Kamen Rider Wizard Episode 11 Review: Truth Behold

Going back to where we left last time, Kizaki's men appear and get ready to take Naoki. First Haruto asks him why he left the store and his response is that he needed to see the place where his father died. Soon Naoki is taken away and before Haruto could do anything, Kizaki stops him. He tells Haruto that Naoki will be protected by him and his men and he calls Haruto a monster like before. Back at HQ, Wajima still hasn't begun to make the new ring. Kizaki yells at him to hurry up because he needs some magical power to fight off the Phantoms. Wajima tells him that a ring will not be helpful and tells Kizaki that to use magic one must go through an ordeal and requires a certain resolve. Kizaki thinks he is being mocked, but Wajima tells him that only Mages can use rings. Later the day, Kizaki and his men are taking Naoki somewhere and Haruto follows. The three Phantoms sees what happens and before Gargoyle leaves, Medusa thinks of a plan. Naoki is taken to an abandoned warehouse where other officers are placed around. Ghuls quickly appear already and start to take down the cops. Kizaki takes Naoki and runs for it, but they are surrounded. There Kizaki takes action and tries to fend off the Ghuls. He is easily beaten down to the ground and the Ghuls start to go for Naoki. Luckily Wizard appears in Hurricane Styles and shoots down the Ghuls. Things get worse though as Phoenix appears! Wizard is shocked to see him since he was killed last time, but Phoenix tells him that he is the immortal Phantom. Phoenix gets the first attacks and uses a big fire burst to send Wizard flying to the water. He changes to Water Styles though and quickly attacks back. Phoenix still has an easy time and when he hits Wizard with more fire Naoki is hit in the crossfire. It isn't Naoki though as it was one of Kizaki's men in disguise. Phoenix then leaves since the real gate isn't there. Haruto goes up to Kizaki wondering why the diversion and risking the others' safety. There Kizaki tells him of the promise that he made with Naoki's father six months ago. The two of them were working on a disappearance case with multiple people missing. Soon the father finds something and shows it to Kizaki and this item is the green magic stone. He also found out about the Phantoms and when he shows Kizaki who the enemy is they overhear their conversation. Gargoyle was given the task to hunt down Naoki. At that point Katayama tells Kizaki to get Naoki away as he will go for the Phantom. Before leaving he tells Kizaki to not come back and to protect Naoki. Afterwards, Naoki was sent away thanks to the amount of time they had, but Katayama was killed. Also we learn that Kizaki hasn't told Naoki this since it will hurt him more to learn that he is the cause of his father's death. Now the real Naoki is being taken somewhere, but Gargoyle appears and tries to take him away. Rinko calls Haruto about this and before he heads off, Kizaki asks him to tag along. There isn't enough time as Rinko gets Naoki away with the help of Garuda and the others. The three of them combine into one, but they couldn't last for long because of Gargoyle's defense. Soon he catches up to the two and Rinko tries to fight, but she is quickly tossed to the ground. There he tells Naoki of his father because both of them were bold to defend others. With the news finally out, Naoki is taken into despair. Haruto and Kizaki soon arrive and Haruto transforms into Wizard. While the two fight, Kizaki tries to help Naoki, but he starts to crack. There he uses Flame Dragon Styles and shoots at Gargoyle with his gun. He goes into his rock form though to block the bullets, but at that point Haruto summons another gun. With two guns he breaks through the defenses and uses the Special Ring to finish him off. Now Wizard gets to Naoki and uses the Engage Ring to go into the Underworld. There the monster appears as it is a lizard hand creature. He summons Dragon from himself and reverts back to Flame Styles. Wizard takes control of Dragon with his bike and the giant fight starts. The two beast struggle, but Wizard gets the Phantom down to the ground and there he uses Kick Strike to finish it off. Naoki is now safe and the next day we see Kizaki paying his tributes to Katayama. He was the one who left the flowers and wine at the plant and there Naoki appears and apologizes to him. Naoki now knows everything thanks to Haruto and now since he found a new hope and that is to join the Bureau and be an officer like his father was. At the store Rinko coms in with Wajima and now he shows the gang the new magic stone he had acquired. He got the stone from Kizaki since Haruto is the only one he can entrust the power to.

Episode eleven is a great follow up to episode ten as it keeps the tone and adds more suspense. Wizard is doing really well with their second parts and this is no exception. First is Kizaki, he got more focus than the last episode. The last episode shown on how he is keeping things secretly and slowly breaking down. In this part he was very strict and wanted to get things moving quickly. What I was surprised by was how much he didn't know. I thought he knew a lot about Phantoms and Mages, but he only learned about things from Katayama. Also he started to be more nice when he started to find things out about magic stones and how the Phantoms work. I hope we get to see Kizaki again because I really want to see him meet with Haruto again. Who knows he could have learned a lot more than he was expecting.

