Good thing you enjoy W. I wonder why you don't like that last arc as you say in your review?

Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but I'll take a couple runs at it.

THE LAST SECTION OF "MOVIE WAR CORE": Core's just a real boring villain, and its motivation only exists to make Akiko feel bad about wanting the men in her life to value her. Equally bad is the way the movie casually deploys Tajador, a form that actually means something in OOO. Not a fun final act for me.

THE FINAL ARC OF "W": I remember not really liking Wakana's turn? It felt real poorly motivated to me at the time. Sort of soured me on the last few episodes. That, and all of the Foundation X stuff felt like it came out of nowhere.

Hope this answers your question!

I meant the final arc of the show thank you.

OOO, DEN-O, ALL RIDERS: LET’S GO KAMEN RIDERS

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That’s the one thing I remembered from this movie.

I love that shot of Our Heroes (well, Our Heroes And Also Ankh) getting crucified in Kamen Rider Plaza. (Not to be confused with Kamen Rider Aubrey Plaza.) It’s… I was very new to Kamen Rider when I saw this movie, and the gigantic thematic swings a Kamen Rider movie could take hadn’t really been made clear to me yet. So seeing a public execution steeped in Western religious iconography was… I did not see that coming! It’s a pretty shocking image!

No pun intended! I dimly recalled that this was one of those Phase 2 movies where Shocker takes over everything, and it’s definitely that. (I think the other one is Kamen Rider 3?) There’s not really much to this movie outside of Kamen Riders and Shocker, though. It’s a 40th anniversary celebration of Kamen Rider, and boy do they never let you forget it.

Like, the story or moral or lesson or whatever, it’s paper-thin: Kamen Rider -- much like Wu-Tang -- is for the children. We see a world without Kamen Riders, and we see children with nothing to look to for examples of bravery and dedication and sacrifice and sweet-ass bike tricks. It’s a very good lesson! I find it hard to complain about a movie whose text and subtext is Thank Goodness For Kamen Rider.

But, man, this movie eventually just becomes a parade of Kamen Riders, with all the story inherent in, y’know, parades. It’s an entire final third that’s just introduction after introduction, and that’s in a movie that already spends a ton of its runtime introducing Kamen Riders!

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Like this guy! It’s the return of New Den-O, now with (I want to say) lighter hair. This was my first ever Den-O experience, and I don’t know that I got even half of the premise. I definitely didn’t get why Momotaros could just become a Den-O despite being one of the monster guys, and I think I sort of get it now. I guess those Decade episodes where he became a real boy are Den-O canon? Maybe?

This was a fairly middle-of-the-road outing for New Den-O. He doesn’t really have an arc. (None of the superheroes do in this movie. Hell, not even Ankh learns a lesson, and he’s the one instigating the plot!) He’s put through another brief demise of Teddy, which I think now accounts for half of all Teddy stories to date? Him dying and Kotaro feeling distraught until Teddy just shows back up? But the Imagin are all very fun, and Kotaro doesn’t drag anything down. He’s fine, and Den-O’s always at least fun. Nice to see that cast again.

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And then it’s just a million Showa guys. I don’t truck with Showa, so all them old guys flipping through the air was not what I wanted in an OOO/Den-O film. They’re just there, which is pretty much how the entire final third of the film felt to me. I like Kamen Rider suits and all, but these guys were interchangeable for the plot. It was just more and more dudes, without anything for them to do or say.

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Except, of course, for the returning W team! It’s a cameo, at most, but I love seeing them. (And, what the hell, did Philip’s voice change between Movie War Core and this?! He’s got a relatively husky voice when he’s saying his two or three lines! He’s all grown up now!) Shotaro and Philip are maybe my favorite duo in all of Kamen Rider, so I’m going to be a hypocrite and applaud this movie for bringing them back for maybe thirty whole seconds.

Beyond that… god, I don’t know what there even is to talk about. It’s a million hero suits fighting a million villain suits, and the only real theme is that Kamen Rider is an awesome franchise. It’s nothing I disagree with, but I don’t know that I needed it shouted at me for ninety minutes.

