REVIEW: Ghost 37
It honestly feels like every time I praise one half of the two episode arc, the other always tends to be sub-par. I really thought that because the set-up episode was better than usual, the pay-off episode would have been fantastic. But with massive pacing and tonal issues, this episode really isn’t the best of Kamen Rider Ghost.
So my first major gripe is with the opening scenes of the episode because boy howdy does it have some tonal issues. Opening on action isn’t really the issue here, because frankly I like when Kamen Rider does that, but it’s the fact that the fight scene with Makoto and his doppelgänger was interrupted half way through by updates from everyone else’s story of the week. We open on this high-energy and tension scene that is immediately interrupted and brought to a screeching halt by some quiet and contemplative scenes.
It’s not that the quiet scenes are bad, no far from it: I’m glad we have these quiet moments to reflect; but it’s that we had this scenario beforehand where Makoto is in some clear danger which leads to high tension that is immediately brought down and thus robbing it of any emotional significance or dramatic weight since it was interrupted. What they should have done, was rather than having the fight cut in two, they should have had the whole thing play out, have Makoto defeated and then go to the new scene. This way the tension of the fight has been dissipated naturally and Makoto is in less immediate danger and so allowing for a more quiet moment to occur. It’s kind of baffling that a 20 year old undergraduate can come up with better pacing than professional story makers.
But no! The poor pacing does not end there! Rather than having the various compelling dilemmas being sorted out in nice long sequences where they come to nice conclusions that make sense, we just get a quick Rocky montage that solves all their issues in 5 seconds! Hurray! Now the most obvious reason as to why this happened was because the show needed a good couple minutes dedicated to the performance of the idol group. Now this annoys me to no end because there was a wonderful opportunity for both Alain and Akari to learn something new in a profound manner, but nope! Gotta have them get over their issues in a montage so we can have a ultimately pointless musical number!
I guess what I don’t like about the character arcs here is that they had a lot of potential, but got dealt with far too easily and quickly. This could have been a great opportunity for Akari to learn to loosen up a little or something like that, to embrace both her scientific pursuits and femininity, yet she just ends up learning a few dance moves and really doesn’t develop much. Alain on the other hand got far more potential taken away! The ultimate lesson he learns is to work with his comrades… something that he had been doing for a while anyway. If he had just trained a bit with Son Goku, Cho Hakkai and Sa Gojo and gained more power that way and learnt nothing further, I would have been fine with it. It’s the fact that he learnt this valuable lesson, without the audience ever seeing him learn it.
On top of that, it’s really bad that he learnt this very important lesson, not from his comrades and friends like Makoto and Takeru, but from three yahoos in an Eyecon. They wasted a perfectly good storyline that would have been wonderful to see fully fleshed out by quickly addressing it in a montage and with minor characters. But what’s even more frustrating about this storyline with Alain is the sudden appearance of Javelle who only appeared up just to get defeated. He somehow just happened to be where Alain was, randomly attacked him and once Alain defeated him, Alain just speeched at him and didn’t react with surprise that he was alive or around. It was so annoying because they just wasted Javelle’s reappearance for him to just job to Alain.
What they should have done, to really show that Alain had learnt how to fight with his comrades help, would have been for him to go find Takeru and helped him defeat the new Ganmizer. This would have not only displayed Alain’s new lesson far better since he would have actually fought with his real comrades , as well as not wasting his reunion with Javelle, but on top of that it would have made more sense for Alain to have defeated the Ganmizer that defeated him in the first place. This would have shown Alain’s growth FAR better and would have also nicely tied it all back together.
The final fight with the Hurricane Ganmizer was also extremely disappointing. Firstly the final fight was far too quick, but it could only be as such in this overstuffed episode. What’s most disappointing is how Takeru gained the Faith Impact. With these new attacks, the best possible way for Takeru to gain them would be to learn about these emotions first hand and by having a crisis himself. This happened quite well with the previous arc as it all eventually tied back to Takeru’s own character arc and past. Here in this episode however, the main character of the show who gained a new power only gained it through other people.
Do you see the problem here? Now Takeru taking a back seat in the events isn’t a bad thing, other characters need the spotlight. However he gained a new power without any growth or struggle himself. It was just given to him without him developing. That is what is so disappointing about his role in this arc: he gained something without ever actually doing anything for it. On top of that the new Ganmizer was dealt with as if it was a monster or the week, rather than the big threat these things are supposed to be. Finally, to add insult to injury, Honami’s psychic ability was explained away as being part of the Igor’s plan which was also never really explained at all, thus again wasting another opportunity by rushing through the story.
My criticism of this episode can essentially boil down to the fact that it had so much potential to have great story-telling and character development, but because of the musical number, everything had to be rushed and thus made worse. The pacing fell off because of this, genuine big moments were reduced to footnotes and so the whole episode fell flat to make space for a musical number. It’s not that the episode is horrendous, because it really isn’t; it’s just extremely disappointing because it had so much potential and wasted it. But the pacing was pretty bad though, the episode deserves all the criticism around that.
