REVIEW: Ghost 08
Remember last week when I said that Ghost could maybe not fall into the trap of two-parters not being that great? Yeah it promptly fell in the trap. With a plot where nothing new happens and what fresh things that do happen don’t have that much of an impact, this week’s Kamen Rider Ghost really isn’t living up to the standards of those prior.
What I am basically getting at is that Ghost’s plot, at least this early in its run, doesn’t really benefit from having a two episode structure. The cliff-hanger of Onari and Akari getting kidnapped along with the appearance of the giant insect Ganma was resolved way too quickly. In fact the scene right afterwards where the three discuss what happened, felt just like the end of an episode. The feeling I got from last week was that the two being kidnapped would’ve been an episode long thing, rather than something that is solved in 5 minutes.
But it doesn’t stop there because the Insect Ganma, yet again survived, despite being obliterated by Takeru’s kick. I understand they needed to keep it for the rest of the episode, but maybe having the giant Ganma being a decoy or something along those lines like they did with the possessions would’ve been nice. On top of that the scenes with Makoto and Saionji felt like a retread of what we got last week; they even used the exact same location to do this scene. All in all the episode’s plot felt quite empty and seemed like it was repeating the same things as last week thematically, rather than building upon what it already had.
Admittedly there were some good aspects to the episode. The action scene between Takeru and Makoto this week was really well done and showed how well the gimmick works as a tool for action as well as a toy line; I especially liked how Makoto used the Gan Gun Hand to firstly grab Takeru, then trap him, then activated the Dai Kaigan for a devastating finisher. On top of that, the fact that Takeru learnt who Spectre is, was a great addition to the plot. The fact that he gives up fighting and that you can tell this all from Taikawa Seiji’s body language adds to the drama of the fight overall. In essence this fight was honestly the best part of the episode.
Another thing I liked about this week’s episode was the expansion upon Makoto’s backstory. The fact that he has a genuine and realistically real reason to hate and fight Takeru, is a breath of fresh to the secondary rider dynamic; For too long have we had secondary rider rivalries based around the dumbest things. I also like how Saionji is baiting Makoto to hate Takeru more and more so as he can get Makoto to get Takeru’s Eyecons. It again shows that there are many characters with many different motivations within the show.
Speaking of the serial plot, this week really didn’t do much to add to it than what I mentioned above. We do get hints of what’s to come with the revelation of more monoliths and so forth, but I’m a bit tired of the excess of mystery. I want to get a bit more than knowing that Aran is doing something somewhere for some reason. I want to know why Aran is setting up all these things and what those damn monoliths are. I can accept the collection of Eyecons to be a key thing since it has been hinted at heavily to grant great power or some kind of wish.
But we have so little on the motivations of Aran and the Ganma. Are they invading earth? Why are they doing that? How are they going to do that? How does the sage factor into this all? Taking a quick glance at other Kamen Rider series, I found that they already moved the plot further than Ghost did, or were not doing as much. My point here is that Ghost has shown us so much of the Ganmas doing their thing, but never explained it. It was fine earlier in the show since we had a general grasp of what they wanted, Eyecons to let more Ganma in, but now that we’ve seen hints of more stuff, yet not really told anything, it’s becoming quite frustrating to watch it unfold.
Apart from all that, there really isn’t much to say since nothing really happened. The drama of Takeru learning about Makoto is on hold until further notice for the sake of a continuing plot, the plot of the week didn’t really go anywhere and the Ganma wasn’t that interesting. I really, really, really hope Ghost hasn’t already lost its steam and that his is a temporary road bump. I want it to maintain the quality is has had since the beginning and judging from scans and the fact that we are getting a new rider soon, I think this might be the case.
