[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Honestly, at the end of the day, after all these years, Fourze is a series where I feel nothing. I don?t hate it, but it?s not cracking my top 10 either.

I'm sorry to hear it didn't work for you, but thanks for sharing your thoughts on it over the last few months!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

If Gamou has realized the errors of his ways by knowing that humans are fine enough as they're, and that he suffers the consequences of his evolution, what'd be the reason for Gamou to still want to see the Presenters via the KRC? He wanted to visit the Presenters to force evolution on humanity, which plan is abandoned now, settling to follow Rokuro's mindset in passing their creations to the next generation.

You got the goal and means backwards. Gamou wanted to meet the Presenters after hearing the voice of space and due to his lack of faith in others, he decided to use the most expedient yet destructive method to ensure he would succeed. This was the reason for his disagreement and betrayal of Rokurou, who wanted humanity to meet the Presenters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

You aren't viewing Tsukasa the same way as this?

Rogue planet

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

As someone whose gateway to tokusatsu was Power Rangers, I always think it's fun to see a good end-of-season base destruction. That's incredibly rare in Kamen Rider, too, so I always have fun with this part.

Tragedy is part of entertainment after all, so I accept that my sadness for the destruction is a credit to the show. Some people just don't want to deal with hard emotions and will turn their back on something the moment their favorite character dies. But I think it's great that Kamen Rider can make people feel a healthy range of emotions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

SERIES WRAP-UP

I feel like talking about this show is really just talking about the characters, maybe more so than any show outside of Saber. The cast is massive, and? like, what is high school except the kids you went to school with, the teachers you had, and the administrators who disregarded your individuality in their pursuit of cosmic ascension? Because of that, as teased/threatened near the beginning of this thread, I am doing my definitive*, unchanging, deeply considered, locked-in POWER RANKING for the Kamen Rider Club. And we?re doing it in countdown order, to make it extra thematic:

9: JK

8: Ryuusei

7: Shun

6: Ohsugi

5: Yuuki

4: Kengo

3: Gentarou

2: Tomoko

1: Miu

Nice to see you've given Kengo and Ohsugi the promotions they deserved! Honestly, I'm especially surprised that you ended up ranking Ohsugi higher than I did. Miu's still your favorite, which is expected at this point after your consistent praise towards her, but Tomoko in second is pretty respectable. Anyway, since you shared yours, I guess it's only fair that I reciprocate with my own Kamen Rider Club Ranking, which I've now put together:

1) Tomoko
2) Gentarou
3) Ryusei
4) Miu
5) Kengo
6) Shun
7) Ohsugi
8) Yuki
9) JK

I also want to clarify like you did for JK that I don't actively dislike any of these characters. They all have some good points. Kamen Rider Fourze is such an awesome show and that's mostly thanks to this lovable group of different individuals making the world around them worth protecting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Honestly, at the end of the day, after all these years, Fourze is a series where I feel nothing. I don?t hate it, but it?s not cracking my top 10 either. Which if you?re familiar with my opinions on? anything shouldn?t be a surprise (and if you?re not, the basic low-down is that I?m meh on anything beloved and popular, while drawn to stuff that most people are neutral to at best, dislike at worst. That?s not even a Toku only thing, I don?t like Kevin Conroy?s take on Batman)

And that's totally okay. Gentarou wouldn't want you to say something you don't believe. I respect that your opinion is authentic and not just jumping on bandwagons.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Kamen Rider Fourze is such an awesome show and that's mostly thanks to this lovable group of different individuals making the world around them worth protecting.

It really is! I think the basic storytelling setup of High School Monster-Fighting is solid enough to do a whole bunch of different kinds of stories, but it's the cast who interacts with those stories that makes this show so special.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

4: Kengo



Kengo is the character I most came around on with this rewatch. I never really liked him on my initial view, but I?m struggling to remember why. I think I just found him too petulant and whiny in the beginning, or just not a great actor. (I still think he?s? solid, maybe not the guy in the cast you see having a long and celebrated career in the industry.)

