Kamen Rider Wizard Episode 10 Review: Solid as Rock

Since Phoenix is still around with no explanation from the incredible last episodes. We learn that Phoenix has an immortal body as his ashes comes together to bring him back to life. As I predicted Phoenix is going to be a rival character as he will keep coming back until Wizard is defeated. Meanwhile we see Kizaki looking at pictures of Wizard's Flame Dragon Styles. Now he believes that Haruto is a Phantom and needs to quickly move for his plans as he takes out a green magic stone. Going to the gang, Haruto is still very happy with the new ring and that gets Wajima in a great mood to start creating more rings. Koyomi is still worried about it though, but Haruto sees no worries since all he has to do is to stay strong and control Dragon. Haruto goes out to search for Phantoms and when he leaves, Kizaki and his men enter the store. He asks for Wajima to make a ring for him. Wajima is not going to because he doesn't work with people he doesn't know and he has no idea what the ring is for, but that doesn't work. Kizaki gives his men the signal as they kidnap Wajima and Rinko comes in, but she is too shocked by the moment to even help. Meanwhile a Phantom has been spotted as Haruto transforms into Wizard while on his bike. The Phantom is Gargoyle and he seems to remember his target as he will use death to take the boy into despair. Luckily Wizard appears and protects the boy. Gargoyle already pulls out his trick as he can turn into stone and in that form Wizard cannot harm him. He then jumps in the air, goes into his rock form, and lands on Wizard. Wizard changes into Land Styles and lifts the Phantom up as he quickly throws him away. There he uses the Big Ring and enlarges his hand and arm, but before he could smash Gargoyle he makes a run for it. Next Shunpei arrives at the store to see only Koyomi is around as he hears the news regarding Wajima from her. At the Doughnut store it seems Haruto is going to try a different doughnut! Sadly he is only getting it for the boy as he sticks with plain sugar. The boy was already told about being a Gate and paraphrases what Haruto told him. Haruto suggests that he goes back to his house, but that's in Akita. Haruto tells him that he should go back to be safe, but the boy has business he needs to take care of. At the Police HQ, Waijima is told he has to get working as soon as possible. Kizaki shows him the magic stone, but before anything else could happen, Kizaki is taken out to deal with Rinko. She is mad about what he did. The same can go for Kizaki as Rinko was in contact with the Mage for a while now and kept it a secret. The boy appears and Kizaki knows him as Naoki and Haruto shows up as well. After finding out why Haruto is around Naoki, Kizaki flips out at him for telling Naoki that he was a Gate. The three are taken with Kizaki to his office and he first asks Naoki why he is in Tokyo. Naoki wants to know about something about his father and even though he was told already he still thinks something is hidden. Rinko then complains about how sector zero keeps too many secrets, but Kizaki says it is necessary.There Kizaki shows Haruto the pictures of himself in Dragon Styles and tells him that he is considered to be dangerous. Naoki and Rinko back him up saying that he is good. Kizaki is done with them still thinking the same as he tries to get Naoki back to Akita. Naoki refuses the offer and will stay along with Haruto for protection. and he will only leave when he finally hears what happened to his father. Phoenix and Medusa talk with Gargoyle then at night about the Gate and Wizard. Phoenix wants another try at him, but he still needs to recover since he just regenerated. Gargoyle though is no concerned with Wizard and wants to get the Gate that escaped from him six months ago. Later that day at the store Naoki talks about the past when Kizaki was partnered up with his father. After his father's death though, Kizaki is hiding information from him. With this Naoki thinks his father's death is because of Kizaki. In the morning, Kizaki checks on Waijima and he hasn't even worked on the stone yet. He is wondering where the stone came from, but he will not be told anything. When Kizaki goes out, Haruto is there to meet him. Haruto wants to talk about how much Kizaki knows since he hid the fact about Naoki being a Gate. Haruto tries to tell him to not get involved, but Kizaki tells him off saying that not only Mages can protect people. He soon gets a call and tells whoever is on the other side to keep track on someone. Soon Haruto gets a call from the three as Naoki as escaped. Naoki went to where his father died with Kizaki's men following him. Gargoyle then comes out and quickly goes for the attack. Kizaki's men interfere, but they are easily being beaten around. Kizaki comes for Naoki and they both run, but they cannot get far. Soon Haruto appears and fights Gargolye as Wizard again. Gargoyle summons Ghuls to help him out, but they don't last long. Wizard jumps up to reach Gargoyle and knocks him back to the ground. Wizard goes for an air attack at that point Gargoyle switches to his rock form and takes the hit. Then he grabs Wizard and throws him away. To finish things, Wizard goes into Flame Dragon Styles. There he uses the Big Ring with the Wizarsword and not even Gargoyle's hard rock body can deflect the attack. He summons more Ghuls and to counter Wizard uses the Special Ring as the attack takes out everyone expect Gargoyle who makes a run for it. The episode ends with Haruto going back to Naoki who tells Kizaki that he accuses him of abandoning his father.

