[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Nomoto and Shun are established as knowing each other, but it was never touched upon again.

I think it's just a little bit of business, to say that two athletes from the same school know each other. It makes Amanogawa High feel more lived-in and real.

[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 21 - “A MISGUIDANCE COUNSELING SESSION”

That idea of everyone moving on, it’s a thing that most of these shows don’t really touch on until their final arc, if at all. The doctors in Ex-Aid are still going to be doctors when the show ends. Banjo and Sento will still be friends when Build ends. Takumi will still be a petulant handful when 555 ends. But Fourze (and Gotchard, but less so) is a show that’s telling you in Episode 21 that some folks are already planning the next phase of their lives. Shun and Miu are graduating in the summer, and that’s it for them and the KRC. Kengo, Yuuki, and Gentarou are figuring out what they’ll be doing in a couple years when they graduate. (Kengo’s like NO I CAN STAY IT’S COOL is such a sweet little note, him needing to finish his dad’s mission, no matter what.) Everyone’s aware that this situation – them being friends in the KRC – is as temporary as the fight against the Zodiarts, and that gives a real melancholy sheen to this show, and the strange gravity its exerted on its cast.

It's ironic that it seems that Fourze talks about how a friend circle is temporary, but some of those other series may not have anyone moving on to emphasize their friendship, that your friends are available to you 24/7, unlike the reality of real life where the "fake friends" won't be there for you again. And there can be people who wish that as a true Kamen Rider, people have to give up about what they'd be doing in a couple of years, based on how the premise (...in Showa) was built upon that, where Hongo has to give up university life to fight as Kamen Rider, sacrificing their happiness for the greater good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

She clearly and loudly doesn’t want to be a teacher, which is a very neat change from Sonoda’s phony kindness and empathy. (Which, quick aside: I love how Ryuusei is the first one to clock that Hayami is up to something, because he sees the same bullshit geniality he’s using to deceive the KRC, which means Hayami is also trying to deceive them. Great character beat!) She’s doing a job she hates, because she can’t do the thing she loves. It’s a fun viewpoint to explore, the unhappy teacher, the one who’d rather be anywhere but Amanogawa. It’s mostly setup in this episode, tied to the mystery of the Pegasus Zodiart, and since I mostly don’t remember who the actual culprit is, I can’t spend as much time talking about how Haruka impacts this story.

As said by Androzani, Haruka is Lily from W. Other than her kickboxing here, Nao Nasagawa also did some acrobatics in W as Lily, albeit she botched it. Haruka was a potential Zodiart (red herring here), but Lily was an actual MOTW (in species), but a good one (guess she's the Cubi type of W). Hayami at first seems to look forward against Gentaro, but now he dismisses him and his friends as problem students. Gentaro should also recognize Hayami is up to something as he also recognizes Ryusei's bullshit geniality. I wonder about why Haruka didn't decide to make a living with kickboxing as she wants, like if she's still not good enough for competition or such despite Gentaro feeling that she's great.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It’s, again, an action-heavy episode, where even the basic high school scenes get little moments of Haruka almost assaulting students and colleagues alike, which is another problem that the Amanogawa High HR department seems unwilling to address. (The Chairman’s gotta do better on his hiring standards! You can’t cosmically-hypnotize away every workplace violation forever!) With a Zodiart that just wants to test their strength and skills against anyone – from karate guys in a nighttime training session at a playground (???), to a lone jogger, to Libra (!!!) – it’s no surprise that kinetic and tense fight scenes are where this episode spends the majority of its time. (We even get a massive battle against Virgo and Dustards at the quarry!) It’s all really well done, with the Pegasus suit actor doing some incredibly fast and powerful moves against a variety of opponents, while Meteor and Fourze show off their different styles in several fights. It’s just a brawling episode, and few series are as well-suited to that concept than Fourze.

