To get himself under control, Shinnosuke reluctantly tells Gou to unleash a finisher on him. Gou pulls out the Stop Signal Bike and sends a Full Throttle punch right to Shinnosuke. And that does the trick. Kiriko hurries over to remove Dead Heat from the Shift Brace and Shinnosuke dehenshins.
Belt-san tells them good job, but Kiriko says only 046 and 085’s cores were destroyed. The Voice Roidmude is still out there.
Chase walks up to Heart who admits he is very happy, despite lying in a hole.
Gou helps an exhausted Shinnosuke walk when they see Rinna talking to someone. The longhaired man reveals himself to be the Voice Roidmude and he shoots at them before leaving.
Shinnosuke and Gou want to go after him, but Rinna stops them. She screams.
They take her back to the SID and chain her up to a chair. Otta and Kyu are getting a little overboard, so Kiriko unchains Rinna who says her not being sensitive to noise should be proof she is not under the Roidmude’s power.
Shinnosuke is thinking. If the Roidmude is supposed to show your ideal type, he should not have looked the same to both Shinnosuke and Gou. That means the Roidmude has copied both Amagi and this other man’s appearance.
They ask Rinna who it might be, but she’s escaped.
Meanwhile, Medic is fixing Heart up again while Brain watches. But Brain is unsure why he’s fallen so low as to be creeping around.
Heart compliments Medic for being able to erase Chase’s memories. She says it’s just because Brain did such a bad job before. But since she can’t completely remove all of the Proto Drive programming, she just altered the code to have Chase protect Roidmudes instead of humans.
That means, however, Chase can no longer be the Grim Reaper since he won’t harm Roidmudes.
Brain can’t believe this. How can someone else be more useful to Heart than he is? He must redeem himself.
Shinnosuke and Kiriko update Belt-san on Rinna. Belt-san says it would be nice if Rinna were here to just tweak Dead Heat a little bit. But he’s also been trying to contact Professor Harley, though unsuccessfully.
Shinnosuke tells Kiriko they should focus on looking for the longhaired man. Gou and the Shift Cars, meanwhile, have found Rinna.
Rinna meets with the Voice Roidmude, but Gou henshins and tries to stop him from taking her. Instead, Chase arrives to stop Gou.
Rinna runs off with Voice. Gou summons Rumble Dump and tries a Full Throttle finisher, but Chase counters with a Full Break Bat. Gou dehenshins.
While everyone is asking about the longhaired man around town, a bearded man on a motor bike with a sidecar arrives at The Pit.
Everyone meets back up at the SID. Otta tells them the longhaired man is Sasamoto Kisaburou, a physicist. He and Rinna were classmates at an American university and were very close. As in, romantically.
But Sasamoto disappeared after graduation. So it is likely that Rinna is going along with the Roidmude of her own free will. Kyu is sad thinking Rinna has been looking for him all this time when the real Sasamoto is likely dead.
Kiriko adds that Sasamoto had been researching a way to use sound to control living things. But the Roidmude perverted that research for their own gain.
Shinnosuke thinks as he pulls out the picture taken by Gou of Amagi. He shifts into top gear as he gets a call from Rinna.
Sasamoto takes Rinna to some kind of laboratory where she meets… the real Sasamoto. It turns out Rinna had asked Voice to bring her to the real Sasamoto if he was still alive. And here he is.
Voice was surprised when Rinna first asked, but having Sasamoto’s memories inside him, he understood. Flashback to the moment at university when Sasamoto told Rinna that his research is more important than their relationship.
Rinna tells Sasamoto that he just threw her away and left. But she’s been looking for him and since then, hasn’t found another man who could measure up.
Sasamoto seems remorseful that Rinna thinks so highly of him. But Voice says they should make up quickly and have Rinna help them with their research. Rinna refuses to have this research used for evil. Much to Voice’s shock, she uses a Shift Car to get him under control.
Rinna says she came here to free Kii-kun. But her Kii-kun slaps her hand, forcing her to drop the Shift Car. He grabs her arm behind her back and Voice manages to shoot at the Shift Car, allowing him to transform into his Roidmude form.
But Shinnosuke, Kiriko and the Shift Cars arrive just in time.
Kiriko takes Sasamoto from behind and Shinnosuke explains how he figured it out. Gou’s photo had both Amagi and the real Sasamoto in it. But that means Sasamoto is indeed doing this out of his own free will, which means he is a criminal.
