[Kamen Rider Die]

Hello, friends. My name’s Kamen Rider Die, and this thread is “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider Fourze”.

I just think Fourze’s a fun show? There’re for sure deeper themes and tragic stories we’ll get into over the next few months of me revisiting this series, but Fourze’s just fun for me. I think Teen Ensemble Dramedy mixed with Superhero Action is a pretty unbeatable combo, more so than any number of combinations utilized by the preceding Rider. The main cast is massive enough to sustain a series four times as long without ever feeling exhausted, and the little two-episode stories we get about struggling teens and their metaphorical problems is the exact right level for a show like this to operate on. We’re given a series with intricately sketched characters who evoke relatable adolescent concerns – every dilemma is personal, yet universal.

All that said, I do not 100% remember if that’s actually the case! I remember liking Fourze more than I remember Fourze, which is one of the reasons I’m excited to crack into this show on a rewatch. I’ve enjoyed the bits and pieces I’ve gotten to see again over the last few years via Legend Rider projects, and now I can finally reconnect with all of my friends in the KRC.

Before we get started, a few minor bits of business!

PLEASE ONLY DISCUSS WHATEVER EPISODE WE’RE ON. I’m frequently guilty of this too, but let’s all try and not get too far ahead if we talk about this show. I like being able to appreciate every step of the journey, rather than just framing it all in the context of the destination. If we can stay within the boundaries of the current episode (or anything prior), that’d make it more fun for me.

I MIGHT MENTION STUFF FROM OTHER SHOWS. I definitely will bring up thematic parallels to other shows when it feels necessary, or random jokes about other shows when they’re unavoidable. (There are probably going to be minor references to Blade, at the very least. Sorry if that is also a spoiler!) If you’re the type of fan who wants to go in cold on other shows, consider this a warning.

FEEL FREE TO CHIME IN, BUT DON’T FEEL OBLIGATED. I always enjoy these threads more when people feel like adding to the discussion – teamwork and friendship are certainly a major part of Fourze! – but I am aware of the dynamics of message boards in 2026, and I will not take it personally if discussion is light. I’m good either way!

That’s it for the warnings and disclaimers, I think? Episode posts will go up frequently, but not daily. I switched to more of a When I Have Time schedule with Gridman and Dynazenon last year, and the flexibility really worked for me. I still like to do at least five posts per week, but there may be the occasional string of days where finding time to watch and write just doesn’t happen. Luckily, TokuNation allows you to subscribe to threads, so you can always get an update when a new post goes up. What a treat!

Okay! It’s time for “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider Fourze”! START THE COUNTDOWN!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 01 - “TRANSFORMING HIGH SCHOOL LIFE”



There’s a quote from JFK, back in the 1960s when America was pursuing the at-the-time quixotic goal of landing a man on the moon. In a speech, he said that America taking on these scientific tasks was “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. The point of doing something, in his estimation, is to push yourself, to put yourself out there, to take risks, and do something that changes you and grows your abilities.

And that’s Gentarou, right? He wants to make friends with everyone; not be friends with everyone, but make friends with everyone. He specifically chooses Kengo to be his project in this episode not in spite of the fact that Kengo is a petulant asshole in this episode, but because of it. (Kengo’s first scene is him breaking an unnamed girl’s heart because he’s Not Here To Make Friends!) Gentarou challenges himself to find a way to get Kengo to like him, sure, but he’s also challenging himself to find something to like in Kengo. (Uphill battle for this one!) Forging connections and creating friendships is easy when there’s mutual respect and overlapping interests, but it’s more rewarding when it’s achieved by bridging a chasm of teen melodrama and grumpy disaffection.

Which is another way of saying Welcome to Kamen Rider Fourze!

Great first episode. Everything is there, right in the debut. The core trio feels perfectly aligned: flighty, ebullient Yuuji; raging, forceful Kengo; and dedicated, charismatic Gentarou. While we get a look in at the rest of our soon-to-be regulars – JK providing snarky commentary, Miu flirting with a guy that her boyfriend’s about to demolish, Shun showcasing that the filmmakers are not clear on exactly which football position our resident jock actually plays – the specific energy of our main three is what keeps everything orbiting correctly. (Sorry!) The way that any two of the three can collaborate for a scene on a different wavelength than any other configuration bodes well for a show that’ll mix and match a growing and idiosyncratic cast. Like, Gen and Yuuji have this goofy irreverence to how they approach danger, but Gen and Kengo are more locked-in and aggressive, but Yuuji and Kengo are more inquisitive and excited. Each actor/character alters the formula, so no scene ever feels repetitive or unnecessary, even if it’s just to watch some ridiculous flourish. (Yuuji geeking out over the first Fourze henshin!)