So imagine my surprise on this rewatch when the Kengo/Gentarou dynamic immediately locked in for me, providing the nucleus around which the entire show orbited. I know I just said that the KRC couldn?t exist without Yuuki, but that?s only because she facilitated the epic and heartwarming friendship between Gentarou and Kengo. It?s a bond that never feels like a foregone conclusion, or permanently resolved ? every time Kengo loses his shit at some insane assertion from Gentarou re: Making Friends, I bought the tension and friction that kept them trying to understand each other, over and over, all season long, because that?s what friendship is. Without Kengo?s arc, you?ve got no show. The Ryuusei stuff doesn?t work without Kengo?s story to provide a template that Meteor could play off of; the Gamou stuff doesn?t work without Kengo?s example; the friendship between Gen and Kengo is the show.

And I think Kengo carries his side of things beautifully? The high point for me (non-47/48 category) has to be Cosmic States, where Kengo has to devise and fulfill a Gentarou plan to revive Gentarou, and the ability for Kengo to do that was such a brilliant example of how these two knuckleheads impacted each other for the better. If I like Fourze, it?s because of this friendship.

Weirdly, I think I like Kengo less when I watch the show again. I think it's because I always tend to remember the character's high points and forget all of the time that he spends being either grumpy or relegated to background status because the show is way more interested in Ryusei right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Honestly, at the end of the day, after all these years, Fourze is a series where I feel nothing. I don?t hate it, but it?s not cracking my top 10 either. Which if you?re familiar with my opinions on? anything shouldn?t be a surprise (and if you?re not, the basic low-down is that I?m meh on anything beloved and popular, while drawn to stuff that most people are neutral to at best, dislike at worst. That?s not even a Toku only thing, I don?t like Kevin Conroy?s take on Batman)

I think Fourze cracks my top ten but not my top five. I don't know if any particularly elements of the series really stand out above the pack, but so much of it works so well that I always have a good time when I watch it. There are a lot of Rider shows that I kinda have to be in a certain mood to want to watch, but I'm pretty much always down for some Fourze.*

*Provided it's not the Gemini two-parter.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

1: Miu

I find it kinda amusing you decided to give your overall thoughts on Fourze by talking about the characters, because it reminds me of when I decided to do the same exact thing with Faiz after rewatching that show. Like, it's not really that surprising either of us would make those decisions at all, it's mostly, just, it reminds me of that Zi-O two parter, and that has me questioning if there really *is* some secret deep affinity between these two seemingly very different shows which makes pairing up them more natural than we'd think. Maybe that .5 episode didn't need to bother being so insecure about it after all!

Anyways, yeah, Fourze's a great time, because hanging out with these guys is always a great time. It's almost like, *too* precious of a show to me, though?

This is something this thread has got me thinking about lately, but, as best as I can currently put this theory, I'm starting to think my relationship with Fourze is sort of locked in time in a way that isn't true of any other Rider show for me? I associate it so strongly with a really specific point in my life that it's hard to think of it outside that context. It actually made rewatching the show a sluggish process for me, because I kept having that experience I described with the Meteor stuff in the finale over and over again, especially in the early episodes. It's the lighthearted show that makes me smile, but I kept getting choked up over scenes that aren't quite supposed to be *that* emotional, even when they are emotional, dramatic scenes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the episode where Tomoko joins the club did me in worse than any of them.

And I think, especially because I've since started another rewatch of Wizard, the show that inexplicably ended up meaning even more to me in the long run than this one, I'm finally becoming conscious of just how unusual that is. When I go back to any Rider show that isn't Fourze, I'm generally thinking about it in the context of where I am now, and how that changes and grows my connection to whatever given series. (You can even see this happening in real time thanks to things like my Kuuga thread.) With Fourze though, at least going back for that first full watch-through since it aired, I was mostly making deeper sense of why it resonated with me in the past.

