Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider

Episode 13

This episode has two levels. On the surface, this is an important episode for Ichiyo. Beyond his Kamen Rider mania, he's a man suffering from immense childhood trauma. He witnessed not only the violent attempted murder of his neighbors but the actual murder of his grandparents (along with the Shocker deserter and his girlfriend). Worse still, no one would believe him, except Mitsuba, who had witnessed the same incident, not the police or his sister. From there, his child mind interpreted what had happened as best it could—that Shocker was real and since only he and Mitsuba knew this, it was up to them to defeat Shocker. And since only Kamen Rider could defeat Shocker, this meant he would become a Kamen Rider—he and his grandparents' favorite: V3.

Since then, Ichiyo has lived inside his delusion: that he is a Kamen Rider and that all those around him are side characters in his story. Thus, he's attempted to force them into this role, and breaking his own brother's arm is just the biggest example of this. It never occurred to him that those around him were bothered by his actions. He believes any anger or resentment shown towards him is a passing thing. After all, when it comes to the various Kamen Rider series, the hero's friends and companions may occasionally become antagonistic towards him, but things tend to work out by the end of the episode.

This is why it never occurred to Ichiyo that Futaba might actually hate him—that rather than the forgiveness he had taken as a given, her resentment had built up for years with no outlet. She literally has to beat that truth into him.

And what's truly surprising is, in the end, he gets it. Oh, sure, he doesn't understand why she hates him, but he does understand that she does. While Shocker was the villain in his life, he was the villain in hers. Yet, while he is truly hurt that his sister hates him so much and appears sorry for his actions (well, as sorry as he can be from within his deluded worldview), he can't give up on his fight against Shocker. Being Kamen Rider V3 is who he is now, and that means, if he dies, it will come in that fight, not this one.

Then there is the previously alluded to deeper level to this episode—and for once, it's not something related to Kamen Rider. The first hint of it comes in the fight itself. Futaba's fighting style is far from normal. In the entire fight, she doesn't throw a single punch. Every attack is a kick or a knee—she only uses her hands to block, parry, or vault off of Ichiyo. Moreover, her strongest attack comes from the air, with her leaping down from a height and kicking from upside down.

The next big hint comes from our introduction to Tiger Master—i.e., the person who taught Futaba to fight. The pink tiger mask is something instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen it before. Moreover, from the first world spoken, it's obvious to anyone even a little bit into Japanese voice actors that Tiger Master is played by the iconic Romi Park. The final hint is the still frame of Tiger Master unmasked—an imposing police woman with short hair.

So this leaves us with an aerial fighting style using nothing but kicks, a pink tiger mask, and a tall woman with short hair voiced by Romi Park—in a story created by Yokusaru Shibata. Yes, the hidden layer here is that Tiger Master is heavily implied to be Maki Aikawa, the titular “Air Master” of Yokusaru Shibata's 2003 anime series of that name.

This has all kinds of crazy implications—from revealing what happened to Maki after the end of her own story to the fact that this retroactively makes Air Master a Kamen Rider series by association. Still, if you're looking for someone to join Tojima and the crew in pounding monsters into the ground, enlisting the aid of one of Japan's greatest street fighters is in no way a bad choice. Hopefully, we'll get to see how Tiger Master measures up to a monster like Spider Man next week.

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Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.