Welcome back to my new ongoing recap series focusing on the second Kamen Rider Heisei series, Kamen Rider Agito! But before we go on I want to note I’m going to be starting up a midweek recap series and I’m hoping for at least some of you readers to help me pick which one I do, I’ve got a post about it here.
This week starts off with… a condensed version of the Rider Kick from the end of last week but this time without the awesome song “Believe Yourself” playing, which makes it infinitely lamer by comparison. This is true of all things that happen compared to the version of them that happens while “Believe Yourself” is playing.
The only new thing that happens is that G3 stands up, wonders who this strange new Rider is, and then immediately falls over like it’s some sort of goofy slapstick routine.
I am starting to wonder if G3 is maybe not really cut out for the Super Hero business guys. I’m seeing a lot more ‘bumbling sidekick’ in his future. But for now we’re off for the first time to the credits!
The opening theme for the show is the imaginatively named “Kamen Rider AGITO.” The opening credits also maybe completely spoil some things that are still secret for now but hey since I’m a nice guy as a special service I’m not going to mention them! The song itself is a surprisingly mellow affair and I used to not be a fan of it, but for some reason it’s become one of the songs I sing to myself a lot so I guess it’s sort of catchy? The main chorus hook is “Ready to Go, Count Zero. Kamen Rider Agito!” in English so that may have something to do with why it worms it’s way into my ear. Weirdly the footage they use for the opening theme is clips from the series and shots of the characters all interspersed with footage of the Riders from the show racing on a Motorcycle race track. I assure you that happens at no point during this series.
Once the episode starts up proper Hikawa is getting checked out of the hospital with no serious injuries after being nearly beaten to death last episode including being thrown into multiple cars so I guess G3 at least has some good defensive systems. We also learn that his female support officer is named Ozawa. She points out that even though G3 failed it was designed with enough power to be able to take out an Unidentified Lifeform in one hit so you know maybe Hikawa kind of screwed it up and not the G3? Then in a pretty nice transition since he’s walking out of the hospital the camera just catches a shot where both he and Ryou are in frame together but stays with Ryou instead of following Hikawa.
A doctor kindly informs Ryou’s coach that Ryou’s muscles are expanding and that’s why he’s wracked with spasms and horrible pain. Also it’s Ryou’s coach who is with him at the hospital rather than any family or friends which is kind of weird isn’t it?
Shouichi is working at his gardening (where he just has a garden that is only spinach at the moment) when a quick and convenient conversation with Mana reveals that she’s not the Professor’s kid either as she’s his niece from a non-blood related brother. Also Mana implies bad stuff in her past with her temporarily wishing she had amnesia like Shouichi which is both sad and kind of insulting?
Hikawa meets with the top brass of the police and it’s revealed that only 12 seconds of blurry camera footage got recorded, making Hikawa’s story just as believable as your standard alien photographer.
This scene is… incredibly important! The police are shockingly ready to dismiss his claims of having fought an Unidentified Lifeform and quickly point out that all of those have already been defeated. Hikawa claims that the mysterious entity who came to save him was like “Number 4” but was not “Number 4”, which the police captains say would be impossible in any case.
So now all of you out there who read my previous Recaps (or watched Kuuga) are probably wondering… what happened to Kuuga? The short answer is that this is not a sequel to Kuuga. This is an alternate universe!
Now I’m going to go ahead and recommend anyone out there who, for whatever reason haven’t caught up on Kuuga yet to skip until after the next image because of minor spoilers. So when the series originally came out it was kind of vague on whether Agito was a direct sequel or not but it was decided to officially be an alternate world story, which gets confirmed by some later multidimensional events we’ll get to if we ever make it all the way to Decade. The point being that they didn’t want it to feel like Kuuga had failed by not saving the world in his home universe. So what’s going on in Agito? Clearly in their universe there was a Kuuga too.
Well time for a little fan canon! I’ve always thought (and since it’s my blog yes I can waste all of our time expanding on my fan theory), that the Kuuga from the Agito universe never achieved the Golden Power. That was, after all, something that was kind of an accident for the Kuuga we all know and love. He probably was still able to fight the Grongi but had to rely even more on the police’s help until eventually this Kuuga had to succumb to the Ultimate Darkness to get the power up he needed to fight Daguva, and the police had to put him down. This would handily explain why there is no Kuuga anymore, why the police wanted to create a police weapon that could mimic Kuuga’s powers without his dangerous risks, and why the police are adamantly refusing to believe the Grongi are back considering how awful things turned out last time. So yeah, just my little head canon I guess but always made sense to me!
Okay we’re all back together now! The police chiefs say that if Hikawa is telling the truth and there are Kaijin around now that are more powerful than the Unidentified Lifeforms they should call the new Kaijin “Unknowns” (in English) just to keep everything clear. Because there’s nothing like a loanword from another language to prevent confusion.
