[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 24 - “THE MOTIVATION FOR HEROISM”



Man, I really wanted to like this one more than I did.

The main thing that worked for me was the Tomoko/Ryuusei date stuff. (And it’s a date! I don’t care how grumpy Ryuusei is! This was their first date!) Tomoko’s whole Manic Goth Dream Girl approach instantly snapped their scenes into focus, while Ryuusei’s typically dismissive judgment became a compelling kind of grudging indulgence, and I could’ve watched another 20 minutes easy of him standing around while she kicked her legs while laying on the ground and trying to sense Cygnus Vibes or whatever. Adorable, and my preferred wavelength for this episode’s story about how heroism is more about being there for people – like Ryuusei wasn’t and Meteor was – than it is about acclaim or adulation – like Ryuusei has to take it on the chin in order to protect Meteor’s identity and effectiveness.

Because the Cygnus stuff with the Ugly Ducklings… too broad! Too cartoonish!

The Ugly Ducklings never felt like a real anything, especially Misa, who’s mysteriously good at ballet now (JK brings this up like it’s a clue, but it never comes up again or gets explained) and is just some psychotic fan for a merciless hero. I feel like her iciness demands more spotlight than she got – there’s too much to do with unraveling Eguchi’s connection to Cygnus – and what’s left is some wild-eyed acolyte who gets betrayed by the hero she worshipped. It’s hard to get a sense of her personality or goals, beyond hero worship and dancing (???), so her comeuppance lacks any real weight. She was a two-dimensional crazy lady that believed in the wrong prophet. There’s no moves to her character, so there’s no catharsis or shock to her getting used as a hostage by Cygnus.

Eguchi didn’t really do it for me either, and I generally love stories about people finding the heroism in the mundane. I just never quite got his character enough to make sense of him. Cygnus is the part of him that wants to be a hero, but for all the times it’s stated, I don’t see any of that in the Eguchi character that’s onscreen? Eguchi admires heroes, sure – he adorably dresses up like Fourze at the end and everything, doing little good deeds like his favorite space hero. But the concept of Cygnus as his ideal self, that never tracks for me? Eguchi doesn’t ever seem to want power, or adulation, or respect, or anything we’d normally think of as the downstream effects of heroism; Eguchi is just a guy who wants to celebrate heroism, even though we’re told he wants to be a hero. But there’s no moment where it’s articulated why he wants to be a hero, or what he thinks being a hero is, or how he’s even getting it wrong. He’s just ignoring people in distress, but not doing anything besides that, or suggesting that heroes don't help people. He doesn’t ever seem to covet the fandom that Cygnus cultivates, or live vicariously through Cygnus’s heroic deeds. And if the point is that Eguchi worships heroes instead of living their ideals – which is where I think this episode’s trying to land – I don’t know that him patterning himself off of Fourze instead of Cygnus is some huge character growth.

A lot of it is, like, you make Cygnus an alternate personality, and you’re kind of not talking about Eguchi’s choices anymore. Halfway through this episode he confesses that Cygnus isn’t a hero, so he’s not in a position to explain away or advocate for Cygnus’s point of view. That leaves us with a guy who, like Misa, worshipped the wrong hero, but at least this guy has some sympathy from the audience. But what he didn’t have, at least from me, was any sense of him taking the wrong lessons from heroes beyond an inability to see that heroism within himself. That’s a cute story, and a valuable lesson, but it’s such a minor point to make amidst all of the work that went into this story.

But! Tomoko and Ryuusei! On a date! That’s worth all of the Meteor plots so far!