[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 40 - “OF VALUES AND PASSION”



I like the little friendship between Tomoko and Emoto. It’s cute, and fragile, in an episode that’s otherwise ridiculous and melodramatic. It’s an oasis of two people finding a little bit of connection amidst cosmic machinations and post-traumatic witch disorder, and I really appreciated that this strange association, of all things, was the way into the reveal that Emoto is Virgo.

It’s something I’m sure we’ll be talking more about soon, but I liked how it all ended up getting revealed, and I like that the show chose this specific episode in which to reveal it. We’re in a story about guilt, and love, and bad choices made in the aftermath of tragedy, and how dreams can get warped into something more nefarious when left to curdle, so that is exactly when you do a little subplot revealing that the generous and kind scientist is actually a Horoscope who may or may not be working to enact Gamou’s villainous schemes. Perfect place for it!

The rest of the episode… I don’t know, it wasn’t for me? There’s kind of three main things going on here – the Emoto/Tomoko/Virgo stuff, the Gentarou/Sayaka stuff, and the Meteor/Taurus/Golf stuff – and they’re all working at such different tonal levels and placed in somewhat haphazard ways, so the end result is more about picking through what’s offered, rather than enjoying a complete package.

Like, in nearly any other episode, “Meteor duels a Horoscope in golf to free the enslaved souls of Amanogawa High” would be the climax of the story, because it’s BY FAR the most memorable and iconic thing to happen here. It’s Meteor! Playing golf for the first time! To defeat a bull-themed fascist! And he wins by using his power-up’s cartoony finisher!!! Instead, this episode drops it in the middle, where Taurus refuses to accept his defeat, and the episode just rolls on to a histrionic climax that’s more about Virgo's warnings than anything else. I can sort of see the episode trying to tie together its various threads this way, turning each resolution into a new problem, but the result just makes each preceding element seem like it was a distraction from the current one; the golf thing didn’t matter, then the Taurus thing didn’t matter, now here’s Virgo.

It didn’t help that the Sugiura/Sayaka stuff just never clicked with me. It’s, again, I can sort of see where it works: Sayaka’s hurt by Sugiura’s overly-permissive take on school governance, and he lets the Zodairt Switch’s cosmic power warp him into a malevolent view of safety through obedience and control, which is the natural enemy of the KRC’s more individualistic ethos. That’s a natural story to tell – safety through control versus happiness through freedom, and the balance to be found within them. But what we get over these two episodes is way too absurd to find much emotional weight: Sugiura’s cosmic breakdancing, Sayaka’s nightmare hospital (???), and the general This Is Over The Top tone to every nominally dramatic flashback scene. It’s a whole bunch of choices that didn’t work for me, in service of a story that wanted to do way too much, without much sense of how to best arrange its pieces.

(Also, man, so many weird questions about this episode! Where were any of the teachers for this story of the school being taken over by Sugiura’s army? Why was Sayaka in the Hospital Of The Damned like she was supernaturally cursed, instead of just fell down a flight of stairs? Why didn’t anything come from JK’s scene of being cheered for his fascism? What happened to Ohsugi? Why does Tomoko not tell anyone else in the KRC that Emoto is Virgo? Why am I expected to care about the love between Sugiura and Sayaka, when they’re both repellant creeps in this story, and only Sugiura has an excuse for it?)

Still, Tomoko and Emoto! Those were some cute scenes.