Really good two parter, this. If I'd have made one change it's that you'd have the bit at the end where Fourze and Yuki are talking but you'd be able to see the girls hurl Makise off of the bridge in the background. It was distant and out of focus, let's go full Showa/Super Dave Osborne and just enjoy watching a fully dressed mannequin flop around in the air. It would be both really funny and entirely deserved on Makise's part.

There's probably something to be said about the episode that Kengo was both doomed by the actions of a pervert but also saved by the actions of a different pervert; I really don't want to try unpacking that, though.

Kengo saw Shun's weepy breakthrough and knew he needed to match that Beginning Actor energy.

No, I kid. I think Kengo's always run pretty hot, which makes him both a natural foil for Gentarou, and also clearly his future best friend. If he's histrionic and overbearing here, well, he's gonna die alone on the moon! It's okay this time, as opposed to him getting mad at people laughing and having fun and not being awful to each other!

I think this two-parter was probably the first time back in the day that kinda made me step back and realize all over again how much I love this show? Not that there had been a single week so far that I hadn't been having a blast (not that there ever would be, either), but like, I adore the whole structural thing of having Kengo be the guy who basically starts the show and then also having him be the last to accept the basic premise. Even though there a few episodes left before the now traditional "season finale" that capped off 2011, this very much felt like the appropriately climactic ending of the show's first act.

It was a really touching story with a lot of great details. The use of the KRC flag is obviously great, for one, but I'll also shout out Miu giving that hug to Yuuki here too. Even though I simply cannot condone Die knocking Tomoko down from the top of his ranking, for what it's worth, I was also frequently more impressed by the material Miu in particular gets than I remembered on a rewatch, and that little moment is one that's stuck with me since.

Yeah, it's sort of tough for me to describe without making it sound more contradictory than it is, but I'll give it another shot. Tomoko's makeup is definitely a part of how she expresses her true self, but it's precisely because of that I think there's an aspect to it where it's also her armor, in a way? It's something that makes her more comfortable confronting the world -- a small way she can sort of put things on her own terms -- and that's what makes her still feel exposed without it, even though she's still the same person either way.

To give Gentarou more credit than Switchblade and Die did, I also think that's part of the point of his little speech about the Moon and the Earth? Because obviously lots of things change on this planet all the time, but the planet is always still the Earth, regardless of the details.

In that light, it actually makes sense that Kengo is at his most irate in Episode 14, moon-exile notwithstanding, since he's spent three months watching his mission get more and more monopolized and hijacked by the Heisei Breakfast Club, with their decorations and toys and posters and flags and easy charm and exclusive handshakes and trips to get ramen and he is trying to stop an evil celestial force here and HIS DAD DIED ON THE MOON YOU GUYS. Kengo loves a good self-pitying and judgmental tantrum, and this is maybe his last shot to do one for a little bit, so he really makes a meal out of it.

We are all on the same side, Kengo!!! Take it easy!

(Miu so good in this one, though.)

(And Gentarou is a terrible student, admit it.)

KAMEN RIDER CLUB MEETING – QUIZ: KAMEN RIDER URBAN LEGENDS!! EPISODE 03

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/fourze/quiz03a.png

Miu runs a tight ship! She does not like sass from her contestants!

This was a solid episode, mostly for how everyone’s fallen into an entertaining pattern as a participant that kind of perfectly matches their character: Gentarou charges heedlessly into answers, but somehow it all works out; Yuuki puts way too much thought into things with hilariously idiosyncratic logic; Shun is a blowhard, and it frequently kneecaps him; Kengo is buffeted by random weirdos he’s partnered up with; JK is the most aware and informed, but he just chokes at the buzzer; Tomoko is a little spacey but gets some killer jokes in around the edges; Miu is the star, and the reason we’re all here.

This was a good one! I can’t believe JK was the only kid who legitimately knew anything about V3 and still somehow lost! Again! Every single week! This time to Gen! Who is a dummy!!!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/fourze/quiz03b.png

Some people just learn differently than others, man! I'll admit I can't picture Gentarou ever committing words like "Pangaea" to memory (too much カタカナ for him), but he probably at least knows that continents like to hang out together and be buddies sometimes and thinks that's manly and cool... or something!

Have to wonder if the childhood friend team winning was either the actors actually knowing the answers, or the producers letting them win, since here going to be broken up starting with the next one.

Also noticed a flute little bit with Miu reading the episode titles along side the Showa Narrator.

Anyway, the answers for my Nigou Quiz were C (Ryuki’s equipment voice is Tsuyoshi Koyama, while Den-O’s is unknown), B and A (with the Kolonel being the odd one out because he died to Nigou, while the others died to Ichigou). So now it’s time for the V3 quiz.

V3’s theme song refers to his father, his mother and his sister. But what is his sister’s name?

A) Haruka
B) Yukiko
C) Chiharu

V3’s first series arc lasts from episodes 1-13, and his final series arc lasts from episodes 41-52. But how long is his second arc?

A) 14 episodes.
B) 11 episodes
C) 27 episodes

In the reboot movie Kamen Rider the Next, Kazami Shiro was played by Kato Kazuki, previously Kamen Rider Drake. But what did the two Riders share before that movie?

A) A dragonfly motif
B) A career in makeup
C) An association with the number 3

I mean, sure, Ohsugi did inadvertently save Kengo, but him moving the locker was the thing that inadvertently endangered Kengo in the first place. Nevertheless, he's a saint compared to Makise.

Still 36 episodes, a bunch of movies and a Hyper Battle crossover with Tomoko's namesake left for him to change his mind once more.

Armor is a better way of looking at it for sure. And that armor is part of her identity which Gentarou assures her doesn't need to change for anybody, while also accepting her authentic self. I guess you could say, it's her Armour Zone.

