[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 21 - “A MISGUIDANCE COUNSELING SESSION”



It’s an action-heavy episode of Fourze, but still one that manages to hit at a topic that very few other Kamen Rider shows can cover.

This show takes place in high school, and that’s not forever, no matter badly you do in class. (Even Gentarou is bound to either graduate or get kicked out!) Kids will inevitably grow up, move on, and find lives outside of the very specific social circle they’ve developed over their educational journey. And it’s not just the students whose time in the halls of a place like Amanogawa High can be fleeting – teachers also come and go, as Ohsugi hilariously and melodramatically grapples with in this episode.

(Ohsugi… man, he’s so much better once Sonoda’s gone. He’s still a creep and an irritant, but he’s so much more self-involved and pathetic, and it just makes his schtick infinitely more palatable to me. Him having a full-on breakdown in the hallway because he misses being a harassing creep to Sonoda is fun, while him being a harassing creep to Sonoda was not fun.)

That idea of everyone moving on, it’s a thing that most of these shows don’t really touch on until their final arc, if at all. The doctors in Ex-Aid are still going to be doctors when the show ends. Banjo and Sento will still be friends when Build ends. Takumi will still be a petulant handful when 555 ends. But Fourze (and Gotchard, but less so) is a show that’s telling you in Episode 21 that some folks are already planning the next phase of their lives. Shun and Miu are graduating in the summer, and that’s it for them and the KRC. Kengo, Yuuki, and Gentarou are figuring out what they’ll be doing in a couple years when they graduate. (Kengo’s like NO I CAN STAY IT’S COOL is such a sweet little note, him needing to finish his dad’s mission, no matter what.) Everyone’s aware that this situation – them being friends in the KRC – is as temporary as the fight against the Zodiarts, and that gives a real melancholy sheen to this show, and the strange gravity its exerted on its cast.

Like new teacher Haruka!

She clearly and loudly doesn’t want to be a teacher, which is a very neat change from Sonoda’s phony kindness and empathy. (Which, quick aside: I love how Ryuusei is the first one to clock that Hayami is up to something, because he sees the same bullshit geniality he’s using to deceive the KRC, which means Hayami is also trying to deceive them. Great character beat!) She’s doing a job she hates, because she can’t do the thing she loves. It’s a fun viewpoint to explore, the unhappy teacher, the one who’d rather be anywhere but Amanogawa. It’s mostly setup in this episode, tied to the mystery of the Pegasus Zodiart, and since I mostly don’t remember who the actual culprit is, I can’t spend as much time talking about how Haruka impacts this story.

Aside from, you know, all the fighting!

It’s, again, an action-heavy episode, where even the basic high school scenes get little moments of Haruka almost assaulting students and colleagues alike, which is another problem that the Amanogawa High HR department seems unwilling to address. (The Chairman’s gotta do better on his hiring standards! You can’t cosmically-hypnotize away every workplace violation forever!) With a Zodiart that just wants to test their strength and skills against anyone – from karate guys in a nighttime training session at a playground (???), to a lone jogger, to Libra (!!!) – it’s no surprise that kinetic and tense fight scenes are where this episode spends the majority of its time. (We even get a massive battle against Virgo and Dustards at the quarry!) It’s all really well done, with the Pegasus suit actor doing some incredibly fast and powerful moves against a variety of opponents, while Meteor and Fourze show off their different styles in several fights. It’s just a brawling episode, and few series are as well-suited to that concept than Fourze.

Story-wise, this one was maybe bit more mystery and setup than I’d like, despite the amount of action (feels like we should’ve gotten the Pegasus reveal as the cliffhanger?), but it’s all done with such a rich level of style that I can’t complain. We’re still spending time on the character relationships, we’re still talking about a life beyond the KRC, we’re still getting Miu’s hyper-competent leadership (even if it kills Shun), and we still have a shot like this: