[Switchblade]

I love a good "No, I'm not dealing with this" gag and 22 had a fantastic one when Haruka opened the door on Fourze and immediately closed it again. Loved that bit.

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

Fourze 21-22

This arc is pretty memorable for a couple of reasons. The first of these is that it introduces the first new Horoscope, something which will stop being a huge detail when the show's pacing issues makes most of them ordinary monsters of the week near the end of the series. This one is a proper threat, though, and will be around for a good while to come. I remember not liking the guy very much, though, so I'm not exactly thrilled that I'm up to his arc.

The other memorable thing is the main guest star, Nao Nagasawa.Nao is, of course, one of the most prolific tokusatsu actresses of the 2000s and 2010s, having appeared in all of the major toku franchises - Sentai, Rider, Ultraman, and Garo - plus several other shows and movies. She's a talented martial artist in her own right and one of director Koichi Sakamoto's major muses. She joins the cast of Fourze as Gentaro's new homeroom teacher, his new martial arts trainer, and the first non-evil teacher to learn his secret identity. This is an important role, which is why she won't appear again until a cameo near the very end of the series and/or the summer movie, I forget. Still, she's predictably great here as the reluctant face-kicking teacher; I would have happily traded getting more of her instead of the obnoxious Cancer guy.

I did like how this episode tried to misdirect the viewer into thinking Nao was the monster. It didn't work as well on a rewatch, but there was some stuff with Virgo that makes way more sense if you know what her deal really is. This was a fun arc, overall, and probably one of the ones from this part of the show that I remembered most clearly.

Has Yuki gone crazy yet? We're definitely getting there. She showed up for her career counseling appointment with her shuttle hat and some plush satellites on her wrists. That is not normal. Still, that was only one scene and nothing else really pushed deep into crazy town. If anything, I thought it was pretty funny when she and Tomoko tried to spar with each other.

I still liked these episodes. I think it's a pity that Haruka doesn't take Sonoda's place in terms of actually showing up on screen, but it's Nao Nagasawa so I'm going to be unavoidably biased. It does seem weird that the character isn't more prominent from here on out, but Kamen Rider generally doesn't do a lot of recurring characters, just regulars and guests. I'll talk more about my thoughts on this in a few arcs.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

I still liked these episodes. I think it's a pity that Haruka doesn't take Sonoda's place in terms of actually showing up on screen, but it's Nao Nagasawa so I'm going to be unavoidably biased. It does seem weird that the character isn't more prominent from here on out, but Kamen Rider generally doesn't do a lot of recurring characters, just regulars and guests. I'll talk more about my thoughts on this in a few arcs.

I mean, the only way Haruka could reliably recur on Fourze is if she became, like, the faculty advisor for the KRC, but that's a preposterous concept that's not even worth entertaining. No, she's a teacher, so her utility to the narrative is now complete. Sorry!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 23 - “TEAMING UP WITH SWANS”



Despite the presence of Cancer as a new Horoscope to deal with, this one had a real old-school Fourze feel to me. There’s a Zodiart, it’s running around causing trouble, all while a new subculture of students enters the picture. There’s not much in the way of escalating conflict – Cancer might as well be a more talkative early-days Scorpion, and none of the other Horoscopes get involved in this story – and stuff like Meteor’s secret identity is a fun wrinkle, nothing that’s really driving the plot. (Ryuusei does get to ask the big Can A Zodiart Be Good question, but this episode answers it with a resounding Not Cygnus.) It’s just the viewer meeting some weird new characters, and exploring a bizarre hero-worshipping subculture that’s grown at Amanogawa High.

Like, that last part is kind of this whole episode, for better or worse. The Ugly Ducklings are so complex and involved that you can’t really shorthand them the way you might Goth Witches or whatever. Cygnus is new, so that takes a minute to establish; Eguchi’s cosplay gimmick is new, so that takes a minute; the Ugly Ducklings’ headquarters at the abandoned site of the pool hall beneath the Narumi Detective Agency (!!!) is new, so that takes a minute; Misa’s combination recital/motivational speech/workout is new, so that takes a minute. The Ugly Ducklings… there’s a lot there, and sketching it all out – alongside four different Cygnus appearances (including two fights!) – eats up a whole lot of this episode’s runtime. This is an episode where we are kind of on this journey with the KRC, and there’s not a lot of room for them to do more than observe.

