I'm sort of okay with this? Beyond just the basic power creep of Zodiarts being the new Dustards once you've got Cosmic States and Meteor Storm, there's also... like, I'm not sure how many more original takes there were on high school drug addiction metaphors? 29/30 were as close to an archetypal Fourze as you can get, and it just did not feel like there were a ton of moves on it for me. At least with the Horoscopes, there's more intention behind it, and a sense that Club is being proactive in eliminating the scourge at its source, rather than reactively waiting for someone to get high on cosmic collectibles.

I don’t really have issues with Cosmic States or the Barizun Sword, there are worse looking visual upgrades and weaker conceptually weapons.

Conversely, I’m not keen on how after all the build up regarding Meteor and Aries, the latter gets taken out by Fourze, leaving Cancer as the latter’s most personal foe. It’s like if W had Phillip and Shoutaro finish off Isaka, while Terui took out some comparative nobody.

I don't know? While Meteor's been hunting Aries for his whole run, it's not like Aries did anything to Jirou; he's a means to an end. Standing up to Aries as Ryuusei -- where he has no powers -- in order to rescue the KRC is arguably more important than defeating him, since it's all about Ryuusei the KRC member, rather than Meteor the Kamen Rider.

(Also, it'd mean Tachibana turning back on the Meteor System, and that would feel pretty fast! Not much of a punishment!)

Sad but true. Could've had an Interpol x CODE crossover or something. Of course, I'm glad Yoshizawa has such a successful acting career, he totally deserves it (Fukushi Souta as well), but man, it hurts when you don't get to see your favorite characters return.

Sold!

Even for the first two parts, Utsugi is better. She complains about her problem loudly and openly and like you said, her kicks are for intimidation only, never causing harm.

Except Gentarou sees friendship as personal gain as much as gain for those he befriends, it makes him happy, so what others may see as his sacrifices are more like investments to him. Even when he gets murdered, he comes back to life and befriends the guy who murdered him.

If only Ohsugi had come with them to Subaruboshi, so he could keep everybody safe from Ryusei, including Ryusei himself.

Exactly. This is Ryusei's most prominent flaw brought to its most tragic conclusion. Even though the best case scenario is right in front of Ryusei, it requires him to put his faith in Tachibana and KRC for something that has no guarantee, when he already knows for sure that Aries can wake up Jirou right now. Aries, to his one and only credit, followed the script, while Ryusei brought sufferring to himself and his friends the moment he strayed from it.

Strong enough for a Rage Art anyway.

Fortunately, Yamada is a transfer student at Subaruboshi, so Gentarou has no self-determined obligation to befriend him. Which means that Gentarou can sleep on this one, haha.

It's a fitting conclusion to Ryusei's arc for sure. He has lied consciously to many people, but the biggest lie he told himself that he didn't care about his new friends, since he believed that truth was inconvenient to his mission. I love the part where Ryusei comes back to save the KRC and tells them he's not doing it for them or even Gentarou, but to do right by himself instead of letting the mission dictate how he should live. I think that line really shows what Kamen Rider Meteor is all about, as someone who wants to protect what's important to him.

While I'm not going to say that Cosmic States is one of my favorites or anything, I like it for what it is. I'll defend it the same way I defend Decade Complete (OG, not 21). Not as good as the base form, but good enough on its own merits. Also, I love that space banana, the Barizun Sword! These days, we're lucky to even get a Final Form weapon.

That analogy doesn't work, since Isaka was the cause of Terui's problem whereas Aries is the answer to Ryusei's problem. Sure, Yamada was oppressing Ryusei's old school buddies, so there's motive for beef (uh, mutton?), but Ryusei seeing the error of his ways and trusting Gentarou to take care of Aries instead of doing it himself seems to me like character development. Their friendship was the last ingredient for Cosmic States.

I love the use of Ohsugi in this story: begging the Principal to be allowed to send three students to Subaruboshi, and doing it so pathetically that the Horoscopes who definitely should be wary about exposing Yamada's plans to random students when the Chairman is already barely stifling police investigations are like Jesus Fine Yes They Can Go.