Oh man, I only got the easy question right. I thought Ambassador Darkness might've been the guy from ZX, but nope, that was Ambassador Hell. I'm still 3 ahead of Die though and now we're up to shows I've seen, so give me your most obscure questions!

V3?s theme song refers to his father, his mother and his sister. But what is his sister?s name?

A) Haruka
B) Yukiko
C) Chiharu

V3?s first series arc lasts from episodes 1-13, and his final series arc lasts from episodes 41-52. But how long is his second arc?

A) 14 episodes.
B) 11 episodes
C) 27 episodes

In the reboot movie Kamen Rider the Next, Kazami Shiro was played by Kato Kazuki, previously Kamen Rider Drake. But what did the two Riders share before that movie?

A) A dragonfly motif
B) A career in makeup
C) An association with the number 3

V3?s theme song refers to his father, his mother and his sister. But what is his sister?s name?

A) Haruka
B) Yukiko
C) Chiharu
D) Pretty much irrelevant; she dead

V3?s first series arc lasts from episodes 1-13, and his final series arc lasts from episodes 41-52. But how long is his second arc?

A) 14 episodes.
B) 11 episodes
C) 27 episodes
D) Longer than the Archbishop Wing one.


In the reboot movie Kamen Rider the Next, Kazami Shiro was played by Kato Kazuki, previously Kamen Rider Drake. But what did the two Riders share before that movie?

A) A dragonfly motif
B) A career in makeup
C) An association with the number 3
D) I don't have anything clever here, but I wanted to point out that for about the first half of the series one Destron mook always has a slightly different mask due to the design changing after the first costume was made.

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 13 - “KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze13a.png

On the one hand, this episode is zero percent subtle about its metaphorical usage of “Astroswitches” in place of “drugs”. Miura is hardcore fiending for some sweet, sweet, cosmic collectible power, and it’s a wonder that Toei didn’t take the English language route inherent in its foreign high school aesthetics and just title this one “Switch Madness”. This is not one you’ve got to work hard to decode.

On the other hand, I’ve always loved that this story existed in Fourze, even if it’s hammy to a degree that Kengo would probably turn off if he saw it on TV. The idea of the Astroswitches being a targeted attack on teens naturally lends itself to a further exploration of how teens turn to drugs for all of the same reasons that celestial henchmen might find them malleable and villainously-motivated: pressure, anger, guilt, sorrow, jealousy, resentment, etc etc etc. Kids are at a vulnerable point in their development when they're teenagers, and they’re susceptible to making poor decisions that endanger themselves and others. Sometimes it’s narcotics, sometimes it’s cosmic collectibles.

And if Astroswitches are like an illicit substance preying upon kids, then eliminating their immediate hold isn’t going to cut it. Miura and the rest of the kids in the first few episodes may not have known the full extent of the deal they were making with Scorpio, but they willingly made the deal to endanger themselves for cosmic power; no one had this forced on them. The same motivations that Miura had in the past are still with him, and the allure of the Astroswitch is an easy way out of living with the diminished reality he finds himself in, and the attendant guilt and shame. His addiction isn’t about wreaking vengeance anymore – Shun apologizes here, and Miura basically acts like Shun’s being oblivious to the real situation – it’s about the addiction, full stop. You don’t fight that by defeating drug dealers or exploding drug supplies or putting on street plays about friendship (almost, though!) or by letting someone know that you’ll always protect them from their ability to get more drugs. You don’t fight it at all, really, which is the lesson that Gentarou’s learning throughout this episode. His friendship with Miura can’t fix what’s wrong in Miura, only Miura can do that. The friendship isn’t a solution, but it’s maybe a place where Miura can solve this problem for himself.

And who better to be introduced in a story about the addictive allure of power to help you feel less like a failure than ol’ wall-hiding puzzle-eating Tachibana from Kamen Rider Blade!

Yeah, we’re introduced to Principal Hayami this episode, a million miles away from the self-sabotaging failure pile that we all adored from Blade. Hayami’s smiling, charismatic, beloved, and unnervingly nefarious in a way that the episode is clearly asking you to think he’s Scorpio. Luckily for me, we find out at the end of this one that Happy Young Non-Threatening Teacher Sonoda is actually Scorpio, so I don’t have to pretend like I forgot that reveal. (I really didn’t want to have to be like Maybe The New Principal Is The Scorpion Zodiart, because we both know that ain’t right.) While Hayami duplicitously balances his bright and sunny exterior with notes of menace towards Gentarou in private, it’s really Sonoda who’s the main threat in this one, and I’ve never really liked that?

It’s for two reasons. The first is that the show took the surprise factor a little too much to heart, and even knowing Sonoda’s the bad guy on this rewatch, there’s maybe only one story where it’s even suspicious, or something to puzzle over. (The JK story, where she’s invited to the party.) Otherwise, she never really expresses any thoughts on the unfolding storylines, or does much to interact with any of the students. (The Witches stuff, maybe, for a couple lines of dialogue.) It’s not a bunch of clues leading you to this conclusion, and even in retrospect, there’s precious little in either the performance or the surrounding dialogue that makes the mystery affect the story. It’s just this episode where suddenly she’s in the action, or suspiciously not around when the action occurs. It’s like the production team pointed at her for the villain slot, when they just as easily could’ve pointed at Ohsugi and gotten the same result. (Arguably better! That would’ve been way more fun!)

The other problem with Sonoda being Scorpio is kind of a downstream consequence of her being so hidden and normie over the last 12 episodes: I don’t care if she’s bad? Her only real use was in observer cutaways with Ohsugi that I mostly rolled my eyes at, or increasingly troublesome interactions that I feel like Amanogawa High School HR should be addressing. (She’s so horny with Hayami! Inappropriate for the workplace!) I don’t feel like she’s shifted the balance of power in the narrative because she doesn’t feel like a loss for the KRC. She added nothing before, so her heel turn isn’t subtracting anything from the team’s hopes or dreams. To put it another way, I was not watching the end of this episode and saying SONODAWHYHAVEYOUBETRAYEDUS?!?!

