and that if Kagawa succeeds with his plans, he’ll never have to again. So he goes to visit Kitaoka, who is completely hung over, along with Goro and Shimada (Megumi is perfectly sober and crazy). They say he’s “sick,” but it’s very obvious to adults that they’re hung over, with Kitaoka’s sensitivity to sound and Shimada’s random nausea. Kitaoka, naturally, hasn’t seen Ren, and Shinji realizes that Ren’s going to go after Asakura. But Kitaoka tells him that Asakura’s just been captured. Shinji turns on the TV, giving us a quick glimpse at local programming, including a shot of Kamen Rider Agito’s actor in a J-drama, and he comes across a news report that Ren saw when he stopped for a moment to rest. Asakura will be transported that afternoon to Kanto Prison. Shinji races home, where Sanako looks up from the news to try to stop him. She points out that Ren’s gone missing and asks if they had a fight, and she tries to ask Shinji to fill in for Ren’s duties at the shop, but he doesn’t listen. This is going to be important a little later on. Shinji tells Yui about the transfer and his suspicions that Ren will attack, so they both go to intercept him. Yui manages to stop him hiding among the press corps vans and goes after him, but suddenly, someone pushes her into oncoming traffic. Shinji rescues her just in time, and shaky, she explains to him and bystanders that someone pushed her. As the transport begins, Ren joins the parade of press vans.
Inside the transport van, Asakura pretends to be sick long enough to pull out one of his contract cards from his shirt. Turns out that he had slipped it from his deck during the arrest and hid it throughout holding. He tears away one of the newspapers covering the windows and unleashes Metalgelas, laughing like a maniac as it eats the police inside the van. The transport van loses control as Asakura takes over, creating several crashes with police and journalist vehicles. Shinji’s van and Reiko’s car manage to break through and continue the pursuit. Asakura escapes and terrifies the lead inspector into freezing, then steals his gun, knocks him out, and grabs his deck from the patrol car. Shinji and Yui continue the chase as Ren gets ahead of them, but Reiko loses them and Megumi tries to pursue on foot.
The chase leads to the docks, where Asakura’s tire blows out, forcing him to abandon the van. Ren staggers after him, and with him still injured, Shinji and Yui are easily able to intercept. Shinji tells Yui to handle Ren while he goes after Asakura. In a rather brilliant moment, Yui fails to talk any sense into Ren and just outright slaps him. Nice to see that when she can’t be the voice of reason, she’s willing to be the fist of reason. All sound is drowned out by sirens, leaving it to Ayano Sugiyama and Satoshi Matsuda to show off their physical acting skills for this part of the scene, with Yui shaking Ren as she tells him what’s happened. Then all you can hear is Yui breathing through tears as Ren seems to wake up and heads to his bike, overwhelmed by the revelation and knowing he has to get to the hospital. Awesome work, guys.
Not to be outdone, there’s an awesome un-henshinned fight scene where police swarm Asakura, and he takes them all down in the time it takes Shinji to run over. Asakura challenges him to a fight, and though Shinji hates to fight, he knows he has to. Tiger walks over as they enter battle, and Ryuki uses Survive, revealing Dragreder’s evolved form of Dragranzer, who casually bats aside Ouja and Metalgelas mid-Final Vent. Unfortunately, it only turned Ouja on, since the uber-violence gets him all hot. In an aside to the real world, the media is able to reach the transport van, and Reiko is the first to jump aboard, naturally, and she immediately spots the newspapers covering the windows. When she hears that it was Kitaoka’s idea, she realizes that he must know something related to this case. Back to the battle, Tiger finally intervenes, nearly killing Ouja, but he leaves without finishing him off. Ryuki Survive asks how to seal the Mirror World, but when he doesn’t get an answer, he just hauls an injured and unconscious Asakura back to the police. Yes. In front of the police and all the press. I have no idea how nobody saw this beat up reporter emerge from the windows of a police car.
