Yeah, neither can I.

She's not the worst, but I feel most other Fourze episodes would find a way to tie her more elegantly into the emotional structure of the plot. Only here, the villain plan is very "We need to do this for unspecified plot reasons", so there's not a great narrative pay-off to it all. The photo with her and Gentarou at the end is cute, and there's a couple of mildly funny moments, but could definitely work better. I can see a Fourze episode where it works, but this needed to either commit to that, or scrap it for progressing the lore arc.

Granted, part of that is the Horoscopes plan being incredibly dull, with no real reason to care. They're not threatening anyone imminently, there's no emotional stakes, they're just comitting petty vandalism!

One of my biggest issues with Fourze is that it takes forever for Gamou to reveal what his plan is and by the time he does it just feels like a complete ass pull.

Well, I should be noted that in Kuuga, in most episodes the human plot does not intersect with Grongi's actions at all. Personally, I liked that they got out of school, plus I can't imagine a Japanese school show without a trip to Kyoto. I wonder where schoolchildren originally living in Kyoto go? I agree that Leo is boring, but the show needs an enemy to counter Meteor on a martial arts level.

I'm in two minds of it. On the one hand, he's basically been a Showa-era villain the entire time, sitting on his egg chair and biding his time wth no clear plan beyond "Make more Zodiarts idk". On the other, after watching Zero-One, Saber and Geats in the last few years, having one overaching villain and not bouncing between a bunch of infighting villains is nice. I'll let you know when I'm inevitably disappointed with his evil plan.

That's cool and all, but I'm not watching Kuuga, and Fourze is usually better at making sure there's some coherence between the MOTW and the human story. What works in one show isn't going to work transplanted wholesale to another., especially without Kuuga's investigative aspects.

Kamen Rider Fourze Episodes 35 and 36 - "Monster Live on Air" & "Our Last Performance"

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...176c1f3fefd57&

I was originally going to open this with a fake Krusty the Clown quote about JK episodes being death, but this one was a lot better than expected. Not perfect, and JK willingly teaming up with a Zodiarts at this point in the series is a choice, but I think the emotions involved mostly justifies it. I remember what it felt like finishing school and moving to uni, and wondering if friendships would last, and how people drifted apart, and this episode is getting at that. Because JK isn't wrong - the KRC is important now, but will it last? Is it wrong to look forward to the future? It's similar to the Shun/Mio episodes previously. There's also something here about familial expectations that isn't super explored, and I like the detail/implication that JK doesn't use his full name because of that family issue. It's more than what I expected to get (JK uses it cause he thinks it's cool (It's not)). The basic music biopic structure works well enough, and a lot of that is hinged on JK having that pre-existing friendship with Capricorn. In his head, he's not selling out to the Zodiarts, he's just defaulting back to older friends. The fact he's even apologetic to Gentarou about leaving the KRC is more than the JK of 30 episodes ago would have ever done. It's still weasel behaviour, don't get me wrong, and not realising the Zodiart's power might be cursed is genius level behaviour, but he's 16.

Relevant to like three messages ago, there's some lore stuff here, as the show remembers to have an overarching plot, and Gamou's looking for the Core Swtch, whatever that is (I was online during 2012, I think I know but won't say). They seem to be building to a rivalry between Meteor and Leo, which is fine, Ryuusei needs something new to do after Jiro came back to life. I'm finding myself in a bind, because generally here, the MOTW stories are way better than any lore, but the longer they keep putting off developing any lore, the less satisfying it's going to end up being. So I wait and see.

And finally, it's incredibly funny that all it takes for the Cosmic Switch to give up is JK breaking up with Gentarou in the politest way possible.

Also I went on the Wiki to see when I should check out the HBV and got spoiled on a reveal I didn't know by the first line of an episode synopsis, what a useful well-put together website.

That's a Fandom Wikia for you.

Yes, this is a very funny thing, only possible on a show so heavily focused on the power of friendship.

I relate to this pain.