The Weekly Ride Review with Ethan: Kamen Rider Gotchard Episode 29 & 30 Double Feature

What’s up, Riders! We have a mystery to solve so hope you’re ready! In this double feature, we have a tricky fox, mysterious murders (it’s fine they’re just unconscious) and the start of a story of love and jealousy as old as time…

Episode 29

Recap

This episode sees Rinne, Hotaro and Renge investigate continued attacks on the villagers in Renge’s grandmother’s village, after the events of last week’s episode. They quickly encounter the nine tailed fox Malgam who’s the one responsible for rendering loan sharks, village leaders as well as Starshine Hoshino and Kajiki unconscious. When they find them, Renge takes the time to steal Hoshino’s necklace containing five Cosmic Chemies.

During the fight with the nine tailed fox Malgam, Renge, her nana and Rinne get trapped inside a nightmare smoke bubble which, after calling back to a flashback from earlier, Renge steps up to protect her grandmother. The five Chemies resonate with her desire and aid her, freeing the three of them. 

Hotaro ends the fight with the Malgam by using these five Cosmic Chemies to enter the avatar state, Rider Kick the Malgam into a mountain wall so hard as to uncover a hot spring, which will attract more visitors to the town saving them from selling to the loan sharks. It turns out the Malgam possessed the Kitsune statue the town prays to and it wanted to help protect the village. The episode ends with Minato arriving and praising the gang on a job well done. Kajiki and Starshine Hoshino decide to now be occult detectives, so Sherlock Hoshino and Watson Kajiki take off.  

The Bad

I’m not sure how to phrase this and I don’t necessarily mean it as a negative thing but this two parter, this episode more so than the last feels like an Ultraman episode. Particularly like a mix between the episodes where they throw a curveball and pull the old “the problem this week is a ghost, suplex that spaceman” and the episodes where it turns out the Kaiju was misunderstood. Again, as someone that likes Ultraman it’s not really a negative point for me it’s just an odd feeling seeing this kind of thing here in Rider and some people might not be into that. 

On a more negative note, I don’t think Chemy possessions work like they do for the nine tails Chemy, making a Malgam by possessing an object, I mean. Does the fact the Kitsune statue was worshiped change things? Do objects absorb emotions from their environment, like in FNAF? I just have so many questions… and I bring this up because the series wants us to be rooting for Hotaro to make his dream of a world were humans and Chemies can coexist to happen. When Malgams, creatures born from negative human emotions mixing with Chemies, can be formed without even needing humans it makes that future Hotaro is dreaming of seem harder to achieve.        

The Good

I did enjoy this episode/two parter quite a lot. As I mentioned, as an Ultraman fan seeing Ultraman feeling episodes feels like a win to me. The subplot about Renge and her Nana was cute. One scene I would like to highlight was Renge, Rinne and Hotaro walking up the stairs to the shrine the conversation feel improvised and very natural, Hotaro suggesting they take Tenliner and Rinne talking him out of it, and Renge telling them all “I’m fine I used to come up here all the time as a kid.” It was just a nice scene. 

The Conclusion

As I said already, I enjoyed this two parter. It was fun and its pleasant goofy vibe is just what we needed to after the end of Geryon and the start of the next major part. It was cool getting to see Hotaro and the gang out of there normal element dealing with something more occult. I do like that they didn’t fully explain the fox sprite, leaving it up to the viewers to decide whether or not the nine tails Chemy possessed a normal item or if the village really had its own guardian spirit. 

Episode 30

Recap

This episode was rough, I’ll be honest. We are going to speed things up a little but only really recapping the main plotline and get right into it.

