REVIEW: Drive 38
So I know I sound like a broken record, but week after week Drive proves to me that the first halves of their two episode arcs are always inferior to the second half. Time after time have I felt that the arcs start with a pointless and uninteresting mystery and then builds up to a greater plot unrelated to it. This week is another case of that.
And so, like every second week of this show, we start with the lame-ish aftermath of a cliffhanger. But y’know what? This one isn’t half bad. If you remember, last week, Shinnosuke was left without Mr.Belt with Heart menacingly walking towards him. However it turns out that Heart was not going to attack him, saying that he wants to fight Shinnosuke at his full strength.
The two also discuss how Heart wishes to only overthrow the humans, rather than killing them all. It shows us that, yes, Heart is still the antagonist of the show, but he is still noble and inherently good. Of course he would want to find his place in the world; sadly it’s through means that could hurt many. This is definitely the sign of a good antagonist. There is also a brief moment when Medic comes to receive Heart and he simply ignores her. I understand that this is a momentary thing for Heart to dislike Medic, but I feel it really expands their characters to more than what they were.
Cut back to the Special Crimes Unit HQ where we get an exposition dump from Rinna who explains that since the fires from the sacrificed Roiimudes were decreasing, the golden sauce was getting more refined/successful in creating ultimate evolutions. Now I do understand that this scene is needed to explain the ‘mystery’ of the episode arc, however it felt really out of place and simply put there to make sure the plot of the weekly mystery was pushed forward. Yeah it’s needed so there is a weekly narrative to allow for more interesting things to happen, but it still felt clunky and unnecessary.
Returning to the more interesting stuff, while walking past a restaurant, Medic daydreams about eating there with Heart. This may seem irrelevant now, however it is super important later on. Shinnosuke and crew, after staking out the restaurant, finally catch up to the Chef Roiimude. Interestingly, the directors/writers/Toei/whoever decided to use type Technic and Wild for the fight. It’s nice to see the forms again, but they definitely feel shoe-horned in; nothing wrong with the show itself, just the format it takes nowadays with the many, many forms. The fight swiftly ends and we learn that Okumura is the culprit and that the Roiimude he fused with was his female sous Chef. He also pleads to Shinnosuke not to kill her since she heightened his sense of taste a hundredfold.
Now this plot line isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just really forgettable due to it being condensed so much to fit the main plot with Heart. It would have been a great plotline by itself concerning Human/Roiimude relations which would have made the Roiimudes more tragic, thus increasing the drama, and also further highlighting such an obvious and interesting theme. However it is cast aside, to what I do admit is an interesting character study with Heart which does humanise Roiimudes, which is a main theme of the show.
And so we continue onto the long as climactic fight of this episode. Firstly we get a great moment where Gou uses his roll call again, which is just great to see; it’s also a little more restrained, but probably so as to show he has grown as a character. Apart from that it is a pretty average fight. What’s more interesting however, is what occurs afterwards. So during the fight Medic had dropped the golden sauce which the Chef Roiimude had made for her. This drops her into a deep despair that Gou tries to take advantage of, but Shinnosuke stops the attack, thus paying back his debt to Heart.
Turns out Medic was making the golden sauce so as to make Heart so overjoyed via good food that he would evolve. Heart recognises this as a noble cause, however was mad at her since she was sacrificing his precious comrades. But because of this Shinnosuke learns that Roiimudes can indeed love and care for each other and so vows to defeat them only because they threaten humanity. Heart also reaffirms his love of fighting Shinnosuke and so ends the show by evolving into his ultimate form. Now starting from this week for a about a month, we will get 1 minute minisodes tying into SURPISE FUTURE. This week we are introduced to Shinnosuke’s son, Eiji and the future he lives in. Krim Steinbelt also makes a cameo in the episode proper wondering whether the Roiimudes or the human will win. I really like all this since it’s been forever since a summer movie has been not only pushed this much, but is also integral to the plot. I am very much excited for how the movie is gonna go.
So yeah, that was an episode. It did have an interesting plot-that-ties-to-the-rest-of-the-show with Heart and Medic, but the weekly mystery was meh. It did have a seed of an interesting idea, however since it was relegated to the b-plot and so late in the show’s run, it didn’t get the time it needed to be really interesting. But apart from that, Heart and Medic’s story really pulls this episode up and I hope more comes from these two/what themes they highlight.