After the meeting Jackass Cop meets Hikawa in the hallway and proves his temporary name to be incredibly fitting as he straight up talks about how he used to look up to and respect Hikawa for being chosen to be G3 but now he’s positive that Hikawa and his task force just straight up made up the whole attack to prevent them from losing their jobs because no monsters have shown up for 2 years. It’s also pretty clear he probably never actually did respect him and just said that so his eventual flat accusations of lying would sting all the harder because he’s a Jackass?
I’m tempted to just stick with the temporary name but we find out he’s called Hojo Toro (the Jackass) when Hikawa returns a sick burn about he used to think Tojo was an elite but apparently he just has all the time in the world to hang out in stairwells waiting on people he wants to have a chat with rather than doing his job.
Hikawa meets up with Ozawa and the other support officer as they talk about the case. They agree to treat Agito as an Unknown for now even though Ozawa is already keen to talk about how awesome it was that he saved Hikawa’s sorry butt. Which considering without him Hikawa would be dead you probably have to give that to her. They also review the salient facts. An entire family was murdered for some reason, and the only piece of evidence they have is a photo.
Did you notice it? It’s a spooky photo. Thing is over there hanging off the boys shoulder, and it was taken a day before he was murdered. Floating disembodied hands are uncommon enough even in Japan for this to warrant further investigation.
At the O-Parts research lab the dials are spinning along at a good clip when all of a sudden the power goes out and with extreme stealth and cunning two giant cat monsters with glowing halos over their heads poke their heads out from behind the giant cross everyone’s looking at so they can do some sabotage.
The machine bursts into sparks right in front of the Unknown and somehow nobody notices them. Because… they are just THAT GOOD. Seriously Solid Snake take now that is how you do tactical espionage action.
The sabotage seems to make the dials spin even faster, which… I mean the O-parts research folk were already spinning the dials to unlock them so it seems weird to break in and risk detection just to also keep doing the same thing they were already doing but hey I’m not a Halo Cat Monster.
Professor Misugi has brought his grad students back to his house so he can review their theses once again and that same dumb kid Okada from last week still wants to write about psychic powers as though that’s even a thing in a world where it’s established that two years ago magical ancient monsters rose from the dead to battle against the last savior of humanity. It turns out Okada wants to write about psychic powers because he’s convinced he’s psychic! Because sometimes he thinks things will happen and then they happen! I would like to restate the Okada is a graduate level college student.
So they decide to host an experiment where Okada tries to guess which playing cards the Professor draws, and Shouichi joins along in the guessing because… I don’t know to make Okada look even dumber when he fails? Which of course both Shouichi and Okada do. But someone else is watching the competetion. Mana. And what does she see in her minds eye?
Mana is watching from the hallway and guesses all the cards correct, but she is intentionally keeping her gifts hidden from her family. For reasons!
As the cross dials keep a-spinning Hojo is called to the scene of another dead body stuffed in a tree. And what’s his first reaction on looking over the corpse of a dead high school girl?
Seriously look at that smile! What a jackass! He’s all excited because if more dead bodies are being stuffed into trees than it means that Hikawa couldn’t have seen the culprit explode the night before. Again I want to stress his first reaction is not remorse, or determination, or… well anything acceptable, it’s just to sport a smug grin because he’s got one up on his rival. He grabs his partner Kouno while they dig up info on the victims relatives since the last string of murders involved the elimination of an entire family.
Hikawa meanwhile went out to confirm that the photo they had was of their victim (which I don’t recall that ever being in doubt so that seems like an odd waste of time), while Ozawa has been busy trying to identify the location where the photo was taken, and after cross referencing photos sends Hikawa off to Buzen Peak to further their investigation.
Shouichi has finished cooking up his first spinach dish and makes a bad pun about it that is identified as a bad pun by the rest of the characters, so for those of you who were already missing Manager from the Kuuga recaps let it be known that his spirit lives on. The family is going to be forced to eat Spinach for the rest of the month because it’s all Shouichi has been growing, but his food apparently is edible if mild tasting. The Professor theorizes that Shouichi might prefer mild foods because he is suffering from some debilitating medical condition that could kill him (since he has amnesia and wouldn’t know what medicine he needed), and then seems surprised when this greatly depresses Shouichi.
Oh and he does all that while casually reading the newspaper and ignoring his family.
So Professor Misugi continues to be the same dick he was last week and is just barely beat out by Hojo for being actually detestable since the Professor at least didn’t consider coming across a dead school girl a ‘good day.’