Voice laughs and explains that Amagi was Sasamoto’s sponsor, hoping to use the sound research to help his matchmaking business. While Amagi wasn’t so receptive of working with a Roidmude, Sasamoto was willing.
Sasamoto says combining Voice’s power with his research, they’d be able to control people. He just wanted to see the results of his research in action.
Belt-san says Sasamoto was tempted into this foolish decision in the name of science. “You’re the same as the monster,” Shinnosuke says. They’re ready to bring him down to the station, but Voice will not let them go easily.
Kiriko shoots at Voice as they all run.
Two Roidmudes meet them outside, but Tridoron and Gou also arrive.
Shinnosuke and Gou both henshin. Shinnosuke goes Type Wild.
Gou takes on the two Roidmudes while Shinnosuke goes after Voice. But suddenly, the controlled women appear to protect the Roidmude. They grab both Gou and Shinnosuke as well as Kiriko.
But Dead Heat arrives, thanks to the bearded man. The man says Shift Dead Heat is complete. Gou recognizes this voice. It is Professor Harley!
Professor Harley tosses Dead Heat to Gou and he uphenshins to Dead Heat Mach.
Gou easily fights off all three Roidmudes. He uses a Sudden Dead Heat Burst and finishes off the two Roidmudes.
While Shinnosuke tries to use Hooking Wrecker to tie up the women, Voice reveals they all have bombs strapped to them.
No problem though as Gou unleashes a Full Throttle Dead Heat Burst finisher to finish Voice for good.
Professor Harley cheers. The women are free of Voice’s control and Shinnosuke goes over to them to try and remove the bombs.
Suddenly, Gou gets too hot and he goes out of control as well. He starts running toward the bombed women, but Shinnosuke can’t unleash a finisher right next to them.
But it’s okay. Kiriko delivers a Kiriko Kick to her little brother. “Nick kick!” Professor Harley compliments.
Later, Otta takes Sasamoto into custody. But first, he turns to Rinna and tells her while it’s late, he now realizes how much she means to him. He needs her by his side.
But Rinna says his voice no longer holds a piece of her heart. He committed a grave sin not only as a scientist, but as a human being. She won’t ever meet him again.
Rinna sadly walks away.
Chase creeps around nearby.
Back at The Pit, Rinna cries, but Professor Harley cheers her up.
Professor Harley tells Shinnosuke and Kiriko to keep an eye on “dangerous boy” Gou.
He has to get going now, but he first gives Rinna a food souvenir from America for her and Krim Belt-san to enjoy together.
Professor Harley hops on his motorcycle and drives off to continue his world tour.
Episode Thoughts
What an amusing episode.
Story wise, we officially welcome Dead Heat to the arsenal. Dead Heat’s cool.
But we got a lot more character stuff I think. First, we got to see more of where Brain’s head is at regarding Heart and his crush position in the hierarchy, I guess. Can’t wait for that Brain-Medic catfight in the future. lol
We get a little backstory on Rinna, which was great. It definitely added more to her character. Also good to see she can go out on her own. And her still trusting and believing her once upon a time love fit in well with her character.
Professor Harley was fun. I wish we got to see more of him and Gou though. It would be fun to see a flashback episode of Gou’s time in the US with Professor Harley.
Just a fun episode all around.
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4 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Drive, Episode 17 – Who Will Win the Dead Heat?”
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We’re finally getting to see some infighting among the Roidmudes, it just took Medic’s arrival to tip the balance of the established dynamic. It’s made them a lot more interesting as villains.
Yeah I definitely hope we see more. Especially if Chase defects back to the human side as is expected. Hehe
It’s his first appearance, but I am definitely loving Professor Harley. Yeah, we really should get a lot more of the old man.
But for this particular case of the week, I must say that I am rather disappointed.I*t’s Rinna, who is a major side character, so I was really expecting a lot. But Sasamoto’s story just came out flat. There isn’t even any real weight to his “scientific motivation”, since they didn’t even make it clear why he is even doing his research and why he felt it was more important than Rinna. The episodes with Lira was far more interesting, and she was just a one-off character at that.
Yeah flat case of the week. It basically took 2 episodes to establish that Rinna went to school in the States, had a boyfriend, still wants a husband but is committed to the team for now lol That could’ve easily been 1 episode, but it was alright for its simple purpose I guess