[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!

[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 22 - “KICKING YOUR TRUE NATURE”

I sort of thought it was? I remembered the rakugo thing not being some minor details, but a big clue, and Pegasus didn’t act like Utsugi at the quarry. This episode more or less immediately offers Kijima up as too suspicious too ignore, and Utsugi too confused to be a cover, leading to a pretty enjoyable solution to what’s normally an Act 1 mystery. There’s some genuine effort made to have the clues divulged organically, with very little of the dialogue bending over backwards to phrase things in a way that triggers a forced Eureka moment – though, even when it does, that’s a little ode to the wordplay of rakugo, maybe? (The biggest one is Shun’s whole Gosh Magnetic Fields Are Powerful bit, but even then he’s talking about cell phones, which Ryuusei links to watches.) Kijima framing Utsugi out of a combination of spite and ego makes for a compellingly villainous motivation, and a worthy new Horoscope for our team to deal with.

With Sonoda's departure, despite Kijima being the more interesting actor, compared to Utsugi, who's also seemingly more compelling compared to Sonoda, ironically, Kijima's someone who's more similar to Sonoda as a student who puts up low-key two-faced facade and ascends from MOTW to an actual Horoscope, so there'd be more scenes of him later, like Hayami or Virgo. Guess Kijima is different as a Horoscope rather than MOTW, but lately, it seems that the Zodiarts are more unlikable, closer to Makise type (still the biggest scumbag) of being more petty, like both Nomoto and Kijima here, rather than sympathetic ones like Natta/Unicorn or Satake/Hound before, where Kijima is just power hungry and has pettier reason to frame Utsugi. Kijima is somehow successful in learning martial arts in kickboxing thus he can copy her fighting style and keep the masquerade, not only in acting, though wonder why if the fan is confiscated by Utsugi, Pegasus dropped it in previous episode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Shaping Utsugi’s story into a more adult take on following your dreams is a neat swerve for this show, and it’s especially welcome around a discussion of what the kids are going to do with the rest of their lives. Like, there’s your dreams, and then your career, and sometimes those don’t get to be the same thing. Utsugi dreams of being a kickboxer, but that’s not the sort of thing that’s going to pay the bills, so she became a teacher. (I’m not going to say that people don’t end up in careers they abhor via accident or inertia, but I’d love to hear how she ended up in a job she clearly despises, instead of, like, becoming a gym teacher? Or a physical therapist? Or any number of sports-adjacent jobs that aren’t dressing up in a suit and listening to the problems of teenagers you resent?) But Gentarou – both a high school student and a superhero – helps her understand that you can still follow a dream while working a job, and you can even find the things in your job that help you get closer to your dream. It’s cute, that little acknowledgement that being an adult means maybe doing a thing that isn’t what you’d hoped for, but can maybe still be something you find fulfillment in if you work at it. (Like teaching a kid how to kick the crap out of a wordplay monster!) It’s a minor victory, her starting a kickboxing club at school, but it does feel like a victory.

Utsugi does become a gym teacher at the end by opening a kickboxing club at school. I do thought that she should perhaps become a gym teacher rather than a school lessons teacher, but for last episode, she seems to not want to teach martial arts too based on her reaction to Gentaro asking her to show off her moves, but she ends up doing that in the end. Guess it's shown that Utsugi's on her own league as a fighter as Gentaro who can beat up several delinquents or Dustards at once but stands no chance against her. Then yeah I thought she should be clearly good enough to easily apply for one of the jobs you suggested her to, unlike for instance, Squidward who's stuck in a job he hates as a cashier because he's actually bad (or at least not passionate enough) at art. Utsugi plays some part in the final battle against Pegasus, but she doesn't directly score hits to Pegasus unlike for instance Dango in W ep. 8 (Heaven's Tornado).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

We’ve also got the Meteor/Aries storyline cooking in the background, but I wasn’t really feeling it here. We get a little duel with Virgo, but mostly it’s stuff that didn’t feel as dialed-in as the rest of the story did for me. Some of it’s just… like, Pegasus only had a 1 in 8 chance of even becoming the right Horoscope, and I kind of laughed about that at the end of the episode more than I should’ve. It totally tracks that those odds are good enough for Ryuusei, but this does not feel like a strategy I’m going to be super invested in. (A 1 in 7 chance now!) My favorite Ryuusei beat in this one was probably him trying to sneak away to Henshin, but JK thinks of him as the other coward in the KRC, and sticks to him like glue so they can both avoid combat. It’s a fun gag! The rest of his story was plot stuff for the future, and I’ll hopefully care more about it there.

I know it depends more on the person than the martial arts, but can seem that based on Utsugi, kickboxing is placed higher here than Meteor's Jeet Kune Do here, which is about many martial arts mixed while keeping the useful ones and discarding the useless ones, though Cancer does get badly injured by Meteor's one-inch punch, which partly exposes his real identity as Kijima due to JK's banter. This is a much older show, but Ryusei asking Kijima to show off his stomach feels so Gavv, to know if someone is the MOTW or not. And the coach's actor name is Shoma Kai... but it's not Parado's actor one! JK would be likely an unwitting help again, other than smacking Kijima's stomach, to be a step closer in exposing Ryusei's true identity, just by trying to stick together.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Considering how Utsugi doesn't want to be called Sensei, as she doesn't identify as one, I think she's actively trying to appear as an anti-authority figure, in a way that maybe also makes her sound a little like a moody teenager as a side effect. On the other side of this friendship, Gentarou acts so familiar with everybody, whether they're teachers or students, so I guess those factors let them meet each other in the middle or something.

I wonder if Gentaro's method of finally bonding with Utsugi is an effective one of being constantly persistent, which'd just drive people away from them (and for places like online, getting blocked without any other chance to reconnect), but it seems necessary for Gentaro to do this as he was misled by Kijima and thought Utsugi is endangering others, so he's hunting her to protect people from being attacked, which leads to her exposing all her belongings in her bag, thus she's forced to confess about how she doesn't know what to do when her resignation letter appears. So, I feel like some luck and contrived coincidence was involved here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

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.

Wouldn't work for the audience as, Eiji is seen as the example to strive to be by the fanbase for how selfless and self-sacrificing he is. I guess it'd more fit for Eiji, if he's perhaps likely allowed to regain his desire to become an astronaut, musician, or soccer player, which was what he's thinking about when younger. His desire still revolves around protecting others, but he wants power for it. Actually Revice would be an example that Ikki wanted to become a soccer player, and ends up pursuing it at the end of the series, free from obligation of just running the Happy Spa out of obligation to family (noble sacrifice). And for KR shows that do push dreams or desires, the western audience would object to this 'amoral' conclusion, like for Ryuki compared to Japanese fanbase accepting that there's no sin to fight for desire.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I do thought that she should perhaps become a gym teacher rather than a school lessons teacher, but for last episode, she seems to not want to teach martial arts too based on her reaction to Gentaro asking her to show off her moves, but she ends up doing that in the end.

I took that to be Utsugi wanting a clear delineation from the part of her life she valued -- kickboxing -- and the part that she didn't, represented by a student intruding on her space. Gen's whole point at the end is that Utsugi's only making herself more miserable by seeing a distinction where one doesn't have to exist.