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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Kamen Rider Gaim Episode 36 Review: Melon Versus Melon (Major Spoiler Alert!!!!)

With Takatora back in the city he starts to see how everything is being set to ruins and his brother casting aside any good that he tried to teach him. Kouta sees that Micchy needs to be saved, but Takatora thinks Micchy needs to be stopped. Can the man who started the project really take down his own brother?
So Kouta has finally seen his friend in his true colors and is still trying to hold onto the fact that Micchy is a victim in the situation. This is because he learns that Micchy has been hiding tons of information about him and is blinded on what he really wants. I can see what Kouta is talking about here; keeping secrets can do something to another person. Kouta even knows this from a personal experience since when he learned about Yuuya's death and while hiding it made him avoids the others. For Micchy, him hiding secrets got him to be closer to his friends and some actual happiness. Also with Micchy hiding secrets it did caused Micchy to have a split personality. Micchy is lost, but I do think he is finding his true colors at the same time, he learned mostly the bad things from Takatora as that was established which I will get to later. Kouta will easily be learning things the hard way about Micchy later on in the series as in the end everything is for the fruit of knowledge. I still like Kouta here though since he is not giving up his hope for an old friend even if he is literally attacking him. Kouta keeps his heroics strong and it will take much more to break it.
Along with that Kaito is still with the fact that Micchy is the enemy and that he needs to be fought off. Kaito always had an eye out for Micchy when things started getting hairy and even say him shoot Kouta in the back. With Kouta still disagreeing with him though he ends up talking to Mai about the situation and again something interesting happens. Mai is saying the same thing as Kouta did before as she will keep her hope for Micchy. Her hope is strong and she will keep fighting for that hope and for once Kaito finally realized that she was strong in her own way. Kaito has said before that she does have her own power, but for once he tells her that she is strong and it's all because she can keep a grip on her hope. It's a great scene as we are seeing the good side of Kaito and his ideology of power. He just wants to be strong and wants others to follow that path and it's still great to see being established again. For some reason then there is a focus with Kaito getting a cut from Reduye for some reason, so what could be happening to him now?
Now for Takatora and boy there is a huge change of focus for him in this episode. He is now back in the city and can once again help out with the Inves problem. Sadly he sees that his brother did not listen to the advice he gave him and is absolutely crushed seeing his brother the way he is now. With Kouta wanting to save him and Kaito wanting to fight him, Takatora is in between with the issue. He sees that Micchy has gone too far and needs to be stopped, in a way he is saving the Micchy he thought he knew, the little brother who would carry on his dreams. Takatora even goes back to his house to find his hold belt and Lockseed to get back in combat. Now with what happens I do feel that these two having a conflict should have been a longer part of the series since things are concluded rather quickly, it's not bad, but having things be a longer effect would have been the better choice. Still how Takatora has to think about everything in the new viewpoint since humanity is losing its chance to save itself. Takatora went straight to it as well as he knew what needed to be done, he's still the warrior he was before in the end, well until the very end.
Meanwhile with Micchy he is just losing more of his sanity and to my surprise is sharing much more in common with Reduye. Reduye again surprised me with how smart she actually is, again in the end she just wants to have fun with toys, but my goodness she goes far with it. Reduye mentioned that she killed her family first and that was a pleasant experience since having kin fight themselves is amazing. Reduye even wants this to happen with Micchy so that he would be more like her. In the end though, Reduye is just toying with Micchy in the end which is what Micchy is doing at the same time. These two are just backstabbers and they even do it to the most important pawns in their schemes. I have to wonder though who will be winning this fight of brains though.
So with Micchy being used by Reduye so that he can be pretty much herself, he is indeed the darker side of Takatora. When the two brothers meet up they have a great scene together as they talk about what's right and wrong. Takatora always had his doubts about the plans he had to use, mostly Project Ark because it would just kill off people. Micchy is trying to rework that so he can save half of humanity, but mostly we all know he wants his utopia as well. When Takatora sees that is what Micchy learned from him he knows he has to be stopped for good. Micchy is not good, he is just going to kill more people and lead humanity down the same path of destruction. Even during the fight Micchy goes on about how Takatora should be a sacrifice. It's because Takatora was the most gifted and the truly oblige people should go first for the others. Takatora is clearly right about Micchy, he is the darker side of him. Micchy only saw his brother as pushing expectations on him so he only thought of things like doing business or just getting the most realistic results. Those were the things Takatora doubted the whole time and wanted to save everyone if possible, he was a hero who had to do some evil things and sadly Micchy just learned from the evil examples.
The action portion of this episode was strong thanks to the two melons fighting it out along with Gaim fighting Reduye. First of all, with Reduye pretty much being Demushu all over again he is going all out. I liked how things started with Kachidoki as the fight was more head to head before Kiwami got involved and the effects and weapons came out. Now I still did like the Kiwami parts as there were good creative things done with it, like how it begun with Gaim using the grape gun and the acorn hammer together. There was then still some head to fight moments with Gaim using the Kagematsu and clashing with Reduye. There was even a moment where Gaim broke free of Reduye's ivy as Reduye knows this means something, high chance it has to do with the Overlord powers as Sagara mentioned before. Along with a new song that's pretty good it was a good fight showing off more of Kiwami's powers even though they used the same finisher again!
So with the melon brothers their fight was a strong one indeed. What's interesting is that things are rather balanced with Micchy having more power while Takatora has more skill. Takatora still used his shield rather well and I love seeing when the energy arrows were hitting we can see that Takatora had movement, noting that there is more force pushing the shield compared to other attacks. Micchy was even doing cowardly tactics which is usual Micchy. It was great seeing this not be one sided because it gave a great suspenseful feeling to the fight. Now I could tell that Takatora was going to hold back because again he is a doubtful hero, but he really payed the price this time! Takatora holds back at his final swing because he thinks of the good Micchy, but that Micchy is long gone as he goes for a slash across Takatora. It destroys the belt and causing him to go into a lake where he drowns... This is what I liked, it happened so quickly and right at the moment when Takatora returned. Death is being used well in this show since it's coming at unexpected moments. This seemed to be Takatora's comeback into the show, but he is killed off by his younger brother. Now Reduye got the wish she wanted as well and if I thought Micchy lost it before I know it's only going to get worse and worse for him.
With the surprising twist of how Takatora gets his end in the series there were other great things in this episode. First it was great to see Kouta and Takatora finally have a talk for once and there were even more ideas being exchanged. We even get a full realization of what Micchy has become along with the fact that Reduye is pulling more strings than we imagined. The fights were good and the ending was shocking and sad, it's not a perfect episode since I do think they could have covered a bit more and again I do feel this should have been a longer effect regarding Takatora and Micchy. Still this episode gets an A-
Next Time: The movie rider! Actually we're going to skip this episode so get ready for episode thirty-eight review next.

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