We are now at the tenth episode and Wizard is still impressive and is keeping my attention. I like how Kizaki is now more involved and I wish for more. Him being involved reminds me of how the cops in Agito acted. Kizaki actually reminds me of Houjou because of how he acts, but I can tell Kizaki will have more redeemable qualities. We can already tell he cares for people because of his past relation with Naoki and his father. He is now more strict and cold and I bet there is a good reason for that. He even knows about Phantoms and I think he could know Gargoyle. With episode ten giving some hints on the secondary rider I won't be surprised if he could Beast.

At first people were thinking that the green stone could be for Haruto since there is Hurricane Dragon Styles. It has been revealed in magazines, but I know this stone is for the upcoming rider, beast. Even though he is fully yellow and the ring shows a yellow case, the eyes are green. There is also the fact that Wajima wonders where the stone came from so it could be a completely different type. One more thing is that Kizaki sees Haruto being a Phantom so why would he want him to get a new power? It is the tenth episode and having hints on an upcoming rider does seem early, but this could the rumors that Wizard will have more riders in the actual series.

Now onto Naoki, the Gate. Out of the past Gates he is my favorite so far. He is a boy who can see past lies and suspects something is going on. This is also regarding his father's death so of course he won't be stopping anytime soon. He is even a pretty clever boy and some may say he is just jumping to conclusions, but blaming Kizaki for the death of his father is understandable. First he didn't say Kizaki killed him, but he is the reason why. Kizaki has shown that he runs away and leaves the work to others. There is another fact that he is keeping everything a secret and he put Naoki in Akita. I am sure that Kizaki didn't flee, but I bet he still blames himself. Kizaki probably found out about Gates from the father and he could have fallen into despair and became a Phantom. Knowing that the father was a Gate he thought Naoki was one as well and wanted to make sure he was safe. I bet I am somewhere close. Either way the first part of the arc shows good traits of Kizaki and Naoki.

The amount of character interaction was great like always with Naoki and Kizaki taking the spotlight this time. The other four still had their moments with Haruto being the savior like always. Rinko finally told Kizaki that she is tired of the secrets which was something that the chief didn't want her to do. Wajima also got a little more screen time with his concerns about the stone. First I am very curious on how he got started with ring making for magic purposes. He can easily tell when something isn't right since he doesn't want to work on the green stone. Leading to another mystery on how Kizaki got the stone in the first place. That is a great thing Wizard is doing, the mysteries really are well.... mysterious. We barely know anything still and a lot if happening in the plot. Along with the fun characters and even the minor ones it makes following the mystery more enjoyable as we learn about what is happening and how some characters are connected.

Onto the villains and first is Phoenix. We learn that he is immortal which is what a phoenix can do. It's ashes will bring it back to life. Now seeing how this will work for a villain interests me a lot. I bet there is some loophole to kill Phoenix for good. Or there could be a way to trap him. We even learn that Phoenix's magic is drained after regenerating. So how long will it take for Phoenix to get back to full strength and will he be able to get stronger? The Phantom of the arc is Gargoyle and he is lacking compared to other Phantoms. I do like how he knows Naoki as he is probably connected to what happened six months ago. His methods are very straight forward which is nice, but he's just bland. He is not really thinking of any plots just going for his target. The other Phantoms learned how to keep an eye on their targets and actually learn about them so they can get them when the time is right. I will say though Gargoyle's ability is very cool with how he turns into solid rock. A great defensive technique and he already used it for his offense. He's still good, but the past Phantoms were just way better.

 The effects for this were very good as well.

Onto the action and we got some really good parts here. First was the fight when Gargoyle used his rock ability for an offensive attack. I was surprised that he did something like that in the first fight. I was expecting that he just kept his defensive stand so he can attack at the right times. He got Wizard stuck with his rock body so Haruto switched to Land Styles. We can see that Land Styles gives Wizard a strength boost as he could lift the rock beast. Big got used twice with the usual hand attack and then with the sword. I am very happy to see other spells being used with the sword as Big is impressive. Swords are great and making them bigger is even better! Dragon Styles gives Wizard tons of possibilities for attacks and I wonder what he can do with the gun form? Overall there wasn't much action with the second fight being fast and the Phantom getting his completely out down. The camera work is still on the good side and gave us tons of new angles to look at as Wizard flows around the battlefield.

Episode ten is not as great as eight and nine, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. Wizard holds many great elements along with it's great writing, perfect use of characters, and amazing fight scenes with good looking effects. I give this episode an A- just because the fights were shorter in comparison and Gargoyle is a weaker character so far. There is still Kizaki and Naoki who are very fun to watch as they made most of the drama in this episode.

Next Time: Kizaki enters the ring!