Kamen Rider Fourze (Tokusatsu)

At Amagawa High school, students of all walks of life come together to learn at a school where space exploration is the key subject. But the students are in danger - evil astro switches are being given out to the students that turns them into Zodiarts; monsters who emulate the constellations of the stars. But trying to help them is the secret Kamen Rider club, created by Kisaragi Gentarou, a transfer student who's dream is to become friends with everyone in his school. He fights as Kamen Rider Fourze, using the power of good astro switches to protect the students and return the zodiarts to normal.

(Tokusatsu - 48 episodes, finished)

There is a lot about Fourze which is pretty awesome, but that being said, this isn't one of the best series i've seen. To explain this i need to go into some of the mythology of Kamen Rider. All the Kamen Riders of the past have the power to fight against evil, but that power is often thrust upon them and comes with self harming side effects. For example the original riders were forced to become cyborgs, Kabuto is vilified by society and so on. But with Fourze there is no side effect, and depending on how you slice it, this will either be a good thing or stick out as a flaw in the story. And also because of Gentarou's attitude towards wanting to be friends, there is often too much touchy-feely emotion going on that can get in the way of the action.

But once you get past that, the rest of the series is extremely awesome. Fourze himself is an epic rider - he is space themed and his main power is have 40 different switches that can equip various weapons and abilites. This creates the widest range of combos imaginable from one rider. That being said though, often one switch will be used once and forgotten about, and after a while he only ends up using 4 or 5 switches repeatedly, which is a shame because that is a huge loss of awesomeness.

The rest of the series is fairly good. The characters are as big a range as you can imagine, and all of them are extremely loveable (although some can be more annoying than others). The story is good but can come off a little face paced. There is a good level of mystery to some of mini stories, but this is eclipsed by some great dialogue and humorous moments. The editing and narrative are all great, but again can come off a little quick.

All in All, Kamen Rider Fourze may not be the best of the Kamen Rider series, but he certainly is one of the best. I like to think he is number 4 on the top 5.