Die's distaste for the design of Cosmic States is practically one of the running gags of these threads, so now that we're here to specifically talk about Fourze, I gotta say, I really love Cosmic States. In fact, judging by the way he seems to think the suit itself is under-designed, based on the comparisons to cheap Halloween costumes and frozen treats, I even get to frame this in Die's favorite way -- by actively agreeing with the basic concept and then drawing a completely different conclusion.

To me, a lot of the beauty of Cosmic States is that they didn't overthink the look. The simple approach works as a contrast against how complex Fourze's other form changes were, making it stand out in a different way from usual, but the details that are there still give it that impression of being the most powerful, without having to make his shoulderpads too huge or anything. I forget if anyone in this thread ever brought up the well known anecdote about how Fourze's eyes deliberately lack the common teardrop lines meant to symbolize the sorrow of being Kamen Rider, but what's a lot less well known is the part two to that story, which is how the yellow lines of Cosmic States deliberately invoke that imagery to suggest how Gentarou is now sort of carrying with him all the feelings of the many people he's gotten to know so far in his quest to make friends with everyone. That's a pretty good suit in my book!

More than anything though, I was honestly just really happy they made it such a pretty shade of blue? Like, that was a first for a final form, and I've mentioned before how Fourze was the first Rider I was able to actively follow from the trademark being filed. I had literally never had the experience of wondering what the ultimate powerup for a Rider was going to look like before (I think I knew about PuToTyra by the time I was caught up enough to care with OOO?), so it turning out to be a fresh main color that was way up my alley felt like another in the long list of reasons it just kinda seemed like this show was made for me.

As such, actually getting to these episodes was an even greater joy than usual at the time. You've got Sakamoto directing, you've got that great cliffhanger with the hero dying, you've got a plot that makes room to focus on the secondary Rider just as much as the main hero (because it's a show about friendship!), heck, you've even got a new insert theme with May'n signing again. It's pretty much everything you could ask for out of this whole genre of Rider episode; a lot of things in these two are things I immediately think of when I think Fourze.

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You are, as always, the Tendou to my Kagami.

Fun fact, Yoshizawa had his Fourze reunion a while back before AWAKE when he did the live-action BLEACH movie with Fukushi and Mano, where Fukushi was Ichigo and Mano was Orihime. :lolol

Gentaro has always been preferring for Ryusei to be honest, which even includes if it ended in his temporary death. Gentaro was already proud too when he died in ep. 32 before, he never had a grudge since the start. This is eventually used by Gentaro to have the KRC bury the hatchet with Ryusei, by getting Ryusei's full motivation clear. Gentaro's compassion is something common in most of the main Riders, but it seems that the other KRC members aren't quite on Gentaro's level in moral compass of them being baffled but accepting of Gentaro's gesture (following his example, thus they still have some way to go). Gentaro isn't a preachy type (though his debut was him screaming at Kengo for being inconsiderate to the girl's feelings), and just views the good in others like how Ryusei is the same as him, just that Ryusei happened to win (guess this answers my talk before, Gentaro does lose to trained martial artists like Utsugi before). Seems the non-preachy ones are the do-gooders that are more well-liked in KR fandom (if not, there'd be likely far more complaints for forgiving your murderer, despite it being their character), like him or Shoma, but it depends (may be risky) if the other people will recognize their wrongs without being directly stated about which is wrong they do, particularly if something wrong is normalized.

I don't know about Ryusei failing. The decision of Ryusei to choose to work with a sociopath seems stupid before, but Ryusei does get what he wanted here at the cost of the blood on his hands. It's surprising that Aries actually held into his bargain, and brought back Jiro's consciousness, unlike when two of the Takahashi's secondary Riders pulled this, or for non-secondary, when Micchy in Gaim (albeit he's already evil for a long time) made a deal with Ryoma to take care of Mai. I don't think that Jiro's body condition worsening is about something Aries did. Ryusei still got to do the first step of improving Jiro, in getting him to press the Astroswitch to cancel his transformation. I guess despite him not being screwed over unlike those examples above, the punishment was about if getting what you want (Jiro) is worth losing everything else, where he had his powers taken away, his other friend died, and being alienated from the rest of the other friends. But obviously, everything worked on his favor at the end with Tachibana letting him become Meteor as well as sharing his secret with the rest of the KRC.

Despite Ryusei going 180 in his actions, him warming up to the KRC is still seen in him not being proud over his decision to murder Fourze before, and him trying to prevent further damage to the KRC after killing Gentaro by holding off the Dustards untransformed, which would likely kill him before the revived Gentaro arrived. For some, fitting punishment is anything bad happening to someone who has done bad things, regardless of what kind of punishment, which happened to Ryusei in him being beaten up by Dustards. This depends on the story, but can be seen by them as a writer's way to make the character look sympathetic or win people over, and can have polarizing reactions. Seems to perhaps work on the KRC members who were rightfully pissed off for Gentaro's murder, but tries to get Ryusei to stop after seeing him beaten up to buy them time.

I guess I've seen several discourse about final form's looks and that if they're not worthy of being the final form due to their looks alone being worse, thus Fourze Cosmic States getting this view here is quite normal. None of Fourze's looks are my favorite (I think Magnet States is the worst-looking one for me), but I like Cosmic States' look compared to a good number of Fourze's other forms, I like the shade of blue used for Cosmic States. For your talk about Cosmic States' head, Fourze's base form also got joked about his head, where, though I know it's meant to be rocket-shaped, it makes him look like Pocong (a type of ghost in my country).

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...249&height=438

But aside from that, I feel what's more important to make about the final form is its performance in battle, as final is about being stronger. Cosmic States is one of my favorite final form in the power it possesses, where as one of the final form with combination of all powers, Cosmic States has the most broad combination with the Switches being able to be combined, two at a time. Freezing rockets, giant flaming sword, launching electric sword, etc. Like, I wonder what something like Aero + Stamper or Stealth + Freeze would do. Unfortunately, like typical KR fights, the powers would get underutilized in later fights, likely due to budget. If true, then the budget impacts the final form this time, rather than one of the combos like OOO's GataKiriBa. For the flashy powers, Cosmic States' finisher is also quite bland of just a simple sword wave (teleporting people to space is a step up from what KRC has though)
..
Ryusei should serve his punishment by having the power needed to fight Aries taken away. Ryusei's beef is with the people around him like Tachibana and the KRC, without Aries playing a part on it, Ryusei chose to do this himself.

True. Though I feel people lump everyone together of being tempted by personal comfort, greed, and personal gain, and if they choose to serve others rather than chasing their dreams or self-serving interests (or to them, I guess what everyone 'should' want including them like fame, money, status, etc.), it's seen by them as a sacrifice to resist basic human temptation, despite them being visibly happy to serve others including sacrificing.

His failure was in losing himself to his mission, yeah. He technically succeeded, but that success was immediately and tragically revealed to be hollow: Jirou's disappointment in his friend, Gentarou's death, losing Tachibana's support, leaving the KRC to be tortured and killed by Yamada... this is not what victory traditionally looks like for people who think they're acting with nobility and caring!

KAMEN RIDER CLUB MEETING – QUIZ: KAMEN RIDER URBAN LEGENDS!! EPISODE 08

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First, nothing in this world will ever be loved as much as Miu loved that Salamander Kaijin; adorable, the glee in her eyes. Second, I matched Miu’s joy with watching Tomoko (and her partner, I don’t know who, some dead-weight) finally win a quiz and get to celebrate with her toy; addictive, that little triumphant smirk.

Finally, man, Ryuusei clearly did not like doing this! I understand that it's got to be hard coming on with Quiz 8 when everyone’s already used to rhythms of these bits of ancillary media, much like it’s tough to be the new cast member months into an established ensemble, but he was not good here. The “Thinking Time” segments were just dead air, as were all of the times the cast watched clips of Skyrider. He didn’t really goof around or try to entertain, which (judging from the rest of his career into the future) speaks to him being a more dedicated actor that doesn’t want to do much of the goofy side-project stuff, or at least not being too much of a natural when asked/ordered to participate.

I say that, and I think it's a defensible theory off of this installment, but I remember him being really good at hosting the stunt team talk show from the summer’s Net Movies? Maybe this one was rough because they filmed it too early after him getting hired, or maybe he just needed a bad one under his belt in order to do better next time, but this one was kind of a rough watch. Not my favorite quiz, despite being such a good one for Miu and Tomoko!

