Recap: Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 33 – Lovekov’s Rebellion!? Sakura’s Resolution

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Sakura begs Ikki to save Aguilera then decides to hug her instead, causing her older brother to crash land and dehenshin. After a dramatic silence, Sakura promises that if Aguilera’s going to be killed, it’ll be Igarashi Sakura doing the killing. Aguilera and Sakura stare at each other for a few seconds before Aguilera huffs and puffs and walks away. Tamaki chases after her.

Meanwhile over in Director Akaishi’s office, Doctor Akemi is trying to cut the zipties from her feet and hands. When the creepy director comes in, she asks him who the hell he is. Director Akaishi says he is an ancient being who Gifu made immortal in exchange for him monitoring humanity’s evolution forever and ever.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

“What the f- are you even talking about?” Doctor Akemi says as she cuts the last ziptie, does a flip over the couch and grabs a conveniently laying around Colt-like F.A.R 50 pistol. She shoots a hole through Director’s Akaishi’s skull and hand. But the holes immediately heal. Director Akaishi calls on Gifu to do the thing and the thing results in Vail regaining his physical form for the first time.

Director Akaishi stamps Vail with the Kong and Megalodon Vistamps. Vail is eager to meet the Igarashis.

While Tamaki is merely setting himself up for another undeserved slap from Aguilera at the aquarium, a whiny Sakura and Ikki beg Vice to check on Lovekov to see what’s up her ass lately.

Vice jumps into Sakura’s head and finds Lovekov listening to loud music in her room. She has apparently gained the ability to speak like a normal person. And with her newfound capacity, she says Sakura’s been a terribly-written character lately and tells “trash” Vice to get the hell out of her face.

Vice relays what Lovekov has said to Ikki and Sakura.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Just then, Tamaki comes in with a red hand painted on his face which is actually Aguilera 100th time slapping him for no reason because she hates men or whatever.

The lovesick Tamaki feels sorry that because of the Deadmans, Aguilera has not been able to go out on date like normal people. Tamaki had hoped he could provide that experience for Aguilera before she dies. But he now realizes that she does not swing that way.

Knowing she is what Aguilera wants, Sakura goes chasing after her.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Over at George’s lab, Daiji is very worried about Doctor Akemi and he says he will go confront the director. Military ranks be damned all in the name of justice. George thinks that is very interesting.

Daiji begins banging on the director’s door while screaming. Director Akaishi calmly welcomes him in. But Daiji continues his screaming fit when he sees a dazed and confused Doctor Akemi on the floor.

Director Akaishi taunts Daiji and that just causes Daiji to scream even louder.

Daiji tries to fight the director, but Akaishi recites a poem about himself while burning Daiji’s body and making him bleed. Director Akaishi laughs about the futility of reckless youth providing for fun entertainment. He drags Doctor Akemi out the room.

Daiji’s screams are now silent.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Meanwhile, Sakura has found Aguilera at the aquarium. Aguilera is excited to finally be killed. But Sakura does a pouty face and says she wants to have fun with Aguilera first.

Sakura drags Aguilera to the theme park to do date things. Ikki, Vice and Tamaki watch them from the bushes.

Vail suddenly pops up, demanding to know where Papa Igarashi is. Ikki says he will never tell, so Vail decides to kill him first before going to ask Sakura instead. Ikki shoves Tamaki out of the way and tells him to continue lurking around the bushes watching Sakura and Aguilera’s date.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Ikki and Vice henshin and battle Vail. But the two buddies are surprised that Vail has the same powers as them. Vail says it’s thanks to Director Akaishi.

Vail tells Ikki to relay a message to his father. The longer Papa Igarashi hides, the more time Vail has to savagely murder the rest of the family. Ikki says that will never happen to the bestest family. He delivers a Revice Strike at Vail and is able to drive him away for now.

Tamaki loves watching Sakura and Aguilera sit down for some ice cream. But Hikaru interrupts the date when he has Sakura’s Driver all fixed. Sakura is sad that the romantic date is over. But now Aguilera has a date with death.

