The Weekly Ride Review with Ethan and Danno: Kamen Rider Gotchard Episode 4

Ethan and Danno Ride again with this week’s Kamen Rider Gotchard review featuring Ants, Ants, Ants, energy drink ninjas, hearts to heart and much more. Check it out! 

Episode Summary

This week’s episode opens where last week’s left off with Valvarad vs the Submarine Malgam, which he quickly dispatches, capturing the Chemy and giving it to Rinne as a gift. This takes us into the opening, after which we see Hotaro’s friend run up to him and excitedly tell him about a mysterious hero of justice that has been fighting the monsters that have been appearing. He adds that every time time people try to take pictures of them, that information gets erased. Hotaro, assuming they are talking about Gotchard, is very happy to learn how people have been seeing his actions. This good mood carries over into his Alchemy Academy classes. He and Rinne make small talk and he invites her to come to his restaurant, saying he will make her something unique. They are interrupted when two other students ask to borrow Kamantis for Chemy catching. In exchange, they will give him Energyl and Sasukemaru: the energy drink monster and ninja Chemy, respectfully. Under these conditions, Hotaro accepts. 

Mr. Minato then walks in and introduces everyone to the newest person sent to help round up the Chemies, Spanner Kurogane. Spanner is quick to remind Mr. Minato that they are equals and he’s no student. On the way home from class, Rinne and Hotaro get a ping that there’s a Chemy nearby so they run off to deal with it. Running into a warehouse, they are confronted by the Three Abyssal Sisters who, after a bit of back and forth, the sister Hotaro beat in the first episode and the elder sister leave the third to defeat them using the power of Antrooper, in the form of the Ant Malgam, our monster for the week. 

Activating her new Malgam powers, she transports the two heroes to an ant hill labyrinth. The summise that they will need to beat the Malgam in order to escape. After a short confrontation in Steamhopper form, Hotaro and Rinne decide to run as the Ant Malgam summons more Ants to hunt them down, eventually being sneak attacked by the Ant Malgam. Hotaro is knocked out of Steamhopper and the sister reveals to Rinne and Hotaro that her dad is the one that gave Hotaro the Gotchardriver and, also, he’s dead. Borrowing Sasukemaru’s power via the Chemy Riser, Hotaro and a distraught Rinne make a clean getaway and have a heart to heart about Rinne’s dad. After remembering her dad’s smile, Rinne finds the strength to move forward believe that her dad is still out there. At this moment, the Ant Malgam’s minions appear and Hotaro uses Energyl and Sasukemaru to transform into the Energymaru Wild Form, an energy drink ninja. After making quick work of one ant dude, Rinne throws the Deepmariner card to Hotaro and he transforms into VenomMariner, our new full form debut. This form’s appearance is shortlived, though, as, after defeating the second Ant Malgam minion, the main one appears and takes Rinne hostage, demanding the driver, to which Hotaro reluctantly agrees. Energyl, however, who was left in the Chemy Riser, doesn’t agree, materializing an energy drink hand to hit the Ant Malgam, allowing our heroes to get back the driver and free Rinne. Hotaro transforms into AppareSkebows and finishes them quickly with another finisher roundhouse Rider Kick! The sister flees to be beaten another day and the group capture Antrooper, just as they are transported back to the warehouse. 

Shortly after celebrating, the building starts to collapse but Spanner sends Madwheel (via his alchemy) to Hotaro, letting him turn into the MadPirates Wild Form. This allows the two to escape. Spanner snatches Madwheel back before checking on Rinne. The episode ends with Rinne getting the address for his restaurant from Mr. Minato, surprising Hotaro, who makes her something to eat. Rinne describes his creation as being “kinda off,” leading to Hotaro yelling “NO GATCHA” as the credits roll. 

Thoughts

Ethan’s Take

I’m so happy that I get to say this for a fourth week in a row: I really liked this episode. It has a very strong emotional core with Rinne’s reaction to the news about her dad. I brushed over it in the summary but that scene and Reiyo Matsumoto’s performance were on point. Just really good emotionally moving stuff. Hotaro being a friend, listening and doing his best to help her was just really nice, too. 

The more lighthearted moments at the start and the end of the episode are also really well done and do a great job of creating an emotional juxtaposition, giving the viewer a emotional comparison point/emotional break from the more serious scenes with Rinne. A complaint that I have constantly in particular media is that if your constantly in a dower, serious tone, when you want to have a serious moment it won’t hit nearly as hard as you want it to. This episode of Gotchard demonstrates the opposite nicely. If the whole episode had the tone of the scene with Rinne, that scene wouldn’t have hit as hard. 

We got to see a lot more of Spanner this episode. This time he wasn’t just this full grown man beefing with a high schooler, it was him being very affectionate to Rinne, which, imma be honest, I found kinda creepy. It’s still very early but hopefully this is not completely indicative of his whole character. Hopefully, there’s more to it than, ‘he just likes to creep on this highschooler while beefing with this other one’. I really liked the Malgam suit this week. The Ant crawling up the arm sideways head look is very cool. Alright, that’s all I have for this week. Now over to Danno for their thoughts on this week’s episode! 

Danno’s Impression

I’ll be honest, I’m mixed on this episode, gang. What it does well is done pretty dang well. Though, what I don’t like about it, is really iffy. Let’s start with what I like: Action. 

This week’s episode taking place in an enclosed space where Kudoh and Ichinose are forced to get along and eventually become friends is pretty great. Finally we get to see our two protagonists getting along. There’s also the suits we see this week and, hey, AppareSkebows is still relevant! That’s cool. I hope they keep the idea of that power scaling up in future episodes. The M.O.T.W. suit(s) were also really cool. I also like how the Sasukemaru Chemy Card was used by Hotaro. I hope we see more stuff like that, like maybe seeing some of the vehicle based Chemies used for travel. 

Now for what I don’t like: Spanner’s involvement.

Spanner went from a frickin’ dork of an antagonistic force to… kinda just like Kaixa, in my opinion. I mean that in the worst way possible. Albeit, I haven’t seen all of Faiz yet (those who know me know that I’m a staunch Inoue hater) but I will say that Kaixa’s manipulative and abusive tactics seem more subtle. Whereas, Spanner hits you over the head with his tactics, like he’s bludgeoning you with his oversized wrench. Obviously, that’s an over exaggeration but still.

His presence as Valvarad is still cool, but I’d rather he be taken more subtly. Maybe, instead of Valvarad’s identity being known immediately, we could have a mystery figure transform and slowly be revealed to be Spanner. I dunno.

Part of it also just makes me feel… icky.

Come back next week for a new edition of The Weekly Ride Review as Ethan and Danno take you through Kamen Rider Gotchard from start to finish.

What did you think of the episode? Did you also cry at Rinne and Hotaro’s heart to heart? Did you find spanner as odd as we did? Let us know in the comments below!