[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 12 - “DUTY AND NOBLE INTENTIONS”



Kengo! Jesus, what a handful this guy is.

We get to see a more serious side of Yuuki in this episode, to better convey how perilous things are for Kengo, but also to remind us that Kengo is kind of a terrible friend. He’s principled, but that makes him demanding and prickly. He’s concerned about the greater good, but in a way that disregards individuals and their feelings. He’s willing to die for his mission, but he isn’t prepared to share the burden. He’s kind of relentlessly rude, and prone to tantrums, and just a full-time project for Yuuki. It’s not that Kengo isn’t worth the hassle, but it’s also that it’s always a hassle with Kengo.

But Yuuki gets him, even if she normally indulges him. We’ve gotten 11 episodes of Yuuki gently steering Kengo to variable success, while placating his wounded ego and sweetly suggesting some new outlooks to him, but this time she needs to have a talk with Kengo. Kengo’s trapped on the moon – which is, you know, still a pretty big deal! – but he’s lashing out at the people closest to him, whether he wants to admit it or not. He’s missing how they’re not only working to rescue him, they’re working to honor him by continuing to fight the Zodiart that’s menacing the school.

And that, honestly, is the only reliable way to connect with Kengo. It’s just like the first Kengo story with him and Gentarou about using Fourze, but now widened to include the entire KRC: You don’t reach Kengo by telling him you care about him, you reach Kengo by showing him that you care about his mission. The team putting the defeat of Makise over the safety of Kengo (because Kengo wasn’t in any immediate danger, despite being moon-exiled) lets Kengo know that there are people who share his dedication, and that’s worth letting them in.

It’s a phenomenal episode, for how it makes Kengo his most intemperate so that Yuuki can be her most forthright, and in turn let Kengo be chastened enough to accept that he’s not alone. It’s very sweet, how this story took the time to make Kengo that last official member of the Kamen Rider Club.

Also! An incredibly fun episode of superhero teen dramedy!

I don’t… like, I don’t ever want to lose sight of how ridiculous and fun this show is, even when it’s doing a very sweet and melancholy story of a boy who’s afraid to die alone. Even when we’re getting Kengo screaming at the rhyming injustice of being trapped on the moon to die, just like his father, we still have a plot where some incel piece of crap is going to telekinetically drive a bus full of high school girls off of a bridge, and the only way to stop this cosmic monstrosity is to be electric and also briefly invisible??? (Also, I love that the way the director decided to show the girls being telekinetically manipulated was to fill them walking backwards and then run it in reverse, so they're walking forward in a herky-jerky way. Super clever!) Like, this is all still a bunch of high school kids trying their best to affect a moon rescue, and it’s simultaneously earnest and hapless, which is the perfect balance for this show of weirdos saving the day. For example: I get that Yuuki’s going through a lot, and she’s willing to try anything to rescue Kengo – up to and including begging the Chairman of the school to mount an international moon mission – but shouldn’t the astronaut-in-training have been the one to tell Gentarou that Fourze can’t just fly all the way to the moon? Seems like her area of expertise!

But I’ll forgive the show that minor oversight, since everything else in it was so perfect. Kengo’s story is treated with the appropriate gravity (well, more than, considering his lunar imprisonment) while the previous episode’s all-hands youthful energy continues to carry the rest of the narrative. A two-parter befitting our newly-official Kamen Rider Club!