But the drug metaphor stuff, that really worked. If I don’t have a lot positive to say about the reveal of the drug dealer, I guess that’s not the end of the world. I will get over it, unlike Miura and his jonesing for that pure, uncut stardust…

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze13b.png

So fun easily missed clue as to the big reveal: Sarina Sonoda is an anagram of “Sasori na no da”, which is a specific dialect of Japanese for “I am the scorpion”, or more fittingly, “I am Scorpio”.

But in more episode relevant talk, I do like the concept of this one.

This show does love using references and clues in the characters' names!

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 14 - “THE STINGER’S RELENTLESS ASSAULT”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze14a.png

Where the first part of this story was about the tragic aftereffects and larger metaphor of Miura’s tragic addiction to cosmic collectibles, this part is about the myriad forces at work making those cosmic collectibles available to the impressionable youth of Amanogawa High School, and the exact shape of the faces that Fourze will be responsible for punching.

The Miura stuff, we’ll get to it, but this episode is all in on the Horoscopes as our new opponents for the KRC going forward. (I think this is the first two-parter with no lower-level Zodiart?) We’ve got Scorpio’s bad-guy glow-up (I love that the Episode after Sonoda’s revealed as a villain, she’s wearing black leather pants to school. Hilarious!), the new Supernova CG end-stage form for the Horoscopes, Libra’s introduction, the Dustards that I forgot to mention last time, and more red-eyed Chairman than ever before. The episode still finds time for fun KRC interactions and the aforementioned Miura story, but there’s a lot of Plot business to get through, to varying degrees of success.

I’ve always liked the idea that the Horoscopes are teachers and administrators at the school? I like the heroes and villains all working within one system together, even if the heroes are unaware of it. (Which, I get that Miura never saw Sonoda turn into Scorpio at the end of the last episode, but he seriously didn’t hear her talking from three feet behind him? That Switch withdrawal was clearly hollowing him out!) It makes the story capable of talking about how heroism and villainy exist in a continuum, and how we become better for having something to overcome that’s intrinsic to our daily life. The Horoscopes are part of the world of our characters, and they need to figure out how to negate their influence without necessarily being able to eliminate them entirely.

Like with Miura here, whose temptation isn’t something he can defeat externally, it’s really only something he can defeat by examining the choices he’s made and making the decision to fight for a better version of himself. It’s the old thing about the hand needing to reach back to the one that’s reaching out, where all the effort of his friends only works if he’s willing to push himself back to wanting happiness. The episode doesn’t make nearly as much room for Miura as 13 did, but it also arguably doesn’t need to? We knew the scope of Miura’s depression, and we already saw that no amount of poorly-written street plays were going to make him change his mind. All we really needed was a scene of Scorpio making an offer, and Miura finally seeing that he wanted his friends more than he needed the rush of power, and it was worth turning his back on his need to fight for his want.

And he did it all as the kickoff to a huge fight at what I’ve always thought of as Toei Stonehenge, a site that I feel like we’re seeing for the first time in Heisei, but we’ll for sure come back to for Wizard and (maybe?) Build. It’s a perfect set for a fight between Fourze and a Horoscope, giving everything a foreboding celestial sheen. The fight itself… mixed bag? I liked that Fourze needed all of his super forms to get the job done, and I think the Dustards are a fun group of star ninjas (???) to beat up as mooks, but you KNOW that I don’t have a lot of love for CG final forms for villains, so, like, half of the Scorpio fights here didn’t click with me. Scorpio’s such a fun hand-to-hand combatant – all kicks and strikes – that giving that up for a CG monstrosity feels like a massive downgrade instead of a clever upgrade. At least there were a bunch of black-suited mooks for Fourze to wallop on!

I think this one worked pretty well, even if the previous part was more interesting emotionally. Miura’s story is split 75/25 over these two episodes, while the Horoscopes are split 25/75, and I’m always going to care more about poignantly metaphorical stories that use toku to explore the human condition than I am a plot-heavy installment that’s mostly about ramping up the danger level for the series while fleshing out the villain side of the cast. I like where it’s all going – Gentarou wants to have a girlfriend, which is something I’m sure isn’t a theatrical experience you can ask your parents to take you to go see right now – but I also liked where it was just fine.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze14b.png

Also, please understand how hard I had to fight myself not to make these two images the screengrabs for Episode 14:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...rze14fake1.png

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...rze14fake2.png

I still sort of regret it!!!

So in a more subtle manner than Sonoda, Hayami also has a meaningful name connected to his Horoscopes motif. His given name Kohei contains the kanji for “fairness”, “justice”, or “impartial”, matching with Libra being the balance between justice and evil.

One wonders how Gentaro reacted to seeing himself emerge from an exploded Zodiarts. I’d have given anything for a scene where he takes it entirely at face value, only for Kengo to point out the logical hole.

Of all the things in this show that are literally out of this world, nothing damages my suspension of disbelief more than the idea that a high school principal makes enough money to afford a Porsche.

Gentarou would definitely try to become friends with his doppelganger, but it'd all fall apart when they each tried to do the same part of the friendship handshake at the same time.

One of my favorite storytelling choices for this two-parter is that Miu opts of the basic, boring visit to Miura's home, but willingly signs up for the deranged and character-assassinating street play. She just loves the spotlight too much to say no! (Also, it's a plan that shits on Shun, which is her unstoppable addiction.)

It's such a great idea that I take it for granted! It's like, of course the villains in the Kamen Rider show are people in a position of authority misusing their power? But first of all, that actually isn't an absolute, and second, yeah, this particular spin on it has a lot of specific merits for the high school Rider.

