Recap: Kamen Rider Gaim, Episode 47 – Transform! And to the Future!

Gaim 47

Kota hurries downtown where a swarm of Inves are attacking the people of Zawame. He quickly finishes them off with an Orange Squash and de-henshins as Mitchi comes running.

He asks Kota if he’s okay, but Kota remembers he’s got a job interview. He hurries off, leaving Mitchi alone to hear the people gossiping about these Beat Riders who go around acting like heroes but are really behind the Inves attacks.

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Back at the Garage, Mitchi asks Kota why he continues to fight even as people think the Beat Riders are the villains and there is no reward for saving the townspeople. What’s the point?

Kota replies that he doesn’t fight to be rewarded, he fights because he has to. Mitchi says Kota-san doesn’t have to go that far, but Kota says he can’t just do nothing when he has this power he can use to fight back.

Kota smiles and grabs Mitchi in a headlock.

“This guy! You complain, yet you still fight with me!”

They both laugh and Mitchi says he just wants them all to be happy, that’s all.

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Fast forward back to the present, 7 months after the destruction of Helheim. Mitchi sits alone, remembering those days in the past.

Mitchi returns to the Kureshima manse and sits at the dining room table with his brother, fully suited in front of a laptop. Takatora asks his little brother what he’s been up to lately.

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Mitsuzane says he’s fine and asks Niisan what he’s been busy with. Takatora says he’s been helping to rebuild the world which is still in a mess, partly thanks to him. Helping is his way of atoning for his sins.

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Takatora says he’ll be leaving for America in two days and hopes that won’t be too much trouble. Mitsuzane says that’s fine and excuses himself.

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Across town, the united Beat Riders are performing for the crowds. Mitchi stands and watches from afar as the dancers all cheer.

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Rica and Rat see Mitchi standing there and call over to him. Chucky asks if he would like to dance with them now. Mitchi turns to them and says “Sorry” before walking away.

“I see, Mitchi hasn’t been able to forgive himself yet,” Chucky says.
Peco steps forward and says not to worry and to just ignore him. The others feel bad. “There’s nothing we can do anyway,” Peco adds.

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Zack says it’s probably hard for Mitchi too so they should just let him be for now.

Meanwhile, some strange insects are attaching themselves to the townspeople.

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Over at Charmant II, Takatora is having some coffee with Akira. He says he is a failure as a brother for not being able to understand Mitsuzane before. Akira says she didn’t know everything about Kota either. That’s how it is between siblings.

Takatora bows and tells Akira that he owes a great debt to Kota. Akira says she thinks this is for the best as Kota must have found his path.

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Oren arrives with some brand new cakes for his melon prince and special guest. Delicious cakes! Takatora compliments Oren, but Non! It’s not him. The cakes are Jonouchi’s creations.

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Jonouchi swaggers out, happy he has pleased them. Oren slaps him upside the head, but one of the strange insects abruptly lands on Akira. She jumps up and suddenly a swarm of the things arrive and join together to form an Inves.

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Mitchi runs toward the direction of the Invesects where he meets a young woman with an evil laugh.

“Long time no see,” she says as she pops out a Driver and a Lock Seed. She henshins and Mitchi charges forward, only to get manhandled by the new-old enemy, Kougane.

Mitchi doesn’t know a Kougane. “I see, so that was just a dream for you. But for me, it was an unbearable humiliation!”

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Kougane knocks Mitchi to the ground and walks off.

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Meanwhile, Oren, Jonouchi and Takatora are fighting off the Inves that formed in front of them. But the Inves just tosses them aside as Kougane arrives. He asks why the Riders don’t just henshin?

Zack comes running toward Kougane who says he is doing all this for revenge. He laughs as he knocks Zack to the floor as well.

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Kougane de-henshins back to the young woman body and says he won’t let them die so easily. Heshe wants them to watch as heshe destroys all they tried to protect and they become extinct like the Femushinmu.

The guys head to Drupers to discuss and think she might be an Overlord. But without any Drivers, they are helpless.