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I like the callback with the Chameleon Man. Not sure it tops Shun’s mock offence at Stronger’s first foe being a kangaroo.

Anyway, quiz time. As pointed out, I played into the electric theme by making Stronger’s answer key AAA. Answers should be more random again starting here.

1. Skyrider has a unique attack known as the Rider Break where he crashes the Sky Turbo into a target. But what was the IRL inspiration?
A. Kids questioning why Kamen Rider didn’t use his bike more in battle.
B. The actor didn’t have a motorcycle license and crashed the bike.
C. Ishinomori and the director thought it would be cool.

2. In the show’s Christmas episode, the villainous plot involves disabling Hiroshi’s ability to transform. How do they achieve this?
A. They threaten the lives of hostages.
B. They use an EMP to disable his belt.
C. They spray black gunk into his rotor to stop it from working.

3. In the back half of the show, Hiroshi received occasional “help” from a mascot character in a cheap costume. But what was his name?
A. Gan Gan G
B. Handle Man
C. Musou Knight.

Thanks for the quiz!

The answer to these and all other Skyrider questions is "Showa Ohsugi":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yctCeRE5dCs

KAMEN RIDER X SUPER SENTAI: SUPER HERO TAISEN

originally posted on December 16th, 2021, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)”

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An exciting movie, with terrific action and a million characters… that I utterly despise if I think about what it’s saying for more than a minute.

Well, maybe not “utterly despise”. That’s overly harsh. I do genuinely hate what this movie ends up saying at its conclusion, though. After an entire film of Tsukasa and Marvelous putting lives in jeopardy and humiliating their friends, we get a Tsukasa speech that, hand to god, is just him going A Real Hero Knows The Ends Justify The Means. Like, look at this garbage:

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I literally had to get up and walk away after that triumphantly-scored (!!!) moment. Yonemura had the goddamn anniversary-level balls to have a superhero tell a villain that any action is justified if the end result is a defeated villain. OH MAN! No! No no no no no! I hate that lesson so much that I will always resent this movie for having it as a moral.

The path to get to that moral is equally insulting. Decade and Gokai Red’s plan to gaslight both friends and enemies alike is riddled with logical problems. Like, the gimmick is that both Tsukasa and Marvelous are hiding other heroes in a pocket dimension, so the villains will think they’re dead. Tsukasa and Marvelous do this personally, with a purple-colored attack. And then they rain fire down on their friends. And then they send other villains after the heroes that only they can protect. What if General Shadow just murders, like, a Magiranger? Or if DaiZangyack’s ship obliterated Fourze? The entire plan falls apart if anyone other than Decade or Gokai Red attack the heroes… and step one of the plan is to take over armies of villains and send them against the heroes.

(Also, best part is Rider Hunter Silva going No Riders Detected as the villains make their move... while Gokai Green is about twelve feet away. Is... is that all that was necessary to hide the various heroes?! Keeping them behind rubble? In a robot's blindspot? Amazing. So dumb!)

It’s a shockingly cruel plan, even if I can sort of see Tsukasa trying it. (I don’t know Marvelous, so maybe it’s similarly believable that he’d shit all over his friends and team-up with the very villains he spent a season eliminating?) Tsukasa deciding all on his own to enact a plan with a hero he just met that might piss off all of his friends… it sort of tracks? It’s reckless, and that’s very much Tsukasa’s M.O. when it comes to plans. It’s dangerous and insulting, and then the end result is all of the Sentais and all of the Riders being in one place to stop the villains from completing a scheme they only attempted because they thought Marvelous and Tsukasa got rid of the other heroes. It’s like dousing your best friend’s home in gasoline, and then leaving a book of matches on their front doorstep, all so you can catch any would-be arsonists. Worse, it’s like trying to catch a known arsonist in the act. Like, why don’t the Riders and Sentai just, like, fight the villains from the start? Why all the subterfuge, when the only things that were gained were a) terrorized friends, and b) an army that didn’t need to be tricked into showing up? It’s a long way to go for an ending that’s just All Of The Heroes Fight At The Quarry, a thing they do more-or-less every season anyway.

