REVIEW: Ghost 22
So remember last week when I said that looking back from episode 22 would make 21 all the better? Well I still feel the same about 21’s averageness, but I will say that episode 22 is all the better for the set up from last week. We got payoffs for the armoured Ganma’s story, Adel and Alain, Makoto and Takeru going to the Ganma world; basically episode 22 was fantastic and was the first time in a while where I was actually at the edge of my seat for an episode of Kamen Rider.
What I was most on-the-edge-of-my-seat for was, well Alain’s ‘death’ half way through the episode. Now I did have a feeling in the back of my mind that he wasn’t actually dead, but it was still so shocking, especially considering that we saw Adel kill his father a few moments before. The few moments between Alain’s death and his ‘revival’, was quite tense and nerve-wrecking. It must have been especially so for people watching the original broadcast since his ‘death’ came right before a commercial break, which would have added way more minutes to the tension and absolute horror.
With Alain’s ‘death’ we also learnt something quite interesting about the Ganma world; namely that, I think, Ganma who have a human form actually are humans who put their souls, or what have you, inside an Eyecon. Basically what happened was once Alain ‘died’ he woke up in his real body. So what I’m assuming is that people from the Ganma world do have physical bodies, but they put their consciousnesses or souls into Ganma Eyecon to not be able to die. This opens up a whole can of worms like: are these individuals from the human world who invaded the Ganma world? What about the grunt Ganma, do they have physical bodies? What about Adonis, is he actually dead? And what about Makoto? What’s the deal with him and his body?
Speaking of Makoto, he was definitely a major part, and will be more so as the weeks come I think, of why this episode is so great. With this week’s episode we really see how much he has grown and become kinder since he treats Alain with so much respect and adoration, helping him as much as he can as well as truly believing Alain can change. He also wanted to have Aria come with him, so it really shows that Makoto has grown and genuinely is a good person. In fact he wasn’t even the angriest one this episode, which is quite surprising.
That honour (?) goes to Takeru, who showed a new side to himself this week. After realising that the souls the Ganma had taken lead to those humans’ death, he confronts Alain very angrily over how the Ganma world is not in fact as perfect as he perceived it to be. This is some fantastic stuff since we really haven’t seen Takeru ever be this angry before, especially towards someone as helpless in the moment as Alain. It really shows not only Shun Nishime’s breadth in acting skill, but it also shows that Takeru isn’t some 2 dimensional do-gooder type hero. It also puts him up against some real difficult challenges that presumably he will overcome and be even more impressive on the other side. I’m quite enjoying and looking forward to Takeru’s heroic journey as the show goes on.
Back to Alain, he also got some great character moments this week as well. I forgot to mention that in the last episode he looked like he was starting to get some doubts about not only his role within Gama society, but also which side he was on. The brief moment we saw of him with his father, firstly showed which son Adonis loves more (because he treated Alain better) and secondly that Alain was well on his way to join our protagonists’ side and stop the Ganma invasion. This week not only solidified that sentiment, but also created a lot of pathos for him. I say this as after Alain enters his real body, he is feeble, weak and helpless; yet he still does his best to save Makoto and Takeru, who are his kinda enemies at this point. It shows a lot of growth in character that he wanted to save these two, despite being severely injured. Judging from the previews, it seems like this character development for him is only going to continue growing and I’m really excited for it.
Which leaves us with the usual I-don’t-know-where-else-to-mention-this-stuff paragraph. Firstly I wanna say that I really like not only the design of Adel’s Ultima Ganma form as well as the transformation Eyecon for it’ it’s really nice to see the ‘Kamen Riders as morally good versions of the villains’ theme alive and well through the Ultima Ganma form. On that note I’m also glad that Adel seems to be the big bad of the series, especially this early in its run; it means we have a clear villain all the way through to the end who is also mostly irredeemable. I also really like what they did with the Armoured Ganma since, yes she was defeated, but honourably and without her losing any of her morality; it was a good way to add to the theme of Ganmas not being completely evil, while still having a monster of the week format.
So yeah, this was a great episode and a really nice way to tie everything up from last week. It’s odd to say that I’m starting to feel like that there are so many of good to amazing episodes that this is becoming the norm. This episode is absolutely one of the best episodes of Ghost, but it doesn’t stand out from a crowd of amazing episodes. This isn’t really a bad thing since it just means that on the whole, the programme is really good.