They all head to the waterfront. Sakura slaps the Driver on her waist and Lovekov pops up, perfectly fine now. Sakura henshins and Aguilera transforms. They battle.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

George arrives with a new Hashibirokou Vistamp that gives Sakura a new weapon. Sakura uses it to slash at Aguilera several times.

“I loved you, Sakura-chan,” Aguilera says. Sakura says to drop the past tense because she ain’t dying yet.

Sakura goes into a speech about finding her resolve and wanting to use the Gifu powers within her body to save people. And that includes her beloved Aguilera.

Sakura slashes at Aguilera and that ends her demon contract.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

Sakura says she did not care about Aguilera’s wishes and instead forced what she wanted on her. That is, to split Aguilera from her demon. To do that, she asked Papa Karizaki to find a way to make that possible. Papa Karizaki in turn asked George to create a Vistamp to do that.

Aguilera says she has nowhere she belongs. But Sakura says she does. And that where is right in her arms. Aguilera cries in the arms of Sakura who wants to have lots more fun together.

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

The first bit of fun is Sakura forcing Aguilera to take a bath together.

The next bit of fun is dressing up in new costumes to head to Weekend so Aguilera can apply to join the organization.

Episode Thoughts

Whew. I’ll take a deep breath. This is going to be much longer than necessary.

So I’m going to be employing a few meme reaction video whatevers to express how I feel after watching this episode. First up…

No, because seriously. What was this? Everywhere the episode turned, it was one WTF thing after another.

Like, I’ve mentioned every week, I am so surprised by how much I’ve disliked how Revice has gone lately. I’m sure everyone else has loved everything. But we all have our own opinions of course. No matter how cuckoo.

So anyways! I really feel like something’s happened or the show is being run or written by a completely different team. Because I feel like there’s been two different Revices. And I really believe the existence of the TTFC miniserieses plus Dear Gaga actually sort of make the apparent (to me) disparity between the two Revices that much more pronounced.

The Mystery, Kamen Rider Vail (the miniseries, not the that thing that popped up this week), Dear Gaga; all three of these side pieces feel more like the Revice we were introduced to. Not whatever these last couple of weeks have been.

This episode was so much a culmination of the questionable story decisions they’ve made lately. And I absolutely know there’s likely more to come.

So first, let me quote the wonderful Bernice Starnes:

I really don’t. And no, I’m not talking about most of the characters from Saber. (Though the quote certainly applies.) I could even refer to several characters here on Revice. But the first one is definitely Aguilera.

And the main reason being the show has not done anything to make me care about her or even Tamaki. They killed off the only interesting Deadmen, left the two less interesting ones. And by not making them Deadmans anymore, makes them even more uninteresting.

I mean, the show just sped through that whole bullying plotline in about an episode and a half which resulted in the bullied kid getting killed by the Deadmans. And all just to abruptly transition Julio into Tamaki so the show could have a comic relief character and thankfully save Kurodo Hachijoin from having to maintain that horrible haircut all year.

So Aguilera’s character development goes from evil girl boss to a delusional husband-hungry desperada to a less interesting female version of sulky Fukamiya Kento to… *insert cliffhanger*

Meanwhile, Sakura’s character development goes from wanting to get out of her brothers’ shadows to wanting to pave her own path to (correctly) questioning the true intentions of Fenix to (to be determined) not questioning the true intentions of an even more sketchy organization to…

And that brings us to where the two characters meet. All their character “development” has apparently led them to their ultimate climactic moment.

No, not them professing their love for each other. But apparently fulfilling their destiny to become gay witches or wizards… (Nah, not wizards. I wouldn’t do that to what was actually a good season, Wizard.)

Kamen Rider Revice Episode 33 Recap

But huh? What is this? Talk about cults. Now that right there looks more cultish than even those veil(with an ‘e’)-wearing Deadman cultists, let’s be real. Lol

I know things are crazy when I can confidently say Power Rangers has done something better than Kamen Rider. And that’s on the relatively solid writing for Izzy Garcia being LGBTQ.

Toei wanted to tell a story about two young women going from rivals to something romantic? Wonderful! But perhaps next time, actually develop the story rather than throw away everything you were originally doing with them and then instead add random looks of longing to imply they’re into each other.

Speaking of things being pulled out of thin air. Director Akaishi is apparently very VERY old and very VERY invincible.

Uh… okay?

Everything that happened in Director Akaishi’s office was straight bonkers. And not in a fun way. Why did that Daiji-Akaishi battle come across as comedy rather than some dramatic moment. Like, they actually had “blood” to show how intense the scene was and how brutal and powerful Director Akaishi is. But instead, the entire time I was going:

I wanted to laugh. I don’t know why.

But I didn’t end up laughing because of the way they just pooped… I mean, popped Vail’s physical form out like it was another throwaway line. (There’s been a lot of those moments lately.)

Vail’s physical debut should be its own episode and get its own build up. Not shoehorned into this mish-mash of an episode. Both his appearance in the office and then his battle with Ikki and Vice were all afterthoughts. When actually, it should’ve even been a cliffhanger.

Again, Vail is the demon that murdered these siblings’ grandparents. Right? Or at the very least, the demon who has had a hand in turning Papa Igarashi’s mind and body into a clusterfrak. Making his physical presence known should be a big moment in this story and for our Igarashi siblings. But nope.

Then there’s the random check-in with the Karizaki Family drama with zero context and zero attempts at building a foundation for whatever the hell they’re going to do with the father and son.

I mention the Karizakis now because both their story as well as Vail’s is currently being told on Revice Legacy – Kamen Rider Vail instead. If they insist on doing that, then fine. Go ahead. But, just an idea, release all of that first before then presenting those ideas in-series? You know what I mean?

Toei’s been slow walking the TTFC rollout of the Vail miniseries to every other week. But I think every minute of it holds a pretty big significance to how one can absorb the story in-series.

And again, I’ll say how I believe the Vail miniseries as well as Dear Gaga and probably even The Mystery all should’ve been kept in-series instead of separate things that may or may not even be canon. Like, what is even going on.

A couple months ago, Revice was on track to match my two favorite seasons (Build and Zero-One), if not top them even. But now, with my very pessimistic view of the final four months of the season, I don’t even know if I can eventually rank it any higher than just above Ghost on my list. And I greatly dislike Ghost. (Though a bit less now than right after it wrapped.)

I’ll go wallow in my overdramatic, pessimistic pool of tears now.




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35 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Revice, Episode 33 – Lovekov’s Rebellion!? Sakura’s Resolution

  1. Am I the only one who doesn’t see anything romantic about this Sakura and Aguilera thing?

    1. No, you’re definitely not. It can easily be a sisterly bond or something. Which is probably what it is. Especially when the season is supposed to be about family bonds. But the way they’ve written it, you could take it any way since it lacks a good foundation.

      Knowing Toei, they do like to queerbait, tbh.

  2. “Speaking of things being pulled out of thin air. Director Akaishi is apparently very VERY old and very VERY invincible.

    Uh… okay?”

    Uh, didn’t previous episodes already implied that Akaishi is not normal?

    1. Yeah. He’s definitely not been normal. But for me, it’s not really been enough to establish him as some serious player in this Revice game. We know he’s old and invincible because he tells us. But up until this episode, he’s just acted like a creeper. That’s not necessarily laying the foundation for something impactful.

    2. What are you talking about, isn’t he the originsl founder of Deadmans who personally recruited Orteca?

      Also I’m not talking about his mannerism, I’m talking about how he looks exactly the same in the old NOAH photo, thus implying he’s somehow immortal. So how is that pulling things out of thin air?

      1. That is all as vaguely implied as Sakura and Aguilera being gay is. Putting a hood over Jun Hashimoto (who is definitely a much better actor than this character is asking of him) does not constitute plot development. This is the kind of stuff KR and Sentai pull when they introduce a random villain as the final boss in the 40s even when they have perfect established candidates who’ve been on the show since episode 1.

