Welcome, Riders, to another Weekly Ride Review. Join Ethan as they review Kamen Rider Gotchard episode 14, featuring Christmas, father/daughter relationships and Ethan trying very hard not to make a Jurassic Park joke…
Summary
Episode 14 opens with a flashforward to Hotaro getting eaten by a dinosaur before flashing back to Hotaro helping his mum put up Christmas decorations. Rinne shows up and Hotaro’s mum asks them both to go get fir branches for the holiday wreath. While out gathering branches, Rinne opens up about her interactions with Atropos and how that’s been making her feel. Then, suddenly, the pair hear X-Rex roar in the distance and take off to see what it is, also calling Mr. Minato to report it in.
Meanwhile, Spanner gets orders from someone to keep an eye on Rinne and go steal the Dread Driver and Dark Chemy Cards from the Three Abyssal Sisters. Lachesis transforms into Kamen Rider Dread Type Zero and takes Spanner apart like she’s disassembling Ikea furniture. Back in the main plotline, Hotaro and Rinne meet Sawa Manabe, a young lady who wants to take a picture of X-Rex as a gift for her dino loving freelance writer dad. The trio hear a roar and take off to investigate, bringing us up to time with the flashforward that kicked off the episode.
Rinne and Sawa escape X-Rex, making their way back to where they first met. They find a photo of Sawa and her father together. Inside X-Rex’s tummy, Hotaro finds Sawa’s dad freaking out because of the memories X-Rex has made him relive. It turns out that X-Rex has been eating people so that they can get to know them better by experiencing their memories. After sharing one memory of Sawa’s dad, Hotaro assures him that she still loves him and tells him about how she wants to take a picture of X-Rex for him. Hotaro then asks X-Rex to check out his memories to see how serious he is about befriending him, which he does. X-Rex ends his quick recap of the series so far with a small scene of young Hotaro becoming friends with Hopper1 as a child, a memory that was clearly wiped from him.
Befriending X-Rex, Hotaro turns into Super Gotchard UFO-X and flies out of the dinosaur Chemy with Sawa’s dad. He joins back up with Rinne and reunites the dad and daughter, just as the Abyssal Sisters find them. Clotho gets her turn at transforming into Kamen Rider Dread Type Zero just as X-Rex arrives and, using his new friend’s power, Hotaro transforms into Kamen Rider Super Gotchard X-REX, bringing this episode to a close.
My Take
GOTCHA! Another week another ‘get’ episode of Gotchard. First of all, I would just like to say, I love how Hotaro and Rinne just talk to each other; a lesser show would have mined this for drama but Gotchard just has them take a quiet moment and be open with each other. It’s refreshing and shows how much these characters care for each other. It’s just nice to see.
The stuff with Sawa and her dad was also nice to see. This is also one of the times the civilian character relates to me, what with me also being a freelance writer. It’s always great when the media you watch feels like it’s targeting you specifically, even if only a little. Overall, the episode was effective and I look forward to seeing where it goes in part two. Lastly, the form at the end was beautiful. Can’t wait to see it in action next week!
Did you enjoy the episode? Are you looking forward to seeing the Christmas episode next week? What do you think of the new form? Are you worried I’m saving up my Jurassic Park references for next week? You will have to wait and see but all I can say for now is life finds a way. Jokes aside, I look forward to what you all think. As always I’ve been Ethan: writer, reviewer and dino hunter for The Toku Source and I’ll see you next time.