Ren makes his way to Eri’s room, but he freezes at the door when he realizes how bloodied he is from fighting. And like before, all the background music is cut, so it heightens the tension as he doubts himself. But instead of running, he swallows his fear and goes inside. When Eri sees him, she asks what’s wrong. He sits on her bed and asks if he’s changed-the biggest question he’s been dealing with all throughout the series. But she smiles and says, yes, that he seems softer than before. He then shows her the ring and holds her close, relieved to have her back even as she apologizes and cries.
Yui and Shinji relax, knowing they’ve saved their friend. But then something pulls Yui into the Mirror World, and Shinji henshins to save her…
Megumi is still questioning Shinji on how he came out of that glass, and for the life of him, he can’t think of an answer. He asks her to keep it secret, but she wants to keep trying to find him out. Joy. When he returns home, he pulls Ren aside and asks for help, wondering if maybe it’s better to just be honest with everybody. Ren immediately starts teasing him and refuses to help, even though Shinji points out that he helped when the very same thing happened to Ren just a few episodes ago. Ren however argues that they’re even, since he deducted 500 yen from Shinji’s debt for that incident. That would be the price of a Kamen Rider Ryuki gashapon from Kamen Rider Decade (Keyblade not included). When I got it in 2011, it was about $6 US. That’s how much Ren is willing to pay Shinji back for helping him deal with a little kid discovering his identity, who proceeded to steal Shinji’s deck, nearly became a Rider, and then got traumatized alongside Goro watching Ren and Kitaoka fight. Nice to know we can count on you.
Meanwhile, at ORE Journal, Reiko returns from her interview (which may not have been in America after all-don’t ask me), utterly shocked. She pushes Okubo against the wall and makes him very uncomfortable as she asks him to believe what she has to tell him. After she explains everything that happened with Prof. Potratz, they look at the photos of the scenes of the disappearances with renewed vigor. Reiko suspects a connection between Potratz’s disappearance and the general weirdness behind Asakura. She shows Okubo the surveillance pic of Kanzaki and tells him what she learned about Shiro Takami’s death. Now, she’s managed to link Shiro Takami to the Shiro Kanzaki who disappeared from Seimeiin four months later. Even stranger, Kanzaki applied to Seimeiin right after Takami died at Ackley. Okubo agrees that the pattern is suspicious: The Schrödinger’s cat that is Shiro Takami/Kanzaki, who disappeared twice and may be alive or dead; Asakura, who is a fucking Houdini in their eyes, had Kanzaki drop by Kanto Prison; and Potratz, who knew Shiro, disappeared suddenly right in front of Reiko while trying to give her answers. Reiko feels something is unnatural about all of this, since people don’t vanish into thin air, and Okubo agrees that Kanzaki is at the heart of it all. In short, our supporting cast has more of an idea on what’s going on behind Kanzaki than our heroes do, though they don’t realize it. This is why I love this series.
The next day, a Monster electrocutes a bank robber and hauls him off for dinner. Shinji is reporting on the scene, but he’s interrupted by Megumi. He suddenly senses the Monster and tries to run off to fight, but Megumi catches him before he can henshin. So he pulls the old “Look, a diversion!” redirection and runs, but he loses the Monster in the Mirror World. Don’t worry; he’s able to defeat it at the end of the episode. Honestly, the goings on with the ORE staff are really the focus of this plot before the next arc kicks off. Having taken a potty break from running after Shinji, Megumi suddenly comes to a realization in front of the mirror. She runs into him again and says she’s figured it out and is going to expose him at work later. When they return, Reiko and Okubo are still focused on the case, and Reiko decides to head to Seimeiin for answers. With all of this going on, Shinji wonders if maybe it would be better to tell them everything, though Shimada has no clue what he’s talking about as he mulls it over. Then Megumi walks in. Dressed in a sparkly magician’s assistant outfit. And calling herself Princess Megumi. Shimada has totally met her match. She pulls out one of those iron maiden-like boxes magicians use to cut people in half and puts Shimada inside, apparently cutting her in half and then making her disappear before reappearing. Megumi asks Shinji if this is what he’d done, relieving the hell out of him. But Reiko walks up to the mirrors, holding the photos, realizing just how many reflective surfaces were around when she investigated or experienced disappearances.
