(general content warning for minor discussion of anti-asian racism and grooming, credit to dear icarus @werewolfcave for bringing details about the short film more directly to my attention and helping refine what i wrote)
my feelings on the henshin the first short film are sort of complicated in that inherently i don’t really care for the fact that its centered on makeup (it’s a commercial, kamen rider exists to sell toys, its par for the course but its grating on me from the standpoint that the immediate collab your big female rider is apart of is one about makeup)
However i literally literally cannot ignore it because it (at minimum) Implies a lot of canon-relevant stuff about nayuta. its a makeup commercial but its a makeup commercial with hands
nayuta not only grew up with dogshit self-esteem because of the eurocentric beauty standards surrounding her (literally centering her perception of what she needed to be on a poster of a white woman mind you) but she also experienced literal physical assault from her peers implicitly because she was growing up as an asian girl in germany. nayuta at age 10 was coming home with a bruised face and busted lip. she wanted so desperately to prove that she was greater than anyone who hurt her.
one of the most significant parts of this opening bit is nayuta smashing her head against the mirror, flicking between the girl chasing beauty and the girl chasing strength, until that reflection of who she is is shattered to the point that the image is no longer comprehensible. only that hole through which you see the dead-eyed stare of someone who’s given up on her individuality, her dreams, her sense of self. whats left of her after nearly a decade of grinding herself to dust to what felt like no avail? we watch her swipe blood across her lip like when she was 10. her epiphany at age 18 upon realizing nothing was changing (because it was never about who she was or what she could do in the first place) is that she simply wanted for too much
after reaching that conclusion we watch nayuta lower remnants of herself into a hole in the ground in the rain like she’s burying a body in the woods. a funeral for the girl who was broken into pieces by her inescapable reality and the weight of her self-hatred.
at this point in the short film, things diverge. so let’s connect this back to canon because that’s what i care about.
nayuta crushed her desires completely at some point in her teenage life. she hollowed herself. she focused everything toward school. a dance scholarship, she can study abroad in the uk! how impressive how successful. under a weight of parental expectations. of not being what nayuta actually wanted to do. i believe her when she says she likes dancing but i also feel that it was a matter of convenience to the training she’d put her body under for years. kronos’s line about nayuta’s parents in the finale depending on how you read it was implicitly echoing nayuta’s own feelings. she never wanted them dead for real of course, but that relationship was greatly strained by a prioritization of her studies. you only have so much of an idea of this before, but the above feels like its confirming nayuta’s own family offered little solace.
so kronos grooming her rings even more true with this. she finds nayuta, depressed, stressed out, and never having truly let go of the desires she concluded were a greed she had to bury. and kronos Knew she was perfect. already hated her guardians already hated her life. kronos need only grant her that absolute power. and she simply...gets rid of her parents. it was pretty clear in the finale that kronos was possessive of and wanted nayuta reliant on her but i think the added context of nayuta being preyed on specifically for that vulnerability is kind of sickening.
literally no shit that even with her brain scrambled, nayuta saw a group of women fighting for other women (specifically other japanese, some of whom are also mixed like she is, women i feel is important to point out as well) in a way that made them fierce and cool and powerful and heroic and went PLEASE LET ME IN YOUR GROUP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. girls remix is proof of a life shes always yearned for. if we take what the short film tells us as context, it actually enhances her connection with them greatly.
acknowledging that many aspects of this are a convention of being a makeup commercial its crazy that not much adjacent to this regarding nayuta’s past made it into the spinoff because it hits on some pretty significant parts of the character that greatly enhance and contextualize the journey she has.
she’s been dragged around by other people’s (her peers, her parents, crowd) expectations her whole life. no one knew it at the time but nayuta, like every other crowd cyborg, was a dead girl walking. and finding reassurance and safety and love within girls remix (specifically the bond she shares with rinne) saved her.
wirbelwind is activated twice before the finale, once by kronos and once by the nayuta who’s mind was fragmented. only when nayuta finally reconnects with the pieces of her that were lost and reaffirms who she is—who she WANTS to be does the belt activate proper, and nayuta mikazuki is, by her own will, finally resurrected, reborn as kamen rider eins. the culmination of her deepest desires.
and the conclusion of her story is leaving the confines of her previous life behind and becoming a kamen rider. relocated to japan, seemingly dropped out of college, and…finally, finally living as and for herself. dedicating herself to defeating anyone who would force sadness upon the world.
i don’t think all of this is 100% Supposed to fit together in this way but this is what i think this is what i feel. trembles like a sick dog i love my grasshopper. send post
annaxmalina
pixelskylines
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
2087
jbbartram-illu
yousharknotpass