The most frustrating part of the story to me is that Diend actually calls Tsukasa out on it, and he’s right, and then the movie throws it all away.

Again, can’t speak to the Sentai part, but it’s way more interesting to watch this movie after watching Decade. The real throughline of the movie (for me, at least) is how Kaitou and Tsukasa navigate their toxic relationship. There’s plenty of stuff about putting aside differences or reaching out to people or how The Greatest Treasure Is Friendship (gross), but I love how this movie really drills into how much Kaitou and Tsukasa need each other. Even in the midst of trying to make everyone in the universe think he’s a bad guy, Tsukasa sort of breaks character to try and recruit Kaitou. The real climax of the film for me isn’t the bullshit We Fooled You/We Fooled You Into Thinking You Fooled Us stuff that Marvelous and Tsukasa smirk at the villains with. It’s when Kaitou is furious that Tsukasa would consider their friendship/”friendship” collateral damage; acceptable losses.

He’s 100% right, Kaitou. It was a lazy plan by our “heroes”, and it presumes that they can be forgiven as long as no one dies. It’s nearly sociopathic in its disregard for people’s feelings. Tsukasa could’ve easily told Kaitou what was going on, just like Marvelous could’ve told the Gokaigers. All of this villainous subterfuge is just cruelty dressed up in nobility, and it’s disgusting. Kaitou’s dead right to tell Tsukasa that he was worse than a supervillain; he was an asshole.

But then Kaitou tilts into Psycho Ex territory, and the movie loses its thread.

I mean, I sort of like how Kaitou’s reaction to Tsukasa valuing all of these Riders and Sentais over what he had with Kaitou is Okay Fine Die With Them Then. Kaitou doesn’t really care about Riders or Sentais in the aggregate. He might care about Gokai Blue as a person, but he doesn’t particularly value other superheroes for any innate reasons. The idea that Tsukasa would destroy their relationship for the sake of strangers would naturally (for a toxic version of “naturally”) make Kaitou want to put those strangers in some sort of jeopardy. I don’t know that Kaitou forming a giant robot and trying to murder decades worth of superheroes works for me, though. It’s like Tsukasa’s plan: it’s too much, too fatal. It treats the safety of everyone else as obligatory, ensured. Like, this is just Kaitou throwing a tantrum at being ignored, don’t worry about it, let him get it out of his system. It’s less fun if the movie can’t treat it seriously?

But, I don’t know, the rest of the movie is pretty fun. The plot is really nothing. It’s just a ragtag group of survivors (two Gokaigers, Diend, and Hina from OOO) running around and watching cool Sentai and Rider fights. That’s it. They don’t really have a plan to stop their ex-friends from slaughtering other superheroes. It’s just Marvelous and Tsukasa’s weird scheme, front to back, which works out basically 100% correctly. (Even the Kaitou stuff just puts them back where they started.)

Still, y’know, a million superheroes! A fun cameo from the Den-O Imagin! Eiji’s in this about as much as Gentaro is! Great fights! (Best one for me was the early Gokai Red/Decade fight, where they kept using similar-themed suits, like Blade versus Spade Ace. I love when the match-ups get clever like that!) A massive battle at Kamen Rider Quarry! A finale that depends on continuity from the Fourze HBV! The story in this one is alternately illogical and offensive, but the fan-service and action are so good that I find myself working to forget the story.

Weird, weird movie. Incredibly successful as a celebration of tokusatsu; practically criminal in its stupidity and abhorrent morality.

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—

THE REAL "SUPER HERO WAR" WAS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY

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It’s really funny to rewatch this movie now, after having just concluded Episodes 31/32 of Kamen Rider Fourze, to see how this movie accidentally rhymes with that story. Where the Fourze episodes concluded an arc for Meteor all about how he lied and betrayed in the name of doing what he thought was right and trying to protect the people he cared about, but in doing so abandoned his principles and endangered others to the point where he was indistinguishable from the villains, this movie goes That, But Also No One Learns Anything. A Yonemura specialty, to take a classic toku plot and render it dramatically incomprehensible but aesthetically maximal.