The plot with Miura here is an especially memorable one. You can really see how much Fourze shares a higher-than-average amount of DNA with Double from the overall concept, but it's also a story where, again, if you're doing the high school Rider, it'd probably be a waste to not do something along these lines at some point. And they did do it! And it was really fun and interesting, like most things in this series!

Also, I barely said anything on the forum about my own rewatch while I was doing it, but I did make an extremely rare exception for a particular bit of direction in episode 14 that I thought was just killer. This'll be slightly redundant since Die used part of the sequence, but just the one photo can't possibly do it justice. So, for the benefit of everyone who reads these threads without actually going back through the episodes:

On the topic of direction, there were two things from this episode that I loved but didn't mention. (You'd think they were suit debuts or something!)

The first is from that Scorpio scene, and it's where Sonoda is moving just out of Gentarou's view around corners and down aisles, but she's moving backwards. It's creepy and atmospheric, and a nice escalation from the mundane but foreboding setup into the pure terror of the monster appearance.

The second thing, which is the exact opposite, is Fourze descending back to Earth after detonating Scorpio Supernova (also the name of the eighth-best Oasis cover band in Des Moines), landing on a hill made from the crashed Horoscope, shouting his success to the heavens, slipping and rolling down the hill, and rehashing his success like he didn't just look like a fool. Gentarou is full of dumb teen energy, and he does not know how to be embarrassed!

Fourze's episode titles consist of 4 kanji as a rule and Switch is an English word, so I don't think that would work.

That street play was humorous as hell though. It's great that now Kengo is officially part of KRC, he can be convinced to go along with these antics on the basis that it's supporting his mission. He committed to the role as seriously as he could, until he couldn't take anymore. :lol

You didn't even like that awesome Rider Double Rocket Drill Kick?! I thought it was fitting how the climactic space fight played like a bigger and better version of the one with Orion Zodiart, but this time instead of defeating Miura, Fourze got to defeat the one who hurt Miura.

I'm not sure which would be more cursed, whether Miura would be referring to Ohsugi or Sonoda.

I might've connected the stars to make that constellation, if I'd known that Sonoda had a given name.

A poorly-acted street play to convince a drug-addicted teen that his bullies regret their treatment of him and he should feel good about himself is easily the most memorable non-Tomoko thing from the entire Kamen Rider Fourze experience.

(And we'll be getting to the Tomoko thing later today!)

originally posted on December 12th, 2021, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)”

KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER FOURZE & OOO: MOVIE WAR MEGA MAX (DIRECTOR’S CUT)

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax1.png

Good set of films!

It’s not really one story, though. It’s like the Decade/W movie, where there’s an epilogue story doing one thing, and then another two-thirds of the runtime dedicated to a completely different story doing an entirely different thing. I liked both stories, though, so I’m not really too upset at how haphazardly they’re joined together.

The OOO story is a good one, and it’s one of my favorite epilogue stories. It reframes the way we’re given Ankh back -- just to lose him again -- as a larger message about protecting the present so you can experience a better future. The hope of Ankh’s return doesn’t disappear, even if (especially if!) Ankh himself does.

I’m not sure this story would work without Eiji’s character, though. You just buy his optimistic dedication to eventually see his friend again. It never comes across as delusional or foolhardy, just this very sweet sense that some day it’ll all work out. And in the meantime, he’ll make sure there’s a world for Ankh to return to.

The Riders that appear in this part of the movie, Aqua and Poseidon, are effective in different ways. (Also, ha ha, we’re back to the Phase 1 thing of No One Actually Says The Character’s Name, so that’s fun.) Aqua’s the sense that the future is something someone else will be responsible for, the fear that the weight of the past renders our actions irrelevant. Poseidon is the consequence of that abdication of responsibility; the cowardice of inaction. They create this nice morality play about how Ankh ain’t gonna just fall out of the sky for Eiji, despite this being a movie where Ankh literally falls out of the sky for Eiji.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax2.png

Plus, great action-y suit designs. Poseidon has a kind of vulgar aggression to him, letting his opponents know that he’s lowering himself to fight with them. (There’s this one move where he tosses his sword for an opponent to hold, beats them with both fists, then takes the sword back!) Aqua, meanwhile, is this slim Showa design, with a fluid fighting style that prioritizes parries and deflection.

And the action in this movie! Oh, man! It’s an insane amount of fighting that’s largely done by the non-stunt actors, which was pretty amazing. I usually don’t love when Kamen Rider projects give a bunch of action sequences over to non-suit performers, but this was the exception. The fight in Cous Coussier, where Ankh and Eiji hold off about a hundred Yummies (and Eiji does a kip up!) is on par with any of the other fights in the movie. The whole OOO section gives everyone some awesome action, and it keeps the non-suit stretches of this fairly long movie (two hours for the Director’s Cut, which is long for a tokusatsu thing) from ever feeling padded or unnecessary.

It’s a really solid take on Eiji’s eternal -slash- decade-long goal of reviving his friend, one that makes Maybe Tomorrow into a beacon of hope.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax3.png

And then there’s Fourze’s section, that’s just straight-up teen romance, and I dig it.

There’s not much linking tissue to the OOO story, thematically. The Fourze story is about first love, and seeing past someone’s exterior to love them for who they are, and it’s all done in a story where Gentaro falls in love with a non-sentient pile of girl-shaped space goo. While the OOO story is built around the past and the future, the Fourze story is very present tense, with a focus on the fleeting nature of teenage infatuation.

