[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 08 - “COORDINATING WITH HEAVY METAL”

Like, it’s for sure a choice the whole production team made for Shun’s big speech. The crux of this story is that Shun – much like Satake’s BAD BOY of a son – is chafing under the demands of his father. But unlike the Hound, Shun deals with the stifling expectations of his father by doubling down on the pressure, forcing himself to be even more stringent in his identity as a good son. Shun hates the KRC because they’re fun, unlike his miserable existence as a popular jock. (Just, like, go with me here. I know how that last sentence sounded.) Shun breaks down at Gentarou’s flippant dismissal of Shun’s so-called leadership skills and strategizing, and tearfully lays out his entire psychology in capital letters.

Satake has black and white view to lump any "filth" the students have the same with the worst kind of students. It's not really stated on what happened for Hound that he ended up bad despite having Satake as dad, other than how Satake's hatred of delinquents rooted from Hound. It may mean Satake didn't discipline Hound enough to then go 180 after Hound's failure, or that Satake was always like he's now to Hound and he instead broke under pressure to be free. Being "lawful" good isn't about most righteous characters like Gentaro, but "lawful" is what Satake pulls. Otherwise, I feel that Yuki isn't really at fault to be punished, it's just Ohsugi being an overbearing jerk as someone who thinks teachers and students shouldn't be friends.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

(Real quick aside: as an actual American Football fan, I found this episode’s specifics on Shun, the team, and all of it to be hilariously distracting. Most of Shun’s physicality in the fight scenes would be more appropriate for a lineman, not a quarterback. Quarterbacks definitely aren’t supposed to tackle people! And Kengo’s description of the QB's leadership and play-calling kind of misses out on the idea of, you know, coaches. The QB, much like basically everyone on a sports team, is supposed to follow instructions and execute according to a coach’s plan. You can gunsling, especially at the high school level, but it’s very weird for this show to suggest that Shun subsuming his own plans in order to follow someone else’s lead is a deficiency in him as an athlete. It’s sort of a crucial skill?)

I guess this can be expected if Kamen Rider wouldn't always seem to get hand to hand combat, more core part of the series as fighting one, right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

What follows is a scene of Shun weeping about his dad being overbearing, and football not being fun because of it, and him wanting to have fun, and it is a mystifying scene, tonally. If there’d been a shot of Shun using eye drops to fake tears, it’d make perfect sense in the way the actor plays it. It’s 100% this character having an emotional breakthrough, and the things he’s saying definitely make him sound miserable and self-loathing, but the performance is one of the phoniest things I’ve ever seen. It’s a joke that no one’s laughing at.

Shun's relationship with his dad turns out to be not a pleasant one, and everything wrong Shun did are all the dad's fault. Anything he does including dating Miu or ditching Miura is about obeying his dad. Shun's acting aside, this'd be the more easier route for media to try to make the main cast member or characters they want people to support to be rootable, in contrast to JK before not being the one put on victimized position even if it'd lead for him to take advantage of others (can have just said other friends/society being blamed instead, like the dad for Shun).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The thing that makes Shun and Gentarou work as scene partners is that they both have incredibly weird ideas about What It Means To Be A Man, and they’re the only ones in the cast that have that near-psychosis. (JK isn’t gonna care about manliness, the girls all think that stuff is toxic masculinity, and Kengo can relate to the dad stuff, but he ain’t gonna bawl in front of people about it.) Gentarou goes big as the default, and Shun best responds to big, theatrical nonsense. They both view manliness as an intense burden to carry that are thinking about way way way too much, so they’re naturally going to cry their eyes out and connect over making a break with your dad to become your own man. Shun’s phoniness hits Gentarou’s over-the-top empathy and it all feels like it’s the only way this show could’ve landed Shun’s big, dumb story. I like it, even if it’s hard to spend too much time defending Shun’s terrible, terrible histrionics. (It’s real bad!) I think the specific hypermasculine weirdness of Shun and Gentarou as rivals and then dudes forgives a lot of the embarrassing performance stuff.

Regarding the girls part, Miu's defense of Gentaro against Shun was how his words might be right about him being the manliest of the man. I guess other than Miu quickly warming up to Gentaro, I feel Shun warmed up even quicker to Gentaro despite being seemingly more hostile before to ditch Miu for joining KRC and have a dispute with her about how they view Gentaro as trash/manliest. Miu seems to be still not enough for Power Dizer despite her having athleticism for cheerleading or Queen festival. Shun's clearly on a different level compared to Gentaro (who is a good fighter) too when pushing the lawnmower by himself.