But last episode showed where Gamou refuses to let people investigate Amanogawa High. Gamou is the owner of the school, it's intentionally made to breed monsters. The students and teachers are also only potential grooming into Zodiarts. Haruka misses her kicks to people like Ohsugi, but they'd still got a look at her shoe bottom, which'd hit their skin if she connects her kicks, unlike on the gym where it's taken off. Meteor goes back to being cold when a friend fallout isn't involved, though he praises Fourze clearing up the Dustards with Claw and Board Switches.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Gentaro should also recognize Hayami is up to something as he also recognizes Ryusei's bullshit geniality.

Well, Hayami isn't trying to be Gentarou's friend, so he probably isn't paying too much attention to phony adult authority figures.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 27 - “A TRANSFORMATION THAT’S DENIED”



Kijima’s a real fun adversary for the KRC in general, and Meteor in particular.

For one thing, he slowly but surely pushes Hayami out of the Cool And Calculating range, straight into his more Blade-reminiscent mode of being a sweaty, pathetic weirdo. Hayami wants to run a tight ship that Kijima is gleefully setting on fire, while the Chairman favors a more self-motivated curriculum that’s okay with sweeping a few dozen imperiled students under the rug in the name of cosmic villainy, so every Hayami scene is now either him sputtering impotently at Kijima’s lackadaisical approach to subterfuge, or him sputtering impotently at the Chairman’s lack of interest in policing his lieutenants. (Also, way more scenes where Hayami has to grovel in apology!) I just feel like things make way more sense when this actor is portraying a character that's struggling to overcome his constant and glaring inadequacies?

But, for another thing, Kijima’s KRC-scaled. He exists on the level of our heroes, and more directly, he exists on the level of Meteor. Beyond just being a kid that they all still go to school with, which is completely insane in the most dramatically-correct way possible (I like how it talks about school as being a place where people can also reinforce their worst attributes), he’s a liar, like Ryuusei, and an outsider warrior, like Meteor. Where folks like Sonoda and Hayami are true believers in the Chairman’s indifferently unfurling scheme, Kijima just got lucky, and he’s going to ride that luck as far as it’ll take him, for as long as he’s having fun. His ambitions align with the Chairman’s generally – much like Meteor can team up with Fourze against certain enemies – but he’s still in it for himself first and foremost. He’s just looking out for himself.

Which, in an uncharitable way, is sort of what Ryuusei’s doing. He’s lying and scheming to keep his identity a secret from the KRC, because if anyone finds out his TERRIBLE SECRET, then Tachibana will snatch it away forever, and then he can’t save Jirou. He’s putting his needs ahead of the greater good, and he’s willing to betray the people who care about him in order to do it, because he doesn’t actually care about them in the first place.

That’s all bullshit, though.

It’s that moment at the KRC hotpot dinner, where Gen gives his little Friends Will Always Help You speech, that gives it away. Ryuusei storms out in his usual cloud of not being here to make friends, or Gen doesn’t understand the real stakes of friendship, or a handful of his usual rationalizations to look down his nose at a guy who values friendship more than anything else in the cosmos. But the reality is that he leaves because he knows that all he’d have to do to get the entire KRC to rally behind him and defeat Cancer is admit his secret, and let his friends help him. But that wouldn’t just lose him the ability to be Meteor, it’d give him something brand-new to risk. If he lets his friends help him, he admits that they’re his friends, and look what happened to his last friend. Instead, he goes to confront Cancer alone, at which point Tachibana becomes another punitive educator for this show to deal with.

The Tachibana of it all… we’ll see where it goes! I remember not liking most of the Tachibana stories, even if I no longer remember why I didn’t like them. He’s a cruel taskmaster here, but we’ll see where it goes next time. It may be Spring Break, but fighting Zodiarts does not take a vacation!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So the Amazon quiz was harder to do than the others, since a lot of fodder for good questions is either in the official one, or could be answered by watching something else.

In spite of his supernatural origin, Amazon is still considered a modified human like the other Showa Riders. How?
A) The ancient mystic grafted the Gigi Armlet onto his arm.
B) He has an artificial heart from a childhood accident.
C) A fragment of wood is lodged within his ankle.