I kind of love how easily Fourze stories talk about teen issues, how sturdily they support its inherent melodrama. Everything’s very Big, you know? It’d be idiotic in a W story, or in Gaim story, but for Fourze this all feels perfect. Taking the time to tell this brief story of Gentaro falling in love with a girl from space, instead of tying up loose ends or seeding future ideas or whatever… yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want from a Fourze movie story.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax4.png

Nadeshiko isn’t much of a character, unfortunately. Suit’s great, and her fights are more fun than I remembered (I mostly recall the Butt Bump, which is not this movie’s proudest moment), but there’s basically no character there until maybe the end of the movie. She’s a non-sentient pile of space goo; this story could’ve worked almost exactly the same if she’d taken the shape of a puppy. It’s a story entirely about Gentaro’s semi-possessive feelings of affection, and the way he’s projecting those feelings onto Nadeshiko. It doesn’t feel reciprocal, until the very end of the movie. If this movie has a flaw, it’s that the concept of Gentaro’s Space Girlfriend doesn’t get more detail than those three words.

Well, there’s another flaw: the Foundation X villains in this one suck. While Poseidon is a bad-ass fighter that reflects back on Aqua’s guilt and fear, the Foundation X mad scientists are trying to rule space? By controlling the world’s energy? All… all of the energy, somehow? It’s all nonsense, exacerbated by the shrug of trying to create a Core Medal and Astro-Switch doomsday device. It’s only the proximity of the two series that provides context for the villain’s scheme, not anything that feels logical or clever. OOO has medals, Fourze has switches, so here’s a villain who makes a switches-and-medals Driver to take over the galaxy. Okay, sure, why not.

It’s a plot that, unlike OOO’s story, has to support a way bigger cast of characters, and its broadness actually ends up making for a really thrilling final third.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax5.png

I mean, last appearance of Philip and Shotaro together, you know? If this is the last onscreen appearance for these two actors to share, it’s a good one. This is their Legend Rider graduation, the moment where they can feel like they’ve set the stage for future heroes. We’ll see Shotaro again soon, but we won’t ever get to see Kamen Rider Double again. Bittersweet.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax6.png

And, in case the gigantic NO. 40 HANGAR in the background doesn’t give it away, this was the second 40th Anniversary Kamen Rider film. Look at all of them Showa guys! That’s going to make someone’s day, and that someone is not Kamen Rider Die. I think they’re used a little better than they were in Let’s Go Kamen Riders, if only for the stellar montage of Every Showa Finisher, but it’s still not a thing I care a ton about. (I think this is the first movie where they gave Nigou a black helmet, though? To make him more visually distinct from Ichigou?) They’re not here to tell a story with them, or about them. They’re here to make the movie feel massive. At that, they succeeded.

There’s a thing that this movie does in its final act that is probably my favorite thing any movie could ever do. When I saw it this time, it immediately activated that Hell Yes feeling the best toku movies can unlock. It’s when all three of the Phase 2 Riders are beating the holy hell out of mobs of monsters, and each Rider’s opening theme plays as they’re doing it: W-B-X while Double is cycling through Gaia Memories; Anything Goes while OOO is soaring the air as Tajador; Switch On while Fourze slots in Astro-Switches. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s a trick nearly every team-up movie would use in the future, because it’s the most potent nostalgia you can mine. It puts you right back in the days when you were watching those shows for the first time, right back when it meant the most to you. I don’t care when Showa suits are trotted out to show the history of the franchise, but I am all in on them playing those killer opening songs while dozens of monsters are cut down like the grass.

(Which, I mean, Phase 2 Heisei is 100% my sweet spot for opening songs. Your mileage may vary!)

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax7.png

All that, and we get the Early-Bird debut of Kamen Rider Meteor. After skipping it for the W/OOO movie, we’re back to that post-credits thing that Accel got, where we see the suit and the actor, with the promise that they’re on a collision course with our Primary Rider. Not much to talk about besides that. I like Meteor! I like what he brings to Fourze’s plot. Here, it’s a brief cameo.

Anyway, this movie was way more fun than I remembered, even if it’s stitched together in a way that doesn’t feel fully thematically coherent. The OOO parts sit sort of uneasily beside the Fourze parts, but both parts are really good. I am okay with a clumsy movie that still delivers pathos, action, and humor. This one did the job! Plus, it gave me one of my Top 5 Favorite Kamen Rider Moments:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/megamax8.png

—

originally posted on March 28th, 2025, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider OOO”

FRIDAY IN THE FUTURE

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ooo/megamax.png

Yeah, I think this one’s a good one. It’s an OOO section that operates at the highest degree of difficulty possible for a post-series project: You gotta bring Ankh back, because that’s the show, but you also gotta do it in a way that honors the bittersweet ending of that show. I think the decisions here were all the correct ones? Letting Ankh’s return and disappearance be a message of hope, to counter the seeming futility, is a very smart move. It’s a chapter in the larger story, not the end of it, so it’s okay to enjoy the moment without letting it be more than that. Unbelievably effective at getting back to the sweet rhythms of Eiji/Ankh/Hina, if only to entice us to pine for more.

It is still an incredibly long movie, though – god, I love Kamen Rider, but any Rider team-up movie over 90 minutes feels punishing at a certain point. There’s just not enough sense that you’re watching one story, you know? It’s like bingeing a miniseries. Summer movies can get away with it, a long runtime, because you’re in one story. This one’s completely not that, and I feel like each of the first two parts was probably right to trim out 15 minutes or so for the theatrical cut, even if it values pacing over coherency.

But! Still one of the all-time great winter movies for Phase 2, with Sakamoto making everything appropriately cinematic and super-sized. Spent longer than I would’ve wanted rewatching this, but it’s a good flick.

—

MY REPORT ON “KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER FOURZE & OOO: MOVIE WAR MEGA MAX (DIRECTOR’S CUT)” FOR THE KAMEN RIDER CLUB

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

It’s really funny to me that the only Fourze parts of this movie I talked about four years ago (which: four years ago!!!) were about Gentarou and Nadeshiko, because the only parts I really want to talk about this time are how every other member of the club supports and enhances this story.

