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.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...abutosig03.png

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!