[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 13 - ?KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL?

On the one hand, this episode is zero percent subtle about its metaphorical usage of ?Astroswitches? in place of ?drugs?. Miura is hardcore fiending for some sweet, sweet, cosmic collectible power, and it?s a wonder that Toei didn?t take the English language route inherent in its foreign high school aesthetics and just title this one ?Switch Madness?. This is not one you?ve got to work hard to decode.

Fourze's episode titles consist of 4 kanji as a rule and Switch is an English word, so I don't think that would work.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

You don?t fight that by defeating drug dealers or exploding drug supplies or putting on street plays about friendship (almost, though!) or by letting someone know that you?ll always protect them from their ability to get more drugs.

That street play was humorous as hell though. It's great that now Kengo is officially part of KRC, he can be convinced to go along with these antics on the basis that it's supporting his mission. He committed to the role as seriously as he could, until he couldn't take anymore.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER FOURZE EPISODE 14 - ?THE STINGER?S RELENTLESS ASSAULT?

I liked that Fourze needed all of his super forms to get the job done, and I think the Dustards are a fun group of star ninjas (???) to beat up as mooks, but you KNOW that I don?t have a lot of love for CG final forms for villains, so, like, half of the Scorpio fights here didn?t click with me. Scorpio?s such a fun hand-to-hand combatant ? all kicks and strikes ? that giving that up for a CG monstrosity feels like a massive downgrade instead of a clever upgrade. At least there were a bunch of black-suited mooks for Fourze to wallop on!

You didn't even like that awesome Rider Double Rocket Drill Kick?! I thought it was fitting how the climactic space fight played like a bigger and better version of the one with Orion Zodiart, but this time instead of defeating Miura, Fourze got to defeat the one who hurt Miura.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Also, please understand how hard I had to fight myself not to make these two images the screengrabs for Episode 14:





I still sort of regret it!!!

I'm not sure which would be more cursed, whether Miura would be referring to Ohsugi or Sonoda.

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

So fun easily missed clue as to the big reveal: Sarina Sonoda is an anagram of ?Sasori na no da?, which is a specific dialect of Japanese for ?I am the scorpion?, or more fittingly, ?I am Scorpio?.

I might've connected the stars to make that constellation, if I'd known that Sonoda had a given name.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

That street play was humorous as hell though. It's great that now Kengo is officially part of KRC, he can be convinced to go along with these antics on the basis that it's supporting his mission. He committed to the role as seriously as he could, until he couldn't take anymore.

A poorly-acted street play to convince a drug-addicted teen that his bullies regret their treatment of him and he should feel good about himself is easily the most memorable non-Tomoko thing from the entire Kamen Rider Fourze experience.

(And we'll be getting to the Tomoko thing later today!)

[Kamen Rider Die]

originally posted on December 12th, 2021, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)”

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



Good set of films!

It’s not really one story, though. It’s like the Decade/W movie, where there’s an epilogue story doing one thing, and then another two-thirds of the runtime dedicated to a completely different story doing an entirely different thing. I liked both stories, though, so I’m not really too upset at how haphazardly they’re joined together.

The OOO story is a good one, and it’s one of my favorite epilogue stories. It reframes the way we’re given Ankh back -- just to lose him again -- as a larger message about protecting the present so you can experience a better future. The hope of Ankh’s return doesn’t disappear, even if (especially if!) Ankh himself does.

I’m not sure this story would work without Eiji’s character, though. You just buy his optimistic dedication to eventually see his friend again. It never comes across as delusional or foolhardy, just this very sweet sense that some day it’ll all work out. And in the meantime, he’ll make sure there’s a world for Ankh to return to.

The Riders that appear in this part of the movie, Aqua and Poseidon, are effective in different ways. (Also, ha ha, we’re back to the Phase 1 thing of No One Actually Says The Character’s Name, so that’s fun.) Aqua’s the sense that the future is something someone else will be responsible for, the fear that the weight of the past renders our actions irrelevant. Poseidon is the consequence of that abdication of responsibility; the cowardice of inaction. They create this nice morality play about how Ankh ain’t gonna just fall out of the sky for Eiji, despite this being a movie where Ankh literally falls out of the sky for Eiji.



Plus, great action-y suit designs. Poseidon has a kind of vulgar aggression to him, letting his opponents know that he’s lowering himself to fight with them. (There’s this one move where he tosses his sword for an opponent to hold, beats them with both fists, then takes the sword back!) Aqua, meanwhile, is this slim Showa design, with a fluid fighting style that prioritizes parries and deflection.

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.

It’s a really solid take on Eiji’s eternal -slash- decade-long goal of reviving his friend, one that makes Maybe Tomorrow into a beacon of hope.



And then there’s Fourze’s section, that’s just straight-up teen romance, and I dig it.

There’s not much linking tissue to the OOO story, thematically. The Fourze story is about first love, and seeing past someone’s exterior to love them for who they are, and it’s all done in a story where Gentaro falls in love with a non-sentient pile of girl-shaped space goo. While the OOO story is built around the past and the future, the Fourze story is very present tense, with a focus on the fleeting nature of teenage infatuation.

I kind of love how easily Fourze stories talk about teen issues, how sturdily they support its inherent melodrama. Everything’s very Big, you know? It’d be idiotic in a W story, or in Gaim story, but for Fourze this all feels perfect. Taking the time to tell this brief story of Gentaro falling in love with a girl from space, instead of tying up loose ends or seeding future ideas or whatever… yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want from a Fourze movie story.



Nadeshiko isn’t much of a character, unfortunately. Suit’s great, and her fights are more fun than I remembered (I mostly recall the Butt Bump, which is not this movie’s proudest moment), but there’s basically no character there until maybe the end of the movie. She’s a non-sentient pile of space goo; this story could’ve worked almost exactly the same if she’d taken the shape of a puppy. It’s a story entirely about Gentaro’s semi-possessive feelings of affection, and the way he’s projecting those feelings onto Nadeshiko. It doesn’t feel reciprocal, until the very end of the movie. If this movie has a flaw, it’s that the concept of Gentaro’s Space Girlfriend doesn’t get more detail than those three words.

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.

It’s a plot that, unlike OOO’s story, has to support a way bigger cast of characters, and its broadness actually ends up making for a really thrilling final third.



I mean, last appearance of Philip and Shotaro together, you know? If this is the last onscreen appearance for these two actors to share, it’s a good one. This is their Legend Rider graduation, the moment where they can feel like they’ve set the stage for future heroes. We’ll see Shotaro again soon, but we won’t ever get to see Kamen Rider Double again. Bittersweet.



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.

There’s a thing that this movie does in its final act that is probably my favorite thing any movie could ever do. When I saw it this time, it immediately activated that Hell Yes feeling the best toku movies can unlock. It’s when all three of the Phase 2 Riders are beating the holy hell out of mobs of monsters, and each Rider’s opening theme plays as they’re doing it: W-B-X while Double is cycling through Gaia Memories; Anything Goes while OOO is soaring the air as Tajador; Switch On while Fourze slots in Astro-Switches. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s a trick nearly every team-up movie would use in the future, because it’s the most potent nostalgia you can mine. It puts you right back in the days when you were watching those shows for the first time, right back when it meant the most to you. I don’t care when Showa suits are trotted out to show the history of the franchise, but I am all in on them playing those killer opening songs while dozens of monsters are cut down like the grass.

(Which, I mean, Phase 2 Heisei is 100% my sweet spot for opening songs. Your mileage may vary!)



All that, and we get the Early-Bird debut of Kamen Rider Meteor. After skipping it for the W/OOO movie, we’re back to that post-credits thing that Accel got, where we see the suit and the actor, with the promise that they’re on a collision course with our Primary Rider. Not much to talk about besides that. I like Meteor! I like what he brings to Fourze’s plot. Here, it’s a brief cameo.

Anyway, this movie was way more fun than I remembered, even if it’s stitched together in a way that doesn’t feel fully thematically coherent. The OOO parts sit sort of uneasily beside the Fourze parts, but both parts are really good. I am okay with a clumsy movie that still delivers pathos, action, and humor. This one did the job! Plus, it gave me one of my Top 5 Favorite Kamen Rider Moments:



—

originally posted on March 28th, 2025, as part of “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider OOO”

FRIDAY IN THE FUTURE



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.

It is still an incredibly long movie, though – god, I love Kamen Rider, but any Rider team-up movie over 90 minutes feels punishing at a certain point. There’s just not enough sense that you’re watching one story, you know? It’s like bingeing a miniseries. Summer movies can get away with it, a long runtime, because you’re in one story. This one’s completely not that, and I feel like each of the first two parts was probably right to trim out 15 minutes or so for the theatrical cut, even if it values pacing over coherency.

But! Still one of the all-time great winter movies for Phase 2, with Sakamoto making everything appropriately cinematic and super-sized. Spent longer than I would’ve wanted rewatching this, but it’s a good flick.

—

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



It’s really funny to me that the only Fourze parts of this movie I talked about four years ago (which: four years ago!!!) were about Gentarou and Nadeshiko, because the only parts I really want to talk about this time are how every other member of the club supports and enhances this story.

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.

Other things I didn’t notice the last couple times: so we’re just tossing in two new Horoscopes?! I know that technically both Virgo and Leo have been glimpsed before, but it’s sort of wild how the fight with Virgo happens in this movie. It’s great, but it seems kind of out of nowhere for this movie to drop in another new antagonist, instead of utilizing the recent Libra Horoscope instead. (Leo just stands around as a bodyguard, so it’s whatever.)

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!

[Fish Sandwich]

I've talked plenty about how awesome this movie is before (as of this writing, I've still yet to see a Rider film I'd be quicker to suggest is just The Best Rider Movie period), but I guess something I can say about it specific to the experience of watching Fourze, as someone who was there at the time, was how excited I was for it to begin with?

Because obviously for an overseas fan, you're waiting way longer than just until it hits theaters. There's the whole half a year or so after that you've gotta endure, and for a movie that seemed this exciting, endure is definitely the right word. More OOO was obviously going to be exciting because it was more OOO, but just that whole premise of the Fourze section was brilliant? Again, it's one of those things where it's like you've basically *gotta* do something like this somewhere, because it just fits everything this show is about so well. It seemed like it was going to be even more fun than Fourze's usual, already higher than normal standard, and when I finally did get to see it, it lived up to the hype, for sure. It's never really gotten less exciting for me over the years, either. Always a fun one to go back to.

[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I've talked plenty about how awesome this movie is before (as of this writing, I've still yet to see a Rider film I'd be quicker to suggest is just The Best Rider Movie period), but I guess something I can say about it specific to the experience of watching Fourze, as someone who was there at the time, was how excited I was for it to begin with?

It's definitely my favorite of the Movie War format, for sure. (The less said about Super Movie Wars Genesis, the better.) If I feel like the third section of this one isn't much more than a climax right from the start -- I think that's a Stronger quote? -- it's mostly because the first two parts work so well. It's big and epic for both OOO and Fourze, while still being grounded and sweet. Hard balance to get right!

("The Best Rider Movie", though... that first Heisei Generations, maybe, for partly nostalgic reasons, but I also think it's sort of perfect in the storytelling and pacing? Trio of Deep Sin, for how mature and melancholy it is? REALxTIME, for being a full-on banger? Tough to say!)

[Fish Sandwich]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

("The Best Rider Movie", though... that first Heisei Generations, maybe, for partly nostalgic reasons, but I also think it's sort of perfect in the storytelling and pacing?

When Heisei Generations came out, I really loved it and thought there was a strong chance it'd end up being another movie I'd keep coming back to over and over the same way as Mega Max. It just sorta didn't end up being that for me? Despite the bold claim I just made, I wouldn't necessarily fight anybody who tried to tell me Heisei Generations is a more narratively cohesive film, but despite all the things it has in its favor, it's never quite been in my heart the way this one is.

It might honestly be the Showa reverence that pushes Mega Max over the edge for me? When I say Mega Max is probably The Best Rider Movie, it sort of means something obnoxiously specific in my head that's worth explaining. It's not about it being my favorite (still Paradise Lost!), it's not about me believing it's better crafted by some list of objective metrics (there are actually quite a few out there that are this awesome in their own ways, including the other two you mentioned) -- it's just like, so holistic as a Kamen Rider experience in way that's so hard to beat.

That's one of the benefits that comes with it being less focused on doing one specific thing. It kind of does everything all at once -- so many characters, so much big mindlessly fun action, but also some actual storytelling to chew on -- and it happens to be really really good at doing all of those things individually, while also doing a decent enough job tying it together just enough for it to all flow smoothly, even when there isn't actually much connecting plenty of the elements when you stop to think about it. I don't actually know if it IS The Best Rider Movie, but it feels like the one that deserves the title of The Best Rider Movie the most to me.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I don't actually know if it IS The Best Rider Movie, but it feels like the one that deserves the title of The Best Rider Movie the most to me.

I love your very specific reasoning! I think that's totally valid!

...unlike the Showa stuff, that is so outside of what I need I need in a Kamen Rider movie that you might as well have said that Super Hero Taisen is the best Rider movie because it has so many Sentai teams in it.