[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Which of these Jin Dogma monsters was the winner of a kids design contest?
A) Red Danger
B) Keyman Joe
C) ShoukaKong

What historical Japanese figures shares his name with a me of Kazuya?s martial arts mentors?
A) Musashi
B) Benkei
C) Goemon

Unlike most other Showa Riders, the series constantly reminds us that Kazuya is a cybernetically modified human. How?
A) He performs regular maintenance on his electric mechanisms.
B) He excretes oil
C) Metallic sound effects play during his fights.
D) He has to regularly reconfirm the Super-1 Terms of Service

Thanks for the quiz!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 37 - “SELECTING THE STAR PUPIL”



I like Erin, and I think she’s got strong chemistry with Gentarou, but this one’s a little too hard to take seriously, for a couple reasons.

The first one, weirdly, is Erin herself. Like I said, I think she’s a fun character for this series: a poorly-translated American girl who immediately connects with Gentarou’s overpowering enthusiasm, but bristles from his boundless empathy and sense of shared achievement. She is unbelievably self-motivated – her Zodiart form is capable of recovering from any injury and pressing on like nothing happened – but she can’t grasp the idea of teamwork, just top-down leadership. The idea of her interacting with the flat management structure of the KRC is solid, even if elements feel a little derivative of 15/16. (We’re seriously in another story where Yuuki’s exuberance is driving a Zodiart completely insane!) The problem is that her loathing of Yuuki feels even more tenuous and untethered than Motoyama’s did back in 15/16, since Yuuki is at maybe 75% of Peak Yuuki, and Erin is losing her mind. I get that Erin’s under pressure, both externally and internally, but it’s hard to take her seriously enough when she’s flipping out at Yuuki in her very first scene. There sort of needed to be a more gradual build-up, and I don’t think we got it here, which makes the emotional weight of Erin’s frustration hard to give much credit. Yuuki isn’t nearly annoying enough to warrant this, even accounting for the psychological warping effects of the Zodiart Switch.

The other problem is, uh, Yuuki. I know I just said that Yuuki isn’t annoying enough to warrant Erin’s immediate and blazing enmity, but Yuuki is still pretty annoying this episode. I think she acquits herself well enough over the various tasks, and Kengo’s right that Yuuki has a great sense of when to lighten a mood (always, around Kengo, which is why she’s so good at it), but she’s rolling around during a presentation and screaming fealty to a rocket. Again, I get that she’s also under pressure here to realize her dream, but the stakes pale in comparison to how wacky Yuuki gets in this episode.

So, yeah, between a Zodiart who screeches her backstory and a KRC member who is slightly less relatable than the Hayabusa puppet this time out, I don’t know that the main rivalry has enough thoughtfulness to it to allow for real emotional investment, at least from me. There’s still the Gen/Erin stuff, though, and I thought that worked way better, mostly because Gentarou’s able to modulate his performance enough to make some of the heart-to-hearts feel like they’re about two actual teenagers, instead of overly-broad characters. I love seeing Gen get the chance to try and understand an episode’s villain before things get too crazy, and it’s nice to see him once again wager the story’s outcome on the hidden talents of Yuuki. (I… hope she does better here than in the talent portion of the Queen Pageant!) While Yuuki and Erin are hard to believe, Gentarou’s place in the balance always helps to bring things into focus.

And, y’know, there’s also the rest of the cast who… are present! It’s not a story for them, sadly, so we get yet another episode that JK, Shun, and Miu can’t directly participate in; Tomoko is dragged along, without really having much cause to be there; Ohsugi gets a single scene, barely; Kengo’s Cosmic Illness pops up again, after, like 20 episodes of not mentioning it; and the Zodiarts continue to collectively make Hayami feel like garbage. It’s a lot of little bits of business, some more entertaining than others – Ryuusei’s isolation freak-out and old-school cover-up are an episode highlight – but everyone’s so good at their characters by now that they can make even a single scene worth the viewer’s attention. I wish this one integrated everyone more, but some stories are just Gen/Yuuki/Zodiart stories, and that’s okay.

Which: this was an okay episode! I don’t think the tension between Yuuki and Erin was crisp enough to carry their story beats, but Gen smoothes over a lot of it, and everyone else chipped in around the edges. Sometimes that’s enough!

[Switchblade]

This episode was my breaking point for Yuuki. I absolutely lost any remaining ability to tolerate her after this.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

This episode was my breaking point for Yuuki. I absolutely lost any remaining ability to tolerate her after this.

I assume she seems a lot more tolerable if you've been awake in a blindingly-lit room making paper cranes for over 70 hours.