Hojo and Kouno are tailing the dead girls family on bodyguard duty while Hikawa tries to match the skyline in the photo up to a location. When things don’t seem to be adding up he realizes his phone’s out of service range and ducks into a little shop to make a call. Thanks to the power of coincidence it turns out the shop owner has a photo of the same location hanging on his wall but he explains that… that location was leveled 10 years ago!
Dun dun DUN! Which means the already impossible photo with an extra hand in it is even more impossible because the date stamp, the location, and the age of the person at the location all contradict one another. Which would be totally the kind of thing Phoenix Wright would have to pick out for an Objection but since Hikawa is a detective and not a lawyer at the moment he is just befuddled!
Hojo and Kouno continue their stakeout of the dead girls twin sister at a park where they’ll get to the bottom of these non Kaijin based murders!
Hilariously they actually see the Kaijin’s hands first doing that same reverse Z movement we saw last week but they kind of linger back and seem to withold their judgement until they actually see the Cat Unknown walk out from behind the tree. Like “Oh maybe it’s just a crazy person in the park with weird monster gloves on doing shadow puppets let’s see where they’re going with this.”
As the Cat Unknown starts his attack once again both Shouichi and Ryou are racked with intense headaches and pains, though Ryou rips open his shirt to reveal he’s got an… ah… interesting little light show going on.
In the interests of maintaining a family friendly blog I will just allow you all to insert your own jokes here.
In the interest of fairness it should be noted that Shouichi also has a glow going on but he’s not covered in sweat and tearing his clothes of. No he’s just outside in the garden swinging his glow around for the whole neighborhood to see!
Think of the children Shouichi! Won’t someone please think of the poor impressionable children!?
Shouichi finds his headache suddenly clearing as he runs off with a determined purpose, hopping his motorcycle as he drives off without saying a word. Mana tries to keep up behind him on her regular bicycle, shouting out for him to slow down but eventually he loses her what with him being on a motorcycle and her being on a bike.
Hojo and Kouno manage to evacuate the girl and somehow manage to start a fight with the Cat Unknown during the day but make it to hold out after the sun sets. So how’re they holding up?
So Kouno is shutting helplessly at a bullet proof monster while it shoves his partner Hojo into a tree. Sounds about right.
Hikawa rendezvous with the G Trailer and suits up to G3, setting out on the GuardChaser where he instantly endears himself to me by ramming his bike straight into the Cat Unknown.
The GuardChaser is sadly too bulky to pop a wheelie but I will appreciate vehicular violence in whatever form I can get it in.
Leaving Hojo and Kouno behind G3 sets off in pursuit of the fleeing Cat Unknown. He manages to overtake the Cat only for the Cat to grab him and fling him off his bike. Rather than go for the worthless gun G3 decides to switch it up by drawing out the GS-03, which is a sweet foldable high frequency sword that might actually be able to hurt the Unknown! I stress might because G3 proves completely incapable of actually hitting the Cat with the weapon. He misses at one point and cuts through multiple steel girders like they’re butter so you know it seems like a really good weapon, which just adds further evidence to the ‘Maybe Hikawa is incompetent’ pile.
Then the second Cat Unknown that has been sitting out for most of the episode joins in the fight and things go about as well for G3 as you might guess.
As Hikawa is beaten down and the G3 suit is injured the Cats move to make their escape before Shouichi arrives on the scene. There’s a short pose where he crosses his hands together before he summons his belt with a flash of light, and slaps his hands down on both sides of it to make the front medallion start glowing again to blind everyone looking towards him.
Well if G3, a super suit produced by police science was unable to even injure these Cat Unknown I mean what odds does an untransformed human have?
Oh never-mind apparently karate is sufficient. Shouichi fights outnumbered and still manages to deliver a beat-down on the two Kaijin while the police look on, but because of the bright light emanating from his belt they’re unable to make out much on their cameras about who is fighting the Unknown. The camera pulls in tight while he’s punching and kicking between them and in between shots he’s suddenly Henshined into Kamen Rider Agito!
While Agito is busy with the white Cat Kaijin the black one summons his halo and draws a spear out from it, because sure why not?
The spear… really doesn’t help the Black Cat out at all. He’s still not able to land any blows and eventually oh come on show really? Agito… ahem… whips out his own spear.
C’mon Agito I had like a full good year run of a family friendly atmosphere and you are just ruining it and we’re only in episode 2!
It turns out that when Agito slaps the left side of his belt he can cause a spear to grow out of his belt buckle. After literally throwing the Black Cat on the ground and standing on him in a way purely meant to humiliate the Kaijin there’s a weird flash from Agito’s belt as his entire body is cast in wavy lines for a moment before he’s suddenly in a new form!
His staff can open and unfold, with the ends forming two bladed spears. And now armed to match Agito takes the fight once again to the Black Cat, and once again is completely dominating him. Now with the numbers even that frees up G3 so that he can handle the White Cat and prove himself to be a true hero!