Unfortunately, while Shinji’s been flailing and while Reiko and Okubo have been piecing together the puzzle, stuff has happened to the rest of our main and supporting cast. Yui suddenly becomes weak at the shop and drops a teacup as she collapses, dizzy. Unbeknownst to her or Sanako, she’s beginning to disintegrate, much like a Rider who’s been in the Mirror World too long. One of Kanzaki’s mirrors breaks as he senses this (to be perfectly honest, I don’t know if it’s cracking to alert him or if he’s psychically cracking it as he discovers this, but given events in the finale, I’m leaning toward the latter), so he goes to visit Kitaoka. He asks if Kitaoka’s still in the fight, calling him out on not doing much. Kitaoka explains that his strategy was to let the others kill each other off first, but Kanzaki reminds him that the doctors only gave him another three to six months to live. Meanwhile, Goro notices Asakura lurking on the property. Kanzaki next visits Eri and somehow causes her vitals to go haywire, and she has to fight to stay alive. This is one of the more confusing aspects about Kanzaki. I can fully understand the whole control over time and over Mirror Monsters, but…he’s able to control reality. There are things that he cannot change, which we’ll see him come face-to-face with at the end, but he has some amazing psychic ability that lets him warp reality. It’s not explained, but he clearly does. Ren races to the hospital and watches helplessly as the medical team tries to stabilize her. But the doctor pulls him into the office to look over her brain scans and gives him the bad news: she’s dying. She’s out of time, and she will die within the next few days.
Yui is still feeling dizzy, still unaware that she’s disintegrating. Kanzaki looks at the painting he’d rescued in episode 28. Kitaoka collapses at his desk. Asakura returns, and he and Kitaoka prepare to fight. And in Room 401 of Seimeiin University, we see a new Kamen Rider, Tiger…
The Battle of Friendship (Yasuko Kobayashi): As you can tell by this title, this is the big one. Shinji senses a Mirror World presence and finds Kanzaki, who tosses him a Survive card (Rekka-firestorm). He tells Shinji it’s for when he fights other Riders, as he wants Shinji to use this power to overwhelm them, and he warns him that he’ll have to fight with a stronger power soon. At the same time, Yui wakes up, hearing her brother swear to protect her. Shinji returns home to find Ren still sitting on his bike, staring at his deck and clearly troubled. He won’t explain anything, though, and gives Shinji an unreadable look as they head inside, where they find a large stack of dishes waiting for them.
The escalation of the fight that breaks out over this is great, beautifully portraying all three of the characters involved. Ren tells Shinji to do the dishes, though Shinji asks why. Ren says something rude to try to end the conversation, but Shinji keeps pressing on. This begins to set Ren off, and he throws a towel at Shinji, telling him to do it. This is usually the point where Shinji just does whatever Ren tells him to do. But now, he’s a stronger person and really sick of taking this shit, and he throws the towel back at him. Yes. Shinji. Shinji’s the one who escalates this. The one who doesn’t want to fight. Meanwhile, you’re watching Ren’s fight-or-flight instinct in action, and it’s symbolic for the rest of his arc. He can’t run away anymore, and he has to fight. As they continue throwing the towel back and forth at each other, Yui watches until Shinji ends up breaking some dishes. She asks why they have to fight, and Shinji once again escalates the confrontation by calling Ren a child for his temper. The fight becomes even more physical when Ren stops at the door, and Shinji storms over and says that even though he doesn’t know what’s going on, Ren is constantly acting cool and shutting them out to go on alone. It finally gets Ren confrontational, and he grabs Shinji by the shirt and pushes him back into the shop, asking if it’s better never to shut up the way Shinji acts. The two are about to come to blows, and finally, Yui steps in. They’ve grabbed each other by the shirt, and it’s clear someone’s going to make the first swing if she doesn’t break it up, so she splashes them both with water and tells them to stop. And at this point, poor Sanako walks in to see that something bad just went down.
