Kamen Rider Fourze: Review: The Queen Festival Competition

Firstly, this episode is all about Miu Kazashiro. It’s the annual Queen Festival at Amanogawa High and she basically runs the whole thing, she wins every year, she’s the queen bee, cheerleader captain, everyone worships her. Gentaro, as usual, is on his mission to befriend literally everybody in the school, so he decides the only way to get through to Miu is to actually challenge her. Not fight her, but beat her at her own game. So his big brain plan is to get Yuki to enter the talent contest.

Second part is funny as hell though. Yuki is… Yuki. Super awkward, space-obsessed, zero stage presence, and Gentaro is hyping her up like she’s gonna win. You also get more of JK in this episode, the informant dude who knows everything. The whole vibe is very high-school drama, like a teen movie, but that’s what makes Fourze work. It’s not trying to be super dark yet, it’s just light and goofy. The show is still setting up the Kamen Rider Club dynamic, so you see Kengo being annoyed, Yuki being Yuki, and Gentaro just being too genuine for his own good.

Third, the actual Kamen Rider stuff. The monster of the week is the Chameleon Zodiarts, and honestly the design goes kinda hard. She can turn invisible and has that creepy tongue attack, and she’s been threatening girls not to enter the Queen contest because Miu secretly doesn’t want competition. The fight outside the school is solid, we get to see Fourze struggling a bit more because Kengo is still messing with the Switches. The action isn’t the best of the season but it does its job and the reveal of who the Zodiarts is actually makes sense for the story.

Overall I give this one like a solid 7.5/10. It’s not the most crazy episode, but it does exactly what episode 3 needs to do – it builds the world, makes you actually care about Miu instead of just seeing her as the mean popular girl, and it shows why Gentaro’s whole friendship thing isn’t just a gimmick. If you like Fourze for the heart, this is the episode that proves it’s got more than just space switches and rocket punches.