And while we’re on the topic of things about this movie that popped more after rewatching shows, I really liked the Hina/Kaitou stuff here? I don’t know if this connected for me before, but she’s saddled with basically Blue Ankh for this movie, and that’s such a fun idea? (Yonemura has them! In small doses!) Kaitou is yet another self-involved pretty boy that prioritizes his own fulfillment over basically anything else, even as he’s emotionally connected to a Rider and therefore capable of doing the right thing under highly specific circumstances, rendering him maybe salvageable to someone like Hina – I Can Fix Him, but with a Henshin sequence.

(Speaking of Kaitou, there’s one extra thing I noticed this time that made me laugh. During the climax at Kamen Rider Quarry, Kuuga shows up, but it’s Shiny Kuuga, which means canonically it’s Onodera… who then gets “murdered” by Marvelous, to zero reaction from Kaitou. At first I’m like, that’s a plothole, Kaitou adventured with that guy for months, he’d be motivated to do something if he got executed, but then I was like, No, Kaitou completely wouldn’t care if Onodera got killed by a Sentai, the film is right to have him not react.)

Other than those couple of newly-relevant reads, this was the same ol’ Super Hero Taisen, one that’s both the definitive team-up film for its insane roster and comprehensive history, and one I’m happy to maybe never watch again because it's incredibly dumb and morally bankrupt. There’s real cleverness to the various match-ups and fights, and little moments for an absurdly high number of characters and forms – I always forget that the Den-O cast gets such a big look in, along with every OOO combo suit for some reason? But the Fourze and Go-Busters cast disappear for, like, 80% of the film, and have absolutely no emotional or narrative buy-in for the entire plot; the Horoscopes and Vagras never show up, even for a single scene. It’s a Gokaiger/Decade movie with special guest stars The Current TV Show Guys, despite the marketing’s reliance on recency bias.

And it’s an incredibly self-satisfied and callous film? For all of the Power Of Friendship talking (someone did watch Fourze!) and soundtracking, this is a movie where Gokai Blue gets inadvertently psychologically tortured by Marvelous for 75 minutes, before completely forgiving Marvelous when it turns out that he wasn’t betrayed, he was only lied to non-stop. The main theme of the film is that The Ends Justifies Means, up to and including deceiving those closest to you in the name of more expedient justice. Again, sort of the exact opposite lesson from the then-airing Fourze! YONEMURA!!!

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I will never rewatch this movie because I cannot fathom having nothing better to do with an hour of my life. I will say, as I have before, that my favorite part is how one of the villains exclaims that all Sentai members have been killed, despite the fact that Gokai Green is just hiding behind a medium-sized rock. I've always read this as Yonemura being so out of touch with Gokaiger that he just assumed Doc was their funny sidekick and not actually a member of the team. Speaking as a big Gokaiger fan, that's a fair read.

"All Sentai have been killed!"

cut to Gokai Green

"...all useful Sentai have been killed!"

The tie-in net movies are literally the only good thing that came out of this film. I am honestly glad that I never bothered rewatching it when I was going through my own first viewing of Kamen Rider Fourze at the time nor in my own rewatch of Go-Busters just last year. I seriously hated how it completely derailed Marvelous as a character and yes, I still do.

At least his hair didn't look as ridiculous as Tsukasa's!

Rude but accurate.

So fun fact, the big fight at the end was sent in to Guinness because they managed to gather 486 suit actors just for filming it. I’ve no idea if they won it or not.

I’ve also got to love that with the budget to recreate one old suit for both franchises, the Sentai suit they went with was Bio Hunter Silva, while for Rider they went with KomaThunder. Freakin’ KomaThunder.

KomaThunder was the only Rider kaijin that had watched Gokaiger, so he was the only one able to identify Joe and Don at the scrapyard! They needed to revive him for this plan to work!

If not, then I?m really curious to know what did.

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 33 - “CHAOS IN OLD KYOTO”

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If I had a 100-yen coin for every time a high school Kamen Rider show took a two-episode field trip to Kyoto where a goofy romantic subplot on the Edo set competed with a storyline where the cosmology of the main plot found a new level, I’d have two 100-yen coins, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

(I think it’s mildly funny that the Taisen movie skipped over the seemingly Heisei-mandated movie trip back in time to Edo – going to Showa instead – so we didn’t have to get the slightly contrived costuming and soundtrack for the old samurai stuff, but it somehow landed in the TV show instead, like Kouhei demanded that Fourze interact with these tropes, no matter what.)