For now, though, I think I'm going to choose to think of that as just another homework assignment to get to one day. I kind of suspect most of that baggage was something that only needs to be squared away the one time, and that still leaves the mystery of what Fourze really does mean to me in the present as something exciting to discover in the future. A future where hopefully, I'll only be crying at the scenes that are actively gunning for my tears. Fourze has long existed in this strange gray area where despite my *way* above average level of emotional attachment to it, it's somehow not a show I immediately think of as a Ghost-level all-timer for me, but, thanks to this thread, I feel like I'm finally getting a handle of some of why that is.

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

6: Ohsugi

Them Larry King suspenders.
And god, that haiku.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Weirdly, I think I like Kengo less when I watch the show again. I think it's because I always tend to remember the character's high points and forget all of the time that he spends being either grumpy or relegated to background status because the show is way more interested in Ryusei right now.

I don't blame you? I don't really blame anyone who ranks the characters in different orders. Nearly any character in Fourze could either be someone's favorite, or their mortal enemy, and I could probably see it. (Except for Miu and/or Tomoko; you got a problem with them, you got a problem with me.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I associate it so strongly with a really specific point in my life that it's hard to think of it outside that context.

No, I get it. I'm planning to do a rewatch of Agito on my commute starting in May, to refresh myself for the new movie, and I feel like it's going to be real weird -- that's the show I really associate as the start of this whole writing project, where it stopped being reactions to chunks of episodes and I started to really sit with a single installment. It's a formative show for me -- the thinking man's Kuuga! -- and I definitely am going to be right back in the winter of 2020 when I watch it again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Them Larry King suspenders.
And god, that haiku.

He's so good in the middle of this show!

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I don't blame you? I don't really blame anyone who ranks the characters in different orders. Nearly any character in Fourze could either be someone's favorite, or their mortal enemy, and I could probably see it. (Except for Miu and/or Tomoko; you could a problem with them, you got a problem with me.)

We have the same top three, just not in the same order.

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER CLUB MEETING – QUIZ: KAMEN RIDER URBAN LEGENDS!! EPISODE 12



First of all, is that right? Did Shun actually receive half the prizes for the Quizzes? I did the math, and here’s how many times each contestant won a Quiz:

Ryuusei = 0 (He was only in one, but it’d’ve been pretty funny for him to win the one he was in and be able to say he won 100% of his Quizzes.)
JK = 2
Tomoko = 2
Miu = 2 (robbed)
Yuuki = 3
Gentarou = 3
Kengo = 5
Shun = 5

So, actually, counting the Blu-ray he got for hosting 11/12 and the Nigou figure he got for hosting 2, he got seven of the eleven prizes! More than half! (Also, the winningest team was Kengo/Shun with three straight wins, and Tomoko was right to declare that they needed to be broken up after 6.)

With the bookkeeping done with, we can talk about this final Quiz, and it was one of the best. The actual normal Quiz part was solid, even if the kids seemed a little lethargic after eight questions, but the Bonus Round was insane – five kids trying to guess a number and getting incrementally more hyper about it, until only a jankenpon contest could crown a winner – and the little send-off at the end was surprisingly affecting. I wish that the various Final Stage cast Q+As would get subbed at some point, but since that feels unlikely, this is the closest I’ll maybe ever get to hear these actors talk about what this show meant to them while it was still fresh and/or raw. It’s interesting to hear how much each of them embodied parts of their characters: Tomoko’s well-spoken emotional insight; Shun’s poorly-timed humor; Yuuki’s wistful nostalgia; Miu’s charm and joy; Ryuusei’s brevity-bordering-on-curtness; Gentarou’s lack of interiority and easily befuddled nature. You get a sense of how working on this show for a year-plus bonded them, and what the end of it via a DVD pack-in (?!) signifies to them, and it honestly caught me off-guard. I thought we were just gonna give away a Kamen Rider Blu-ray! I did not think you were going to make me sad! MINUS A MILLION POINTS!!!

[Switchblade]

Man, there were way more of these trivia quiz videos than I knew there were.