REVIEW: Ghost 06
This week’s Ghost was music to my ears with another fantastic character focused episode! Akari is the star or the plot, with Takeru getting a healthy dose of development as well. We also get the debut of Kamen Rider Ghost Beethoven soul!
With this week’s episode Takeru is still feeling the effects of Spectre’s brutal attack, which I think is genius. We have seen a good serialisation in Kamen Rider before, but to have it start this early I think is really, really good. On top of that I like how we are getting the serialisation not from 2 part episodes, but rather individual episodes that add up to a greater whole. It’s not revolutionary for television as a whole, but for Kamen Rider I think having self-contained episodes helps the quality since we won’t get the horrible cliff-hangers that have plagued the series before. However, by having the plot of the week be shorter does lower the quality of them since they have less time to make their point or develop. Yet in this episode specifically, despite being overall weak, there was a great synthesis of the two plots when Akari is convincing Kousuke, the victim of the week, to live and Takeru takes the words she says to heart.
Speaking of Takeru and Akari, they were both fantastic this week. With Takeru’s loss of confidence he is less and less able to be seen by the others, which Akari rightfully gets quite affected by. Akari tries her best to not only console Takeru, but try to cheer herself up. It’s nice to see the female secondary protagonist not only doing quite a bit for the hero, but to also be a three dimensional character herself; she is just a normal person trying her best to make sense of the bizarre occurrences surrounding her. I also liked, again, how much Takeru was affected by Spectre’s words and how it was quite a blow for his confidence. However, it might have been a bit nicer for it to linger a little while longer, but hey beggars can’t be choosers. Hopefully his issues will linger on for a while as they are not so easily solvable; and the case seems to be so as Takeru’s time is still rapidly coming to a close and Onari states that he still has a lot of training to do.
We also got some advancement in Makoto’s character this week as well. Yes he is still the ruthless loner we were shown last week, but we do find out that he does have a softer side and why he is mercilessly collecting Eyecons: his sister turns out to somehow be a Ganma Eyecon. This means that he also has a very personal stake in this fight over the Eyecons and so making the exchange and gaining of them even more dramatic. His sister also hinted that Makoto has some sort of connection with Akari, which does play out a little this week since he doesn’t take the Musashi Eyecon from her when Takeru dropped it. This does feel like the writers are somewhat rehashing Terui Ryu’s character except in blue with Makoto, but it could turn out to be an interesting addition to the character. On top of that he does allow Takeru to gain the Beethoven Eyecon, thus showing that he does have some respect for Takeru, or at least some sympathy.
Speaking of the Eyecons, I really liked their usage this week: Makoto using Edison against Takeru to further lower his confidence was really interesting, if predictable. I also like how the Gan Gun Hand was utilized with it with it extending and electrocuting Takeru. It was nice to see Musashi finally being used again, but I wish they went a bit further with its significance since it was born from Takeru and the katana guard that his father gave him. Maybe a passing line or something would’ve been nice, but it was treated like any other Eyecon, rather than an emotionally and thematically important one.
Yet that was not the most important Eyecon this week as we got the debut of the Beethoven Soul/Eyecon this episode. It really feels like as more and more of them are introduced, their significance lowers. The only previous rider that had this many forms was Gaim, but the gaining of them weren’t as painstaking and plot heavy. I’m just disappointed that the programme is kinda wasting such great dramatic potential by just introducing them willy nilly. Then again it means that we are more likely to get ones that do have more significance at some point, which I hope is what happens.
But what about the Beethoven soul itself? It’s alright. Its design is quite drab with a mostly grey colour scheme with hints of black and white for the piano keys. It’s not that it has a small amount of colours, but rather that the grey is quite dull and boring. The helmet design I do quite like with various notes making up the form’s face. Its functionality is interesting too since it is able to control music and weaponise it, but it was underutilised much like the form itself. Overall it’s not that impressive a soul and I don’t mind as much that its going to fade into the background.
I do have a couple general bits to say to wrap this review up. The Ganma this week, personality and design wise wasn’t that compelling either, but what it did in regards to the victim of the week was quite interesting. It’s power to remove silence was quite off putting and definitely something I’d never seen before and I also liked how it was trying to push Kousuke to give his life to further his music. It made more sense than Axe Ganma’s plan and clarified more how an evil Eyecon is made. On top of that, I really liked how the resolution of Kosuke’s arc also helped with Takeru’s confidence and his conviction to fight as Ghost.
So apart from the character development of Akari, Takeru and to a lesser extent Makoto, the episode was pretty average. Now that’s average for Ghost, which means it was good, but average nonetheless. The plot of the week wasn’t that compelling and the Eyecon introduced was not that interesting either, but that doesn’t detract from the rest of the episode’s quality. So let us hope that next week’s episode is not that discordant and is in fact more melodic.
