[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 05 - “TWO SIDES TO FRIENDSHIP”



My all-time favorite thing in Fourze is Miu as the leader of the club. She just barges in and declares herself leader because she’s the most clever and charismatic girl in school, plus she’s already in charge of everything school-related as Queen… but then the show goes Yeah She’s Right, which is the funniest possible choice. It’s the idea that you can make a decision about the person you want to be – trying out new conceptions of yourself, new identities, new responsibilities – and you’re allowed to see where it takes you in high school. Every day’s a blank slate, and every dream you have is one you’re allowed to nurture and explore with the right group of friends (and friend-adjacent grumps like Kengo) at your side. Miu shedding things she’s outgrown, like Shun and cheerleading, in order to become a superhero supervisor that goes for moonwalks is such a fun concept to play with, and it alone makes this episode a winner for me. Every scene with Miu is fun and surprising.

Also, I guess JK’s in this one?

If you’ve got a big-hearted but impetuous main character like Gen, you inevitably have to do a story where his twin tendencies of seeing the best in people and not really thinking past his immediate desire get him into trouble, so here’s a story where the enormously phony and fawning JK manipulates Gentarou into protecting him from a vengeful Zodiart. JK’s annoying from the first scene of this episode, declaring himself Gen’s best friend and biggest fan and Gen’s the coolest and the most amazing and I hate it. It’s one of those things that haunts this episode in a variety of ways: how the story hits the same buttons over and over, way past where the show has made its point, and into something more grating and annoying. JK’s supposed to be annoying, but I don’t need all of JK’s scenes to be annoying. It makes Gen look a little too naive to be believable, and it’s just not fun to watch play out. JK is performatively awful in this story, but he also makes his scenes awful to watch.

The Ohsugi scenes: same thing! They play the Wacky musical cue under a multi-minute scene of Ohsugi and Sonoda talking about a bunch of things that clearly aren’t clues to anything, or will have any bearing on future storylines in and around this two-parter, like horoscopes, Sonoda being invited to JK’s party, or how to deal with students outside of the classroom. Ohsugi is sweaty and clammy in equal measure, his normal Horny Weirdo character from every other scene he’s had with Sonoda, but the relentless It’s A Joke music underneath was both totally unnecessary, and went on for way too long. The editing and post-production for this episode lack the confidence and cleverness of the previous episodes, layering oppressive musical cues and amplified character traits over an otherwise solid story.

Beyond the Miu stuff – perfect; I could’ve watched a hundred more of them – everything else in this episode felt tuned incorrectly. Gen comes off slightly too dimwitted, instead of sweetly motivated and single-minded in his focus on friendships. JK is wall-to-wall annoying, instead of just suspiciously outgoing and ingratiating. The music is distracting, instead of additive. The balance is wrong, rather than the ideas being bad, so I don’t think the show’s on the wrong track. This is early days, and it’ll take some fine-tuning to get things right. But this one was kind of irritating to watch!