So my fun fact for this week is that originally, instead of showing he didn’t need to breath to prove he’s not human, Kengo would’ve transformed into an alien resembling Fourze. But they didn’t have the CG budget for Sagittarius to go Supernova like the others, so some cutbacks were made.

He's really great, and it's so apropos for Gentarou as a character -- dude's got great big emotions and does not know how to moderate them!

I just figured it was a Nadeshiko callback? If you need a dramatic way to tell Gentarou that you're a non-human lifeform, that's the accepted way to do it!

About Kengo being in conflict with Gentaro before for him trying to help Nadeshiko, turns out that Kengo wasn't different from Nadeshiko. Obviously, as what Gentaro already did, or recurring theme in Kamen Rider, it shouldn't matter which species someone is. This is important for the villain fighting aspect, in the reason of why Japan isn't doomed yet due to Gamou collecting all the 12 Horoscopes, and that everyone including the main KRC cast are still safe, that the real chosen one was Kengo to visit the Presenters. Wonder what'd be the other proper way to prevent Gamou from succeeding until now other than the shoehorned plot/secret revelation (of which, Utahoshi name means star, thus explaining Kengo's origins).

It's rather ironic for the franchise that, the move Gamou uses to commit the most significant atrocity to the cast in murdering Kengo, was a Rider Kick. Should be obvious that Emoto rescued Kengo after Rokuro died, guilt happens when the damage is done and is irreversible. Kengo was given to Rokuro's relatives, being said as Rokuro's son, and was raised by them. What's said here in this discussion is about Gamou only having infinite ego, but it's clearly said here that Gamou wants to evolve humanity in the backstory with Rokuro, at the cost of Japan casualty.

It was actually rather good fighting scene between Ryusei and Tatsugami in their human forms. Tatsugami is clearly stronger, but Ryusei manages to hold his own due to using martial art techniques, something that seems to be more significant in their human forms rather than when Ryusei fights as Meteor. It's confirmed here that Tatsugami doesn't value his life, he devotes himself for his loyalty to Gamou while having nothing else going on in his life, used to also waste his life by only brawling in alleyway fights. Ohsugi got more involved here to not only hear about Kengo's explanation, but also tries to stop Leo from harming the students and reported to Gentaro and Yuki that Rabbit Hatch was attacked (from the man who once intruded in the Rabbit Hatch to antagonize these three).

Yuki's obsession with space began due to hearing voices from the Presenters (though it's about Riku Sanjo episodes), which was what Gamou related to her with before to create Gemini. This should also have Yuki being more motivated to become an astronaut, so that she can meet Kengo again after he returned to the Presenters. It'd be not a sacrifice for Kengo (he's not dying), but just going separate ways that they may not be able to visit them anymore. This should be also about their bond rather than plot revelation, with an added thing of actually showcasing Yuki's determination or the show's theme of breaking the impossible.

Nadeshiko is made of space goo; Kengo is made of space rays. Totally different!

(But, no, it was pretty lucky for Kengo that he didn't talk Gentarou out of being friends with collections of space materials that were built to mimic human life!)

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 48 - “THE GALAXY OF YOUTH”

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That graduation scene! One of the best things Kamen Rider ever did.

I like how it foregrounds the dramatic irony of Gamou’s story. He wanted to evolve humanity into something that could take its place in the stars, so he built a school in order to scheme a way that would let him do that, but the school itself became the culmination of his plan; his achievement was there the whole time, and he couldn’t even see it. The evolution of humanity… man, that’s just growing up? The next generation improves (hopefully) on the work of its predecessors, just like Utahoshi tried to explain 18 years earlier. It’s links in a chain, like Kengo’s keyholder (it keeps being narratively important!), until the dream is achieved. Gamou thought he needed to do it all himself, but the reality was that he imparted his wisdom, his drive, and even his dream to these kids, who are going to achieve it in his name. He’d already won, and he didn’t realize it.

