[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 22 - “KICKING YOUR TRUE NATURE”

I sort of thought it was? I remembered the rakugo thing not being some minor details, but a big clue, and Pegasus didn’t act like Utsugi at the quarry. This episode more or less immediately offers Kijima up as too suspicious too ignore, and Utsugi too confused to be a cover, leading to a pretty enjoyable solution to what’s normally an Act 1 mystery. There’s some genuine effort made to have the clues divulged organically, with very little of the dialogue bending over backwards to phrase things in a way that triggers a forced Eureka moment – though, even when it does, that’s a little ode to the wordplay of rakugo, maybe? (The biggest one is Shun’s whole Gosh Magnetic Fields Are Powerful bit, but even then he’s talking about cell phones, which Ryuusei links to watches.) Kijima framing Utsugi out of a combination of spite and ego makes for a compellingly villainous motivation, and a worthy new Horoscope for our team to deal with.

With Sonoda's departure, despite Kijima being the more interesting actor, compared to Utsugi, who's also seemingly more compelling compared to Sonoda, ironically, Kijima's someone who's more similar to Sonoda as a student who puts up low-key two-faced facade and ascends from MOTW to an actual Horoscope, so there'd be more scenes of him later, like Hayami or Virgo. Guess Kijima is different as a Horoscope rather than MOTW, but lately, it seems that the Zodiarts are more unlikable, closer to Makise type (still the biggest scumbag) of being more petty, like both Nomoto and Kijima here, rather than sympathetic ones like Natta/Unicorn or Satake/Hound before, where Kijima is just power hungry and has pettier reason to frame Utsugi. Kijima is somehow successful in learning martial arts in kickboxing thus he can copy her fighting style and keep the masquerade, not only in acting, though wonder why if the fan is confiscated by Utsugi, Pegasus dropped it in previous episode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Shaping Utsugi’s story into a more adult take on following your dreams is a neat swerve for this show, and it’s especially welcome around a discussion of what the kids are going to do with the rest of their lives. Like, there’s your dreams, and then your career, and sometimes those don’t get to be the same thing. Utsugi dreams of being a kickboxer, but that’s not the sort of thing that’s going to pay the bills, so she became a teacher. (I’m not going to say that people don’t end up in careers they abhor via accident or inertia, but I’d love to hear how she ended up in a job she clearly despises, instead of, like, becoming a gym teacher? Or a physical therapist? Or any number of sports-adjacent jobs that aren’t dressing up in a suit and listening to the problems of teenagers you resent?) But Gentarou – both a high school student and a superhero – helps her understand that you can still follow a dream while working a job, and you can even find the things in your job that help you get closer to your dream. It’s cute, that little acknowledgement that being an adult means maybe doing a thing that isn’t what you’d hoped for, but can maybe still be something you find fulfillment in if you work at it. (Like teaching a kid how to kick the crap out of a wordplay monster!) It’s a minor victory, her starting a kickboxing club at school, but it does feel like a victory.

Utsugi does become a gym teacher at the end by opening a kickboxing club at school. I do thought that she should perhaps become a gym teacher rather than a school lessons teacher, but for last episode, she seems to not want to teach martial arts too based on her reaction to Gentaro asking her to show off her moves, but she ends up doing that in the end. Guess it's shown that Utsugi's on her own league as a fighter as Gentaro who can beat up several delinquents or Dustards at once but stands no chance against her. Then yeah I thought she should be clearly good enough to easily apply for one of the jobs you suggested her to, unlike for instance, Squidward who's stuck in a job he hates as a cashier because he's actually bad (or at least not passionate enough) at art. Utsugi plays some part in the final battle against Pegasus, but she doesn't directly score hits to Pegasus unlike for instance Dango in W ep. 8 (Heaven's Tornado).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

We’ve also got the Meteor/Aries storyline cooking in the background, but I wasn’t really feeling it here. We get a little duel with Virgo, but mostly it’s stuff that didn’t feel as dialed-in as the rest of the story did for me. Some of it’s just… like, Pegasus only had a 1 in 8 chance of even becoming the right Horoscope, and I kind of laughed about that at the end of the episode more than I should’ve. It totally tracks that those odds are good enough for Ryuusei, but this does not feel like a strategy I’m going to be super invested in. (A 1 in 7 chance now!) My favorite Ryuusei beat in this one was probably him trying to sneak away to Henshin, but JK thinks of him as the other coward in the KRC, and sticks to him like glue so they can both avoid combat. It’s a fun gag! The rest of his story was plot stuff for the future, and I’ll hopefully care more about it there.

I know it depends more on the person than the martial arts, but can seem that based on Utsugi, kickboxing is placed higher here than Meteor's Jeet Kune Do here, which is about many martial arts mixed while keeping the useful ones and discarding the useless ones, though Cancer does get badly injured by Meteor's one-inch punch, which partly exposes his real identity as Kijima due to JK's banter. This is a much older show, but Ryusei asking Kijima to show off his stomach feels so Gavv, to know if someone is the MOTW or not. And the coach's actor name is Shoma Kai... but it's not Parado's actor one! JK would be likely an unwitting help again, other than smacking Kijima's stomach, to be a step closer in exposing Ryusei's true identity, just by trying to stick together.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Considering how Utsugi doesn't want to be called Sensei, as she doesn't identify as one, I think she's actively trying to appear as an anti-authority figure, in a way that maybe also makes her sound a little like a moody teenager as a side effect. On the other side of this friendship, Gentarou acts so familiar with everybody, whether they're teachers or students, so I guess those factors let them meet each other in the middle or something.

I wonder if Gentaro's method of finally bonding with Utsugi is an effective one of being constantly persistent, which'd just drive people away from them (and for places like online, getting blocked without any other chance to reconnect), but it seems necessary for Gentaro to do this as he was misled by Kijima and thought Utsugi is endangering others, so he's hunting her to protect people from being attacked, which leads to her exposing all her belongings in her bag, thus she's forced to confess about how she doesn't know what to do when her resignation letter appears. So, I feel like some luck and contrived coincidence was involved here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I think Fourze is a great example of how the spirit of Rider has developed since the Showa Era. While Riders are still expected to endure suffering and loneliness, they're no longer completely defined by that and can still enjoy a relatively normal lifestyle with friendship and dreams. There's also the show's predecessor OOO, where the classic image of a self-sacrificing Rider is criticized as unhealthy and inefficient.

Wouldn't work for the audience as, Eiji is seen as the example to strive to be by the fanbase for how selfless and self-sacrificing he is. I guess it'd more fit for Eiji, if he's perhaps likely allowed to regain his desire to become an astronaut, musician, or soccer player, which was what he's thinking about when younger. His desire still revolves around protecting others, but he wants power for it. Actually Revice would be an example that Ikki wanted to become a soccer player, and ends up pursuing it at the end of the series, free from obligation of just running the Happy Spa out of obligation to family (noble sacrifice). And for KR shows that do push dreams or desires, the western audience would object to this 'amoral' conclusion, like for Ryuki compared to Japanese fanbase accepting that there's no sin to fight for desire.