Recap: Kamen Rider Build, Episode 26 – The Treacherous Deathmatch

Misora’s bangle somehow helps Sento control his Overflow. When he snaps out of it, he realizes what he’s doing to Misora. He lets go of her and dehenshins. But Gentoku has taken Pandora’s Box and they now have the possibility of a traitor in the midst who leaked to him the location.

Seito PM is excited to have Pandora’s Box so he can unlock its power, but Papa PM refuses to hand over their FullBottles. Seito PM threatens to firebomb Touto if he doesn’t.

Papa PM summons the guys over to his residence and tells them about Seito proposing another proxy prize fight. If they lose, they will surrender Touto’s territory and FullBottles to Seito. If they win, Seito will retreat from Touto and restore Hokuto to its pre-PPV fight state.

The catch this time is that there will be three one-on-one fights. That means Sento, Ryuga and Kazumi will all fight. Papa PM asks them to win this fight and end the war.

Back at the lab, Sento says he will develop a new power up item to help him control his Overflow. But how? They do a mini-recap of the season so far by projecting the recap to Misora in the FullBottle purifying box.

Misora tells Sento and Ryuga to shut up while she thinks. A little later, she emerges from the box with a new rabbit FullBottle. Sento tries the two rabbit FullBottles for the first time together, but it doesn’t work. Instead, he gets another idea and gets to work.

Just then, Sawa arrives at the lab and offers to help. She also says Kazumin is at the Skyroad.

Ryuga decides to go to Kazumi and he arrives just as Kazumi buries the dog tags of his comrades and friends. Remembering his own loss, Ryuga also pays his respects and suggests they train together for the big fights to find a way to increase their Hazard Levels.

Ryuga shakes his FullBottle to henshin, but he hears something inside. He opens it up and finds a wiretap.

Back at the lab, Sawa is helping Sento. He compliments her on her work so far, but he begins asking her questions about her father. He says he looked up the gas explosion at the research lab, but found no record of a Takigawa on the list of victims.

Sawa say Takigawa is her mother’s surname and she used it after her father’s death.

Sento vows to win the proxy fight so they can have a future by ending the war.

One week later, it’s time for the big fights. Kazumi will take on Rai Washio, Engine Bros. Ryuga faces off against Fu Washio, Remocon Bros. And the main event is Sento vs Gentoku.

The first undercard gets underway.

Back at the lab, Sento furiously completes his new power up which he believes will safely use the power of Hazard. He realizes what time it is and hurries over to the gymnasium location of the fight.

Kazumin and Bro Rai henshin and battle as Ryuga and Misora watch from behind a glass. While fighting Bro Rai remembers the moment they became a Nanba Childrens and growing up being trained as weapons. And finally the moment he and other Nanba Childrens, including…

Sawa Takigawa(!), pledged their allegiance to almighty Nanba.

He uses that motivation to gain the upper hand over Kazumi.

Meanwhile, just revealed Nanba kid Sawa is copying all of Sento’s data onto a USB.

Kazumi draws more power from the memories of his fallen comrades. Kazumi is able to wear the Bro down enough to allow him to deliver a Twin Finish Scrap Finish Rai.

Kazumi officially wins the match.

Sento arrives and shows Ryuga and Misora his new creation. Ryuga says he won’t need the new device as he heads out onto the court.

Sawa is talking to Nanba on the phone about delivering the data to him.

The next undercard is Ryuga vs Bro Fu. But he surprisingly morphs into Hell Bros instead of Remocon Bros, which he combines with Engine Bros.

Ryuga can’t believe it.

Episode Thoughts

No really big surprises in this episode. Though again, it’s a little sad Sawa has been a spy all this time. Of course, her becoming close with the Gang is exactly what a good spy would do. But there’s just something about the original “outing” as a Nanba lackey that makes this big reveal feel anticlimactic. I think it would’ve been better had they not done that little story earlier and instead drawn out the possibly suspicious activities until the big reveal here of her being a Nanba Children. That would’ve been much more impactful.

Still, I hope they use Sawa as a way to go deeper into that part of the story and to possibly build up just how scary and ruthless old man Nanba really can be. The Nanba Childrens has some nice potential if explored well.

Rewind to the beginning of the episode, I thought this was going to be a full-on recap episode. lol It certainly seemed that way at first. But it was actually an interesting way to finally get us inside the purification box with Misora for the first time.

I really liked the moment between Ryuga and Kazumi on the Skyroad. The show hasn’t really developed their relationship that well other than them not liking each other very much. (And them fighting for Misora’s heart.) But those scenes of conflict between them really helped to set up the scene here. Them bonding, in a way, over their losses from this war. Their shared experience of losing someone is a great way to illustrate their commonality. And of course it also worked well with the Bros talking about their resolve too.

I had a feeling in an earlier episode that Ryuga might have some kind of bug on him. They intentionally focused on him when they talked about plans one time that needed to be kept a secret. Instead, the secret was easily found out. So it was either Ryuga was a spy or he’s been wiretapped.

Sento in-helmet shot at the beginning was very Sentai/Power Rangers. It was fun. And I also recognize the set of the PPV fight as a location used to film an MV for Filipina singer Beverly who just so happens to sing the opening theme for Build. hehe

Overall, it was a good episode with fun action. A couple of nice callbacks to earlier quirks of Sento. But it definitely felt like a transitional episode that will lead up to the big battle between Sento and Gentoku.