At the start of the new semester at school, a new girl called Seina Tsukumo, Hotaro’s childhood friend, has joined the class. Following the start of year assembly, the Gotchard gang and Seina decide to help the drama club put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, as there’s only one member in the club at the moment and he really cares about Romeo and Juliet. In every scene, Seina shows she’s really into Hotaro and Rinne seethes in the corner until, eventually, Seina just asks Rinne if she’s dating Hotaro, to which she she says no. Atropos and the Mammoth Malgam show up to get revenge for Geryon, telling Seina they are attacking her because Rinne told them to, as she’s in her way. Rinne starts to refute this before freezing, so Seina believes Atropos. Seina says that she hates Rinne and the Malgam freezes her. As Hotaro starts fighting the Malgam, it knocks an unfocused Rinne out of her transformation and she takes it all pretty hard. Atropos compounds to Rinne that this is all her fault, revenge for taking out Geryon, her father, away…? On this bombshell, the episode ends. 

The Good

First of all, the cameos from two members of the Donbrothers cast. Kanon Matsuzawa (who played Seina) was also in the excellent Faiz Paradise Regained movie and it’s always nice to be reminded of that film. While I have a lot of more negative things to say about this week’s episode, there are some good things to say about it. The animation used to recap Romeo and Juliet was really nice, the fight with Clotho and Spanner was great, loved the way Spanner turned on the trash talk the moment he saw Clotho was having issues handling Dread: Type Three. The fact we see like five of Geryon’s little doll boys merge into a gold Malgam base body was good economic storytelling. It’s clearly so they can reuse them as the Malgam of the week for a good while. Making a Malgam with, effectively, five lives is a smart move. Also, while I’m about to complain about the execution of it, I am happy to see Rinne be used as more of a co-protagonist of the series with some more focus. 

RELATED: The Weekly Ride Review (At The Movies): Kamen Rider 555 20th Paradise Regained

The Bad

So much of this episode is centred on its main plot at the school that the other parts of the episode just seemed like an “everything else” deal. I’m not going to say the relationship between Hotaro and Rinne “came outta nowhere” or “needed more build up,” as I’ve already seen people trying to argue, but I will say that, if this felt like a natural progression of their character dynamic, people wouldn’t be making these complaints, would they?

Also, this one’s more personal, this development , recontextualising all the emotional maturity I’ve praised in the past as “signs Hotaro and Rinne are into each other” and not just these kids being emotionally mature handling their issues by being open and frank with each other, flat out sucks and feels like a downgrade. 

The biggest issue with this episode is probably this… On the production blog about this week’s episode they said this about Atropos:

“The scariest part about Atropos is how she understands Rinne better than Rinne herself, so she can easily take advantage of her weaknesses. She’s determined to take revenge from Rinne, who took her father away from her.” 

Now, reader, I don’t know if you remember a whole three weeks ago (check here if you need a refresher) but, during the big battle with Geryon, Rinne did not do anything to him. After Geryon turned into Type Three, she and Spanner were benched for pretty much the rest of the episode. What I’m trying to say is, her desire for revenge being so focused on Rinne doesn’t really make sense when you consider how Hotaro was the main driving force behind Geryon’s defeat. I know we are giving focus to Rinne and Atropos has been set up as her foil so she needs to be the one pushing things, but we can’t have the defeat of Geryon be a motivator without a better link than Atropos blaming one of the two people that held off Malgams while Geryon was taken apart and smoked by Hotaro. This all took a lot of the punch of the ending out for me as I was left questioning why she’s so focused on getting revenge on Rinne when Hotaro’s the one that actually defeated him!

The Conclusion

Bringing this to an end, this episode really didn’t click with me. Some of this might be my expectations and understanding brushing up against the writers room but the fact still remains that it didn’t work, for me. Hopefully, next week wins me over but I have my doubts. I genuinely didn’t expect this to be my most negative review of Gotchard to date but, hey, it had to happen some time, right? There’s still plenty of time to go for things to pick back up so I’m hoping things work out well. 

Enough about what I think, what say you? Did you like these episodes? Do you agree with my complaints? Do you think I missed some? As always, I have been Ethan: writer, reviewer and king of the drama club for The Toku Source and I’ll cya next time!

Source:  Producer Blog Summary