Any finale that tries to put the villain into an emotional context with the rest of the cast is a winner for me, and Fourze’s maybe the best example. (Also: Saber, Ghost, Drive, maybe Kiva if you’re feeling generous.) Gamou was part of the same system as the kids, doing his part in their story, and that’s lovely to acknowledge. For all the ways the Zodiarts were using the KRC to power up, the KRC were learning and growing because of the Zodiarts. Everyone’s in the same space (sorry) in high school, for good or ill, and the struggles and conflicts help us learn who we want to be, and how we want to become that person. Gamou wasn’t some outside force of evil, he was a guy who helped them as part of their daily lives, even as he was doing it for the wrong reasons. From a top-level view, he was the leader of a celestial death cult that preyed on the youth entrusted to him, in order to reach the stars by obliterating a nation; from the KRC’s view, he was a misguided man who couldn’t see the value in the community his experiment accidentally fostered. The idea of imparting the same grace and forgiveness that the KRC would give to a student to the Chairman of the school, that’s something special.

I’ll always love that interpretation of the season from the kids that powered through it. It’s a view of high school that’s sentimental without being saccharine – high school is a thing that makes you who you are, and that takes both pain and joy. We grow from our success and our failures; from our happiness and our sadness; from our empathy and our selfishness; from our knowledge and our ignorance; from our heroism and our villainy. The KRC wouldn’t be who they are without Gamou, no matter who he ended up being.

Besides that scene, which is astonishing in its humanity and distillation of the show’s ethos and approach, I thought what was here was solid. It didn’t get in the way, if I can damn it with faint praise.

Kengo’s letter was very sweet, even if you knew that Kengo would 10000000% be appearing again in the episode. (I once again forgot how: Gamou saved him via Aquarius’s power, and Kengo just woke up at home and didn’t tell anyone.) I like the contents of the letter, and how it addressed all of the characters, even the ones you don’t associate with Kengo. I like him saying that the show forgot to do a major Kengo/Ryuusei story, which is a wasted opportunity; also, I think he outed JK? I like that he used his words from beyond the grave to rip on Yuuki’s normally-atrocious cooking. I like that it’s Kengo getting the final word on what everyone means to the show, because Kengo fought the hardest of anyone to become the guy who could get the final word on what everyone means to the show – his journey was the longest, and the hardest, and ended the saddest, because of what the KRC represented to him. I like him coming back in a redo of Episode 1, chiding Gentarou for having the gall to throw away a letter that someone put their heart into, because symmetry is always nice in a finale.

The middle of the episode… again, it didn’t get in the way. Fourze was about kids and school and friendship, sure, but it was equally about the Sakamoto Stunt Show Spectacular, so we get some explosions and sick bike jumps at Kamen Rider Quarry, plus all the major upgrade suits for Fourze and Meteor. It’s a fight that doesn’t mean a ton to me story-wise – trying to give Meteor a moral victory over Leo in a final speech felt forced, but whatever – but it genuinely wouldn’t feel like the end of Fourze without a half-dozen form changes and too many explosions. I think of it as ceremonial, befitting the graduation theme.

But, yeah: the graduation. I love it. It makes me so happy, to see these kids tell their season-long villain that they learned a lot from him, and that defeating him helped turn them into people that he can be proud of, and that they’ll be the people that he always wanted to be. It’s the hardest kind of finale to do, but it’s the only one that would’ve made any sense for this show. I’m gonna be smiling like Gentarou for the rest of the night.

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One of the many distinct yet scattered specific memories I have with this finale is watching it again on a whim, I believe sometime during Wizard (maybe before Ultimatum was subbed too?), in that period I've probably mentioned somewhere in these threads at least once where my overall passion for tokusatsu had cooled just a tiny bit compared to how it usually is, now and before.

I was so invested in Fourze from the beginning, it should go without saying that I found watching the last episode a very emotional experience the first time. It shouldn't be a surprise that I found it very emotional that second time either. The thing about that second viewing that I remember most though, what really caught me off guard, was that it was actually that little mini-finale for Ryuusei that pushed me into that territory of just being like, destroyed, before I even got to the much more emotional graduation bit that I expected to do me in all over again. I'm sure it had to something to do with the distance from the show -- it now being an old show versus the newest one -- but I just got so caught up thinking of how much these characters meant to me, and all the joy I felt, not even just watching the show, but simply knowing the show was there for me to watch, that the really simple and obvious idea of Meteor turning his catchphrase around like that in the end suddenly hit me like a truck. Like I hadn't really been giving it the space in my mind it deserved, but all of a sudden, yeah, that whole Leo/Meteor rivalry really had a great payoff, didn't it? This show had a really great payoff.