Taking a break for a moment to look at the rest of our cast (and trust me, we’re going to need this break), let’s start with ORE. Reiko visits Seimeiin and spots Hajime Nakamura, last seen in episode 17. Recognizing him from the yearbook photo she apparently researched, she asks him about Kanzaki. He tries to deny ever knowing him, but she begs him as the only one left from Ejima Lab. But as with Yui, he completely shuts her out. Never one to be deterred, she decides to check out Room 401, where she’s blasted by a strange wind. There, she meets Professor Kagawa, who’s taken over the lab. He’s polite to her at first, insisting that it’s no problem that Reiko came in, since people tend to barge in on him all the time. The covered windows are to try to limit just how much of his research people see. He confirms that Ejima Lab had previously been in that room, and he explains that Kanzaki was a rogue student that Prof. Ejima could not control. But Reiko spots the mirrors and realizes that she was right about the connection, knowing these mirrors must have been integral to Kanzaki’s mysterious research. She’s about to touch one, but Kagawa suddenly turns cold and pulls her hand away, warning her not to touch.
And while all of this stuff was going on, Asakura arrived at Kitaoka’s only to find nobody was home-because Goro put Kitaoka in the car and drove off without explanation. The next day, Kitaoka is allowed to return home, and he begins preparing for a meeting. Goro warns him not to go, and Kitaoka points out that he knows Asakura was there the other day and so Goro spirited him away. In a really nice moment that betrays Kitaoka’s true humanity, he says he understands Goro’s concern, but he chooses to fight because he wants to, and so Goro instead decides to drive Kitaoka to his appointment. But on the road, Asakura shows up in the middle of the street. Goro starts to charge, intending to run him down. When he realizes that Goro is serious about this, Kitaoka jerks the wheel away and tells Goro that it’s not for him to kill Asakura. Yes, Kitaoka also has matured. And the two Riders go to fight.
Now, back to our heroes. Breakfast the morning after the fight is an incredibly awkward and silent affair. Ren, Shinji, and Yui mostly pick at their food and won’t speak or make eye contact with anybody. Sanako finally has enough and kicks them out of the house for the day. While they’re not sure what to do, it dawns on Shinji and Yui that this is the first time all three of them have gone out anywhere as a group-usually it’s just two of them with the other out. There’s a hilarious bit where a woman passes by them walking a dog, and Shinji is absolutely terrified and hides behind Yui, and they realize a few minutes later that Ren was keeping his distance from the dog too. Our heroes. They decide to head to an amusement park, Nihon-land, for the rest of the day. Now, there is a park in Shizuoka near Mt. Fuji called Nihon-land (or Nippon-land) HOW, and the area they’re at in Ryuki is heavily forested, but from what I’ve seen of the pictures of the real life Nihon-land, it’s a little kiddy-ish compared to what we see here. The one we see here I think is the same amusement park refugee camp from the later Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Lost. Either way, it’s out of the city.
This easily could be a filler episode written as an excuse to give the cast a vacation (Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie and Power Rangers Zeo “No Business Like Snow Business”), but Kobayashi always seems to turn these episodes into a character spotlight moment: in Den-O, Ryotaro follows Yuto to what looks like the exact same park for a really awkward discussion about Yuto’s and Sakurai’s motivations; in OOO, both times they go to an amusement park, it explores Eiji’s PTSD and his lack of desire; and in Go-Busters, we get a focus on Yoko as she tries to give the Buddyroids the best day ever when she learned it was their birthday. I think even Shinkenger and Power Rangers Samurai had a character focus on Kotoha/Emily in their amusement park episodes. And this is the case here. When Shinji and Yui are having fun, Shinji keeps having to tell Ren to have fun and teasing him when he starts seeming to. Even so, Ren sits out one ride and stares at his deck, still torn by the conflict in his heart. What does he want? His love or his friends? He can’t have both, and he sees that now. Kanzaki watches his agony with a smile-and this is the most disturbing part for me. He seems to enjoy watching Ren suffer. Now, granted, he knows that Ren’s going to make the choice that he wants him to make, but it doesn’t change what he did to get Ren to this point. He already put Eri in a coma, and now he’s killing her, just to motivate her boyfriend into acting. This makes it very hard to forgive him down the line, and it’s something I’ll discuss in depth during the Endpoint Analysis.
Shinji and Ren sit out another ride when Yui wants to go on the carousel. Shinji notes that Yui seems like such a kid for liking it, and that comment prompts Ren to start opening up about his past with Eri, and he admits that Eri hated the carousel. We finally get to see what Eri saw in Ren and more of why he’s so devoted to her. Carousels had always frightened her as a child because she couldn’t see her parents once the ride started turning. Then her parents died, and that remained a painful memory. Ren says, “We probably only had each other,” which indicates that his family is no longer in the picture for one reason or another, so two very lonely people probably ended up drawn to one another. Ren was all Eri had left, and she was the most important thing in his life, so naturally, he took this role as her protector seriously. After hearing this story, Shinji realizes that something happened, and it’s why Ren’s been acting off for the past two days. And now I have to give credit to the best director ever here-Mother Nature-as a storm suddenly rolls in during the episode. You can clearly see that it started raining on them in the middle of shooting, with puddles on the ground and Shinji’s hair soaked later on, and just as Ren finishes talking, fog rolls in and the wind picks up. It really adds to the atmosphere, and you can see why the director decided not to stop shooting. Remembering what the doctor told him, Ren reminds Shinji of his promise to fight him one day and asks him to fight now. Shinji is shocked and devastated that Ren is asking this, but he agrees. They leave the park, leaving Yui behind-which I think serves two purposes. First, it spares her feelings, since neither of them can stand hurting her, and second, it keeps her from stopping them as she always does.
Knight and Ryuki meet in battle, with Ryuki reluctant, which gives Knight the upper hand. Kanzaki watches from the mansion, insisting that this fight is all they can do for Yui. Yui tracks her friends down, but she can’t stop the fight. In a do-or-die moment, Ryuki begins to find the will to survive and kicks Knight away. He reminds himself that he promised Ren he’d fight, and he charges in seriously, matching Knight so perfectly that Knight has to pull out his Survive card. “Climax 5,” a remix of “Kanzaki Shiro” from EPISODE FINAL plays during this, really emphasizing how big it is. Knight Survive hits Ryuki, leaving him once again hesitant to fight back, and Ren just demands, sounding very much like Kanzaki, “Fight.” I’ll get on that a little more next episode, and I’ll really cover it in the Endpoint. Finally, Ryuki stands and pulls out his own Survive card, and the new ending theme, “Revolution,” begins to play. While I’m partial to “Hatenaki Inochi” myself, I do like this song a lot too. I think the importance of the shift to themes is that “Revolution” is Ryuki’s “Time Judged All.” “Time Judged All” from OOO is the theme of both Eiji and Ankh, moreso than it’s the theme of Kamen Rider OOO TaJaDor. The lyrics of “Hatenaki Inochi” are a little vague, though it does suggest that the second verse is about Ren. Still, that one’s treated as Shinji’s theme. “Revolution,” on the other hand, makes it very obvious that the second verse is about Ren. And this is something that I think first-time viewers have a hard time with-figuring out just who this show is really about. I’ll explain it more in the Endpoint, but the songs, particularly “Revolution,” prove that it’s not a story about just one Rider.
