With power, it's easier to create impact on others not only about fighting monsters, but also, to change Tomoko for the better by giving her what she wants the easy way by just simply taking her to the moon, the KRC. What edgy teenagers are thinking is also often like this, where they don't feel belong in the world and want to escape including participating in something problematic (like said madness and vengeance here). I wonder what'd people like Miu or Shun did if they meet Tomoko before they met Gentaro and joined KRC. Felt that they can potentially look down on her as someone who doesn't belong, unlike now, which can mean that there's rehabilitation stuff due to meeting Gentaro that happened to those, where now, Gentaro combined with others opened Tomoko's eyes.

It seems that Tomoko is the overthinking and analytical type that has attention to detail, which I can relate here as also a reculse, dunno if this is often the advantage of these kind of people. Fire Switch isn't only about manipulating fire, but it also is actually immune to fire, rather than something that is vulnerable to attacks like usual despite producing fire.

I don't know if this talk here is allowed, but, even Fumika Shimizu herself is also one...

I always forget about this bit, but I absolutely love all the stuff with the KRC trying to track down the Magphone. I'm not entirely sure how everyone being cold gibes with all the track athletes competing in shorts and tanktops at literally the exact same time, but I don't care because it's just a fantastic series of fun little comedic moments. Miu with a megaphone is maybe my favorite version of the character.

You know, I keep think this while I'm watching episodes but always forget to comment on it: what the hell is up with the Foodroids? I get that they were designed to inherit the Candroid price point from OOO but I do not get the concept here. What does fast food have to do with space? Where's the throughline here that ties all of the Fourze merch together?

...And right on cue, 19/20 is another pair by Ishida.

This is another one where I don't have too much to contribute about the story off the top of my head, so I'll give the merchandise a little love by mentioning that I'm pretty fond of Magnet States, but even more than that, I just kinda like the MagPhone itself a lot? The whole shtick of the Fourze Driver is putting all these flickable doohickeys of various shapes in it, so the idea of making this new form feel like a bit more of a big deal by having it not only be a two-piece magnet theme, but having it be two giant handles to work huge cannons is just such a perfectly natural escalation of the gimmick.

It isn't really any more significant than the other form changes so far within the show's story, but I do find it cute that from this point on, that huge bulky thing just *is* Gentarou's phone, for advertising purposes. What I absolutely adore however, is simply that from this point on, Gentarou always verbally announces when he's splitting the phone in half to put in the belt. Like he's so dumb that he'll forget if he doesn't remind himself out loud every time, which is so perfectly That Character I'm both surprised they didn't come up with something like this earlier, and not at all surprised they expanded on the idea a bit the next time the had the chance.

Oh yeah, this is where those first show up! I love those pictures! Bless whoever decided to just make those a regular part of the Rabbit Hutch set after this, because it'd be a shame it they were only for this episode.

...and you even had someone trying to make it easy for you. At this rate, Die, CODE will never trust you again! :p

High schoolers eat a lot of cheap fast food, and the show is also about high school. I actually happened to be skimming the Japanese Wikipedia page for Fourze just the other day and read something about how they considered having them be school supplies before deciding that wasn't a strong enough motif to sell toys of? But either way, the key is that their role is to be in the scenes that don't have Riders fighting, which is why directly connecting them to the space part of the show was probably not seen as that important.

It's also just... it's such a perfect Gentarou move, because it could play as ridiculously literal -- she wants to escape to the moon, so just take her there and maybe it'll wake her up -- but it's so sincere and empathetic, leading to a beautiful lesson about change, that I love it.

I've talked to folks that run marathons, and they much prefer to run in the cold, so I assume the Amanogawa athletes are the same way. Also, every kid runs hot, and I'm not sure they even know it's winter outside, unless you're three KRC members scavenging for a malfunctioning roleplay item.

And thanks for keeping things on topic by remembering to mention Miu!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/03...g?v=1771461272

The theme song also directly references fast food! People can take it up with Anna Tsuchiya if they think the Foodroids are outside the aesthetic of Fourze!