It’s also just so much fun to watch? The big setting of a high school makes all of the action pop more for me – this isn’t typical Kamen Rider Geography where a fight at the stadium rolls into the river rolls into the quarry, you know? We’re at a place, and the fights feel like they both affect the place (damage and explosions) and are affected by the place (locker rooms). Amanogawa High School is as much a character on the show as any of the kids or teachers (arguably more than some of the teachers; Sonoda isn’t much to talk about this time, and Chuuta is Wacky) and you really get a sense of it through this episode. Beyond a quick moon-based prelude, and a tiny detour to collect the Fourze Driver later in the episode, we’re just at school for a day, and that’s exactly what I wanted. Keeping the action to the school feels distinct to this series, and I love it.

Doesn’t hurt that this is maybe the signature Sakamoto show, a guy who’s synonymous with Heisei action… and other stuff. This premiere really gets across the duality of Sakamoto, with tons of memorable action, both superheroic and otherwise – Gen jumping off a bridge in his first scene, the brawl with the Zodiart, and some shockingly good CG on the Power Dizer appearances – wedded to some male gaze-y camerawork. (I feel like Sakamoto just did a find-and-replace through the script, switching ESTABLISHING SHOT with LEGS.) The high school setting feels a little weird at times; teens are horny, and that should be part of the story, but the filmmakers shouldn’t necessarily be horny. Still, it’s never too distracting, and if it’s especially noticeable or heightened from what I remember, this is a premiere, and everything’s a little turned up from how it might work on a recurring basis.

It’s, seriously, a hell of a set-up for a show. Gen/Yuuji/Kengo is an engine that reliably moves the plot and creates melodramatic teen tension (Kengo cursing his body; we’ve all been there as teens, bud) while the superhero action and ensemble conflicts are dropped in with just the right ratio and tone. I can’t believe this thing started off better than I remembered it!

[Androzani84]

So once again, you and I are doing watch threads for Rider and Sentai, exactly 5 years on.

But to get on topic, I remember that I started watching Fourze because I couldn’t decide whether to watch it or OOO, so I cut out the middle man and watched both. So they kind of blend together in my memory, even though I took longer to watch Fourze (16 weeks to OOO’s 7). So I’ll have more vivid memories of the second half.

As for what I can discuss, etymology and cast appearing in other shows. The latter won’t start until next time, but for now.

Gentaro is one letter off being an anagram of “Stronger”.

Kengo Utahoshi is an anagram of Takeshi Hongou, the civilian identity for Rider Ichigou.

Yuki Jojima is a modification of Joji Yuki, Riderman’s civilian identity.

Miu Kazushiro is an anagram of V3’s given name, Shiro Kazami.

And Shun Daimonji is an alternate reading of the kanji for Hayato Ichimonji, aka Nigou.

And as for additional trivia, Kengo almost being Fourze before Gentaro steps in has a bit of a real life precedent to it, as Ryuki Takahashi (Kengo) was up for the role of Gentaro before Sota Fukushi (Gentaro) chose him as a partner for a part of the audition that required a second actor to play off.

[DreamSword]

Overall, I find Fourze to be a very average season of Power Rangers.

There, you now have what pretty much every post I could make on the show would amount to.

I might chime in on a few episodes I find super notable in the future, but otherwise I'm likely sitting this one out. I hope you and whoever else watches along has fun though.

[Sunred]

Just gonna drop this here.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

As for what I can discuss, etymology and cast appearing in other shows.

This is something that's maybe more relevant to bring up around the winter movie, but the kind of vestigial aspects of this show's original conception as a 40th anniversary exploration of Kamen Riders as urban legends is FASCINATING to me. The names, the KRC as an idea, the movie stuff, the various ancillary videos about the Showa era... like, there's so much floating around this show as an anniversary concept, but literally none of it is in the text of the series. So weird!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

Overall, I find Fourze to be a very average season of Power Rangers.

Fair enough! It's definitely got both teens and attitudes in this first episode!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Just gonna drop this here.

An initial draft of the intro writeup had a Saved By The Bell reference, but I was like I'm too old, no one's going to get that, so thank you for making me feel better about my original comparison. There's maybe more Degrassi than Bayside, but I'm glad we're all finding our own ways of drawing out the school setting from this show's DNA.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Doesn't hurt that this is maybe the signature Sakamoto show, a guy who's synonymous with Heisei action... and other stuff.

