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notoneglance · 11 months

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Why the takoyaki amnesia doppelganger episodes???

So I think we can all agree that this whole plot line in Blade was wild and peak Inoue and definitely a comedic break in between two emotion heavy arcs. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do anything for the narrative. Despite being a huge departure in tone from the rest of the show, it does actually fit thematically and in terms of character development.

As a refresher, the arc I’m talking about happens in episodes 29 and 30 of Blade where Hajime briefly loses his memory and meets an identical-looking guy who convinces him to switch places for a bit. This guy, Mikami Ryou, is the heir to a takoyaki-making group in fierce competition with a taiyaki group and knows nothing of the Undead.

As silly as this whole premise is, the “prince and the pauper” style identity switch thing is a well-established trope often used to explore a character and their situation, just as it does here in Blade. There are intentional parallels between Ryou’s life and Hajime’s, despite their completely opposite personalities, and by switching them around, this arc both gives us a new lens on Hajime as a person and foreshadows the ending of Blade.

So let’s recap Ryou’s situation:

He’s the son of the head of an intensely competitive takoyaki-making gang, the Iroha clan, and was raised into this job. He doesn’t seem to have anything against making takoyaki itself—we first see him enthusiastically working at a stand—but he isn’t actually part of his father’s group. In fact, he hates the pressure to be involved in the conflict to the point where he switches lives with some random stranger just to leave it all behind. Part of this is because he is dating Michi, the daughter of the head of a rival taiyaki-making group who also seems a bit distant from her family. Both Ryou and Michi’s fathers discourage them from being together, each believing that their child is being “deceived” by their competitor.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The Battle Fight has way more going on than the simple two sided takoyaki vs taiyaki rivalry, but from the pov of the audience, it can be simplified into an Undead vs Human Kamen Rider fight. The show explicitly draws parallels between the two fights. When Ryou’s father says he wishes that Ryou would join the Iroha clan so that they could “win and survive”, Hajime despite his amnesia is instantly reminded of the Undeads’ motivation to do exactly that.

Like Ryou, Hajime was raised in this competition but does not particularly want to fight, instead forming a connection with someone on the other side—Kenzaki.

Actually, the whole “win and survive” thing is really interesting. Because of their circumstances, both Ryou’s father and Hajime fully believe that their survival is dependent on winning. It’s a kill or be killed world out there, and even if Hajime is starting to wish that there was some other way, neither of them are willing to let themselves lose. I’ll come back to this point later, because neither actually end up needing to win in order to survive.

Anyway, we have a bunch of similarities between Hajime and Ryou’s situations, but what does that actually tell us about Hajime (other than that he and Kenzaki are in love)?

Well, first off, having those similarities sets up space for a distinct contrast to highlight some aspects of Hajime’s character. The plot going on with the Blade squad and the fake Hajime centers around Hajime’s humanity. In the beginning of episode 29 before Hajime loses his memories, Kotaro accuses him of not having enough human emotion to care about what happens to Shima’s bird Natural. When he is replaced by Ryou, Kotaro thinks that the personality change was due to Hajime taking his words to heart.

These episodes emphasize that Hajime isn’t human and he’s definitely not the friendly and open person that Kotaro seems to want him to be. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and it doesn’t make him dangerous.

Most of the people besides Kotaro are just confused by Hajime acting so out of character, and Amane actively rejects this false Hajime. Even if Kotaro is happy about Hajime acting differently, he’s an outlier, and probably the only one in the group who has ever really held negative feelings for him.

Just like how Kotaro prefers the new Hajime, Michi initially prefers Hajime to the real Ryou, actively choosing to claim that this imposter is Ryou despite knowing otherwise. Ryou’s father goes along with it too, even after it’s implied that he has also figured out that this man is not his real son. Unlike Ryou, Hajime is focused and strong—a fighter. In the rivalry between the takoyaki and taiyaki groups, Hajime is the one who has the determination to “win and survive”, to fight for the Iroha clan.

We see the opposite on the other side as well, that Ryou is not a fighter. When thrown into a situation where an Undead attacks him, he runs away screaming rather than holding his ground. Which is a perfectly reasonable reaction for a regular human!

The part where the idea that “Hajime is superior to Ryou” to the people in Ryou’s life falls apart is when it comes to the emotional bonds.

Kotaro might be wrong about Hajime not caring about people in general, but there’s no reason for him to specifically care about the people Ryou loves. When Michi asks the fake Ryou if he loves her, Hajime replies that he doesn’t know what love is, upsetting her. Hajime spends most of this arc confused and not really invested, vaguely going along with the events without particularly asserting his own will, whether others are expecting him to be a takoyaki maker or Michi’s boyfriend. He doesn’t have any real stake in all this drama because he doesn’t actually know them—he’s not their Ryou.

However, things get switched up when Ryou comes back and declares himself as the real Mikami Ryou.

