Kamen Rider Gaim Episode 43 Review: Lord Baron! (Major Spoiler Alert!!!)

The Golden Fruit continues to move the plot of the show as Micchy's and Kouta's fight comes to an end, but the results will surprise many. Another surprise is how Mai reacts to all of this.

The episode begins with a big bomb that is for sure, Micchy actually defeats Kouta. Kouta lets his guard down on purpose so when he takes a lethal blow he can get rid of the Hell Fruit Lock Seed. Micchy was in complete shock when this happens since he was in the heat of the moment. Micchy was saying things on how he would die for Mai as he didn’t care for his own life anymore. The whole Hell Fruit Lock Seed didn’t last long which does disappoint me in a childish way and by that I mean I can’t see this form anymore. In an actual story purpose, it’s great that this Lock Seed is gone because it gave Micchy a complete wake-up call though. Still having Kouta die at that moment is a big shock on its own right, especially when it first happened. Many fans were in disarray because of this since many of those fans just hate Micchy without understanding his character.

Micchy again is a character that is lost and this episode really proves all of that. When Kouta is talking to Micchy he says on how they used to be friends not so long ago and even he wonders how that got lost so quickly. Kouta even tells Micchy that he has his whole future and that a few mistakes won’t be ruining his life. Micchy has been confused for a long time in the series and Kouta is telling him that it’s fine to be confused. There is a long road ahead and a few mistakes won’t be destroying it. Kouta is telling Micchy to forgive himself and sadly Micchy is going to have a hard time doing that now because of Kouta’s death. At the least though, Micchy will try to keep Mai alive for Kouta’s sake. So Micchy who would die for Mai has now changed his path to stay alive and keep someone else alive for Kouta, sadly this couldn’t happen.

A huge scene that happens is that Micchy finally gets the biggest knife in his back. There have been other knives in his back mostly from Reduye and the other Overlords, but Ryouma simply put him out of commission. He ends up taking the Golden Fruit for himself and that means the operation was a success, but only for him. He killed Mai just to get the Golden Fruit since as he said before the fruit was infused with her heart. I will easily get to how delightfully evil Ryouma was in this episode later as he really turned the tables. Well with Mai dead in front of Micchy’s eyes he breaks down and Ryouma soon starts to take that to his advantage. First he kills Takatora’s belt, preventing Micchy from transforming into the strongest form. Ryouma then starts to tell Micchy that Takatora tried to prevent Micchy from growing up too fast since the real adults will easily punish those who were not ready. That moment clearly shows that the confused Micchy was not prepared for what was going to happen and major consequences are happening because of him. He was more collected, he could have had a chance to prevent or at least change things, but Mai will try to do that.

Mai is dead there is no doubt about that, but her spirit lives on within the Golden Fruit. With this she obtains a new form and some new powers since she is literally the Golden Fruit. With unimaginable powers she decides to change the future by traveling between time itself and try warning everyone to back away. What’s really interesting is that we do learn that she did succeed at one point, but it was thanks to Sagara that put things back into line. It was also interesting to see that Sagara was traveling around with Mai meaning he is a being that could already do this. He decides to be an observer and when something got out of line he simply put it back into place so he can continue to watch what he wanted. What I didn’t get was that the things Mai were saying was not what she wanted to say. This is shown with her telling the heroes of their fates cryptically and not straight to the point while the real Mai wanted to tell them right off the bat they will die. Maybe it is due to the fact that not even the Golden Fruit can do that much or maybe Sagara was affecting her words since he was following with her in time. Either way her words got changed and ended up not helping the situation; it clearly did change certain things though.

With this episode flashing back to the previous episodes were Mai tried to warn the heroes of their fate, there were other callbacks to the series. First there was seeing Sagara announcing during the time of the Inves Games and even dressing up like the deejay again. The whole time his role was apparent since the beginning of the series as he observed things and announced them to others. There were even callbacks with Kaito since he had to make a choice the Helheim Fruit. He holds it in his hand as this is reminder of the time he was going to work for Ryouma and the others when first investigating the Overlords as he crushes the fruit in his hands. This time however he takes a bite out of the fruit and even talks about Hase. His transformation then even reminds me of Demushu since Kaito gained Overlord powers and used one of them during a fight. It’s amazing when the series starts doing these callbacks as they that shows how much the show has been playing the audience with foreshadowing. This is great for watching the show again and it’s just great writing in general.

I really feel that Ryouma has been at his finest during these recent episodes because he was constantly keeping up with how things have been changing. The many events of this show would clearly scare many away or even break them, but Ryouma not only stays he still becomes a major player and stays on his road. He wanted the fruit and he stayed true to that as he killed someone for that with no doubt whatsoever. He even tricked Micchy to kill Kouta for him and with his kill switch that destroys the other Genesis Drivers, he has nothing to worry about or so he thought. With all of that, Ryouma was letting his true self go as he was strangling Micchy and brutally beating up Kaito. Things really got out of pace even for Ryouma though as he started to lose it when the Golden Fruit vanishes and when Kaito got his new powers. The thing with Ryouma is that he kept with science and could never predict the impossible. I mean who would know that the Golden Fruit could become sentient pretty much and that humans could actually become Inves and maintain their minds? Sadly, these were then Ryouma’s final moments in the series and that is probably why they made him this big player during the recent episodes. Still the series even noted that he would be a big foe with that one fight he had with Kouta in the middle of the series.

Kaito took a huge leap in today’s episode as things were looking bad for him as he could die from the Helheim’s poison in his body. During the fight with Ryouma he loses because he is just using the standard driver and Ryouma is more of a cheater than a strong fighter. The poison starts to hurt him again and then things get interesting at that point. I did love how Kaito was losing it since this was a do it or die moment and he was saying some lines like starting an experiment. So he takes a bite into the fruit and becomes Lord Baron! Well that is what I’ve been hearing what it’s called and I would like to consider this a new form for Baron. First of all I love the design; it’s easily my favorite of the Overlord designs right next to Roshou. First it clearly works with Baron’s mold as he still has the horns like in his base form and he still has some form of shoulder pads. The color palette is similar, but the amount of silver is replaced with red and black. There are still touches of yellow which clearly reminds me of Banana Arms. Kaito just took down Ryouma with no problems then which lead to a rather silly moment. Ryouma starts telling Kaito that he will soon die because of this new form since Ryouma is a man of science and rejects that humans can evolve without it. Then he just falls off a building… there was even the odd moment with all of the feathers around Micchy and Kouta…

The action was quite low since Kouta was killed off early in the episode which should feel more overwhelming than I thought, but I know he is coming back even when I saw this for the first time. Still there was Lord Baron completely dominating Ryouma in a fight which was still rather fast. Again I bet the series had to save up money for a really big fight since the finale is coming close, but this is why they had this big reveal or turning moments. Gaim is clearly more about the story which is great since good drama can easily replace action. Still seeing Lord Baron like that was awesome since he was using the many powers that were soon dominating him. The effects were used well which is probably why is a quick fight since they can’t have too many effects used.

Episode forty-three is just another stellar episode, what really made this episode stand out the most was the use of callbacks. Then how they tried to show that Kouta died was a way to pull at the audience’s strings again. Micchy’s whole character starts breaking down as he killed Kouta and couldn’t save Mai as Ryouma soon gives him a complete scare of his life. Ryouma was amazingly evil again and on top of things until Lord Baron came. As I said there were some strange moments like Ryouma’s death and even with something like Sagara exploring with Mai in time, I was laughing when I think I shouldn’t have. With that though this episode gets an A-

Next Time: Hail to the king, baby!