If I ever tried to do an episode-by-episode deep dive on this show, it scares me to think how long I'd end up feeling the need to go on about this one episode. There's just something to say about pretty much every last scene, and even trying to just hit the major bullet points in this thread is a little overwhelming to think about.

Like, the letter-reading scene's pretty great, right? I believe there's a whole anecdote about how the staff deliberately made that all those actors' final day of filming, letting the KRC all be in one room with just each other, which is appreciably sentimental but also just cruel? I haven't checked the exact facts on this in a while, but I'm pretty sure at least Yuuki's crying there basically involved no performance at all.

And then like, the graduation thing is the big showstopper, and you'd think Die writing all that he did so eloquently would about cover it, but there's so many layers going on there! I know Switchblade mentioned when it was used earlier that he doesn't like that Kamen Rider Girls cover of Saite at all, and I think back when 25/26 aired, I didn't like it either, but here, I thought it worked fantastically to add to the emotion of the scene. I really appreciated how well edited the whole sequence is to match the gradually ramping intensity of the song itself. And like, of course I love that Fourze ends with Gentarou shaking the main villain's hand. What else could it be, you know? There's a very strong overlap between Die's taste in Rider finales and mine there, so that's the part I don't need to repeat too much. I appreciated each and every week of watching Kamen Rider Fourze for that whole year, but this conclusion in particular is extraordinarily special to me. I don't know if it's like my favorite Rider finale or any concrete way like that I could try qualifying it, but I think about this episode a ton, and it's certainly something that comes to mind almost immediately when thinking about Fourze.

Koichi Sakamoto has actually talked about that in multiple interviews. The easiest one to find probably being during the episode of "Let's Talk Toku!" that he was on, wherein he talked about the letter reading scene was the final thing filmed, specifically because everyone knew just how hard it'd hit everyone on staff.

And while I probably sound like a broken record in mentioning how alot of Fourze was just so-so to me, I can also acknowledge how cool it is that the show really hit home with those involved in making it come to life.

I keep forgetting how much everyone but me loves Meteor! (Spoiler for the Series Wrap-Up post: still did not end up loving Meteor!) (Also, Leo: not my favorite Zodiart!)

I am glad that Ryuusei got a moment in the finale for Meteor fans to enjoy, though, in much the same way I'm glad there were sick bike jumps for the fans that enjoy those. There's no wrong way to enjoy a Kamen Rider episode!

To clarify a little more, a lot of the reason I didn't expect to find that scene as emotional going back as I did was because my initial impression of it was very much that it was just Ryuusei's "give him something to do" scene. Something functional and needed, but not especially clever or interesting -- a lot like how you describe the stuff in an episode of Rider that you appreciate logically but didn't really engage with emotionally.

But I think I sort of related to Ryuusei more that second time in a way that made me understand more deeply how well thought out a final period (or exclamation mark; this *is* Sakamoto we're dealing with) at the end of Meteor's arc it was? It's very appropriate that as a transfer student, he shouldn't be there for the Gamou stuff, and I like that while the rest of the KRC express what AGHS has meant to them, Ryuusei is the one who expresses more specifically how much the KRC has meant to him, and how he's going to keep carrying all those feelings forward in his life -- that's the thing that suddenly meant way more to me however many months on, rewatching the episode as a way to think back on old times.

Sure, and that's a sweet way of looking at it. Similarly, I can try and put myself in a headspace that likes what the show is doing with Meteor and Leo -- Leo's this guy super dedicated to dying for his cause because of his faith in someone else, while Ryuusei's here saying that the kind of single-minded focus on one person in your life to the degree that your own life and goals lose their definition is super unhealthy, which is all because Ryuusei's had the KRC to help him work through his self-annihilating tendencies.

...but man, Ryuusei still isn't my guy! I'm sorry! I don't want to take him away from y'all! I will try and explain why tomorrow, but I assure you it's incredibly subjective in a variety of ways!