I wonder if people who have been around longer than me could better get this across, but it's also sort of important to note that Sakamoto was actually only just starting to become synonymous with Rider at the time, since he got involved with the franchise during Double a few years before this. Nowadays, it's like he just shows up to direct episodes and movies and web spinoffs of every toku franchise ever without anyone even needing to ask, so it's easy to take for granted in retrospect, but at the time, it was pretty exciting to see this guy leave Power Rangers and suddenly be making all these projects in Japan that had *this* level of kinetic excitement to nearly every shot. There really wasn't anybody else on these shows doing anything quite like it back then, and maybe there still isn't? This specific period for him, especially, I've always felt was just crazy heightened in a way I feel like he's sort of reined in a bit since. I don't particularly miss his obsession with legs being on such prominent display so constantly, but I definitely still yearn every now and then for how wild stuff like the camera setups could get.

Anyways, yeah, Fourze! Hard to go wrong with this show! Really happy to see you give yourself the opportunity to dig into every episode like this, Die. Going with Aesir for the subs, too, I see! I actually made the same decision during my own rewatch of Fourze, just to mix things up, but the fact that Fourze has so many options available to begin with reminds of what I guess is my first personal anecdote for the thread. I'm grateful to Fourze for a lot of reasons, but one of them is simply that it was the show that gave me the push to try Over-Time's subs after sticking with TV-Nihon throughout OOO, mostly because it was the same place I was grabbing the earlier shows like Ryuki.

Obviously the way Over-Time wrote the lines by comparison was a bit of a revelation and all that, but mostly? It was entirely a matter of them being faster, because I couldn't wait to watch this show. This will all be stuff I've definitely mentioned a million times even just in these threads, but I got into Rider during OOO, which meant Fourze was the first show I was around for from the earliest rumors. I still recall seeing some leaked picture of the dude's spaceship/onigiri looking head and everyone freaking out about how strange and/or lame he looked, because this is back in those pre-Ex-Aid days where it was still possible for lead Rider designs to affect people that way. For whatever reasons, every piece of information that came out about the show just made it seem more and more exciting to me, and when I finally got to watch that premiere, it was everything I hoped for and then some? OOO, I always took for granted, but this was a show I knew right away I was going to be treasuring each and every week of.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I wonder if people who have been around longer than me could better get this across, but it's also sort of important to note that Sakamoto was actually only just starting to become synonymous with Rider at the time, since he got involved with the franchise during Double a few years before this. Nowadays, it's like he just shows up to direct episodes and movies and web spinoffs of every toku franchise ever without anyone even needing to ask, so it's easy to take for granted in retrospect, but at the time, it was pretty exciting to see this guy leave Power Rangers and suddenly be making all these projects in Japan that had *this* level of kinetic excitement to nearly every shot. There really wasn't anybody else on these shows doing anything quite like it back then, and maybe there still isn't? This specific period for him, especially, I've always felt was just crazy heightened in a way I feel like he's sort of reined in a bit since. I don't particularly miss his obsession with legs being on such prominent display so constantly, but I definitely still yearn every now and then for how wild stuff like the camera setups could get.

The Zodiart fight in this episode reminded me a ton of the first episode for Gavv, which has maybe my favorite opening fight in Reiwa. In both, there's a sense of the show using its pre-show planning to have the first suit fight of the series incorporate a level of action and stunt work that -- if not to the level of a movie -- was far more than you were likely to get on a weekly basis, while still feeling like it was in the range of what this team was proving they could deliver. The crew here makes the action scale reasonably, keeps the stakes appropriate, and tells you what you need to know about how the heroes are going to attack problems going forward. It's memorably excellent!

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

An initial draft of the intro writeup had a Saved By The Bell reference, but I was like I'm too old, no one's going to get that, so thank you for making me feel better about my original comparison. There's maybe more Degrassi than Bayside, but I'm glad we're all finding our own ways of drawing out the school setting from this show's DNA.

I wouldn't be surprised, given that Sakamoto was a young international student in America during the early to mid-90s, and shows like Saved By the Bell, 90210, and Degrassi were huge back then.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

I wouldn't be surprised, given that Sakamoto was a young international student in America during the early to mid-90s, and shows like Saved By the Bell, 90210, and Degrassi were huge back then.

It's very America-coded for the premiere, at least to my eyes. The cheerleaders, Shun playing American Football... it just feels way more like something from my context than shows like Gotchard or whatever. (I like Gotchard! That's not a dig!) Maybe that's just how universal these experiences/tropes really are!