That does make sense, but I can also believe they were pretending to be cold as a way to really commit to their bit. That feels very on-brand for these weirdos.

With Fourze coming after OOO, Makise rather reminds me of Kitamura from OOO ep. 33-34 before who's also a creep that puts his so-called friend in abusive relationship that isolates them from the rest of their friends in a possessive manner, but it's done to the male main Rider (heated drama between men eh...) rather than the female lead. Makise isn't only matched in how Yuki's actual friend is also "more than human" as Fourze, but his tracking abilities he used to stalk Yuki are also replicated by Burger Meal. His motivation at the end doesn't seem to be about being a yandere for Yuki anymore, but just about being a hope crusher.

Spelled out by Sonoda too that Kengo has become more outgoing since meeting Gentaro. Now it's seen how Kengo met seemingly the only person he seems to consider a friend for now in Yuki for flashback. Kengo doesn't seem to get annoyed with Yuki yapping at him the first time about her space geekiness like about Kengo's dad she saw him unlike to others. For normal humans, they seem to only be able to travel to Rabbit Hutch by the gate on the locker, but at least now, Fourze can easily travel to space.

Maybe what's more important for the show is the acting, more than the writing or such. It feels that, though this'd be subjective, the more well-liked shows like Den-O, W, OOO, Fourze, all are seen as having good acting, while shows that are more lukewarm received like Wizard, Ghost, Saber, or Gotchard usually can have some characters people can't stand to watch, due to the acting. I can feel that those shows can have some similar aspects or cons as 2-parter type of show, but with differing reception, with Den-O being something that most fans acknowledge the flaws of like the plot or writing, but the acting makes up for all of it.

Good acting can frequently save bad writing, but (for me) good writing can rarely save bad acting. Your mileage may vary as to which shows have which, or which characters or actors are which, but it's hard to think of a time where a character's story worked for me when the actor wasn't able to make sense of things, or I wasn't able to connect with the performance.

KAMEN RIDER CLUB MEETING – QUIZ: KAMEN RIDER URBAN LEGENDS!! EPISODE 05

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/fourze/quiz05a.png

I felt a little bad for JK in this one, because the actor is clearly a fan of Showa stuff, and yet the audience he’s presenting to is just there for a professional obligation. Like, they’re all doing their jobs while having fun – no one seems annoyed, or grumpy, but they would definitely not being doing this if Toei wasn’t employing them to do it. But JK’s little presentation… it comes across like he genuinely thinks this is cool, and the other six kids have this look in their eyes like Dude Can We Move On Already. It’s hard to be a fan on these obligatory quiz shows, I guess!

It’s easy to be Ryuusei, though, because his stuff was clearly filmed well after these quizzes, and the quizzes were probably filmed well before Ryuusei had even been cast, so he's just doing one generic thing. (The tells are that Ryuusei never comments on the specific questions or answers, while Miu’s hair is way shorter in these quizzes than it is for the corresponding Ryuusei arc episodes.) It’s not a huge deal, or anything positive or negative, but I like how it reveals a little bit about how these pieces of bonus content are put together.

You might think that last paragraph was dull, but I assure you that JK would’ve thought it was fascinating!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/fourze/quiz05b.png

You can tell by this point, some of them know just what kind of show they’re doing and are able to correctly guess the answers accordingly.

And speaking of answers, the ones for the Riderman quiz were C, B and A respectively. Time for the X quiz.

Ryo Hayami, who played the lead role of Keisuke Jin, later married and had two children with his co-star Naoko Miyama. But who did she play in the series?
A) Ryoko and Kiriko Mizuki
B) Chiko
C) Medusa

Episode 27 is a commemorative special focused on the 5 Kamen Riders. But what milestone does it commemorate?
A) 200 episodes
B) 5 years
C) None. It’s just a special episode.

In the second half of the series, G.O.D switches to using monster based on real historical figures. But which of these is not an actual monster that resulted from this?
A) Toad Goemon
B) Bat Rasputin
C) Centipede Youkihi

Thanks for the quiz!