Like, the first thing in the Fourze side of this movie is JK not showing up for a big club activity because he’d rather goof around than support the team’s mission, but the resolution to the battle between Fourze and the Mutamid is everyone in the club doing whatever they can to support Gentarou when he needs to process his emotions. The swing in this one, when it goes from vague Community Activities to Support Your Friends, it just activates the KRC for some very fun bits of business. The most exciting part of the movie for me this time was watching the entire KRC rally around Gentarou when he needed to take a breath and mourn Nadeshiko, because the KRC is about friendship, and how that saves the world. This is as much a story about how we help our friends navigate relationships as it is a story about navigating relationships, and it took rewatching the first few Fourzes to help me understand that.

Other things I didn’t notice the last couple times: so we’re just tossing in two new Horoscopes?! I know that technically both Virgo and Leo have been glimpsed before, but it’s sort of wild how the fight with Virgo happens in this movie. It’s great, but it seems kind of out of nowhere for this movie to drop in another new antagonist, instead of utilizing the recent Libra Horoscope instead. (Leo just stands around as a bodyguard, so it’s whatever.)

Beyond the reminder that Fourze is more than just Gentarou, I thought this one was still a blast to watch, if a little overly-long and kind of eventually not about much. There’s a kind of storytelling that happens in a crossover film where it becomes more about generic superheroic character beats than anything else, and this movie’s no different: Gentarou could’ve been teaming up with Kiva to defeat Neo-Fangires who needed the moon’s power to rule over the cosmos and you’d’ve had pretty much the same final third. (The Mutamids! There is nothing there!!!) It’s cute that Eiji and Gentarou have a minor amount of history, but it basically doesn’t matter. Once the Mega Max part happens, it’s all pyrotechnics and movie-exclusive Form changes, and that’s fine for what it is. (I just really love Rocket States? The double Rocket is such a fun visual, and the bright orange is so rare in this franchise.) What it isn’t, though, is a particularly compelling or deep story, but at least the first two thirds are. And we got the single greatest Kamen Rider Fourze moment in one of those early parts, which is worth yelling about!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/fourze/amazon.gif

I've talked plenty about how awesome this movie is before (as of this writing, I've still yet to see a Rider film I'd be quicker to suggest is just The Best Rider Movie period), but I guess something I can say about it specific to the experience of watching Fourze, as someone who was there at the time, was how excited I was for it to begin with?

Because obviously for an overseas fan, you're waiting way longer than just until it hits theaters. There's the whole half a year or so after that you've gotta endure, and for a movie that seemed this exciting, endure is definitely the right word. More OOO was obviously going to be exciting because it was more OOO, but just that whole premise of the Fourze section was brilliant? Again, it's one of those things where it's like you've basically *gotta* do something like this somewhere, because it just fits everything this show is about so well. It seemed like it was going to be even more fun than Fourze's usual, already higher than normal standard, and when I finally did get to see it, it lived up to the hype, for sure. It's never really gotten less exciting for me over the years, either. Always a fun one to go back to.

It's definitely my favorite of the Movie War format, for sure. (The less said about Super Movie Wars Genesis, the better.) If I feel like the third section of this one isn't much more than a climax right from the start -- I think that's a Stronger quote? -- it's mostly because the first two parts work so well. It's big and epic for both OOO and Fourze, while still being grounded and sweet. Hard balance to get right!

("The Best Rider Movie", though... that first Heisei Generations, maybe, for partly nostalgic reasons, but I also think it's sort of perfect in the storytelling and pacing? Trio of Deep Sin, for how mature and melancholy it is? REALxTIME, for being a full-on banger? Tough to say!)

When Heisei Generations came out, I really loved it and thought there was a strong chance it'd end up being another movie I'd keep coming back to over and over the same way as Mega Max. It just sorta didn't end up being that for me? Despite the bold claim I just made, I wouldn't necessarily fight anybody who tried to tell me Heisei Generations is a more narratively cohesive film, but despite all the things it has in its favor, it's never quite been in my heart the way this one is.

It might honestly be the Showa reverence that pushes Mega Max over the edge for me? When I say Mega Max is probably The Best Rider Movie, it sort of means something obnoxiously specific in my head that's worth explaining. It's not about it being my favorite (still Paradise Lost!), it's not about me believing it's better crafted by some list of objective metrics (there are actually quite a few out there that are this awesome in their own ways, including the other two you mentioned) -- it's just like, so holistic as a Kamen Rider experience in way that's so hard to beat.

That's one of the benefits that comes with it being less focused on doing one specific thing. It kind of does everything all at once -- so many characters, so much big mindlessly fun action, but also some actual storytelling to chew on -- and it happens to be really really good at doing all of those things individually, while also doing a decent enough job tying it together just enough for it to all flow smoothly, even when there isn't actually much connecting plenty of the elements when you stop to think about it. I don't actually know if it IS The Best Rider Movie, but it feels like the one that deserves the title of The Best Rider Movie the most to me.

I love your very specific reasoning! I think that's totally valid!

...unlike the Showa stuff, that is so outside of what I need I need in a Kamen Rider movie that you might as well have said that Super Hero Taisen is the best Rider movie because it has so many Sentai teams in it.

I'm not sure where I'd rank this movie on my Favorite Rider Films list. It's close to the top in the "Crossovers" category, but I'm pretty sure there are some I still prefer. I will always love the brief pre-fight scene with Shotaro, Philip, Eiji, and Gentarou, as well as the realization of all of the Showa finishing moves' ridiculous physics without cuts. I'm not sure that the individual OOO or Fourze segments really stand out as all-time great stories for either series, though.

