Kamen Rider Wizard Episode 12 Review: The Helpful Assistant

After the events of the last episode we go to a new day where Wajime has made the new ring. When noticing it Haruto can tell that it is similar to the Flame Dragon Ring. That isn't all though, Wajime made another green ring. Now Shunpei is excited for Haruto, but he seems different as he follows Haruto outside for his hunt for Phantoms. At the beginning of the search Shunpei tells Haruto since that he is getting stronger, he needs to level up as an assistant. Now with Shunpei's determination no Phantom can escape..... no. Shunpei just jumps the gun and go to assumption that a woman is a Phantom, a kid was put in despair by a Phantom, and a mascot was a Phantom. Afterwards, Haruto tells him to stop and heads off for a doughnut. Meanwhile a new Phantom gets a job to hunt down a Gate. The Phantom is called Valkyrie and he seems to have a hard time with loud people. Shunpei now just walking around doing nothing, but someone calls out to him. Shunpei recognizes who it is and yells out Tetsyua-sempai. Shunpei asks how he is doing as Tetsuya is working at a confectionery as he is in training and wants to open a store like it someday. Shunpei looks around and he soon sees Tetsuya's boss and he is pretty strict. Back to Haruto he gets his usual plain sugar and rejects another new doughnut. After hearing a mother and child talking about manju the doughnut clerk talks about the manju store nearby. The discussion then goes to about how young someone is and the clerk gets mad and decides to mess around with Haruto by taking his doughnut (he's lucky he didn't steal Marve's chicken). Back to the store, Tetsuya is delivering food for a restaurant and this is when Valkyrie strikes. Tetsuya tries to get away as Haruto is told about the Phantom thanks to Unicorn. Valkyrie catches up to him and knocks down the sweets. Haruto then appears and fights Valkyrie with Flame and then Land Styles. Valkyrie doesn't stay for long since he has done what he wanted to do. So he retreats after Wizard defends himself with the Defend Ring. Now Tetsuya has to tell the restaurant about what happened and of course the woman doesn't believe that a monster attacked him. The boss soon arrives and tells the woman that another store will cover the delivery. Sadly the restaurant will not be taking anymore orders from the store as they end their contract. Back at the store Shunpei tells the boss that Tetsuya could be a Gate and was in danger. Haruto thinks something is up though since the Phantom left rather quickly. The boss doesn't care about what the problem is, it's just the delivery was a failure and that is all. The restaurant always took tons of their products and now they will have a issues with paying for the store. Shunpei has an idea and goes out selling the sweets to everyone he can find. Shunpei finds a customer who really loves the sweets and he said that he will take five hundred a day! We find out that the man is apart of the grocery store and works with the sale of sweets. The deal is that he wants five hundred of the sweets and will keep taking them for half a year! This is very good news, but it sounds to go to be true as Haruto thinks something is suspicious. The boss takes the offer and now wants to make a new manju. It is made and the two boys really love the taste. The boss then names the new product, Hope. The boss and Shunpei then head out to delivery the five hundred Hopes as Haruto will protect Tetsuya as he summons the Kracken to follow them. Things don't go well as the store will not take the order since it was not reported. They try to tell them that someone ordered it, but he soon appears before them and says he died. He changes into his Phantom form and was only tricking them so that he can get the Gate into despair. The boss is completely depressed by this and we learn that he was the Gate. Koyomi sees what's happening and calls Haruto while Shunpei gets the boss away. Haruto appears and defends the two and knew that the boss was the Gate. Valkyrie summoned Ghuls to help him as they fight Wizard in Flame Styles. He uses the Copy Ring to make a clone of himself as the two fight off the Ghuls. The clone vanishes and Wizard changes into Hurricane Styles and keeps fighting the Ghuls. After Valkyrie knocks him down, Wizard changes into the new form Hurricane Dragon. He gets the two swords out and slashes the monsters. For the finisher, the new ring is used as it's called Thunder and summons a lighting dragon head. Valkyrie gets out and flies towards Shunpei and takes him hostage.

Another fine example of why Wizard is doing so good. First I am liking that Shunpei wants to do more. He did help before, but never really helped Haruto yet. Even Rinko does some help and she could have almost got hurt in the last episode. Going on with that, Shunpei was on a roll today. His scenes were very good with helping out his sempai. I loved the scene where he is selling the sweets, it fits his personality and seeing him stuff food down a fake octopus' mouth was great. For me Shunpei never had a great moment, but this arc so far gave him some great parts and I can't wait for the second part to see what he does.

Another great character is Valkyrie. I love his design a whole lot. Also with an intelligent mind this guy is so far doing well. You can tell he was observing things and planned what to do. I was actually thinking that Tetsuya was the Gate still. What I was expecting was to make Tetsuya squander and have his boss yell at him and then letting things continue on. Seeing that the boss was the Gate was really surprising and then finding out what the Phantom's plan was genius. He knew a great way to get involved with the store by making sure the contract between them and the restaurant ended. He knew they would take any opportunity. Then Valkyrie attacks and makes the boss feel depressed since he worked so hard to make the Hopes and knowing that they are useless now. We didn't see much of his fighting potential. All we got was his laser attack, his weapon (a lance), and his flying ability.Overall though this Phantom is really topping the others since he perfectly planned out things and tricked the viewers on who the Gate was.

 One more character or two is Tetsuya and his boss. for minor characters I can tell a lot about these two. Tetsuya wants to learn so he is working hard with his boss. In the summary I did say he is strict, but it's a much different way. It's not straight up yelling at Tetsuya, but telling him how he needs to do things. It's the helpful strictness and not the pure madness that some bosses can have. I love this viewpoint since the boss isn't a mean guy just a hard worker. Now I was expecting he was the Gate when he named the manju, Hope. It was kinda obvious, but it did get me thinking. So applause to the writing yet again. I even loved his speech about he wasn't mad at Tetsuya, but just mad that the delivery was a failure and losing the contract. So we got a good boss and a worker who both work very hard for their dreams.

Now there was the action and we got some old things, but new looks on them. The first fight wasn't anything since Valkyrie left quickly since he did what was needed. The second fight had a lot. First was the Copy Ring and we saw two Wizards fighting Ghuls at the same time. They perform the flips and flowing attacks at the same time and this wasn't a special effect there were two suits. So big hands for having things accurate and dead on the same time. Next was Hurricane form in close combat without a sword. Hurricane form uses his feet for the big attacks while his arms and hands slows down the foes are traps them. A very effective style and how Wizard did it helped him push away Ghuls so he can focus on one at a time. Finally there was Hurricane Dragon with two swords and if you remember how Hurricane held a sword it was the same with two. I love the swordplay with this form holding the swords downward to make bigger slashing impacts and even faster. With his placement too Wizard slashed multiple enemies at the same time. The action at the end was really good and even though it is short it had tons to offer.

Episode twelve is a great one as it gives the usual trend a twist thanks to a smart Phantom. Not a lot big plot changers happened, but we got to see Shunpei in a new light and we will see that again next time. The action was saved to the end and it was worth it since we got many things in the fight. The minor characters are another good thing as they are both hard workers and the boss is the right type of boss. I give this episode an A+ cause of the drama, action, and even the comedy was done with excellent care.

Next Time: Medusa strikes again!