But it’s all pretty bonkers, so I don’t know what else you can do besides let this story of Temu Sieg play out until the heel turn. There’s some fun stuff to potentially interrogate with hero worship, and drawing the wrong lessons from warriors, and whatever is going on with Eguchi and Misa, but, again: sort of too much bizarre Ugly Duckling stuff to define for there to be much storytelling pushing things forward. The details are super weird and fun, so it’s never boring, but I definitely got to the end of this episode feeling like there were a bunch of details, but I wasn’t sure what story was being told yet.

I like the details a lot, though: great to see Miu corralling both Kengo’s bruised ego (he really wants Gentarou to stop doing anything other than testing Giant Foot!!!) and Shun’s weird footwear anxiety to get the investigation moving forward in a very offscreen way; any time spent on the chemistry between Tomoko and Ryuusei is a winner; I’m sure Ryuusei’s conversation with Tachibana won’t take on a great significance down the line; of course Gen and Yuuki both almost end up joining a heroic cult; and oh my god Gentarou scored a 4 out of 100 on his test.

[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER FOURZE & OOO: MOVIE WAR MEGA MAX (DIRECTOR’S CUT)

And the action in this movie! Oh, man! It’s an insane amount of fighting that’s largely done by the non-stunt actors, which was pretty amazing. I usually don’t love when Kamen Rider projects give a bunch of action sequences over to non-suit performers, but this was the exception. The fight in Cous Coussier, where Ankh and Eiji hold off about a hundred Yummies (and Eiji does a kip up!) is on par with any of the other fights in the movie. The whole OOO section gives everyone some awesome action, and it keeps the non-suit stretches of this fairly long movie (two hours for the Director’s Cut, which is long for a tokusatsu thing) from ever feeling padded or unnecessary.

I'm not a mook guy, but I do admit that the action in this movie is enjoyable and that everyone have quite equal share of spotlight, and I guess it's how a normal human can show off how badass they are. It seems that despite Hina's monstrous strength, Satonaka is more effective of a fighter compared to her, though yeah Hina's strength is limited to her hands. The Riders seem to be more formidable in fighting mooks, like Eiji and Gentaro, compared to Satonaka, despite Satonaka being supposed the trained one compared to Eiji being the "newbie" (albeit dunno if Eiji still retrains his Greeed characteristics where where Ankh fights similarly), like for comparison to Gaim, Oren/Yoko compared to Kouta. I still wonder how'd Satonaka fare to normal humans in fighting.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Well, there’s another flaw: the Foundation X villains in this one suck. While Poseidon is a bad-ass fighter that reflects back on Aqua’s guilt and fear, the Foundation X mad scientists are trying to rule space? By controlling the world’s energy? All… all of the energy, somehow? It’s all nonsense, exacerbated by the shrug of trying to create a Core Medal and Astro-Switch doomsday device. It’s only the proximity of the two series that provides context for the villain’s scheme, not anything that feels logical or clever. OOO has medals, Fourze has switches, so here’s a villain who makes a switches-and-medals Driver to take over the galaxy. Okay, sure, why not.

This'd be (at least for me), the earlier part of the story where time stop is used, by Super Galaxy King, of which here, it's implemented like Clock Up. Cronus (which is one of my favorite debut) has significantly better implementation of time stop later. Super TaToBa has similar ability to counter Super Galaxy King's, but despite it being a new super/final form for OOO, it seems that Fourze Rocket States did more in the direct combat against Super Galaxy King (including blocking his beam). About Fourze having a penchant for drills, its writer takes cues from its previous anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Giga Drill Break!), and here there's even the scene of Fourze absorbing the energy beam from Super Galaxy King due to ally is based on a scene in that anime too.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

And, in case the gigantic NO. 40 HANGAR in the background doesn’t give it away, this was the second 40th Anniversary Kamen Rider film. Look at all of them Showa guys! That’s going to make someone’s day, and that someone is not Kamen Rider Die. I think they’re used a little better than they were in Let’s Go Kamen Riders, if only for the stellar montage of Every Showa Finisher, but it’s still not a thing I care a ton about. (I think this is the first movie where they gave Nigou a black helmet, though? To make him more visually distinct from Ichigou?) They’re not here to tell a story with them, or about them. They’re here to make the movie feel massive. At that, they succeeded.