Amazon is notably the only Showa Rider from the first 5 years not to meet any of his predecessors and initially doesn?t ride a bike. So how does he receive the name ?Kamen Rider??
A) It?s the loose translation of the ancient Incan title he inherited.
B) A couple of kids note that he reminds them of past Riders and give him the name.
C) He reads it in the newspaper and thinks it sounds catchy.

Amazon has a different narrator to the other Rider shows from the 70s and early 80s. But who was it?
A) Eisuke Yoda
B) Shun Horie
C) Goro Naya

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 26 - ?A SUBLIME SLOW DANCE?

But this nicely isn?t framed as a regression, or them clinging to past glory. Miu and Shun still graduate, and they go to prom, and Miu gets her dance with Gentarou, and it?s all very sweet, the pin the show puts in their story. (Those flashbacks to them joining the KRC! My heart!) Their membership in the KRC has never been about their academics, or their shared role as students; it?s about them all being friends and caring about their school, and that hasn?t changed.

It's cool how Shun accepts that Gentarou is the most important guy in Miu's high school life but isn't morally defeated since now there's the possibility to become the most important guy in her post-school life instead. Possibilities open up when you realize that graduation is the start of life, not the end. Sentimentality can be a double-edged blade and the opposing ways that Shun and Miu process their times is important to help them both move forward without leaving behind what's important.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Ha ha, I found that album through a streaming service on a road trip a few years back, and the covers are really good. They've got a Kiva cover on there as well that was pretty fun!

Life Is Showtime as well!

Unlike Switchblade, I like Saite and thought it was fitting for the bittersweet atmosphere of the prom. Considering the current 3-girl roster of Kamen Rider Girls though, it's weird for me rewatching this and thinking, "hey, where's Chisato and Jiena?", before realizing they hadn't joined yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

It's ironic that it seems that Fourze talks about how a friend circle is temporary, but some of those other series may not have anyone moving on to emphasize their friendship, that your friends are available to you 24/7, unlike the reality of real life where the "fake friends" won't be there for you again. And there can be people who wish that as a true Kamen Rider, people have to give up about what they'd be doing in a couple of years, based on how the premise (...in Showa) was built upon that, where Hongo has to give up university life to fight as Kamen Rider, sacrificing their happiness for the greater good.

I think Fourze is a great example of how the spirit of Rider has developed since the Showa Era. While Riders are still expected to endure suffering and loneliness, they're no longer completely defined by that and can still enjoy a relatively normal lifestyle with friendship and dreams. There's also the show's predecessor OOO, where the classic image of a self-sacrificing Rider is criticized as unhealthy and inefficient.

[Androzani84]

So, episode 27. Now I can share what the theme naming for Kitajima is. The kanji that make up his forename “Natsuki” can also be read as “Kani” (crab). I’ll have slightly more to say about him next time.

But for now, the regular feature.

Sentai-lert

Gentaro’s grandpa, fittingly for a series celebrating 40 years of Toei Tokusatsu, is played by Nobuo Yana, who is better known as Super Sentai’s inaugural big bad, the Black Cross Fuhrer, in the back half of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger (replacing original actor Mitsuo Andou, who had to withdraw due to illness).

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

It's cool how Shun accepts that Gentarou is the most important guy in Miu's high school life but isn't morally defeated since now there's the possibility to become the most important guy in her post-school life instead. Possibilities open up when you realize that graduation is the start of life, not the end. Sentimentality can be a double-edged blade and the opposing ways that Shun and Miu process their times is important to help them both move forward without leaving behind what's important.

It's also, like... he's finally valuing her happiness over his own pride, and that's the kind of legitimate growth that makes you take a second look at someone you previously rejected. Like Miu says, it's Shun being a cool guy at last.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

SGentaro?s grandpa, fittingly for a series celebrating 40 years of Toei Tokusatsu, is played by Nobuo Yana, who is better known as Super Sentai?s inaugural big bad, the Black Cross Fuhrer, in the back half of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger (replacing original actor Mitsuo Andou, who had to withdraw due to illness).

Neat! Except for that Sentai name!