Recap: Kamen Rider Wizard, Episode 12 – The Wagashi of Hope

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Wajima gives Haruto the finished ring made from the stone Kizaki gave them. But Wajima says he heard the stone’s voice telling him to make two rings. Shunpei excitedly marvels at the 2nd ring, then decides to join Haruto on his daily Phantom hunt.

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You’re strangely peppy today, Haruto says. Shunpei wants to “level up” as his assistant and starts to frantically (and incorrectly) point out possible despair-inducing Phantoms around the plaza. For example, a woman dumping her girlfriend, a lost kid and an octopus. Haruto apologizes for his crazy friend.

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Hungry, Haruto heads to Donut Happy and tells Shunpei to calm down a little for the rest of the day. Disappointed, Shunpei runs into Tetsuya on his way home, a sempai of his from high school and who now works as an apprentice at a confectionery or sweets shop. He wants to become a chef and open his own shop one day.

Tetsuya invites him in and Shunpei is wowed by all the sweet treats. But he’s also surprised to see how strict Matsuki, Tetsuya’s boss is.

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Haruto enjoys his plain sugar and watches a little girl ask her mother for a donut even though they were on their way to buy some manju. Donut Manager tells Haruto the mother and daughter must’ve been headed to Matsukian’s. They’re not a popular shop, but they have good stuff and he likes it. Though young people don’t like it.

Donut Manager thinks Haruto is teasing him for being old since he likes the treats from Matsukian, so the Manager takes Haruto’s donut and makes him chase him.

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Matsuki sees Tetsuya off on a delivery to a nearby restaurant, but along the way gets attacked by the Phantom Valkyrie which Medusa has just sent out on a mission.

Unicorn tells Haruto about the attack and he hurries over. Valkyrie ruins the manjus and treats as Haruto henshins. They fight until Valkyrie retreats after thinking he’s done enough.

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Tetsuya explains to the restaurant owner that the manjus were ruined by the monster attack, but she’s still upset and won’t believe it despite Haruto backing up the story.

Matsuki arrives to apologize for his apprentice and says he’s asked another confectionery to fulfill the order today. But the restaurant owner ends her contract with them.

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Back at the shop, Shunpei tries to get the Boss to take it easy on Tetsuya, but he says even if they die, they must fulfill their orders to maintain the faith customers put in them. Haruto, meanwhile, wonders why the Phantom gave up so easily.

Tetsuya says losing that restaurant account would be a big blow to the shop. But Shunpei tells him to have hope. He decides to help by selling some sweets around town.

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First victims…e rr, customers are Wajima and Koyomi to whom he sells over 20,000 yen worth of treats. He then manages to get Rinko to treat all her coworkers at the precinct with sweets before selling confections to the bickering couple, the mother and son and the octopus from earlier.

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Back at the shop, Tetsuya tells Haruto about how bad off it is and without the big order the restaurant gave them every week, they might be forced to close. But Shunpei brings in a rep from the grocery department of a big department store. Having loved so much the treats he just ate from Shunpei, he’s offering to feature 500 confections from Matsukian daily in the store for half a year.

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Haruto and Matsuki are both suspicious of the amazing offer, but Matsuki decides to do it as they have no choice. They need to create a new manju for tomorrow so he and Tetsuya get to working. They let Haruto and Shunpei be the taste testers for their finished creation and it’s delicious. Matsuki calls the new maju “Hope” as it could be the shop’s last hope to survive.

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Shunpei goes to the department store with Matsuki to deliver the 500 Hopes, but are turned back when the store says they gave no such order. Turns out the store rep, Kiritani, is Valkyrie the Phantom. Which then means Matsuki is the Gate and not Tetsuya.

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Kraken relays the info to Koyomi who calls Haruto just as Shunpei and Matsuki run.

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Haruto arrives and tells them to get to safety as he henshins. He doubles himself to finish off some Ghouls then goes into Hurricane Mode to finish off some more. He then decides to test out Hurricane Dragon Mode.

But as Shunpei wonders what he can do to help, Valkyrie snatches him up and takes him into their air.

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Episode Thoughts
Solid all around. Definitely continuing to mix the comedy and drama well. Plus there were some very cool action shots during that first fight scene.

I definitely did not see “Boss is the real Gate!” coming. So I liked that.

And I also like Shunpei focus-ish episodes so far since Shunpei’s a great, fun character to watch.

With the little things, I’m sure Haruto’s insistence on only plain sugar has some deep meaning that’ll be revealed later on. If not… then I accept that fun quirk.

But the biggest thing I took from this episode… I now want to go look for Japanese confectioneries and buy some treats. Those looked delicious. Hee.

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And this…

0 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Wizard, Episode 12 – The Wagashi of Hope

  1. Yeah it was a solid episode but it was also the one where I started to suspect that they would use Shunpei more and more for comic relief now.
    Also three questions came up:
    1) Why is the Valkyrie form male if Valkyries are all female? After all they had no problems with gendershifting in Fourze so why not do the same here?
    2) How are these phantoms chosen aka by what pattern do they chose the inspiration? Because Gargoyles like last episode are not mythological beings they are just stone statues and while the familiars are nearly entirely European, Garuda is Hindu so what is the pattern here?
    3) How exactly is the continuity here? Fourze suggested that all Kamen Riders exist in the same universe, so how can that restaurant owner not belief in monsters? The people of Tokyo must be used to them by now. Or are we to assume that each season is seperate from the others? Not that it excuses that owner’s behavior.

    The plain sugar thing probably was meant to be a balance act to his otherwise outlandish behavior, but considered the changes later in the season it probably stopped being that.

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