Still, that crucifixion shot! Very cool.

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I remember enjoying this movie and this being like my first taste of Den-O since I watched W, OOO, then went to Decade to do some Heisei Rider stuff. I also kind of really enjoy this movies like, last act honestly?

Idk there's something magical about the crowd helping the Riders long enough for them to transform. The old guard that is the Showa Riders leaping in as the crowd cheers their names. Owner's speech about how as long as people have justice in their hearts, Riders will return. The Heisei Crew coming out next with W getting the special treatment as the most recent addition next to OOO. And then the appearance of four showa characters I didn't even know existed because I only assumed Kikaider and Inazuman were anime. And then there's this Pokemon dude named Zubat? But turns out the dude in the show is this super badass guy? Real good stuff. And that's not mentioning stuff like the cool All Rider Break at the very end.

Anyway as I'm typing this I'm rewatching that entire last third of the film which is something I do often. It's just this nice magical experience and it's something I'd like to recreate in my Fanfics alongside a similar moment in another movie one of these days since I am writing a Zi-O Fic.

Regardless in terms of this movie while it isn't my favorite, I vibe with the last third heavily and that's all that matters to me.

But is celebration of the whole franchise so of course Showa Rider is going be there.

I mean, yeah! I think this thing works well on first viewing for all of those reasons. It's a celebration of 40 years of Ishinomori-related tokusatsu, and they hit EVERYTHING. (Even some still images of secondary Riders, because that's when the budget ran out!) The whole point of the movie is to burnish the legend of Kamen Rider until it glows bright enough to last for another forty years. It's doing all of that exceptionally well.

It's just (for me) not really doing anything else, which made rewatching it sort of boring? It's just a celebration of Kamen Rider, without really telling a story outside of that. And... man, there's not much nuance to the Kamen Rider Is Great parts? It's these kids who think Kamen Rider is a joke, until they're willing to die for it. I respect the moral there -- I will never say no to a story about kids learning to be better because of Kamen Riders -- but there's not really a lot to chew on for a repeat viewing.

But, for sure, that finale was real good on the first viewing.

Sure! But a) I don't have to care about it, and b) a lot of it is just dudes jumping over railings for a few minutes. This isn't like an upcoming rewatch where a Showa guy conveys necessary life lessons to a Heisei guy; this is just stuntmen in suits jumping around.

I get the feeling you're going to have a tough time coming up with things to say by the time you get to the third or fourth of these 'have a hundred suits fighting for an hour' films. At least some have funny gimmicks, like a race car match!

I hope so! I mean, at the very least, there'll be some weird anecdotes and unique/wrong opinions!

In this movie we have learned one thing. Ankh is a Douchebag

I don't know that I needed the movie to tell me that (it's, uh, his main characteristic?), but I sort of appreciated how Ankh selfishly destroys the timeline and never ever cares about the consequences. He's slightly put out by the way Shocker has ruined the ability to prey on human desire, but that's about it. Even the finale is just him going Well I Got These Two New Medals So It All Worked Out.

Also, he completely fights children in this movie, which is great.

So when I first watch this movie I was still very new to Kamen Rider yet I somehow I knew V3 was voiced by his original actor despite the fact that I've never seen any of the dude work at the time. Like I didn't even register Ichigo or Nigo y'know the ones they were advertising coming back.

This is very much a Showa reference. I think Ultraman did it first, but crucifixions were surprisingly commonplace during Rider's early years. Long-running Rider supporting character Tachibana Tobei has probably been crucified more often than the lead actor in a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar.

I'm glad you liked seeing these characters again, because I'm fairly certain this is the last time we ever see New Den-O (I think the Cho Den-O trilogy came out before this, but legitimately don't remember and can't be bothered to look it up). By this point, W was obviously the new hotness and Toei probably figured that it was easier to just get Momotaros' actor in a recording booth than it was to get either Kotaro or Kid Ryotaro in front of a camera. We're not quite at the end of Den-O being a required component of everything, but we are past the point where it was no longer essential to get the full cast back.

I know they'd never do it, but I so badly wanted the scene with everyone chanting Rider names to include Shin popping out and the whole crowd going "Uh... that guy!"

Was this the one with Zubat? I love that guy. I highly recommend the show to anyone who a) can truck with Showa and b) loves insanely over-the-top heroes. He's gotten a decent amount of tributes in New Generation Ultraman stuff, most notably Orb borrowing his whole "wandering onto the scene while playing his own theme song" shtick.

I did not know that! Very cool!

I wanna say Kurona brought up how prevalent that strategy was for organizations in Showa, and I think that would make them less special? I liked it here for how much it was not a Heisei thing. Seeing it robbed of historical context was what made it so memorable. If it's just Time To Get Crucified Again, then I'm not as into it.

And that... I know we'll see all this sort of stuff again (Kamen Rider 3?), and we've seen a ton of Vs Showa at the tail end of Decade, but I will always have a bit of a soft spot for Heisei dudes having to grapple with Showa villainy. I'm not as into how much it sometimes flattens the heroes (Eiji could stand to be slightly weirder), but I like the way Ankh kept being a monumental prick, even as he's saving children from the clutches of literal fascist monsters. There's something innately entertaining about watching the (relatively) three-dimensional cast of a Heisei series run up against the cartoonish villainy of any Showa organization.

I didn't think that much of this movie the first time around, but when I rewatched it in a world where I've also seen Super Hero Taisen, I was very pleasantly surprised by how nicely this one holds up, especially considering it's from the same exact writer and director team that brought us SHT (and the same team as Decade's summer movie, at that.) This one is super simple and straightforward, but like, that's not an issue, and the tone throughout is very fun.

Maybe it's literally just because it was made during OOO? Any Kamen Rider story probably becomes at least 50% more enjoyable if it has a healthy amount of Ankh in it, right?

It's definitely that! There's plenty of classic OOO teamwork to this story: Ankh doing whatever he wants while Eiji cleans up the ensuing mess. It's tough to have a bad movie when there's at least a couple scenes of Ankh making everything worse for Eiji.

KAMEN RIDER OOO WONDERFUL: THE SHOGUN AND THE 21 CORE MEDALS

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This is a very sweet film that directly addresses the core (sorry) relationships of the Kamen Rider OOO series… and also a very weird crossover film.

As recent SH Figuarts exhibitions have reminded us: Yes, this film features the star of The Unfettered Shogun, teaming up with a tokusatsu superhero to save Edo-era Japan from a time-traveling alchemist. That’s insane. Imagine if there had been a Power Rangers movie where the Power Rangers had solved the mystery of the villain’s plot thanks to the help of, like, Columbo. Imagine Columbo helping some teens with attitude in the middle act of a summer film. Imagine ten years later, when Hasbro teased Lightning Collection Columbo. Everything I’ve just said is awesome, and ludicrous. AND YET! Toei and Bandai went ahead and did their version of it in 2011, and it’s pretty entertaining.

It’s an entertaining movie, to be sure. There’s a ton of really good fan service in this one. They use GataKiriBa to allow for every single OOO Full Combo to fight side-by-side, and that’s fantastic. There’s a new movie form, the also-recently-offered-as-a-Figuart Burakawani suit. All the villains of the show make both in-suit and out-of-suit appearances. All the heroes take part in the narrative. It’s an All Hands movie.

I’m not sure it really hits any huge heights, though. Everything’s there, and there’s nothing I’d really crab about (well, one thing), but it’s still a very Three Out Of Four Stars movie. Solid, fun, but still sort of forgettable. There’s the one theme, and it’s one I really like, but it’s somehow also one that gets wrapped up midway through the film?

