Never watched these before and still haven't now. I'm actually impressed that they dragged Sonoda's actress back for these things given the complete lack of closure for the character on the show itself.

Despite my mostly neutralness on Fourze as a whole, one thing I can definitely give it is that it has my overall favorite set of Net Movies for any Rider show, with the Scorpion Lady shorts being the biggest highlight.

It had the sort of character development I'd been wanting out of alot of the characters in Fourze, as the added layer of of the titular Scorpion Lady seeing a bit of herself in Yuki leading to her being one of the characters I look more fondly on, and wishing that the shorts themselves had all made up their own episode within the show proper.

They are really gilding the lily with Tomoko in these Net Movies.

It feels incredibly weird, since (if memory serves) she doesn't come back for the movie? I think?

...I genuinely can't tell if you're doing this to me as a bit.

But, in case you aren't, I was a huge proponent of Sonoda getting more of an arc on the show, and I'd've felt a lot more warmly toward these scenes if they'd landed alongside, like Episode 7 or 8, rather than letting her identity be a secret until just before they booted her from the cast. Running up her anxiety alongside all the friendship stuff of the KRC -- specifically how isolated and manipulated Sonoda is by the Horoscopes -- would've been a very dramatic counterpoint. Alas!

She never comes back after being sucked off into the (non-bathroom) hole.

First, the joke: She was forced into Virgo's hole, which every failed Horoscope has to enter.

Now, the actual response: Is there actually a Dark Nebula? I don't remember if 45-48 elaborate on it, but Emoto specifically tells us before he dies that every punished Horoscope was secretly saved in his M-BUS station, and no one really went to the Dark Nebula. But the Net Movies continue to treat the Dark Nebula like an actual thing that people were sent to as a punishment, including the Sonoda films. So, like, is it even a real thing? Or just some nonsense Emoto told to Gamou?

My opinion on the net movies: My favourite is the Sonoda Tragedy shorts, my least favourite is the suit actor talk. And that’s probably my dislike for BTS documentaries and interviews shining through (before anyone questions this, most of the BTS stuff I share comes from magazine articles, commentaries, write-ups and wikis. I have no issue with those)

Man, I was not expecting so many folks to be flying the flag for Sonoda! This is kind of a shock! But I'm glad that people had a good time with those films, even if they weren't for me. One of the best things about the Net Movie format is that there's something for everyone!

As I remember them, at least, my own personal hangup with the Sonoda ones is that they're pretty much the only Net Movies I can think of that aren't really all that comedic? Unless "who would care about Sonoda?" seriously *is* the joke, they play out closer to a TTFC special half a decade too early or something, which made them stick out from the usual outlandish antics for me in a way that mostly just left me confused, watching all these things together. I don't necessarily hate the concept itself, but it feels like something that couldn't find a space it was actually meant to exist in.

They definitely for me... like, if they'd been dropped alongside weekly episodes of Fourze in the period before Sonoda was Zodiart Zoned, like the current Minami shorts with Zeztz, or the Zi-O Complementation stuff, I'd see the value narratively and dramatically. Here, it's so removed from the character's arc, and no one on the show's like Hey Remember Sonoda, that it was sort of baffling to interact with. I'd say it would be like doing something with Miu's old cheerleading squad, but those characters just showed up in an episode!

To me that's the beauty of it, and of the Fourze Net Movies as a whole, really. The upside to having the Sonada stuff here is that not only do they provide variety to the entire set, but also provided some added depth to a character who was wasted in the show itself(atleast, for me). It's sorta like an early version of the DVD specials we'd get in later seasons like the Legend of Alain stuff from Ghost, for example.