At least that's how I remember it. I didn't watch the film again this time because I forgot to grab it when I loaded all the other Fourze fansubs onto my laptop.

https://www.tokunation.com/forums/at...1&d=1770519540

Anyway, have my thoughts on it from last time, which include a link to my thoughts on it from the first time.

Don't worry, she eventually got a full personality, but it did take 15 years...

I don't know that I minded a lot this rewatch, though, because the emphasis is (rightly!) on Gentarou's feelings, and how that interacts with the rest of the KRC. For as histrionic and intense as Gentarou's reaction to Nadeshiko's encollectibling was, the real emotional crux of this part of the movie starts with Kengo showing up to say I'm Sorry I Judged You For Loving Space Goo Like It Was A Girl, and ends with JK offering up a handkerchief in lieu of physically opposing the enemy. (JK! I kind of loved his natural and relatable cowardice in this movie and the preceding episode.) Nadeshiko, for better or worse, is the reflection of Gentarou's storyline and emotional evolution, not a character in and of herself. Her arc is to become more realized in light of Gentarou's faith in her, while Gentarou becomes more emotionally vulnerable from her faith in him. It's a Gentarou story told through Nadeshiko, not the other way around.

This is my first time rewatching this after seeing Core Medal of Resurrection, so I paid special attention to Ankh. For Eiji, it's his first time seeing Ankh after losing him a few months ago, but for Ankh, it's his last time seeing Eiji after losing him 30 years ago. While Ankh mostly acts like himself here, as he's not the type to show his true feelings often, he's clearly desperate to stop Eiji from getting himself killed by Poseidon and I think that hits harder knowing what Ankh knows that Eiji doesn't.

It's an awesome emotional moment for KRC for sure! Honestly, I didn't even notice how JK slacking off at the start of the Fourze fifth of the movie was foreshadowing for how sometimes people need their own space and can't just be told to "get it together", the friendship has to work on equal terms, or it won't work at all. Gentarou's problem, the loss of his first love, isn't something KRC can solve, but they can carry the extra burden to make it lighter for him and that's exactly what they do. It's a clever reversal to see Gentarou be the one who needs help and all the friends he helped repaying the favor like that.

HeiGen Dr. Pac-Man is pretty cool for how we get to see Shinnosuke and Haruto (featuring Gaim) show up once more to help the main heroes. I love how Takeru's bravery in the face of death (again) inspired Emu to overcome his fear of death. It also had a great payoff with Emu revivng Takeru in the end.

Trio of Deep Sin sure is unique among the V-Cinemas. While the tone is mature and melancholy, like you said, it still carries a message of hope with how the main 3 Swordsmen confront the deep sins of their pasts. Also, cute dog. Even the Saber haters enjoyed that movie.

RealTime sucks though, IMO.

Megamax is my second favorite Movie War, just behind Ultimatum! Anyway, since Toei stopped making them after Strongest Chemies, I may as well share my ranking:

1) Movie War Ultimatum
2) Movie War Megamax
3) Heisei Generations Dr. Pac-Man
4) Strongest Chemies
5) OG Movie War
6) Heisei Generations Forever
7) Beyond Generations
8) Movie War Full Throttle
9) Heisei Generations Final
10) Movie War Core
11) Reiwa First Generation
12) Sengoku Movie Battle
13) Super Movie War Genesis
14) Movie Battle Royale

So Nadeshiko also fits with Fourze’s theme naming. Her human basis has the surname Misaki, shared with Yuriko Misaki, alias Stronger’s female equivalent Electro Wave Human Tackle. The forename Nadeshiko references the concept of Yamato Nadeshiko, or “the ideal woman”.

While I doubt it was planned at the time, the sudden Virgo scene ends up being important to Fourze’s novel, which I’ll discuss once it’s details become not spoiler-y (I don’t think it was planned because said novel was written a few years later, by a different writer to this movie).

And now for the actor trivia.

Sentai-lert!

In a strange case of this, Kannagi’s henchwoman is played by Sanae Hitomi, who was Toei’s main female suit performer in the 2000s (Within Rider, she was the suit actor for Shroud), and made an in-person appearance in Gekiranger 36 as a female thief named Lily (which considering she was the suit actress for that season’s Yellow Ranger, got funnier come the US adaptation).

And the Foundation X boss lady who barely shows up before being abruptly killed is played by Asuza Watanabe, better known as Miyuki Ozu/MagiMother in Magiranger.

It's honestly a little funny to watch Eiji's wistful comments at the end of the OOO chapter, because he's all We'll Meet Ankh Again In The Future, and all I'm thinking is "Only after you're dead, dude."

(I prefer to think of Eiji's fond wish coming true in Heisei Generations Final instead, which is a much better film; plus it's one where Ankh returns from the dead and immediately calls Eiji fat, which is the OOO Experience in a nutshell.)

Ha ha, I always thought she was a reference to the Nadesico anime, about a spaceship.

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 15 - “HOLY NIGHT CHORUS SINGER”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze15a.png

It’s an episode that’s mostly about how interests in high school are shaped, nurtured, and potentially abused, largely from the perspective of Hayami and Sonoda, and if it’s not a bad episode – too much fun new info, too much solid teen comedy – it’s also not one of this show’s best.

I feel like the quality of any given Fourze episode is directly correlated to how much the entire KRC gets in on the story, and this one leaves almost everyone besides Gentarou, Kengo, and Yuuki with little to no screentime. Miu and Shun get a portion of a group scene, Tomoko gets half a scene, I genuinely can’t remember if JK actually shows up, yet we somehow still got several Ohsugi scenes – this is an episode with so much Horoscopes stuff to juggle, alongside a deeper cast for our Switch Story that it kind of needed to push more than half of the KRC to the edges. I don’t know if that’s ever going to work for me? It’s noticeable here, for how much it leaves Kengo to carry basically half of the Fourze story, in a way that I’d’ve been fine with if this were Episode 3, but maybe not so much when I know what the rest of the cast can do to plus up a story. Everything in this one feels tilted towards the villains, and I’d just rather spend 22 minutes with the KRC.