Using the OOO Summer Movie to tell a story about how the people we love can love us back while still sort of being forgettable/inconsiderate/raging assholes, that’s a great OOO theme. It uses the whole Hina/Ankh relationship as a metaphor for trying to make things work with the people in our lives, even if we end up having to do more of the work than they do. Hina’s in a situation where her brother literally has an exterior that is callous and insensitive (Ankh! At some very high levels of Ankholishness this time out! Entertainingly so!), while having an interior that’s thoughtful and caring. That’s Shun’s story, to a less horrific degree. His mom isn’t around as much as he’d like, and he resents her for it. But she’s trying, and she loves him, so maybe he can try to meet her more than halfway. It’s a little more nuanced than the typical Your Parents Are Owed Your Love And Respect No Matter What lesson some recent Kamen Rider movies have foisted on us, and I’m glad for the thoughtfulness Kobayashi brings to the material. Shun’s right to feel like he should matter more, but maybe he can also cut a working mom some slack when she makes an effort.

It all gets wrapped up in a movie that leans on the societal version of family, of all of us supporting each other, but I feel like the emotional component of the movie peaked when Eiji was there for Shun, not when Eiji defeated Bells or when OOO defeated Gara. Everything after Eiji and Shun share that nighttime snack… it was good, but it wasn’t as good.

But this movie was more than just new forms and classic TV actors! We also need to talk about the appearance of a Kamen Rider actor beloved by fans, an actor whose charisma helped unite a sprawling cast of young adults…

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Kaido! (“KAIDO”) Yup, Kaido’s actor makes a brief, welcome appearance as -- what else -- a guitarist whose life gets significantly worse. I can’t imagine why Kaido got cast in a tiny role in a non-Inoue film, but I’m totally grateful for it.

Anyway, there’s also this guy:

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Kamen Rider Fourze! Who matches the screwball energy of Kamen Rider OOO so perfectly, that it reminded me why W/OOO/Fourze (“WOOOF”) is maybe my favorite streak of series in the franchise. Like, Fourze feels like an evolution of what Heisei Phase 2 was trying to do, not a pivot away from it or a boring retread. It’s taking the Feuding Superhero Dynamic of Ankh and Eiji, but blowing it up to a whole roster of teen archetypes. It’s a lead character who is open and generous, who is living Eiji’s previous sentiment that Riders Should Help Each Other. Everything about Fourze’s slapstick sequence in this film is adorable, and it’s a terrific introduction to one of my favorite lead actors.

Which is not to take away from the OOO team, of course. There’s some stuff that feels a little tacked on here (I don’t… I’m not sure why the cast needed to spend the middle third in an Edo-era crossover?), but it’s still a pleasant viewing experience at worst. I don’t love this movie, but I had a fun time watching it.

I feel like I’ve said that before! And I’ll probably be saying it again!

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I have nothing to really say on this movie other than I really liked the ending sequence utilizing Gatakiriba to it's mostly fullest potential. Yeah turning into the OOO Army of Combo's is cool. But that means we don't get to see Gatakiriba physically at the same time for an extended period of time.

(The fullest goes to the stageshow where they bring out 8 suit actors in Gatakiriba suits to bumrush the stage which I will provide an example of.)

Anyway let me tell you about how Tokugawa Yoshimune is the second worst character in the Battride War Series of games. His entire gimmick is all he can do is sword slash, but if you do a special slash you build a meter that gives you super slashes. Problem is every slash you do a camera cut and a slight pause. And that's annoying in a Musou styled game. Also he uses a horse which is one of the worst mounts in the game next to Kiva and Hibiki's chonky bikes.

Now who is the worst playable character? Hongo disguised as a Shocker Grunt, if I recall all he gets is a weak chop, a salute stomp attack... and that's it.

Thankfully they're only playable in certain areas in their respective games but yeah.

That is a bummer, but I respect the character's inclusion. I wish they'd brought him back for all of the other movies that use the Edo set. Like, retroactively declaring this old guy as an Edo-era Kamen Rider. Bunch of Showa dudes flipping over railings, and then there's this 50-year old shogun doing a backflip after Black RX.

Tell me that wouldn't make Heisei Vs Showa, like, at least eight percent cooler.

Back to back, these are two of my favourite Kamen Rider movies; and my impressions of both only got better on a recent rewatch!