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Bando asks if Yggdrasill still has those Kurokage Drivers, but Takatora says they and all the Lock Seeds were destroyed so other organizations like Yggdrasill would never get their hands on them for evil purposes ever again.

With the Helheim threat gone, there was no need for the Drivers. And now, even if they rebuilt a Driver using Ryoma’s designs, they don’t have any Lock Seeds.

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Zack stands, What can they possibly do then?! Takatora seems to remember something. Jonouchi notices.

Later, Jonouchi waits as Takatora leaves the manse. He’s holding a briefcase and Jonouchi knows it is a Kurokage Driver. He figured there’d be at least one left so he figured Takatora would have it. Jonouchi asks if he can use it to fight.

Gaim 47

But Takatora says he doesn’t want to involve any of them anymore. This is his way of atoning for his sins. Sure, Jonouchi says, but Takatora hasn’t even fully recovered yet.

Takatora ignores him and starts to walk past, but Jonouchi quickly grabs the briefcase. Hideyasu pauses and starts to ask, “There was a guy named Hase-chan…”

Takatora answers bluntly, “Yes. Hase Ryoji became and Inves and was eliminated by Ygdrasill.”

Jonouchi opens the briefcase, “Hase-chan probably became an Inves because of me. That’s why… this is my way of atoning.”

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Jonouchi runs to face Kougane and the Inves. He henshins and fights the Inves while Kougane just laughs.

She henshins and quickly takes care of Jonouchi, forcing him to de-henshin. “Now you have no way of fighting back.”

“Not so!”

Mitchi walks towards them, wearing a Driver and holding a Lock Seed.

“You’re no Kazuraba Kota. There’s nothing you can do.”
“It’s true Kota-san was a hero. But he is no longer here. That’s why we have to be the heroes!”

Mitchi henshins into the familiar Budou Arms and he does all he can to fight off Kougane and the Inves.

The tag-team knocks Mitchi around. But he asks Kota-san to watch over him as he gets up, grabs his gun and shoots at both his opponents, knocking them to the ground.

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Mitchi has Kougane at gunpoint. He transforms back to the human girl’s body. “Are you sure about that? I’m just possessing this kid’s body.” Heshe tells Mitchi to lower his weapon and de-henshin. She cackles.

Mitchi has no choice. He de-henshins. “FOOL!”

The Inves proceeds to beat Mitchi to a pulp. Kougane tells the Inves to make him suffer until he dies. He laughs that the others will quickly follow.

Mitchi apologizes to Kota-san as he’s getting kicked. “I wasn’t able to do anything, after all.”

Suddenly, Mitchi hears a voice.

“That’s not true Mitchi. You’ve worked really hard.”

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A large golden apple-shaped light arrives and blows the Inves to smithereens. Mitchi turns to look and it is Mr. Beginning himself, Kota-san!

Gaim 47

“I had something left to do. And that was to defeat you Kougane.”

Kota forces Kougane to leave the young woman’s body and is now fully in the body of Kamen Rider Jam.

“Can you fight, Mitchi? We’ll beat him together.”

Mitchi gets up. “Yes, Kota-san.”

Both Mitchi and Kota henshin.

They charge toward Kougane and they battle.

Kougane attempts a Darkness Squash, but Kota just waves his hand and it dissipates. Kota and Mitchi work together to deliver a final combined squash to finish off Kougane for good.

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The sun is setting. Mitchi approaches Kota-san who says he seems to look a lot better now. “I told you before, you can always start over.”

Yes, Mitchi replies. But when he sees Beginning Kota start to glitter away, he asks him to stop. He’s got so many things to say to Kota-san.

Kota just tells him to get along with his Niisan and to tell Akira that he is doing fine.

Kota completely disappears.

“Kota-san…”
“We’ll always be friends, Mitchi.”

Mitchi smiles after hearing Kota’s words.

He turns to see the guys running towards him.
Mitchi smiles again and waves as he runs to meet them.

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Meanwhile, two young boys are amazed by a large tree that just sprouted up in a vacant lot nearby. One of the boys asks his older sister what it is and she says this is a sacred tree of the shrine.

Anyway, it’s time for them to practice. The three of them start dancing.

