©柴田ヨクサル／ヒーローズ・Tojima Rider Project ©石森プロ・東映

I have to admit, I was legitimately on the edge of my seat this episode. Last week, we saw that, even as a team, our heroes were struggling against the Spider Man. Now, with him fully transformed, I wondered if they could even harm him—and given how keen most of them were to run away, they clearly thought the same. Even the big joke of the scene builds tension where, one-by-one, the heroes volunteer to sacrifice themselves while the others run away—meaning that none of them actually run but all start lining up in front of one another. And then there’s Tojima.

He alone isn’t interested in fighting a losing battle to let the others escape. Despite the literal monster in front of him, he still believes he can win—that never backing down is instrumental to being the first Kamen Rider. But given all we’ve seen, even as he charges up his Rider Punch, there is very much the feeling that this could go one of two ways: 1) it’s completely ineffective or 2) Spider Man takes actual damage.

While both paths would work for this story in a meta sense (hence why there is some real tension to this choice), what we get is something in the middle. Spider Man isn’t sent flying, nor does he spit up blood. He’s simply knocked on his ass. Like with the Shocker troops before him, it feels like Spider Man has never been in a real fight in his true form, where people weren’t intimidated by him. He never expected someone would just punch him with all the adrenaline-powered strength and fanboy fervor they had. He’s not hurt or angry—more just utterly shocked.

Luckily, it’s then the fight ends due to too many witnesses, and we are promptly introduced to a new cast member, Futaba. The middle of the Shimamura siblings, she was fortunate enough to witness neither the burning of the neighbor’s house nor the murders of her grandparents. Thus, instead of believing that Shocker was real and pursuing a life-long vendetta against them, she had to deal with life surrounded by her outwardly crazy siblings.

She has grown up socially isolated because of their antics, and clearly has a deep-seated hatred for her older brother, especially. But what’s telling is that she seems to be as strong, if not stronger than Ichiyo—likely because she needed to be if she wanted any hope of reigning him in. But the big joke of the episode is that she’s mad not just because he came to her work but because he apparently has friends while she does not. The funny thing is, Yuriko, as the straight man of the group, is at least sane enough that she could be Futaba’s friend—if not for the company she’s currently keeping.

Other than that, this episode is just tying up loose ends—solidifying the “marriage” between Yukarisu and Mitsuba and showing us the one “un-Kamen Rider-like” thing the two older men are willing to compromise on: downing a beer or two after a hard day’s work.

The episode ends things off with a nice little cliffhanger as Nakao, our Shocker-loving yakuza, gets to face off against Spider Man as well—though given how he was one-shotted by a normal combatant back in episode 3, I’m not holding my breath.

**Rating: **

• Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is currently streaming on Crunchyroll. *