And before fujoshis.
In this episode, we learned the reason why Kizaki is overprotective towards his son's partner thanks to Haruto asking the truth out of Kizaki. Later, we see Kizaki slowly warming up towards Haruto.
The first thing I noticed in this episode is the cop action, which reminded me of the earlier Heisei Kamen Rider series and to be more specific, Kamen Rider 555. It reminded me of the cops of 555 is because they are not as involved as the cops of Kuuga or Agito but you can definitely feel their subtle presence in the series. By subtle, they will only appear once the plot of a certain story arc demands it.
The cop action in this episode is about transporting the kid out of the city so that the Phantom will not attack him. To sum up what happened, even though they barely appeared in the series after they were first introduced, the scene proved that they are still competent cops unlike the ones from Kamen Rider W who were just... there. We are aware that there are cops in the series but the one who is doing most of the cop action is Ryu Terui and we barely saw anyone from the police force doing something awesome, till the Kamen Rider W RETURNS: Accel happened.
While they are transporting the kid, Phoenix appears and decides to fight Wizard because he has some score to settle. The duel between Wizard and Phoenix is fun to watch. One thing that I like about it is how great Hurricane Style in this episode. Aside from that, Phoenix once again, threw Wizard in a body of water; we saw how flexible Wizard's fighting style is. Instead of drowning and wait to be dragged in some shore, he transformed into Water Style. Much to my surprise, the cops were able to fool both Wizard and Phoenix since the kid that they are trying to transport is just a decoy!
After discovering the decoy, Phoenix left and we are now left with Haruto and Kizaki. Since they are now alone, we finally have some answers on why he is overprotective towards Naoki, his son's partner. To sum up everything, they were investigating about a mysterious string of deaths and Kizaki's partner discovered a magic stone (the green one) and saw it is a possible lead. Because they brought up mysterious deaths, this made me conclude that prior to Wizard's appearance; they were able to bring a couple of guys into despair.
During their investigation, we saw Medusa and Phoenix, which caused me to wonder since the ceremony happened at least 6 months before the start of the series and this scene takes place a year before the start of the series. Because of this, I suddenly remembered Wajima's statement about Koyomi being a shell of a Phantom who needs constant refueling of mana. Since Medusa and Phoenix are under direct order of the Wiseman and we saw their human bodies during the ceremony. It can only mean one thing, they were just given human appearances after the Phantoms of their human appearances came out and they decided to take over.
This is when Kizaki and his partner discovered that Naoki is a Gate and being a father and all, protects his son only to end up dying because of the Phantom. But before that, he entrusted his son's safety to his partner. The scene between the two shows the trust between the two because it just shows that Kizaki's partner is ready to risk his life just for his son and shows that he is really trust his partner. While they are busy, the real Naoki is about to be transported in some protected area only to be ambushed by Gargoyle.
The problem I had with the ambush is that Rinko is one clumsy cop; she didn't do much, aside that she help Naoki escape only to end up getting chased by the Gargoyle and Rinko is left unarmed thanks to the Gargoyle. One thing to note is that we saw the PlaMonsters combine to form a composite PlaMonster with traits of each PlaMonster. The composite PlaMonster has Unicorn's horns, Garuda's wings and Kraken's tentacles, it's an interesting mix and I wish they can do more composite PlaMonsters in the future since based on its debut; they can make really interesting attacks.
Much to my surprise in this episode, Naoki fell into despair, something the series hasn't been doing in a while now thanks to Haruto convincing a lot of Gates to have hope. Unlike Rinko and Shunpei's case that the Phantom needs to destroy an item that represents his or her hope, in Naoki's case, he is the only one who fell into despair by making him feel that he is the reason why his father died. I just love that they are starting to explore more on the possibilities on how a Phantom can put someone into despair! But unlike the object approach, the cracking of the human body is slower but I guess it's a case to case basis since Naoki is still a high school student and his psychological profile is different compared to Rinko and Shunpei.
Haruto appears and fights the Gargoyle, what made the fight interesting is how he used the Flame Dragon form properly. Instead of directly spamming the finisher, he decides to do something I really miss, Wizard doing a bullet curve and this time around, with two guns and its job is to pierce a hole in Gargoyle's stone armor that caused its destruction. Now that he doesn't have armor, it's time to finish him. After he is done with the Phantom, it is time to fight the Phantom inside Naoki.
Since the Dragon is inside Wizard's body, the only thing he needs to do is to release it and attach his bike on top of the dragon to fight the rampaging Phantom. Much to my disappointment, the CGI for the Phantom looks really bad. Even though I hated it, at least the finisher of this episode looks really great; you know the one that involved a bike as part of the Rider Kick!
The episode ends with Naoki discovering that the one who placed the flowers and the wine is Kizaki and showed Kizaki his resolve of helping others by becoming a member of the National Security Agency in the future. Well at least we saw someone who ends up getting into despair who didn't end up becoming part of Haruto's team! Back to the antique shop, Wajima is back with the emerald magic stone that came from Kizaki. It only means that he now trust Haruto that he can entrust a magic stone to Wajima without his supervision.