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Behind the tree, Kaito pops up. He looks out as Beginning Mai appears as well, “What do you think, Kaito? Everyone has overcome their pasts and have moved forward. Humanity still has a future.”

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“But they might go astray once more, and fight and hurt each other.”

Mai says that’s true. But each time, they will restart once more, correcting their mistakes and taking a step forward.

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“You truly are strong,” Kaito says, turning to face Mai and smiling. He disappears as Mai and a just arrived Kota say farewell to Kaito.

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Let’s head back to our own future, Kota says. He waves his hand and a Crack opens in the sacred tree as we see the once dark red planet has become a glowing blue.

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Episode Thoughts

And with that, Kamen Rider Gaim is over. (Until the Movie Wars and Whatever Taisen in a couple of months of course.)

But this final episode marks the end of what has been an incredible and surprising series. Playing out like a true epilogue (or even a solid Movie Wars plot), the epilogue tied up all the loose ends from Episode 46, most of which would’ve been perfectly fine left the way they were.

Other than the complete disservice to the character of Kazuraba Akira and the wonderful sibling bond we saw between her and Kota, the other loose ends from Episode 46 were neatly tied up with pretty bows here.

Jonouchi got closure on the death of his ally-turned-friend Hase Ryoji. We saw the surviving members of Gaim (damn, Team Gaim suffered the highest death toll of any Beat Rider team, yeah?), Baron and the rest happily back on stage and dancing for the people of Zawame. We saw Kota and Mai are doing well in getting their new planet up and running. We saw Kaito’s soul apparently able to rest in peace now that the sacred tree is back where it belongs and taking comfort in Mai’s hopeful attitude coming to pass. We saw Takatora taking steps to help fix what he helped break.

But maybe the guy who got the biggest weight off his back was Mitsuzane. I actually really loved how they (or Urobuchi, I guess) wrapped his story up in the last episode. They showed him hating himself, but obviously fully realizing why he deserved such self-loathing. That his Niisan actually woke up from being brain dead and Kota’s mission for Takatora, it was easy to assume that one day (off-screen) Mitchi would be able to forgive himself and allow others to find a way to forgive him.

Perfect ending. But that’s not to say I didn’t like this episode. It was still great and hit a lot of emotional notes too. If anything, it was amazing to see fresh scenes between Kota and Mitchi, both the flashback and Mitchi with Beginning Kota.

This episode was also a great reminder of how amazing Mahiro Takasugi is. To see that scene of Mitchi and Kota still young, happy dancing teens really makes you realize the incredibly wide range of emotions Mahiro had to bring to life over the course of 47 episodes. Just amazing. And he’s only just turned 18 years old!

All in all, this episode was pretty explicit in spelling out everyone’s future. Which is perfectly fine.

But seriously. A simple 5 second scene of Akira saying exactly what she said to Takatora, but alone and to a picture or up to the sky or even at a random orange would’ve been much better than her going on a date with the melon prince, eating cake and sliding into the screaming damsel role.

Anyway, Gaim has come to an end. And this series definitely deserves a full Hindsight Review. But basically it boils down to one word: AMAZING.

3 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Gaim, Episode 47 – Transform! And to the Future!

  1. Am surprised that this really tied in neatly with the series. Well, not so neatly. My real big gripe is that the deal with Kogane really felt more of an afterthought, like “Hey, we need some battle.” “I know, let’s bring that guy from the non-canon movie back.” I would have preferred if it was just straightforward look at how Mitcchy finally gets back to his feet without that contrived appearance of a “new” enemy. Or if they have really wanted to, Kogane could have been weaved much better into the plot. It was a bit silly when Mitcchy started asking “Who are your?” and all kogane says is “Yes, you don’t remember me.”

    Other than that, this was a really good close. I love that final scene with Kaito’s spirit. The guy finally found peace and contentment.

    Tsk, Drive has quite a tough act to follow. And considering how emotionally draining Gaim was, it looks like they will be going a bit lighter and softer with that one.

  2. Aww that Kaito and Mai scene. Kaito needs cheering up since he lost what he was fighting for also I love it when he smiles he’s showing how much he cares about his friends

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