Because of his missing belt, Kousuke cannot replenish his own mana, and by the looks of it, his body will soon die due to the lack of mana. With that in mind, can Kousuke retrieve his missing belt?
Like I said in my review of the previous episode, it is kinda obvious that the culprit is the archeologist. His body language basically tells us viewers that he stole the belt. This episode basically verified it. But that is not what's interesting in this episode, what's interesting aside from the debut of Beast Hyper, is their attempt to replenish Kousuke's mana, by letting him wear Koyomi's Please Ring. To be honest, I was waiting for this moment to happen. I mean, if Kousuke needs to replenish his mana by eating Phantoms, why can't just Haruto give him some of his mana with the help of Koyomi's Ring? This episode just answered that question. As it turns out, Beast Chimera doesn't want mana to be just handed in front of him, he wants to hunt it down. Well that explains a lot.
Anyway, now that we are done with this one, it's time to learn the motivation on why the archeologist stole Kousuke's belt. To sum it all up, it is because of his petty revenge. He wants to be badly recognized by the masses for his contributions after his superior stole one credit for one discovery. The Beast Driver and the stuff related to it is his ticket to fame. To be honest, I find his move really desperate and to top it all off, Gremlin is the one who gave him the idea of stealing the belt! Man, until now, I still can't figure out what motivates Gremlin on why he is helping the bad guys.
It is also around the time that we learned why the heck Kousuke is willing to sacrifice his life because of the Beast Chimera, and I really like his reason. His reason is something that I find consistent, especially after we met Kousuke's grandma. Kousuke Nitou is a man of adventure, and the Beast Chimera is one of those things that drive him to have an adventure. To discover the unknown, and to know what are the functions of the Beast Driver and how it was created. To put it simply, this episode reminded us on why he studied archeology, he wants to discover things that people wouldn't dare to look and that is his dream.
Because of this said dream, the archeologist gave him the artifacts that he discovered. Well that was fast. Anyway, they were attacked by the Phantom, Wizard fights them off even though he only has little mana left in his body. One thing that surprised me in this episode is how they brought up the concept of mana. I mean, I find this show's concept of mana pretty inconsistent since the time they first brought it up. In this case, Haruto's mana is running low, but he can still do some spells like Defend and transform into Flame Style. In Kousuke's case, he is quickly running out of mana even though there are times that it was implied and outright mentioned that he didn't ate any Phantoms or Ghouls for a week, and we didn't see him faint or anything!
Hopefully, they will be consistent about mana in later episodes. Now comes the moment that I am waiting for in this episode, the debut of Beast's new form, the Kamen Rider Beast Hyper! Just like how Kousuke first met Beast Chimera, he meets him in his realm and had a chat. Unlike the first one, we actually learned that the Beast Chimera is concerned about Kousuke, that he is not sure if he can handle bringing his power into our realm. But hey, Kousuke's a gambler and believes that danger is equals to opportunity, and just accepted Beast Chimera's challenge.
Kamen Rider Beast's Hyper form looks kinda bad. I am not sure what's running on Toei's mind when they decided to give Beast a gold and blue color scheme for his supposed ultimate form. I think red and gold fits more a beastly looking character. Even if that is the case, I just like that his chest is basically one giant mouth of the Beast Chimera. It looks really cool and puts the idea of actually bringing the Beast Chimera into our realm quite literally.
As for Beast Hyper's moves, I am quite surprised that they decided to give him a gun. I mean, if he is an ancient wizard, why can't he have a crossbow or some fancy looking sword? The only thing that I like about Beast Hyper's moves is how he executes the finisher. I just love that he just assumed that the way to execute the Mirage Magnum's finisher is by inserting it directly on the gun without doing anything on the ring. It makes sense since he is used to that method, but after remembering the words left by the Beast Chimera, he was able to execute the finisher and boy, it is one cool way to finish things off.
It's cool in a sense that performing the finisher basically summoned a full projection of the Beast Chimera into our realm. Granted, he didn't summon the Chimera out from his body, well at least having a giant Chimera chow down one monster is kinda cool. At the end, Kousuke finally have his Phantom meal, the archeologist continues to find ancient artifacts thanks to Kousuke's dream, we still don't have an idea about Haruto's real dream and lastly, Gremlin decides to free a Phantom named Naitou aka Legion. So what is Gremlin plotting now?