Ha ha, no I’m kidding he just gets completely owned once again. The White Cat draws a bow and arrow from his Halo and starts taking pot shots at G3 after throwing him into a warehouse building, and G3 really can’t do anything other than stumble around helplessly as his support crew shouts about all the damage he’s receiving.
Finally “Believe Yourself” kicks in and we know there’s not much time left in the fight. Agito does some unnecessary but cool looking staff twirling before finally landing… just two regular blows on the Black Cat. It’s not a finishing move or anything particularly impressive but the end theme music is awesome enough to make it count as Agito turns his back to the explosion.
Meanwhile G3 decides it’s time to redeem himself. He runs over to his bike and grabs the GM-01 along with a new attachment, the GG-02, which is a grenade launcher that mounts on the underside of the pistol.
He faces off against the White Cat who knocks another arrow, and they both fire at the same time leading to both being knocked out of the fight.
Well G3 may have had to sacrifice himself in the end but he did manage to put his life on the line so that he could take down an Unknown and ha ha ha oh man seriously yeah no it doesn’t work and while G3 ends up knocked out the White Cat is still basically totally uninjured as he goes to attack Agito. Agito changes to his gold form again and doesn’t even bother with wearing the White Cat down any further as he just lands another Rider Kick to end things.
Which of course means that Agito in this episode gets to prove his cool guy credentials twice over by standing with his back to not one but two different exploding cat monsters less than a minute apart from one another.
Well with all the monsters defeated it’s time for our heroes to meet proper face to face for the first time. Which Agito decides to do leaping fist first!
Considering Agito has managed to completely destroy in less than a minute two different Kaijin that the G3 wasn’t even able to injure, on top of the fact that G3 is now crippled to the point of being barely functional and without any grenades left… I am going to go ahead and say that things are not really looking up for Hikawa at the moment.
But it is a pretty dang shocking cliffhanger!
So, Final Thoughts?
As we get farther into the Recaps I’m going to stop comparing Agito to Kuuga, but for now it’s a comparison that needs to be made because the differences between the two shows have a lot of impact on the kind of decisions that drive the plot of Agito.
One of the biggest differences is in the kind of story the two shows are trying to tell. Kuuga was about a semi-reluctant hero who has to constantly face off against impossible odds, with a big part of the show being devoted to him working with his allies to come up with strategic solutions to problems utilizing a slowly expanding bag of tricks and super powers. Agito is very much not about that. Right off the bat when he shows up Kamen Rider Agito is a dominant force. In the first two episodes he has shown no weakness in facing off against the monsters. But we also know almost nothing about him, and the ending to this episode really cements that.
Agito hasn’t done much in the show yet but fight monsters, so it’s easy to imagine that he’s going to just be another cut and dry hero, but right here we hit the end of the episode when he turns his wrath upon a police officer for no reason that the audience can see. While it’s unlikely Agito is going to be a villain of the show (it’s named after him after all), and we know Shouichi seems like a nice guy, it’s still definitely a jarring experience that leaves you wondering just where the story is going. And I know I joke about G3 being weak but that’s actually a big important part of the plot too, G3 is introduced in the first episode as the pinnacle of human engineering and in the span of two fights he’s been shown to be completely toothless, while the Police organization behind him has been showed to be fractured and stifled by bureaucracy and infighting.
Which is all a way of saying that just like Kuuga, Agito is a mature show, but it’s a different kind of maturity. Whereas Kuuga was a horror story where humanity desperately fought against serial killers, Agito is a mystery with the seeds of tragedy already sewn through it. What we’ve seen of Hikawa shows him to be heroic but he’s ultimately too weak to do anything. Shouichi has been shown to have amazing power but with his amnesia it seems like there could be a great danger behind his strength, and we still don’t know what’s happening with Ryou and his seeming connection to Shouichi or what the deal is with Mana’s psychic powers.
I’ve written a lot about this episode and the start of Agito in general here so I’ll save continuing discussion for next week but for some final notes despite having seemingly three main characters the story telling has been very efficient, with just a light bit of humor to underscore the mounting seriousness of the story. If nothing else, this episode is the kind of episode that while not necessarily great on it’s own REALLY makes you want to watch the next episode, which is definitely a good way to kick a new series off!
And now, on the next episode of Kamen Rider Agito!
The giant cross is nearly dialed in! Agito is an enemy! Shouichi wants to belong somewhere! And Agito doesn’t seem to be handling his next double teamed fight so well!
There’s more doubled up Unknown action next week in Kamen Rider Agito Episode 3: My Henshin!
Kamen Rider is Copyright Toei Company, TV Asashi, and Bandai. The Subbed version recapped in this article was produced by the wonderful folks at TV-Nihon.
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