Let's Go Kamen Riders is, for me, entirely a bit of fun -- which good, because that's all it's trying to be! Yonemura seems a strange writer choice for a movie that's ostensibly a crossover between two Kobayashi shows, but the reason becomes clear: he is unabashedly in love with Showa Rider. The entire thing is a love letter to it, wonderfully blending the undertones of a lonely fight against a fascist empire; and also through the Kamen Rider Scouts just embracing how absolutely stupid and batshit the entire show actually was! The scouts are actually my least favourite part of the original show but this movie is fighting to make me love them and... and it just about succeeds! It's a fun, joyous romp; and it probably is not doing much to endear itself to someone who isn't a huge Showa fan, but in terms of 'fun anniversary crossovers', this is absolutely the best one to me and I will never get enough of Momotaros ripping up Shocker grunts in the past left and right for no reason. Just a great movie

OOO Wonderful on the other hand captures OOO's themes in ways that I found the series itself lacking in at times. It's something funny I've found on my OOO rewatch; the series has a lot of high points but so so so much in the middle is just very bland or forgettable... which means that movies, with their condensed runtimes, are able to cut out all that and just get right to the good stuff! One very obvious exception at the beginning excluded, of course. OOO Wonderful stands out to me for its very blunt, proud declaration of its themes of coming together and reaching out to each other; the scene where Eiji goes "you're letting me take my family with me? Well everyone is my family!!" is perhaps a very obvious twist but... man. MAN it gives me chills each time, it's straight up one of the best OOO moments to me. Alongside that you've got the excellent Shun subplot, Ankh and Eiji getting some great moments, a bunch of form fanservice, the Fourze cameo, an absolutely batshit crossover idea that if anything furthers those themes of reaching out by being between two things you'd never have expected to join up in a billion years? Yeah, this kinda has everything! One of the best summer movies for me, hands down

Yeah, I really came around on the Scouts with a rewatch. Some of it's just the way the story is told, with Girl Scout and Boy Scout (I've already forgotten their names) sharing a snack at sunset, the hazy afternoons of childhood giving way to the complicated world of adolescence. That part of it, and the incorporation of childhood lessons into adult resolutions, I really loved. It's very sweet.

I didn't dig OOO Wonderful as much as you did, but I absolutely agree that this Summer Movie really encapsulated what the show was trying to talk about. There's not really any fat on it? It's a lean experience, tossing in just about everything you'd want an OOO movie to include.

Overall I felt the movie was just okay. Its very blatant continuity problems bugged me, especially given how it outright ignores character development in the show itself(Why is Uva even here, given when this movie supposedly takes place?). But man, that climax is awesome and I'll never not love it.

As for OOO itself, man. I watched it right after W, and it's a weird show. Like, a really weird show, even by Toku standards. But that's also kinda what made me love it so much? It's a show that embraces just how out there it is, kinda like the first half of Blade. Add onto that some really well done characters(Date aside), and a main hero who I realted to alot? Yeah, it's was easy to choose OOO as my second favorite Rider season.

I always liked the 40th anniversary Let's Go Kamen Riders movie, if it's actually unpopular then that's disappointing!

Lightning Collection Columbo sounds pretty sick, not gonna lie.

Oh, this is a Kamen Rider thread? I'll be back when we hit Wizard and I have knowledge to stand on

It's a real good climax! It's rare to get all of the main Rider's forms altogether for one battle; in fact, it's pretty much only in Kobayashi shows (this and Den-O) that it even happens? Super cool to see all them OOO forms lined up in a row.

I think it's very popular, with the qualification that it's basically just a celebration of the franchise's history. It maybe isn't the best use of those characters, but it's terrific at making you feel like Kamen Rider matters to people.

I will probably see you around the end of the year, then!

The things I remember most about Let's Go Kamen Rider 1) They actually got Nigo's actor back to do his voice. 2) The Double Riders suddenly laughing at Shocker when they reveal they're not brainwashed. 3) Ichigo and Nigo are now able to defeat a Kaijin they previously weren't able to because...justice? 4) Owner introducing all the Kamen Riders. 5) The Rider Break Finisher into the Kamen Rider logo. 6) Birth showing up with all the Secondary Riders to support the Main Riders and acknowledge they're a thing.

