Recap: Kamen Rider Wizard, Episode 3 – Henshin! Live Broadcast!

At the antique shop, Koyomi is a little annoyed by Rinko hanging around. She is excitedly asking Haruto about defeating the Phantom while taking his bag of donuts from him. Haruto tells Koyomi it’s alright, especially seeing someone recover from despair like this.

He says he’s heading out to check on Shunpei. Meanwhile, at the National Security Bureau, Kizaki is keeping tabs on Rinko.

Shunpei is absolutely ecstatic that he can do magic and goes back to the little kids from before to show off. He attracts the attention of a morning show host, Tajima, who wishes to interview him.

Shunpei demonstrates his fire pointing on camera and Tajima invites him to the TV studio for a live broadcast. Haruto sees him and they go for donuts. Shunpei explains his newfound power and tries to show him, but now it doesn’t seem to be working. Haruto then realizes the Phantom is merely tricking him to get him to fall into despair, but Shunpei thinks Haruto is intentionally blocking his magic.

Shunpei becomes angry, thinks Haruto is a hypocrite and tells him to stay away.

Across town, Medusa and Phoenix are happy to see Hellhound survived Wizard’s attack and that his plan is in motion.

Later that night, Haruto ponders Shunpei’s words to him and Wajima gets him to remember when he and Koyomi first arrived. Wajima apologized for creating the rings that would put such a burden on Haruto, but Haruto affirmed his resolve to prevent what happened to him from happening to anyone else.

Wajima hands him a brand new ring and they laugh about never knowing what the rings will hold.

Next morning, Rinko calls Haruto to tell him about Shunpei being on TV. He hurries to the studio where the host reveals himself to be Hellhound the phantom after taking away Shunpei’s fire power once again, this time on live TV. Hellhound drives Shunpei towards despair as Haruto arrives, henshins and they fight. At National Security, Kizaki orders his underling to call the TV station to keep all of this from being broadcast.

Haruto uses the new ring Light Ring Wajima just gave him and finishes off Hellhound.

Haruto tells Shunpei he’s his “final hope,” places the Engage Ring on him and jumps into his underworld.

Haruto arrives at the library from Shunpei’s childhood and battles to defeat Shunpei’s Cyclops Phantom.

Back at the antique shop, Rinko walks in to find Shunpei massaging Haruto’s shoulders and Haruto explains Shunpei is now his assistant. Rinko sees an Engagement Ring on Shunpei’s finger and understands. She gives them a bag of donuts which they all get into. But emoKoyomi continues to be utterly annoyed… or would it be disinterested? in the shop being a little more “lively” these days.

Episode Thoughts
Well I definitely did not expect the Phantom to have been behind Shunpei’s magic. I actually thought he was a wizard. Maybe it’s my experience with Power Rangers and Sentai and lack of experience with how Kamen Rider works. lol

But it all makes sense anyway. We’re building up Haruto’s world and the people in it.

I think we’ve perfectly established Wajima to be the wise old man, of course. Haruto’s maintained his level of heroic swagger I suppose. And Shunpei’s the eager apprentice.

But Rinko and Koyomi are interestingly different. First of all, I was a little thrown off by Rinko going from hardnosed cop to overexciteable fangirl. It’s like they were writing Rinko’s character as if she were an extension of Shunpei. Which would be fine if we actually saw hints of her being this way in the first two episodes. Not even when she first came into the antique shop did she seem so… “lively.”

With Koyomi, I guess we’ll learn a lot more about her next episode and maybe how the ritual and her memory loss is making seem so jealous/annoyed/uninterested/emo… I don’t even know what’s going on there. And I think I’ve learned not to make any conclusions too soon.

Last thing to note though, that creepy music they played during the fight scene at the studio. How retro creepy was that!? It definitely worked, it was just, damn, gave me the chills.

Anyway, an overall solid episode.

5 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Wizard, Episode 3 – Henshin! Live Broadcast!

  1. When I saw the way that Koyomi was reacting to Rinko I knew she was jealous. With Rinko coming I saw that Koyomi was wanting Rinko to leave I bet she thought that Rinko may of liked Haurto more then a friend Koyomi and Rinko are going to be rivals soon. :p

    1. I had a similar reaction. Also in later episodes. Koyomi seemed rather “I don’t want Haruto’s attention to be on anyone but me.”

  2. This episode is still pretty strong in my mind, even though Rinko was suddenly acting so goofy. However the memory of it is also saddened with what they did with her and Shunpei later, albeit they did worse with Shunpei than her in my mind.
    In this episode here Shunpei started out pretty well and I suspected that he might be the show’s secondary Rider this season, which in my mind would have been a better choice than the one we actually got, after all this is Kamen Rider so the chance of Rinko being the secondary Rider was next to zero in my mind.
    Also this episode further progressed with the idea of magic not being a toy and I always think this is good since otherwise we would have it being way too easy and you constantly ask yourself why they don’t do more. Actually even after seeing the entire season, in the superhero genre Kamen Rider Wizard still had one of the more competent usage of its magic system.

Share your thoughts!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top