[Fish Sandwich]

I really liked this movie. Kamen Rider has been using the whole V-Cinema format lately to make some surprisingly interesting movies (the lower budgets pretty much forcing them to actually tell a story, unlike a lot of the summer movies and Movie Wars and such), and this one is definitely towards the top.

There's a lot I can say about it so let's see if I manage to forget anything:

- First off, I was shocked to see in the credits that Takuro Fukuda was actually the writer here. I mean, he wrote some of the show's best episodes, but considering he turned into something of a flake later on I have to wonder what kind of bizarre production woes were actually going on during Ghost proper. This movie, despite centering on an admittedly somewhat flimsy retcon (although the plot point itself was already kinda flimsy, to be honest, so...), feels like it was made with some genuine passion, and the writing here pretty effortlessly ties every random plot point and line of dialogue from not just the show, but every tie-in up to this point together. Makoto's daddy issues are the crux of the story! All the stuff with Alain! Saionji even gets an arc! It's seriously impressive, and the thought I was jokingly having the entire time was "man, did Yuuya Takahashi write this in-between Ex-Aid scripts?", which I'd say is some pretty high praise.

- The story itself also avoided the problem of feeling like something that should've just been done in the show. Elements of it could've been, probably, but on the whole I think this really worked for the best as an epilogue.

- And while overall it definitely feels like Ghost, the film is also very stylistically weird and different, which seems to be Toei's thing with spin-offs lately. You even got the slightest hints of that Amazons-esque ultra-violence here and there! Though thankfully nobody beat Takeru with a pipe. Although I'm sure some of you would've considered that an improvement...

- I also like how they used Takeru here. They tease you with the idea of him actually transforming only to let the movie be about the guy it says it's about. Of course he still gets to speechify just a little bit at the end, but hey, that's what makes him Takeru.

- Sin Specter is rad and the whole fight at the end was a really cool action scene to end on.

- I don't really care for Necrom's new duds though. I guess it's nice he finally got something, at least.

- Speaking of which, Alain shined in this movie a lot too. Add a couple more scenes to flesh out his part and they probably could've just called the movie Kamen Rider Specter/Necrom or something.

So yeah, not perfect, but this was a really fun flick that basically felt like a gift wrapped apology to Makoto for not being used to his full potential in the last stretch of the show. Props to TV-N for finally subbing it even though they hated it. There weren't even any (major) errors in the translation, which is especially impressive given they were apparently watching a completely different movie than me.

EDIT: Well, actually, they completely misheard a single word in Takeru's aforementioned speech at the end, which is actually a HUGE deal on a thematic level, but the actual plot and everything is completely intact, so hey, there's that.