[Androzani84]

Ah the old “this person who speaks perfect Japanese and broken English is totally a foreigner” episode. Never change, Toei.

Also, Makise is here. Even Tomoko’s reaction is basically “for some reason”.

I’ll have more to say on this storyline after the next episode.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Even Tomoko?s reaction is basically ?for some reason?.

This honestly should've just been a Gen/Yuuki/Kengo/Erin story, with some sort of B-plot for the rest of the Club to work on. Ryuusei's only there to get bounced (it's funny, but he doesn't add anything to the plot; Meteor can always just drop in out of the sky!) and Tomoko is just an extra set of hands. Story would be tighter if they weren't hanging around!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 35 - ?MONSTER LIVE ON-AIR?

Which is another way of saying that I still love this JK story. The GeneGod story? it might be my favorite one on the show? Which is nuts, considering that a) the show has largely forgotten that JK?s existed for the last dozen stories, and b) he?s still probably my least-favorite KRC member. But I like how this story feels like it?s in direct conversation with JK?s original two-parter, in the ways it wants to talk about JK?s ability to value friendships beyond the transactional. It?s a story that allows JK?s fears from his past to color his hopes for the future, and asks him to weigh different friendships against each other to determine what those friendships are worth to him.

My main nitpick with this story is how this Gene guy is introduced out of nowhere and virtually everybody in KRC is a fan of him. It doesn't have the same effect as Wakana's Healing Princess, which Shoutarou and Phillip were regularly shown listening to. However, I do appreciate the effort to do something with JK to solidify his motivations, as he's the member with the least focus. I think it's a better story than his introduction anyway. The guy most likely to betray his friends has betrayed his friends, but only due to intense peer pressure from another friend and it's interesting to see how that development can be resolved. JK feels like whether it's KRC, God or himself, he'll be betraying somebody no matter what, which leads to him accidentally betraying everybody.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 36 - ?OUR LAST PERFORMANCE TOGETHER?

But the smaller Zodiart stuff still works just fine, like the battle between Meteor and Leo. I love any fight where the Rider wins through strategy over power, so I really liked Meteor attacking Leo?s literal Achilles Heel, forcing Leo to abandon a fight that Meteor definitely couldn?t?ve won. It?s also a great way to see some of those old Horoscope suits again, even if the usage here felt a little superfluous. (Leo did not seem to have much of a problem kicking Meteor?s ass in his normal form!)

I like how Meteor's role in this arc is basically just to prove Tachibana wrong and show he can keep up with Leo in a fight, a more recreational problem Ryusei gets to obsess over now that the big deal Aries stuff is behind him. He's a martial artist with a lot of pride, so you can't tell him he can't win and not expect him to try until he can't stand anymore. Meteor sticking to his base form and enduring through targeted attacks was great to watch. He didn't exactly win, since Leo mostly decided continuing the fight would be more trouble than it was worth, but forcing him to retreat was still an impressive win for Meteor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I actually also relate on how friendships can be temporary and that it's only a fraction of someone's life. It's not only high school too, but this still applies to places like work, and there can be also places where the meeting is even briefer, like I guess, the place where Ryusei and Jiro went to (martial arts training), or likely public places like forum, where people may join for some weeks then disappear forever. This can make me less enticed to form friendships, though this can be just my experience because it seems that others stay in touch later after graduating, but for me, it's always me initiating before with nobody doing it after I moved places, which I still wondered how those formed the friendships to not be one-sided (never having social skills or properly learning it).

Yeah, making friends IRL can be difficult and keeping them even more. Friendship thrives on having a common hobby, but something like Tokusatsu is so niche. When people want to talk about "normal" stuff like most sports, world news or weather, I lose interest and can only feign so much. When the server switch happened on my previous forum, I also lost contact with a bunch of interesting people, so that sucks. I'm glad TN welcomed me here though, at a bad time for me. Gentarou is surely enviable, for his ability to navigate human relationships with such skill and hold on to them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Anyway, time for my own quiz. The answers for last time were b (which no-one got, despite my mentioning it earlier in this very thread), c, a. This quiz too a little more effort on my part, so it should be slightly harder.

Which of these Jin Dogma monsters was the winner of a kids design contest?
A) Red Danger
B) Keyman Joe
C) ShoukaKong

What historical Japanese figures shares his name with a me of Kazuya?s martial arts mentors?
A) Musashi
B) Benkei
C) Goemon

Unlike most other Showa Riders, the series constantly reminds us that Kazuya is a cybernetically modified human. How?
A) He performs regular maintenance on his electric mechanisms.
B) He excretes oil
C) Metallic sound effects play during his fights.