Kamen Rider Gotchard Reviews

Gotchard Episode 27 Review

Chapter/Arc Three of Gotchard is finally over, and it went out with an interesting bang.

Geyron's obsession with gold finally comes to life. This is thanks to the production notes, but a talking point has been how alchemy is used and whether it's authentic or not. Haven't seen Full Metal Alchemist, but it's revealed that Geyron focuses on what "real alchemy" is: turning regular metals into precious metals, so his whole focus is to make the world and everything in it to dye the world in gold that lasts for eternity in place of this boring and worthless world.

If that was supposed to be the contrast of freezing everything else with life into something more meaningful with Houtarou's ideal of finding one's Gotcha/ideal and drive to move forward, then...they succeeded.

Geryon mostly realizes on playing up people's trauma, mistakes, errors, and his actions from the past to freeze the world's future, while Houtaro takes people in the present and his actions guide others to take how they are in the present to push forward, which for protagonist and antagonist parallels, it could be a stretch to some, but it's presented well enough here.

That's also bolstered by Geryon's revelation that he intentionally sent Malgams against the heroes because the Gotchardriver/Gotchard Driver grows through experience, combat, and more exposure to the Chemies. All of Houtarou's actions allowed it to become a fitting key for the Door of Darkness, while the Level-X/ten Chemies that they've built up to ever since episode ten gets to be enough to make up for the lack of the one-hundred and ten Chemies.

That's a clever way to address the out of universe problem that neither side combined has all one-hundred one Chemies while giving the fights more meaning and weight. Creative.

Watching the opening scene of him torturing the Chemies to gain dark energy from them in tandem with the Dread Driver in order to transmute it with the liquid spiraling into the Door of Darkness makes things even worse. Once he's done making the world into gold, he's essentially deciding who gets to live and die, and with the price of the the Chemies being the sacrifice, the man is condemning two groups of people to die, with only one of them having the mercy of survival. That's...heavy.

Triple henshins are always cool. Probably the first time all three have started out a fight united, but debuting Dread: Type Two and Type Three was even crazier. Debuting two forms in one episode belonging to the same person can be a bit risky, especially since Type One's debut was rather earlier. However, when you took into consideration Minato, Geyron and the Dark Sisters have more skill and experience than Sabimaru, with the big bad for this arc being so strong he could kill someone without touching them, it'd make sense he'd use Minato to test Type One before moving on to Type Two.

It is funny hearing, "your cheers are giving those brats strength," Clotho, this isn't a Precure movie as her and Atropos take on Sabimaru and Renge while Majade and Valvarad get Repli Malgams to deal with so Geyron can focus on his long awaited one on one.

But it's also nice to see Sabi and Renge get involved with the fight: Dread's former sword user and Renge using spears a nod to her coming from the country side perhaps. But one could forgot their upperclassmen, and given Renge has the least focus on her, it's nice to see the Dread fight encouraged her to train with him in combat alchemy to get stronger. Wish we got to see that onscreen though. They even managed to block Atropos' mind control with Zukympire's by transmuating his abilities into their rings, complete with his arrows.

That's both funny and clever, wonder if they brought the actor back for that or did they use edit stock footage. Clotho just staggering back from the ZTSD just makes it funnier. Show the seniors some respect indeed.

As weak as Majade's finisher is, it's really dope her and Valvarad are able to handle those two easily with their Rider kicks and assist Iron Gotchard through her agility making up for her best match's slow nature with Valvarad going long range. Maybe a callback to when his shot granted Gotchard enough time during the X-Rex part, only this time it managed to push back their opponent.