Flames surround the two Riders, and in a swirl of fire, the Drag Visor leaves Ryuki’s wrist and becomes a gun-like weapon. And yes, it’s a gun that transforms into a sword, which means it’s awesome < /Linkara >. Ryuki places the card inside, and the flames swirl around him, upgrading his armor to red and gold. Ryuki Survive swears not to die and warns his friend that there’s no turning back, no redemption, if he takes even one life. But Knight Survive insists that’s what he wants…
Enter Tiger (Yasuko Kobayashi): The Survives take to battle, and to be completely honest, Ren is completely losing his shit throughout the fight. Normally in a fight, he’s cool, collected, and most of all, quiet. You’ll hear grunts and an occasional “toh!” the traditional Kamen Rider battle cry, but he’s not one for screaming and charging like an absolute madman, which he does here. And way back when I reviewed episode 12, I said that Satoshi Matsuda did an excellent job at portraying quiet moments. Which was code for the fact that I really wasn’t a fan of his screaming throughout this episode. Playing Ren really didn’t give him a whole lot to work with in terms of ADR-as opposed to more recent Kamen Riders, who can’t seem to shut the hell up in battle, like Den-O, W, and Meteor-and I really can’t say anything about his voice acting ability. Maybe he improved by the time the Dragon Knight dub rolled around and he started voicing Len. Who knows? In any case, I’m willing to put the blame on the very sudden shift from depressed and quiet to desperate and loud, with almost no transition in-between. Anyway, Ryuki Survive is hard-pressed to keep up, his will to survive and to save Ren’s soul nearly overwhelmed by Ren’s desire to damn himself for the woman he loves. For the most part, desperation is allowing Knight Survive to keep an edge, but Ryuki Survive is forced to use Strange Vent, which turns into Knight’s next card, Trick Vent, once again evening the odds. Yui can still hear the battle and escapes under a tree, covering her ears until everything goes silent. Shinji staggers over, injured, calling weakly for Ren has he collapses. Elsewhere, where they can’t find him, Ren staggers away injured, knowing he can’t go back home to them and still haunted by the doctor’s words.
As for Zolda and Ouja’s battle, Zolda is forced to retreat when Ouja throws off his Final Vent. Kitaoka runs through the alleys, finally facing a dead end. He drops to his knees as Asakura catches up to him, begging him to spare him. Out of disgust, Asakura lets him escape, but it was all a ruse so the police could corner him. Kitaoka, ever the magnificent bastard, reveals that he purposely ran to this dead end and let himself get caught because there were no mirrors or glass nearby, allowing the police a safe capture. The police surround Asakura and, according to Kitaoka’s instructions, remove his deck before making the arrest. But Goro can’t help but note that Asakura let himself get captured pretty easily and wonders what he’s up to. They go to celebrate with Reiko, who’s explaining her theory to Okubo now that she’s seen the lab full of mirrors, but when she hears that Asakura was arrested, she nearly runs Kitaoka down trying to follow the story. Kitaoka is forced to give his flowers to Megumi and Shimada, who go with him and Goro to a karaoke parlor, where Kitaoka is clearly drinking himself to oblivion to forget the other three singing incoherently.
Back home, Shinji gets bandaged up, and he and Yui are worried. Yui reveals what she learned when she visited Eri off-screen, putting Ren’s actions into perspective for Shinji. Tearfully, Yui admits there’s no way Ren can win in time to save Eri, not with so many Riders still out there. Shinji then realizes that Ren knows that, and he tells her that he’s not going to be able to stop him. He knows that Ren will fight to the end, even if it means he’s going to die. Yui asks if Shinji’s just going to watch Ren destroy himself, but Shinji promises to find another way. He reasons that if he can end the Rider War, then that just might be able to save Ren, and he asks Yui to watch over Eri in Ren’s place.
So Shinji jumps the fence at Seimeiin and dashes into Room 401. Nakamura and Kagawa are inside when he barges in, confused and asking if this was Kanzaki’s lab. Nakamura begins to panic, but Kagawa calmly asks if he’s with Reiko, stopping his apprentice from kicking the reporter out. Kagawa asks what story they’re following for Shinji to come so early in the morning, but Shinji apologizes and promise to come back later. As he tries to make his exit, he crashes into another student, Satoru Tojo, causing him to drop his papers. As Shinji picks them up, he sees that they’re all about the Mirror World. Tojo snatches them out of his hands and Nakamura throws him out. Shinji pounds on the door and tries to get them to talk, but he senses some Monsters and runs off. The three researchers watch, intrigued when Shinji suddenly stops. They see Ryuki head into the Mirror World to fight, confirming Kagawa’s suspicions. Ryuki battles the Monsters, getting an unexpected save by Tiger. Going to Survive, he fights alongside the new Rider to defeat them. Shinji then returns to the building, seeing the researchers head back to the lab, realizing one of them is Tiger. He stops Kagawa and sees the Tiger deck. Kagawa reveals that Kanzaki sent those Monsters after them, and Tojo explains that it’s because they’re in Kanzaki’s way. Kagawa adds another reason: They know how to seal off the Mirror World. Shinji is in shock and offers to help, insisting that he wants to stop the fighting. Kagawa admits, though, that he can’t trust him yet and takes his students inside the lab. But Shinji takes hope from this revelation, realizing that there will no longer be a reason for them to fight, including Ren.
Ren, however, has been running himself ragged trying to challenge other Riders. He despairs when nobody answers at Kitaoka’s, and then he learns that Asakura was arrested, leaving him with no options. He doesn’t notice that somebody’s been watching him every step of the way, with gold feathers falling from a nearby mirror. Bloodied and exhausted, he stops off to wash up in a park. Kanzaki appears before him in glorious lens flare, telling him that he doesn’t need to rush right now to kill the other Riders. He tells him not to force himself to fight. Yeah. You heard it here, folks. Ren tells him to stop shitting with him and that he doesn’t fight for Kanzaki. Kanzaki says he needs Ren to fight someone, but Ren insists on fighting him, believing that he’s Odin. And if you remember me mentioning back in episode 5 that Ren really isn’t the best at putting clues together, this time, it’s understandable. The series goes out of its way to make you think that Kanzaki is Odin, but the truth is that he’s not. Odin is never revealed on-screen, but supplemental info says that he’s some homeless guy that Kanzaki recruited-no word if he was Eiji Hino. Sure, call it a copout if you want, but I kind of like that it wasn’t Kanzaki. Kanzaki is the ultimate cheater. No way in hell is he going to risk himself like that. He’s going to cheat, and he’s going to grab whatever pathetic person he can to do his dirty work for him. He’s not a very good person.
Kanzaki warns Ren that it’s too soon and that he doesn’t stand a chance against Odin, but in the ultimate role reversal, Ren yells at Kanzaki to fight. Kanzaki’s reaction is pretty much “Your funeral,” as he vanishes, leaving behind gold feathers. Knight goes in to battle Odin, who asks if he really thinks he can win, since he choked the last time he had to kill another Rider ( episode 17). Knight affirms he will and goes straight to Survive. But it’s not enough, and Knight Survive is getting thrown all over the place. Teleportation makes a swordfight impossible, and even Final Vent is trumped when Odin flips upside down and attacks him with a sword, injuring him to the point he can’t maintain the form. To add insult to injury, Odin attacks with exploding feathers-not a card, by the way, in case you were doubting how much of a cheating bastard this guy is-while he’s down and makes it impossible to escape. At some point, Knight managed to scan Sword Vent and tried to start another swordfight, but Odin throws him to the ground, leaving him apparently helpless. He brings up his sword, ready to drive it into Ren’s belt. As a last-ditch effort to survive, Knight raises his own sword as Odin makes his move, impaling him before he can strike-a lethal blow made in self-defense. Both are shocked by the action, but as he disintegrates, Odin congratulates Ren on killing without hesitation and tells him to keep fighting. When Odin is finally gone, Knight looks at his hands, shaking-much as Shinji had done back in episode 14-and begins to scream in horror, with an image of Ren superimposed over Knight. At the same time, Eri seems to react to Ren’s pain, shedding a tear as she opens her eyes.