It's a must, for a Fourze movie. After all, the KRC members names are all the anagrams of the first 6 Riders. Kengo Utahoshi is an anagram of Takeshi Hongou (Rider 1), Shun Daimonji is a kanji-based joke on Hayato Ichimonji (Rider 2), Miu Kazashiro is an anagram of Shirou Kazami (V3), Yuki Jojima is a feminized version of Joji Yuki (Riderman), JK is short for Jin Keisuke (X), and Nozama (Tomoko) is Amazon backwards.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Yeah, I think this one’s a good one. It’s an OOO section that operates at the highest degree of difficulty possible for a post-series project: You gotta bring Ankh back, because that’s the show, but you also gotta do it in a way that honors the bittersweet ending of that show. I think the decisions here were all the correct ones? Letting Ankh’s return and disappearance be a message of hope, to counter the seeming futility, is a very smart move. It’s a chapter in the larger story, not the end of it, so it’s okay to enjoy the moment without letting it be more than that. Unbelievably effective at getting back to the sweet rhythms of Eiji/Ankh/Hina, if only to entice us to pine for more.

Yeah, it's actually refreshing that Ankh coming back still honors the bittersweet ending of the series (I do think that this is one of the more enjoyable KR movie, where mostly I think they're underwhelming). Eiji never knew about KR series that has Riders fighting each other like Kobayashi's first work Ryuki, so he thinks Miharu/Aqua is inherently an ally, with Hina being innocent to be completely baffled of Riders fighting each other. I guess it's rather similar that Eiji reaches out to Aqua and it worked despite Ankh telling him off, to Gentaro encouraging Nadeshiko (in front of the villains, for the risk) despite Kengo's disbelief, where it worked too.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

MY REPORT ON “KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER FOURZE & OOO: MOVIE WAR MEGA MAX (DIRECTOR’S CUT)” FOR THE KAMEN RIDER CLUB

Like, the first thing in the Fourze side of this movie is JK not showing up for a big club activity because he’d rather goof around than support the team’s mission, but the resolution to the battle between Fourze and the Mutamid is everyone in the club doing whatever they can to support Gentarou when he needs to process his emotions. The swing in this one, when it goes from vague Community Activities to Support Your Friends, it just activates the KRC for some very fun bits of business. The most exciting part of the movie for me this time was watching the entire KRC rally around Gentarou when he needed to take a breath and mourn Nadeshiko, because the KRC is about friendship, and how that saves the world. This is as much a story about how we help our friends navigate relationships as it is a story about navigating relationships, and it took rewatching the first few Fourzes to help me understand that.

Though there's actually attempts to get Fourze to the moon which failed, it may seem that the KRC prioritizing Makise over saving Kengo in ep. 11-12 can be contradictory to the friendship focus as highlighted here to lift Gentaro's burden (also previously Yuki and Tomoko reached out Gentaro taking the truth of Nadeshiko being SOLU), despite it being explained that it's done to honor Kengo's mission left by his dad. I've seen people demonizing those who prioritize taking care of the threat first over reaching out to a friend, it seems that anything about friend is the most urgent thing one should do, or they aren't real friends. But then again, ep. 11-12 means that KRC is directly about saving the world, as what Kengo and Miu stated about before (for his mission, in Kengo's case), despite them being gift breakers. Dunno if those people are more interpreting that defeating villains and saving the world is about exclusively making the world save for their friend/circle (well, like a world for Ankh to return above), or about revenge to them for endangering their friend (only revolving around the main circle).

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Beyond the reminder that Fourze is more than just Gentarou, I thought this one was still a blast to watch, if a little overly-long and kind of eventually not about much. There’s a kind of storytelling that happens in a crossover film where it becomes more about generic superheroic character beats than anything else, and this movie’s no different: Gentarou could’ve been teaming up with Kiva to defeat Neo-Fangires who needed the moon’s power to rule over the cosmos and you’d’ve had pretty much the same final third. (The Mutamids! There is nothing there!!!) It’s cute that Eiji and Gentarou have a minor amount of history, but it basically doesn’t matter. Once the Mega Max part happens, it’s all pyrotechnics and movie-exclusive Form changes, and that’s fine for what it is. (I just really love Rocket States? The double Rocket is such a fun visual, and the bright orange is so rare in this franchise.) What it isn’t, though, is a particularly compelling or deep story, but at least the first two thirds are. And we got the single greatest Kamen Rider Fourze moment in one of those early parts, which is worth yelling about!