Onto Naoki who was hidden and kept out for a while, but it works since he got the screen time when he fell into despair. His reason for falling to despair makes sense since he was accusing someone else on the death of his father. With Gargoyle telling him he was the cause can make anyone feel bad about themselves. Now what I like is that Naoki overreacts to the news since this is regarding his dead father. People usually blame someone and when he learned the truth he pointed the finger at himself. I do like it, but Shunpei's reason for despair is still the best out of the three.

Gargoyle did stay the same and I was disappointed on his connection to Naoki was. Gargoyle just wanted to get the target he missed for so long. I like that he remembers, but I would actually liked to have him be connected. I was hoping it was actually his father and his appearance just changed over the months. At least have him be close to his father and then that person was changed into a Phantom. Overall I like Gargoyle's personality, but his connection was very disappointing. At least we got a good scene when Katayama tried to fight Gargoyle. Going with that Katayama is an interesting character since he found out about things and told Kizaki. This leads to some questions about how he found the magic stone and how did he learn about the Phantoms. One more thing is that the Phantoms were moving before Wizard begun to fight so again this gives us news that there are more Phantoms than we think.

With the other Phantoms they are getting more involved since they have been failing and with Phoenix attempt Medusa is starting to help out more. She knew something was up and sent Phoenix to distract Wizard so that Gargoyle could get his target. Phoenix did do his part, but he did leave quickly. I know Phoenix isn't the smartest guy and that he just wanted to tease Wizard. It still bugs me though since he could easily kept him around longer and kept fighting. Maybe his magic was still low even though he did show his strength when he fought. I guess he had enough left for a quick fight. At least he told Wizard about his immortality and thus begins the rivalry with Wizard and Phoenix since he can never die.

The action was much quicker compared to other episodes as it reminded me of Double at parts. There are good reasons though. Now the first scene of action was the longest with the police trying to keep the Phantoms away. I like this a lot since episode one had that moment and it's always nice to see the police be more involved. It reminds me a lot of Kuuga and Agito where the cops are just thrown around with ease. Now if they are dead or not is unknown for some and that was disappointing, but there was already a sense of death with Katayama. Even Kizaki tried to fight and he got tossed around as it's very similar to how Katayama fought Gargoyle. Both tried their guns at first and then used the environment around them. Both were even sent to the ground. Then Wizard shown up and had a quick fight with Phoenix. Hurricane and Water were used, but it was too short for anything big. People could say that he should have went into Dragon form, but he was in water so I think that form wouldn't do well. So it was very quick thinking Haruto had to use Water styles to get out of the water.

Then we had his final fight with Gargoyle and it was fast since Naoki was in danger. I did like how Wizard knew he had to finish things quickly. So he tricks Gargoyle to going into his rock form. We finally got to see double guns and with Haruto able to curve bullets he hit the same area with all his shots to break the rock armor. The Special finisher was used again and I was hoping for a Dragon gun finisher, but at least the effects and the angle of the attack made it looks somewhat different. Lastly, we had another Underworld fight and the effects were good and better than Shunpei's underworld. The creature was odd, but still cool looking. I like the eye in the center and it's reptile theme, but the multiple lizard heads for fingers was odd looking since the effects didn't keep to well with them. Then we had another Kick Strike finisher and that's one thing I was disappointed, Wizard has so many rings and he didn't use any creative finisher this time. I know he was in a hurry, but I was hoping for the Dragon form to have a little battle with the beast before summoning Dragon. The last two fights were still good, but I think they could have been a little longer.

Episode eleven delivers in good drama and giving more twists to the series. I love learning that Kizaki actually knows less than expected and how his views on Haruto changed because of the events. I still think Kizaki will try something else. Also my prediction was wrong since I know the new stone will become Hurricane Dragon Styles. Then Kizaki says he can trust the power with him, but what will happen when the new rider comes? The action was lacking in length, but there is nothing wrong with short and sweet. The bad part is that we didn't get anything new expect for double guns. I still rather see other forms be used in the final battle with Gargoyle. Seeing Flame Dragon going into the Underworld was nice though. So this gets an A- since the drama and character involvement is still well used and the pacing never felt slow or too fast.

Next Time: Hurricane Dragon hits Japan