        Olteca’s backstory was touched upon probably a whole 10 minutes, if that.

        And Noah? They’ve only mentioned Noah in-series once. That’s when Buu-san did his little expository rundown after Episode 25. Because apparently Toei would rather keep relevant story out of the series, dump them on TTFC and do random stuff on Sunday mornings instead.

        And Akaishi has not even been a relevant factor in terms of Noah. I don’t even think he exists in the Vail miniseries which is where 98% of anything Noah related has been told.

  3. So honestly my thoughts at this point: Either Vail needed to replace Griff, or to have never included Vail, never done the whole Fenix Tribe thing (currently a debacle, but hey it could work with more space) and keep the Deadman trio as main antagonists, with Tamaki and Olteca getting new stamps/forms after their first major defeat. I don’t know, but don’t have both these plots running around.

    1. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot running around. And because of that, I feel like none of it is getting the kind of care and attention each deserves or simply needs for it to be told in a good way.

      I’d even prefer the typical corrupt government organization rather than this mish mash of whatever.

  4. lol WTF indeed. What a mess this season has become. They’re falling into the same pit Saber fell into. They’re doing too much and ending up doing too little to actually make any of the stories click. They were doing so well and decided to blow it all up. And for what?

  5. bro, Revice has fucking wasted Julio

    They should’ve just killed him off if they weren’t going to do anything interesting with him

    Could’ve at least let him keep his Deadman powers so he can at least do something

  6. It’s moments like Lovekov speaking in complete sentences are why I want to see an American KR adaptation and see how that will play out.

      1. I think to get an honest baseline you’d have to compare Ryuki and Dragon Knight. The only decent adaptation we got.

  7. Ngl revice kinda flopped since we lost Olteca 😭😭😭 hopefully it will get better again

    Fuck off akaishi

    1. That makes me really sad because I always felt that as long as the family is front and center, the show would be okay. But they’ve shoved the family aside and dumped them on TTFC.

  8. Oh good, someone else who isn’t sucking Revice’s dick. I’m almost as shocked to see people waving off the season’s obvious problems as I was shocked that people actually think Saber is one of the best seasons. I mean, wtf?

  9. You homophobic or something? We finally have two lesbians and it’s not just innuendo. You actually got them confessing to each other and naked in bath and shii..

  10. I don’t know about romantic, as the word said was “daisuki”, not “aishiteru”.

    1. Daisuki can be used in a friendly way or romantic way, I believe. But aside from that, there’s the innuendo and the obvious date-like hanging out at the theme park. And then the fans/shippers that want it to happen.

      For me, I don’t really care either way because I still feel like both characters have been shortchanged after both had strong beginnings. I believe like they’ve devolved instead of developed. And them in a romantic relationship or as sisters is such a lazy thing to have them do considering the potential they both had. And it’s also partly due to the erasure of the Deadman3 which I think was so premature.

  11. Revice is flopping so bad, they had to trot out some token lesbians to spice things up. Haha. But seriously, WTF is going on in that writer’s room that the season has declined so much in so little time.

  12. 私は日本出身です。確かに、日本のファンも仮面ライダーリバイスを笑っています。 スタートは順調でしたが、最近はほとんど見られなくなっています。 とても悲しい。

  13. Fuck do I hate revice for leaving me in a state of limbo with Kamen Rider, I hate how the decline slowly left me 2nd guessing all my favorite riders and killed my mood of a lot of collecting. Sadly I just want this decline to end, I hate the “woke” community being forced into the show. I don’t want to be forced fed watch good characters die and focus being put on two characters that aren’t even interesting in the slightest with their shipping of them. All IMO

  14. One of my favorite episodes, even though the sadistic one who put the trailer will have to answer me… By the way, I SWEAR I WASN’T CRYING, IT’S HANA WHO WAS CRYING!

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