[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE - ASTROSWITCH SECRET REPORT



Not my favorite style of these TV-kun specials – clip-show-style stuff that’s largely explaining the toys and/or forms – but something about making Ryuusei participate in it creates some incredibly fun energy and absurdity to the proceedings. It honestly gets slightly more boring when Gentarou shows up, mostly because Gentarou’s canon buy-in for any inane/insane task is immediate, where Ryuusei would never act like this on the TV show, so it’s more fun to watch him riff on collectibles at Tachibana’s bizarre insistence. (Tachibana, again: the right pick, comedically! Way less funny if this was Yuuki!)

The actual jokes and commentary are barely dad jokes, and it never feels like there’s an escalation of the plot so much as there’s some minor deviations to how the jokes are constructed in each section, but the connective tissue of Ryuusei’s overheated excitement and Gentarou’s overbearing teamwork allows both actors to do some quality comedic acting. This is maybe my favorite version of the Gen/Ryu team?! Look at these two goofs: