[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 33 - “CHAOS IN OLD KYOTO”



If I had a 100-yen coin for every time a high school Kamen Rider show took a two-episode field trip to Kyoto where a goofy romantic subplot on the Edo set competed with a storyline where the cosmology of the main plot found a new level, I’d have two 100-yen coins, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

(I think it’s mildly funny that the Taisen movie skipped over the seemingly Heisei-mandated movie trip back in time to Edo – going to Showa instead – so we didn’t have to get the slightly contrived costuming and soundtrack for the old samurai stuff, but it somehow landed in the TV show instead, like Kouhei demanded that Fourze interact with these tropes, no matter what.)

For an episode concerned with Cosmic Energy, and the various Holes it's generated from, I was also concerned about energy – specifically, how weird the narrative energy was in this one?

It’s a Wacky episode, with a number of characters straining the bounds of my patience with their heightened and abrasive character choices. There’s Yukina, right up front, as the oppressive and borderline-psychotic would-be girlfriend of an oblivious and uninterested Gentarou. (I say “borderline” because she really only threatens a puppet. But it’s still troubling!) Then there’s Yuuki, who is buffeted by Yukina’s mania into supporting her quest for love, or whatever possessive and alarming version of it Yukina’s capable of, via an unflattering costume. But mostly, there’s Ryuusei, who is… hmm.

This is our first episode with Ryuusei as Gentarou’s friend, and I didn’t care for it? He’s glued to Gentarou’s side in this one to a People Write Fic About This degree, and if I can see it as an attribute of Ryuusei’s that’s fairly well established – he became a Kamen Rider and murdered Gentarou in order to protect his only friend, so this is not a guy who just checks in once a month via text – it’s also kind of unwelcome and not super funny here. Like, Gentarou is a teen boy! He had his Teen Love Story back before Ryuusei showed up! You don’t need to bodyguard him from an overly amorous teen girl! Especially just deciding on your own that he needs protection without Gentarou objecting to Yukina's overtures! You’re being too weird too fast, Ryuusei!

It’s an okay idea, Ryuusei being newly protective of Gentarou while Gentarou withstands Yukina’s attention in order not to ruin her school trip, but the energy in it’s all wrong: too heightened, too loud, too fast, too aggressive. The whole hidden identity on a class trip thing is fun, and Gentarou fending off a girl who’s a pest is fun, but it’s just too pushy here, like Yukina herself. It’s cartoonish, and while this show normally exists around that level, this one takes it too far over the line, from TV show to HBV. I love HBVs, but you can’t do ‘em as part of the weekly storyline!

And this is very much a Weekly Storyline episode, despite the absence of half of the KRC from the Kyoto trip, or Ohsugi getting ditched in a perfectly sad scene of his standard humiliation. We’ve got Leo making a real, actual appearance; we’ve got Kengo meeting an old scientist buddy of his dad’s; we’ve got the Horoscopes being up to something in Kyoto; and we’ve even got the groaningly unwelcome TV series return of Foundation X, but at least they get beat up real bad. It’s a stuffed episode! And not just for Hayabusa’s prominence!