#KRD176

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Kamen Rider Day 176

Episode: Kamen Rider 555 24 - “The Door to Darkness” Date watched: 1 April 2020 Original air date: 13 July 2004 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/9SnAeko Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Today’s episode is..... strange. Even by this show’s standards. There’s several subplots, people continue to be strange, mean, and creepy to each other, and it both picks up on and ends on a cliffhanger. Basically it’s an Inoue show. Let’s dig in!

The Plot

Takumi sees Kaixa fighting the Lobster and Centipede Orphenochs and joins in, but Kiba happens to also be in the area and wants to fight his mortal enemy Faiz. Faiz quickly dispatches the Horse Orphenoch by throwing him in a river (of course) and helps out Kaixa, but Murakami arrives and shoots an energy blast at them all to make them stop fighting. He then tells Kaixa he wants to speak with him.

At a cafe, Murakami apologizes to Kusaka for the attack by his Lucky Clover members, saying he didn’t order that and he will make sure they don’t act independently. He then asks Kusaka to join Lucky Clover, but he declines. He then asks why Kusaka wanted to join Lucky Clover to begin with, and he responds that he wanted to crush Smart Brain. Confusing man.

Back at Smart Brain HQ, Murakami tells Takuma and Saeko why he stopped them, he wants to get his hands on the Rider Gear and find out why the humans are able to use it, when it should only be usable by Orphenochs.

Over by a bridge, a boy who was thought to have been killed reawakens as an Oprhenoch. Smart Lady approaches him and gives him a brief rundown before just walking away.

thanks I guess

We see Kaido and Yuka talking in their residence about why Mari might be refusing Kaido’s advances. Yuka suggests that a girl wants to get married to the person she loves (obviously referring to her own feelings for Kaido) and he decides to propose to Mari. He catches her on a delivery and tries to propose to her, which she ardently rejects and tells him to leave her alone. From around a corner, Yuka watches and smiles to herself, probably intending to sabotage Kaido’s chances with Mari. As he wallows in despair, even throwing the ring into the harbor, he sees the orphenoch boy jump off a bridge, attempting suicide. Kaido jumps in the water to rescue him, discovering he’s a fellow orphenoch, and takes him under his wing. Kaido sends the boy, Kobayashi Yoshio, to talk to Murakami to see how they can gain entry to Lucky Clover and secure their well-being for life. They learn that they will be allowed to join if they can recover the Faiz and Kaixa gears, so they stage a trap.

They intercept Mari and Keitaro’s car, and they call Takumi and Kusaka to come save them from the Orphenochs. The Orphenochs, meanwhile, just act menacing without actually harming them and it’s really silly.

Takumi and Kusaka show up and transform into Faiz and Kaixa. Kobayashi, the Rabbit Orphenoch, goes straight for their belts during the fight while Kaido, the Snake, tries to keep fighting them. At one point they double up on Faiz and Kaixa aims a shot at the group, not caring if Takumi is caught in the crossfire.

with friends like this, who needs enemies?

Faiz manages to dodge and both he and Kaixa prepare their finishers, but the orphenochs run off, so the riders detransform and give chase on their bikes. (Remember when Kamen Riders used their bikes on the regular? Pepperidge Farm remembers) However, they run into a suspicious police barricade, and two officers tell them they need to inspect their luggage but can’t tell them why. They grab the briefcases with the Faiz and Kaixa gear, take it back to the patrol car for “inspection”, and then hightail it out of there before Takumi and Kusaka realize they’ve been had.

Kaido and Kobayashi meet up with Murakami, Saeko, and Takuma and hand over the stolen Rider gear. Before they can be rewarded, Takumi and Kusaka catch up and recognize their equipment. Murakami tells his subordinates to fight them but go easy, he wants them alive, and Takuma and Saeko transform into Faiz and Kaixa, respectively.

Takumi and Kusaka try to fight back, unarmed, but Kusaka gets knocked down almost immediately and the episode closes on him lying on the ground.

The Analysis

Kusaka is as confusing as ever, and just as malicious. I have to give all the credit to Kouhei Murakami because he’s a great actor in other stuff and he really makes you loathe Kusaka. Even when he’s not doing anything terribly malicious he’s just sour, and he creeps on Mari hardcore despite her clearly not wanting to talk to him. The bit during the battle where he takes aim at Faiz and the two orphenochs, possibly intending to shoot all three of them, is chilling.

This episode is a confusing mess of subplots that largely seem irrelevant. Kusaka wanting to join Lucky Clover but refusing when invited goes nowhere, Smart Lady visiting Kobayashi to basically say “congratulations you’re an orphenoch, bye”, Kiba attacking Faiz and then immediately getting tossed aside, a bunch of scenes in the laundromat that go nowhere. I wish they’d keep it focused. The core plot about Smart Brain trying to steal back the Rider Gear and the subplot of Kaido trying to woo Mari are enough, they could have fleshed those out more and the episode would have been more cohesive.

I do enjoy seeing Kaido’s selflessness in action as he dives in the river to save Kobayashi, it’s not a side of him we see so often. He turns it into a way to advance his own interests but he does it initially purely out of his own goodness. Also, can I just say, including a suicide plot is pretty dark. Crazy what being an Orphenoch does to you. If the episode had been better fleshed out in the right places, they might have been able to concoct a better plan to steal the belts. I had to laugh at the two orphenochs running away from the fight and somehow having the time to steal police uniforms and police vehicles to set up a roadblock in the time it took Takumi and Kusaka to catch up to them on their bikes. It’s so absurd. And then they basically just outright steal the belts without any concrete justification. I don’t know much about Japanese law but this has to seem incredibly suspicious and it takes our leads way too long to figure out what’s going on.

We do get more hints of Kusaka’s past with Mari, but only the vaguest of hints, because the episode would rather have Takumi ask Kusaka if he wants to talk and be refused than actually give meaningful backstory.

The fighting is good, and feels balanced. When it’s 2 on 1, the riders struggle, and they maneuver around a lot as they exchange blows and try to gain the upper hand. Faiz I feel like could make better use of his equipment, but to be fair he doesn’t have a sidearm like Kaixa does, and Kaixa uses his gun somewhat sparingly. I did like the part where the riders were preparing to perform their finishers but the Orphenochs just noped out of there, that was funny and I kind of wish we’d see something like that more often, with the villains avoiding the finisher if it takes too long.

The ending was interesting with Lucky Clover acquiring the rider gear. This gives us our first female rider in-series (Femme only appeared in secondary media) for a little while at least. Kusaka will, of course, regain his equipment in short order but it’s something. Seeing him, untransformed, try to fight Kaixa was scary even if I don’t like him, so we’ll see what happens next!

Next time, more mysteries unfold!

Characters Falling In Rivers Count: 3! Kiba during his fight with Faiz, Kobayashi trying to commit suicide, and Kaido diving in to rescue him.