[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 34 - “SKY HOLE COUNTER-OFFENSIVE”



Where were we? Oh, right: Holes.

There’s a lot of plotting and discussing around Holes, and I wasn’t that crazy about it. It’s decent background, bringing in Emoto and clarifying Gamou’s connection to Kengo’s dad, but the basic plot feels like something you could excise entirely from this series. We hadn’t heard about the competing Hole in Kyoto before, and this two-parter eliminates it to protect the sanctity and allure of Gamou’s Hole, so it’s all kind of inconsequential by the end. We didn’t get weeks of lead-up, or anything. This wasn’t some foreshadowed anything, if I recall; it’s backstory wrapped in a plot development that’s introduced and resolved in basically the same sentence. Nice to meet Emoto, and Gamou’s little I Blame Myself For Not Being Heroic Enough To Keep Your Dad From Getting Himself Killed speech is cute, but the idea of Gamou needing to make his Hole the only Hole is entirely new information right before it is entirely irrelevant information.

But that’s just trivia and setup, because the meat of this story is about Gentarou, and the hole he fills for the students of Amanogawa High.

(Sorry, I will stop bringing up holes.)

Yukina’s still not great in this episode – too screechy, too high-energy – but I like what she represents. I like remembering that Gentarou’s friends want to protect him the same way he wants to protect his friends, and that there’s, like, a reciprocity of derangement to the whole situation when you consider the way Gentarou has shaped the kids at Amanogawa High. Where Gentarou will go to insane lengths to protect his friends and show them how much they mean to him, Yukina represents a student body that will go to insane lengths to give Gentarou the high school life that he’s constantly endangering by suiting up as Kamen Rider Fourze. That’s sweet, you know? I don’t love her grating acting choices, or the way the episode has her start at 11 and move to 15 real quick, but the core concept is really affecting: the kids love Gentarou, and resent that he has to be Fourze. The don’t idolize or appreciate him for being Fourze, they idolize and appreciate him in spite of him being Fourze; his value to the school is himself, not a superhero.

Which makes for a nice investigation into what Fourze really is, and how it relates to Gentarou’s personality – Fourze isn’t what puts Gentarou into danger, it’s what protects him from the danger he puts himself in for his friends. My favorite Kamen Rider thing is how it twists that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility trope from American superheroes to do the inverse: With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power. Gentarou will do anything to protect his friends and their chances for happiness, and the Fourze Driver just lets him do that at a bigger scale. Taking the Driver away doesn’t keep him from fighting the Horoscopes, because Gentarou would never put himself (and his safety) ahead of what other people need. It’s a nice heroic moment, mostly articulated by Yukina and Yuuki because you know that Gentarou does not think about this stuff in this way.

But I do! I liked getting this little moment for Gentarou, especially because the rest of the episode was a mix of plotting that felt self-negating, and a bunch of cute scenes that didn’t add up to a whole lot. (Sorry!) I liked the Kengo/Ryuusei scenes, because it felt better calibrated and more thoughtful than the Gen/Ryuusei scenes from last time; I liked the Leo/Libra scene, because it had a moody and adult energy to it that nicely contrasted with how wacky everything was with Yukina up to that point; and I liked Hayami groveling for his life to avoid the Dark Nebula, and debasing himself so hard that he leveled up, which is just Chef’s Kiss for that guy’s character. All good scenes, but it felt like it was helping transition the overall series arc, not stuff that was creating a cohesive story across these two episodes.

Still! Can’t go wrong with a definitive moment for Gentarou’s version of heroism!