It was so random for me when some actor from a notable period drama turned up in a Kamen Rider movie, in-character, and we just kind of roll with it. Like, the actor is fine, I can kind of get into the characters' premise from what I see in this movie, but it just seems so random. But of course Toei just loves using their old Edo sets.

The Gatakiriba Combo into all the OOO forms was pretty obvious in hindsight and shown off a lot in the trailers, but my main takeaway was seeing TaToBa actually use it's Finisher and not only connecting but succeeding, even if it was just joining a bunch of other Finishers. But still!

True! It is incredibly rare in a movie for a base form to be worth anything, and it's worth appreciating.

Well if we're going by Mitsuru Karahashi's connection to the writer, it should be mentioned he was one of the main antagonists in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger not too long before OOO.

(Also worth noting is that Kobayashi got picked to write that show specifically because she's apparently a fan of period dramas, so that might go a little ways towards explaining why her Riders keep winding up in the middle of them.)

OOO had a real good summer movie. While I would insist that everything in OOO was already the good stuff, I can't put it any better than Kurona did. It's OOO, so there's literally nothing wrong with it, and I've also liked it more every time I've seen it. Double's movie was amazing because of that unprecedented level of Sakamoto adrenaline, but OOO goes for a really thoughtful, gentle sort of vibe (relatively speaking, when there's still plenty of fun action), and that's great in its own right. I was also reminded recently that the tagline for the double feature with Gokaiger was literally something like "Heroes bring cheer to Japan!", which gave me a new appreciation for why it might have the tone and message it does. This movie was released in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake, and I'd imagine that, just like the Rider who makes his debut here, the direction of it was influenced by that to some extent. I've described this as an especially "feel-good" kind of movie before even making this connection, so with it in mind, yeah, I think this a real nice film! Hard not to love a Rider flick that ends with a catchy samba jam about holding hands!

OOO, balancing its use of various forms perfectly? What a surprise! :p

Man. Knowing about this early on really made me love Gokaiger and Fourze that much more; and now you?re saying that wonderful but of good will extended to one of my favourite Rider films too?? That really is heartwarming. Also probably points to a reason for the guest stars; much like the huge outpouring of them in Gokai?s second half!

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!)

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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:

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Yeah, I’ve never got a lot of the love for the movie either. It’s got some great action moments (during a watch party, I noted that Nadeshiko kills a grunt by snapping his neck), but little stands out to me.

Though another thing that came up in that watch party: since Kougami created the Poseidon Driver that partially kicked off the plot, he clearly learnt nothing from OOO.

The Director's Cut does a ton for this movie. The Theatrical Cut got rid of so much important stuff that it's ridiculous.

I love this movie because it was my first heisei movie! The OOO part is my favorite, and Nadeshiko being cute (apart from her showing her alien look) was simply enough for me. The action was so good, and I love how the colors just pop, and I kinda also consider this as like part 1 to Movie War Ultimatum.

And I didn't know there was a Director's Cut! I gotta go check that one out then

Probably my favorite of the Movie Wars styled Winter films with Gaim and Drive's coming in at a close second. I'll probably end up posting my tier list of these films once we hit Final just to make it clear where I stand on these all.

I personally enjoyed the whole "Let's tell two separate stories that meet towards the end" thing they attempted to do with these films. But I do feel like only a few of them really, really pull it off. And even then I end up preferring the Generations films just a tad more.

That being said, I think it was this film that really helped me realize that the Showa Riders were cool. While Let's Go Kamen Rider's definitely like started introducing me to Showa, this is the show that really cemented it. At least with the first seven, I think I was also watching some of Black at the time and I was already sold on him. Will say I find it a shame we haven't gone back to Black Helmet Nigo because that was a real good look for him.

One of the smartest elements of OOO's series construction is Kougami, and the way he resolutely doesn't learn from the perils of his enthusiasm. Goto's stunned that Kougami could continue research that would inevitably bring back the Greeed, and Kougami's defense is basically Yeah But What If It Didn't. Kougami's like the boisterous, bull-in-a-china-shop version of the show's ethos, that a well-lived life includes the pursuit of happiness. It's just that Kougami's only happy when he's accidentally unleashing monsters, soooo...

