Summary: The gang discover the newest Gate is a snotty little brat whose mother has a connection to Haruto, and Phoenix seeks permission to enter the battle personally.

Aquagaze’s Thoughts: So Haruto’s parents died in a car crash and he became a hero because they told him they believed in him? Seriously, Kamen Rider Wizard? Is that the best backstory you could come up with? Ironically, my hope for Haruto ever becoming an interesting main character is long gone, though my interest in seeing what the Phantoms had to do to nearly have him give in to despair – being the hope-obsessed goody-two-shoes he is- does linger. The damage the lack of a particularly intriguing hero does to the overall plot is also kept to a relative minimum thanks to the Gate concept. Haruto is some sort of Messiah whose purpose is to resolve conflicts with his fists feet, while the lion’s share of the story and character development goes to his friends and the individual Gates. So far, Kamen Rider Wizard has been exciting and even well-told on a weekly basis, even for a kids’ show, so a mistake like this can be easily forgiven, especially in a genre where boring heroes and villains often lead to the show falling flat overal. Power Rangers Samurai, anyone?

This episode rather clumsily tied together the obligatory kid episode and the hero’s backstory by means of Hiroki’s mom, but in the end both stories felt rather boring. While the Gate subplots have been interesting one after another, Hiroki’s supposedly tragic story is ridiculously clichéd and made him turn out to be a spoiled brat, rather than a poor kid ignored by his parents. Remember kids, if your dad gets you a gift you don’t like, it’s okay to be ungrateful! Aside from the whole boring-kid-kicking-people-in-the-balls thing, this episode did have the honour of showing off one of the most intimidating guys in rubber suits toku monsters I have ever seen. Phoenix does not mess around and after four failures, he is already more than fed up with Monster-of-the-Week tactics. His methods to drive Hiroki to despair were downright vile, as was the absolute asskicking he delivered onto Haruto. Our cocky hero falls in battle for the first time (and with fall, I mean set on fire and thrown off a bridge) but of course, help is on the way. If you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you’ve probably never seen a tokusatsu show before. Let alone the preview.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: I get why Kamen Rider shows so often have plotlines involving children – it is a kid’s show after all, and kids can relate to someone their own age – but I rarely enjoy them, mostly because the children tend to be bad actors and the plotlines tend to be sappy mush.  This episode is no exception, and it’s exacerbated by the fact that Hiroki is a real brat.  Granted, this grants us some funny interplay with Shunpei and Haruto, but it makes him difficult to relate to, especially when his angst is revealed to be a rather predictable dad-is-always-away-at-work thing. I get this is an actual problem, especially in Japan, but has still been done to death and while the young lad who plays Hiroki tries, bless him, he just isn’t a very good actor and can’t really put the emotion that’s needed into a scene like this. Haruto’s backstory is not really much more interesting either, and while the death scene of his mother and father is touching we’ve also seen so many orphaned heroes by this point that the impact is sort of dulled.

The thing which definitely helps save this episode though is the bits and pieces we get related to the long term plot. We get to glimpse the elusive Wiseman for the first time, and Phoenix entering the fray really cranks the action up a notch, as he ruthlessly curbstomps Haruto. The scene where Haruto desperately tries to use DEFEND over and over as Phoenix just keeps knocking ’em down really conveyed the power and menace of this guy, and it’s a good cliffhanger to end on.

The other major piece of foreshadowing here was the delivery of a new magical stone, and while the cast might be complete idiots to us it’s obvious this is a gift from the White Wizard, who’s clearly still watching Haruto from afar. New stones mean new powers of course, and indeed the preview reveals an upgraded Flame Style. Given Wizard had all of his forms at the beginning of the show rather than gaining them gradually, I’m betting this new stone will be a mid-level powerup for all of them (rather like Kamen Rider Kuuga‘s Rising forms) rather than a true ‘Super’ mode, which tends to come in around episode 30. It also looks goofy, but hey, what powerup doesn’t? The big question here is whether this is the end for Phoenix already, or if he’ll just retreat to lick his wounds. I’m betting on the latter, but we’ll have to see.