For an episode concerned with Cosmic Energy, and the various Holes it's generated from, I was also concerned about energy – specifically, how weird the narrative energy was in this one?

It’s a Wacky episode, with a number of characters straining the bounds of my patience with their heightened and abrasive character choices. There’s Yukina, right up front, as the oppressive and borderline-psychotic would-be girlfriend of an oblivious and uninterested Gentarou. (I say “borderline” because she really only threatens a puppet. But it’s still troubling!) Then there’s Yuuki, who is buffeted by Yukina’s mania into supporting her quest for love, or whatever possessive and alarming version of it Yukina’s capable of, via an unflattering costume. But mostly, there’s Ryuusei, who is… hmm.

This is our first episode with Ryuusei as Gentarou’s friend, and I didn’t care for it? He’s glued to Gentarou’s side in this one to a People Write Fic About This degree, and if I can see it as an attribute of Ryuusei’s that’s fairly well established – he became a Kamen Rider and murdered Gentarou in order to protect his only friend, so this is not a guy who just checks in once a month via text – it’s also kind of unwelcome and not super funny here. Like, Gentarou is a teen boy! He had his Teen Love Story back before Ryuusei showed up! You don’t need to bodyguard him from an overly amorous teen girl! Especially just deciding on your own that he needs protection without Gentarou objecting to Yukina's overtures! You’re being too weird too fast, Ryuusei!

It’s an okay idea, Ryuusei being newly protective of Gentarou while Gentarou withstands Yukina’s attention in order not to ruin her school trip, but the energy in it’s all wrong: too heightened, too loud, too fast, too aggressive. The whole hidden identity on a class trip thing is fun, and Gentarou fending off a girl who’s a pest is fun, but it’s just too pushy here, like Yukina herself. It’s cartoonish, and while this show normally exists around that level, this one takes it too far over the line, from TV show to HBV. I love HBVs, but you can’t do ‘em as part of the weekly storyline!

And this is very much a Weekly Storyline episode, despite the absence of half of the KRC from the Kyoto trip, or Ohsugi getting ditched in a perfectly sad scene of his standard humiliation. We’ve got Leo making a real, actual appearance; we’ve got Kengo meeting an old scientist buddy of his dad’s; we’ve got the Horoscopes being up to something in Kyoto; and we’ve even got the groaningly unwelcome TV series return of Foundation X, but at least they get beat up real bad. It’s a stuffed episode! And not just for Hayabusa’s prominence!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze33b.png

That Hayabusa plushie is one of the best characters in this whole show

I love that the crew is constantly changing the eyes to convey the emotion of the scene or action. I think I find Hayabusa more relatable and expressive than JK?

It's both adorable and the sign that Yuuki has lost all of her remaining grasp on reality.

Yeah, I watched that movie, even though I know little about the anime it was based on. It was pretty cool. I remember it even got referenced in one of Zi-O's supplementary episodes. Anyway, I watched AWAKE recently and thought it was good, so thanks for that rec.

1. Skyrider has a unique attack known as the Rider Break where he crashes the Sky Turbo into a target. But what was the IRL inspiration?
A. Kids questioning why Kamen Rider didn?t use his bike more in battle.
B. The actor didn?t have a motorcycle license and crashed the bike.
C. Ishinomori and the director thought it would be cool.

2. In the show?s Christmas episode, the villainous plot involves disabling Hiroshi?s ability to transform. How do they achieve this?
A. They threaten the lives of hostages.
B. They use an EMP to disable his belt.
C. They spray black gunk into his rotor to stop it from working.

3. In the back half of the show, Hiroshi received occasional ?help? from a mascot character in a cheap costume. But what was his name?
A. Gan Gan G
B. Handle Man
C. Musou Knight.

I haven't watched Super One yet, so I'll have to return to guessing for the next one.

Both times also involved a space-themed martial artist Secondary Rider cosplaying as a Shinsengumi and aired on the 29th day of the month.

Also, Meteor constantly says "WA-GOTCHA!" when he fights, which I forgot about before. It all connects!