And Kagawa, Nakamura, and Tojo are all holding identical Tiger decks…
The Battle Ends (Yasuko Kobayashi): While Yui watches the doctors check on Eri, Ren practically falls out of the Mirror World and staggers away, completely oblivious to Kanzaki watching him from the background before walking away. Yui calls Shinji to tell him the good news, but she can’t get in contact with Ren. Shinji promises to find him before he starts a fight, knowing that Ren no longer has to fight and that if Kagawa succeeds with his plans, he’ll never have to again. So he goes to visit Kitaoka, who is completely hung over, along with Goro and Shimada (Megumi is perfectly sober and crazy). They say he’s “sick,” but it’s very obvious to adults that they’re hung over, with Kitaoka’s sensitivity to sound and Shimada’s random nausea. Kitaoka, naturally, hasn’t seen Ren, and Shinji realizes that Ren’s going to go after Asakura. But Kitaoka tells him that Asakura’s just been captured. Shinji turns on the TV, giving us a quick glimpse at local programming, including a shot of Kamen Rider Agito’s actor in a J-drama, and he comes across a news report that Ren saw when he stopped for a moment to rest. Asakura will be transported that afternoon to Kanto Prison. Shinji races home, where Sanako looks up from the news to try to stop him. She points out that Ren’s gone missing and asks if they had a fight, and she tries to ask Shinji to fill in for Ren’s duties at the shop, but he doesn’t listen. This is going to be important a little later on. Shinji tells Yui about the transfer and his suspicions that Ren will attack, so they both go to intercept him. Yui manages to stop him hiding among the press corps vans and goes after him, but suddenly, someone pushes her into oncoming traffic. Shinji rescues her just in time, and shaky, she explains to him and bystanders that someone pushed her. As the transport begins, Ren joins the parade of press vans.
Inside the transport van, Asakura pretends to be sick long enough to pull out one of his contract cards from his shirt. Turns out that he had slipped it from his deck during the arrest and hid it throughout holding. He tears away one of the newspapers covering the windows and unleashes Metalgelas, laughing like a maniac as it eats the police inside the van. The transport van loses control as Asakura takes over, creating several crashes with police and journalist vehicles. Shinji’s van and Reiko’s car manage to break through and continue the pursuit. Asakura escapes and terrifies the lead inspector into freezing, then steals his gun, knocks him out, and grabs his deck from the patrol car. Shinji and Yui continue the chase as Ren gets ahead of them, but Reiko loses them and Megumi tries to pursue on foot.
The chase leads to the docks, where Asakura’s tire blows out, forcing him to abandon the van. Ren staggers after him, and with him still injured, Shinji and Yui are easily able to intercept. Shinji tells Yui to handle Ren while he goes after Asakura. In a rather brilliant moment, Yui fails to talk any sense into Ren and just outright slaps him. Nice to see that when she can’t be the voice of reason, she’s willing to be the fist of reason. All sound is drowned out by sirens, leaving it to Ayano Sugiyama and Satoshi Matsuda to show off their physical acting skills for this part of the scene, with Yui shaking Ren as she tells him what’s happened. Then all you can hear is Yui breathing through tears as Ren seems to wake up and heads to his bike, overwhelmed by the revelation and knowing he has to get to the hospital. Awesome work, guys.
Not to be outdone, there’s an awesome un-henshinned fight scene where police swarm Asakura, and he takes them all down in the time it takes Shinji to run over. Asakura challenges him to a fight, and though Shinji hates to fight, he knows he has to. Tiger walks over as they enter battle, and Ryuki uses Survive, revealing Dragreder’s evolved form of Dragranzer, who casually bats aside Ouja and Metalgelas mid-Final Vent. Unfortunately, it only turned Ouja on, since the uber-violence gets him all hot. In an aside to the real world, the media is able to reach the transport van, and Reiko is the first to jump aboard, naturally, and she immediately spots the newspapers covering the windows. When she hears that it was Kitaoka’s idea, she realizes that he must know something related to this case. Back to the battle, Tiger finally intervenes, nearly killing Ouja, but he leaves without finishing him off. Ryuki Survive asks how to seal the Mirror World, but when he doesn’t get an answer, he just hauls an injured and unconscious Asakura back to the police. Yes. In front of the police and all the press. I have no idea how nobody saw this beat up reporter emerge from the windows of a police car.
Ren makes his way to Eri’s room, but he freezes at the door when he realizes how bloodied he is from fighting. And like before, all the background music is cut, so it heightens the tension as he doubts himself. But instead of running, he swallows his fear and goes inside. When Eri sees him, she asks what’s wrong. He sits on her bed and asks if he’s changed-the biggest question he’s been dealing with all throughout the series. But she smiles and says, yes, that he seems softer than before. He then shows her the ring and holds her close, relieved to have her back even as she apologizes and cries.
Yui and Shinji relax, knowing they’ve saved their friend. But then something pulls Yui into the Mirror World, and Shinji henshins to save her…