I mean obviously any main Rider can team up with any other main Rider, they're generally straight hero types so there shouldn't be no friction between them (albeit there's almost a friction between Gentaro and Shotaro here before Gentaro declares he'd prevent crying). The treat of Rider team up is obviously about the action scenes, with the different powerset of the Riders. Seen in OOO using all the combos against mooks, and Fourze using 2 Switch combinations like Gatling and Chainsaw, Pogo and Arm, or Chain Array and Scissors. Rocket States actually appeared far earlier than I thought, it's before Cosmic States, obviously it'd offer far less than it. It's Fourze's version of stuff like RabbitRabbit or TankTank.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

It's an awesome emotional moment for KRC for sure! Honestly, I didn't even notice how JK slacking off at the start of the Fourze fifth of the movie was foreshadowing for how sometimes people need their own space and can't just be told to "get it together", the friendship has to work on equal terms, or it won't work at all. Gentarou's problem, the loss of his first love, isn't something KRC can solve, but they can carry the extra burden to make it lighter for him and that's exactly what they do. It's a clever reversal to see Gentarou be the one who needs help and all the friends he helped repaying the favor like that.

About JK slacking off, this can be a reminder about how he's rather unlikable who once betrayed Gentaro, and how at least here, the decision to make him join KRC can be questionable, with this scene as the proof in him may be seen as not caring enough for his friends. That, if JK can't be even bothered to help them with "mundane" or "easy" activity like presentation, then he also wouldn't at their lowest. Other than JK here, usually people slacking off like this is always seen in negative light, that in school they'd be the problem student, in work they'd likely get warning or be fired, or yes, they just don't care enough in general. Though Gentaro got help from friends as returning the favor, many people want to be kind and make friends while expecting that they'd get that treatment; and them not getting it is seen as how rotten the world is (but one shouldn't expect others to owe and repaying, though).

[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I mean obviously any main Rider can team up with any other main Rider, they're generally straight hero types so there shouldn't be no friction between them (albeit there's almost a friction between Gentaro and Shotaro here before Gentaro declares he'd prevent crying).

Tell that to Heisei Vs Showa!

[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!

[Fish Sandwich]

I'd love to swing right in with a big spiel where I talk about how these episodes have always been big favorites of mine, but they just kinda aren't, unfortunately? I can't even immediately recall any particular new thought I had about them during my rewatch, and what I still recall from watching them when they were new is the whole thing feeling just a bit... off? Like a story I *wanted* to really like, but just couldn't for reasons I've never totally figured out.

It *is* apparently Keiichi Hasegawa's first script for this show, and also Kyouhei Yamaguchi's first gig directing standard TV episodes of Kamen Rider period(?!), which might account for something or another, but I also think the kind of vague vibes stuff I registered is more down to the show consciously trying to make things feel varied, which is also probably where these ones succeed the most.

So maybe Die's onto something that the story itself is just a little hard to get a grip on? I've always loved that visual of the homemade Fourze costume at the end, not only taken at face value, but as the kind of bookend I love where it's a new riff on something we saw earlier in the story to demonstrate how things have changed from the beginning. It's just that, like Die, I don't recall ever getting anything very specific out of that either, which brings this post back around to the start, not having changed at all. I'd be very curious to hear from someone who did connect with these ones a little more deeply!

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It *is* apparently Keiichi Hasegawa's first script for this show, and also Kyouhei Yamaguchi's first gig directing standard TV episodes of Kamen Rider period(?!), which might account for something or another, but I also think the kind of vague vibes stuff I registered is more down to the show consciously trying to make things feel varied, which is also probably where these ones succeed the most.

If I was forced to find a different way of explaining why it didn't work for me (and I am not forced!), I'd say it's a too-complicated way of exploring too-simple characters. Eguchi feels undercooked, and Misa is lacking a twist of any sort, but the world they inhabit for these two episodes is like a completely TV show that the cast of Fourze uncovered and crossed over with for a fortnight. So much work went into the Cygnus concept and halo effect of the Ugly Ducklings, but the characters that existed within that setup don't feel as thought out.

(Also, man, remember when Ryuusei didn't want to detonate Zodiarts because he was desperately trying to find the one that'll evolve into Aries so he can save Jirou? Well, Ryuusei clearly doesn't remember that, since he just up and Limit Breaks Cygnus all on his lonesome. I guess his pride was pretty wounded by looking bad in front of Tomoko, which is relatable, if still wildly out of character.)