Both Michi and Ryou’s father initially insist that Hajime is the real one, culminating in a takoyaki vs taiyaki bake off competition between the two Ryous, where both characters that previously seemed disinterested become fired up, breaking out of the lover/fighter dichotomy that has thus far been set up.

Despite running away from the fight, despite running away from his life, Ryou does actually care about his girlfriend and father, and he wants them back. He doesn’t actually want to leave them behind or for them to leave him, so when push comes to shove he stands up and puts his whole spirit into the competition in order to get back his life. Later, when an Undead comes to interrupt the competition, Ryou stands his ground this time, risking his life to defend Michi.

Afterwards, Ryou puts a stop to the fighting between their two families by uniting them through marriage—something that Hajime was never capable of doing despite also almost getting married to Michi—because Ryou is the one that genuinely loves both Michi and his father. And when it comes down to it, they choose the Ryou they know and love over Hajime even if he seemed outwardly better.

Ryou isn’t naturally a fighter, but that’s fine because he can when the situation calls for it, and his reluctance to fight is what allows him to find a solution to this rivalry that benefits everyone rather than just one side.

Meanwhile, Hajime also participates in the “who is the real Ryou” competition not because fighting is just what he does, but because he cares about people in general.

Even though these are strangers that he has no real personal ties to, Hajime feels a connection with Ryou’s dad and his motto for the clan to “win and survive”. Which makes sense, since it’s basically the whole idea behind the Battle Fight, even if he does not remember it. The first time that Hajime made takoyaki, it was extremely half-hearted, just knocking ingredients over into the pan with a confused frown, but now he is fully putting all of his effort into this competition because of his desire to see the Iroha clan succeed.

When the people he loves are threatened, Ryou acts against his nature to protect them. We don’t see this parallel on Hajime’s end here, since none of the Blade squad are in danger this arc, but we’ve seen it happen so many times before with Hajime saving Amane and Kenzaki and even Kotaro that one time. Even without showing it, by having these parallels, the show reminds us of this aspect of Hajime’s character.

The point of the Ryou/Hajime contrast in these episodes is to show that Hajime is an Undead, a fighter—and that he also is someone who cares about people because these two things are not actually mutually exclusive and in fact tie into each other.

In the end, the thing that brings Hajime’s memories back is twofold: the memory that he is the 53rd Undead who will cause everything to be destroyed if he wins, and the memory of Amane saying his name.

That is a good set up for the next arc of the show where the other characters find out that Hajime is the Joker and what exactly that entails, and we start seeing more of the conflict in Hajime between his instincts to win and destroy and his desire to live a human life with the people he cares about. Having this more solid understanding of Hajime, of his strengths and shortcomings and the way he fits among the other characters, is important groundwork for the new set of information and conflicts.

But there is one last thing these episodes do, which is to foreshadow the ending of Blade.

The interesting thing about these episodes is the way that the taiyaki/takoyaki rivalry gets resolved: not by one side winning over the other, but by both sides surviving through Ryou and Michi’s marriage.

In Japan, when two people get married, legally one of them is no longer part of their birth family and is instead becomes a part of their spouse’s family. It can be either the husband or wife, though in practice it’s usually the wife that marries into the husband’s family, as it appears that Michi does here. Socially though, marriage can be viewed as more of a merging of two families, as is seen with Michi’s father also calling Ryou his son.

In the end of the show, the Undead/Kamen Rider conflict is resolved in a similar if more tragic fashion.

There does not have to be a winner to the Battle Fight for both Hajime and the world to survive. Just like how Michi joins Ryou’s family to bring peace, Kenzaki ends up physically changing species into an Undead. Meanwhile Hajime does not physically (or legally) change his status, but he socially becomes human by living among them.

Despite the goofiness of the takoyaki episodes, Kamen Rider Blade as a whole is a more serious show. Their conflict—between the Undead and humans, between the characters and destiny—cannot be so easily resolved. While Michi and Ryou join each other’s families and get to live happily together, Kenzaki and Hajime can only partially trade places as species and are unable to ever see each other again, not really resolving the conflict of the Battle Fight but only putting it on hold.

Still, even if Hajime and Kenzaki are left separated and connected only by the violent demands of fate/God/the Overseer of the Battle Fight, there is a lasting bond between them. It’s not for nothing that the ring designed off their combined character motifs is called “eternal marriage”.

TL;DR: The takoyaki episodes are important in how they set up Hajime as a character in preparation for the Joker arc and also foreshadow how Hajime and Kenzaki get symbolically married to bring peace

#i’m not saying that these episodes were *the best* way to accomplish these goals #i’m just saying it does contribute to the plot and themes even if the tone is wildly off haha #kamen rider blade #tokusatsu #aikawa hajime #kenzaki kazuma #blade #toshiki inoue #i spent way too long writing this essay #anyway please talk to me about blade i have So Many Thoughts #my post

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