I thankfully never saw the Theatrical Cut!

The bonkers commitment of the Fourze part really won me over. Nadeshiko is revealed as a pile of non-sentient space goo, and yet the entire team cheers on Gentaro's declaration of friendship and love for that non-sentient pile of space goo. (They also tease him relentlessly about having a crush on Nadeshiko, which is the most Having Friends As A Teenager thing I can think of.)

Yeah, I think Generations is a better format. The problem with Movie War isn't just that it's two separate stories, but that it's 1/3 one story and 2/3 another story. All of the Foundation X stuff is circling around the Fourze plot and characters, with a small cameo late in the OOO story. With Generations, there's a little more effort to create a story that makes sense for both Rider casts.

This one is probably always going to be my favorite of the Phase 2 "epilogue/side story/crossover" format Movie Wars. It helps that this is the first time where all of the parts feel solid on their own; nothing rewritten at the last minute or farmed out to Toshiki Inoue. Neither story feels truly essential to the series, even though Fourze's does come up again (even if it takes Gentaro 20 episodes to remember that Rocket States is a thing), but they're still all really fun. I especially loved having Shotaro and Philip in there; the brief scene were all 3.5 Riders were interacting is a personal favorite. I was really looking forward to having all of the Phase 2 Riders keep showing up in subsequent films, but that obviously didn't happen. That leaves this movie as the one time when it really felt like Toei was developing a permanent bench of returning Kamen Riders.

I generally enjoy Koichi Sakamoto as a director. He has a fantastic eye for dynamic visuals and highly kinetic action sequences that was largely unmatched for most of the '00s and '10s. There are times, though - and I think that the Fourze summer movie is probably the worst Rider example of this - where his appreciation for action girls starts getting into fetish territory.

I'll always feel that having the O7 here feels kind of pointless in the overall scheme of the film's story. That said, I love getting to see all of the classic finishers done with modern cinematography, especially stuff like V3 and X's, which always depended on multiple shots to mask the questionable physics. It was also nice to see Stronger getting the leading role as a tribute to his actor, who had died earlier that year.

Rider 2's black helmet is not unique to this film. I don't remember its full history off-hand, but there were some appearances during the 80s where he'd show up with the black helmet and/or red gloves and boots to more clearly differentiate him from Rider 1.

Yeah, it's real nice. I like how both Eiji and Gentaro are like Help Us Double You're Our Only Hope. Later movies treat the returning Riders as additional fighters, or an extra push at the finale. This one really spent a few minutes with Shotaro and Philip as a steadying hand. Not just the sort of cryptic weirdo Tsukasa acts like in a film we'll cover in the future/probably Thursday, or the sort of random guest star Gentaro himself will eventually be, but someone the newer heroes can go to when things are too much for them. I really liked that.

Maybe! It's still fun to see Satonaka kick ass, so I don't know if I'm that mad at his choices here.

The other cool thing that they added to this film would be something we still get in crossover movies to this day: Legend Rider collectibles! There's the incredibly stupid plot point of Foundation X turning the Seven Legendary Riders into the exact right amount of collectibles to go in the OOO Driver and Fourze Driver, which launched a thousand Legend Rider gimmicks for every future DX Driver. (I mean, I think it debuted here? I don't recall the W or OOO movies featuring Legend Rider collectibles. Someone can let me know if I got the timeline wrong!) Just seeing Fourze open up the case with, like, a Riderman Astro-Switch... it's very dumb, and very cool.

Legend Rider collectables were introduced in the W toyline (well, Decade really, but you know); but this is absolutely the first time they were in fiction. What's really weird about this example is that OOO does have Legend Rider medals, but they don't look like this at all! These medals are products you could not buy and would not make the appropriate sounds in the driver until CSM!

Oh, how weird! I wonder what made the filmmakers go a different way from the previously-released designs?