[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 30 - “NO NEED FOR SENIORS”



This was a sweet and heartfelt conclusion to the Haru/Ran story, which did not have nearly enough meat on the bone.

You can sort of tell by how many extra plots this episode had? We’ve got the Ohsugi B-plot that’s exceptionally funny and hugely important to the storytelling dynamics of the show going forward, without it really feeling terribly looped-in on the core idea of trust across generations. (It sort of does – Ohsugi doesn’t trust the kids to take care of themselves – but it’s not like he’s been burned by trusting kids before, or that it’s a two-way street or anything. He sort of just needs to feel like what they’re doing matters, and that by helping them he could keep the Club safe. It’s a pretty different cross-generational story?) And then we get a random field trip to Ryuusei’s old school to set up next episode’s escalation of the Aries plotline, with a Libra fight that just feels like it’s an obligatory Meteor showcase, padding out the runtime of the episode. That’s a whole lot of stuff that’s happening around the Haru/Ran story, and that does not speak to the depth of the conflict the KRC are trying to resolve.

It’s a story that’s simultaneously believable and exhausting, this Ran stuff. The entire second part exists because Ran got burned by some older kids she trusted, so now she’ll never trust older kids ever again, but she also won’t ever explain why, because that would require trusting the people who are asking, so we get nonstop narrative obstacles from hell to breakfast that our cast has to puzzle their way around. It’s like the bit about her looking for the friendship charm, where instead of saying what she’s looking for, Kisaragi and the rest of the club have to dredge the viaduct for literally everything, and then try and intuit which single piece of debris is relevant. It’s time-consuming, which honestly wouldn’t be as bad if it weren’t also a completely obvious resolution as well. (I love seeing the cast dedicate themselves to insane demonstrations of friendship!) Haru has been saying loudly and violently that he’s tired of Ran thinking he needs to be protected – he started using a psychologically-scourging cosmic collectible just to be powerful enough to stand on his own two feet! This was not hidden information! It’s a setup that makes Ran a giant boulder that everyone alternately needs to work around or try and sand down, and I just got real tired of it. I don’t doubt that a kid who found her best friend bullied by older kids she trusted would be a little gun-shy and overprotective in the aftermath, but the level to which Ran drags her feet in order to drag out this kind of thin story was mildly disappointing. They could’ve done more for Ohsugi’s inaugural Switch Story!

Which, that part was great. I think he’s treated with appropriate level of respect – he gets rightfully offended at JK’s casual suggestion that he doesn’t care about his students, and he gets nicely intense when Ran reveals that a teacher is the one distributing Switches – while still being a buffoon that maybe is not a net positive for the Club. (Well, Net positive, maybe.) Where the Haru/Ran story felt like the show going through its paces ostensibly in the service of expanding its world with a new generation, the Ohsugi story felt like the show actually widening its aperture by looking in the other direction, with the staff of Amanogawa High collaborating with the students to forge a path to victory. The stuff with the kids was just a gentler version of the stories we normally get with the 3rd and 4th-year students, while the Ohsugi story had a spark that broadened the scope of what’s possible on the show. Like Gentarou, maybe I had Ohsugi wrong all this time?!