The story of the villains is nuanced, though, and it smartly recontextualizes Sonoda’s strategy of Let’s Throw Switches Into The Student Body And See What Happens by showing Hayami’s one-on-one tutoring as the way to better nurture troubled minds and shape them into something more productive. Sure, what he’s trying to produce is a brand-new Horoscope, much like he did in the past with Sonoda when she was a student, but he’s still using empathy and observation to create a curriculum tailored to his student’s needs! I think that’s neat, and it really makes Sonoda come off as the overmatched young teacher she is. Where she’d just hand off a Switch to a moody delinquent, Hayami works with Motoyama to channel his rage into a series of actions that reshape him into a higher being; if it’s not, y’know, good, it’s at least good educational practices.

Motoyama’s little story with the KRC… it’s cute, going this early into a story that makes Yuuki look like a deranged weirdo and Gentarou look like an overbearing pest. Definitely a choice! Motoyama is the Frank Grimes to the KRC’s Homer Simpson, desperately trying to focus on his art while Gentarou provokes him (but in a friendly way?) and Yuuki kind of basically just exists. (He… really does not like Yuuki, despite Gentarou being the one that more actively prevents him from painting. Amanogawa High needs some better counseling for dudes!) Gen has a tendency to make Being Your Friend into your problem, and he’s sort of filling the Sonoda role in this story, by not really tailoring his approach to his subject. It’s the KRC at their most discordant (well, Yuuki gets some solid harmonies from the glee club) for a story about how to get the best out of fraught dynamics, so you gotta start it off with Gen blowing it.

Altogether, it’s an episode that feels slightly imbalanced, but in enough different ways to call attention to itself: Gen’s a little too confrontational, Yuuki’s a little too oblivious, the rest of the KRC’s a little too absent, and we spend a little too much time with the troubling triangle of Hayami/Sonoda/Ohsugi. It all works, thanks to the Horoscopes being interesting and Hayami’s methods feeling character-driven and thematically-appropriate, but it’s still a sometimes grating chapter of the story. Not my fave!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../fourze15b.png

In which Yuki becomes a prima-donna over how her self-penned nursery rhyme is performed.

Also the flashback gives us some insight into how Scorpio operated. Sonoda’s choice of exclusively social misfits is because she herself was once one, and thinks lightning will strike twice,

I think a kindergarten is maybe the best place for a song about Hayabusa, and it's a little weird that the glee club was skeptical about it? It's a cute song about a little space probe! Kids would love that! Especially if she wears the Hayabusa hat!

Man, so late because of obviously no schedule. Fourze is a first watch for me.

Gentaro has more delinquent traits than I expect than just his look like him actually being good in fighting before becoming a Kamen Rider. As someone who wants to make friends with everyone, he's first shown to confront Kengo in how much of a dismissive jerk he was, which can be something that make people don't want to be friends with them. Usually calling out people on their wrongdoings is seen as unfun, and often, those who people want to befriend are the fun and entertaining guys which can involve doing wrong but fun things like gossiping or making fun of others. But obviously it's a hallmark of a real hero to not be only about saving people from monsters, but be concerned about trivial things like someone's feelings from complete letter rejection without even reading it, where people like Kengo may be only about beating up monsters while mistreating people. Protecting smiles rather than lives. Gentaro seems to be more hot-tempered kind of straight hero protagonist like Shinji or Shotaro before, though maybe other protagonists would be angrier if put in Gentaro's position here.

For a lighthearted show, there's quite a number of unlikable characters at this stage of a show, in at least Kengo, Miu, Shun, their cronies who beat Gentaro up. In contrast, Gotchard has Supana being a standout for being the only jerk among the main cast at that time. Obviously, this'd change later as Gentaro would befriend everyone, but I wonder about audience reaction if the main character that goes through this isn't someone who wants to befriend everyone, like, maybe they'd want for those students to be lynched or such or hoping for the main character's later revenge. As everyone are friends to Gentaro, he'd be opposing the divide of the school like the group tables that Yuki warned him. Gentaro's a fictional character about wanting to befriend everyone (and a part of "unrealistic/unrelatable" category of compassionate hero), but I wonder how it'd go in real life, where in my job I've met a girl, beautiful one, who claims she wants to befriend everyone.

I do feel that Gentaro can be more assertive than many of the other KR leads, with him taking over Kengo's fight by taking Fourze belt and pointing out that Kengo's not in shape. The fight did succeed in making Kengo bond a little against Gentaro by assisting him, if only because Gentaro can blow up the school with his use of powers. Guess Gentaro should be concerned about the school damage if he can be concerned about rejecting letters. Fourze's finishers are created (I already know this from Climax Heroes though) by making use of more than 1 Astroswitches, like both Rocket and Drill for the Rider Kick, but the items are still ordinary items. Faiz is much better in the drill kick finisher, full stop.

Well, if the show is about Gentarou making friends with everyone, it's certainly more compelling to see him faced with so many difficult characters. I imagine a show where Gentarou only interacts with pleasant, outgoing teens (who pretty much only exist for the sake of this hypothetical) would get boring quickly!

Oh, you've seen Gotchard but not Fourze? It'll be interesting to see your thoughts on how they stand up against each other.

Yeah, some people just get that way about certain Rider supporting cast members, unfortunately. Be honest, Die, this isn't that different from how you felt most times Jean was on screen back in Kuuga. :p

Yeah no, just that this actually quite resembles darker series more like Emu going against other unlikable doctors/Riders, or Kagami in Kabuto against other jerk Riders.