As promised, here are my full thoughts on Episode Blue and Yellow.

Owner does deliver the most humorous line in this movie though, when he announces the return of Teddy as "AlexandroB*TCH!". As expected from the guy responsible for Banana New Shoe.

Future Miku's menacing behavior is targeted specifically towards Present Miku, as a result of self-loathing for not appreciating her grandmother enough. It's a recurring plot in both this movie and Episode Yellow, the desire to use time travel to rectify a mistake in the past, with varying outcomes.

What would be alternative though? They're both the real Miku, so it's not like she can just choose. I think making them compete with each other does a lot to show the shallowness of Present Miku's problem, how she simply ceases to appear in this movie as soon as Future Miku gets rescued by the Denliner crew. Her objective was merely to get Future Miku out of her life, which seems pretty spiteful considering that the grandmother actually enjoyed having two Mikus, while Future Miku was the only one taking the competition seriously to get to spend important time with her grandmother. Present Miku probably spends the rest of her time with her friends offscreen, giving more reason for Future Miku to oppose her. She wants to save that lost time and the ending is bittersweet, with the grandmother destined to die soon, but at least Miku eventually gets closure. It fits with Den-O's prominent theme of inevitability but allowing small consolations that can have profound effects on people in the future. Miku's actress totally sells the emotions as well, so it's not surprising that she would later portray main characters such as Rinko from Wizard and Magical Goth Girl (I don't remember her name right now) from Travelers Dimension Police.

Maybe this is the crux of your beef with this movie? A lot of what's awesome and touching about this movie can only really be appreciated if you can also appreciate Koutarou's friendship with Teddy, which is consistently something you seem apathetic towards at best. Honestly, it's not even much of an original moral, being something that Den-O has covered several times already. But maybe that's why I think it's a necessary moral for Koutarou to learn, if he's to truly inherit the mantle of Den-O. He needed to learn the value of Teddy's presence in his life and once he openly admitted that to himself, that he was incomplete without him, Teddy gained the courage to act on his own desire to fight alongside him, risking his life. It all plays out very similar to the penultimate episode of Double, or rather, that episode of Double plays out similar to this, since this movie existed first. I think it's a cool movie with a strong moral behind it, that manages to find a new way of saying the same thing without seeming too plain.

Air freshener, duh!

So, I'm sure you remember that I'm not particularly fond of Kaito. But despite that, I strangely thought this was a pretty great movie. Actually, not so much despite, but contrary to that, Kaito is actually pretty good in this movie. The value he places in intangible things like freedom and pride that compel him to rectify his mistake. As someone who believes freedom and pride are essential for humans to make the most out of life, this is one of the rare times where I would agree with Kaito's philosophy. The greatest treasures in life are those non-tangible things, which only we can assign value to.

The way his fellow liar Eitoku-portrayed blue antihero interacted with him was smart, with Urataros projecting his own personality on to him to try and find that softer more heroic side he doesn't want anybody else to know about. It's a little more hidden in Kaito and debatable whether or not it's actually genuine, but against my better judgment, I also like to think that he did all this not just to protect his own treasure of the golden gun, but Reiji's treasure of his mother's letters as well. When Kaito says he only cares about treasure, that's true, but that's not always a bad thing. I think he works better as a Den-O character than he did as a Faiz or Decade character.

The scene where Kaito tries to warn Reiji that Denliner is being stolen reminds me of Urataros' line that (paraphrasing) an interesting lie is worth more than 1000 predictable truths. But in this scenario, Kaito's truth was so interesting that Reiji falsely dismissed it as a lie.

The discarded pass being an important part of Kaito's plan is also a humorous throwback to how Gaoh easily hijacked Denliner in Ore Tanjou. Momotaros didn't learn his lesson!

Reiji is one of the few movie-exclusive Riders I'd like to see return someday. I enjoyed his character development arc from a self-righteous punisher of crime (even a mere beverage artist like Naomi) to admitting to himself that his fall to cynicism and doubt in humanity is a weakness that makes him heartless like Eve. Confronting this fact allowed him to forgive his mother for her absence in his life and become a more honest person. Kaito, the man who ruined his life, ended up saving him as well.

Other than the character, G Den-O is also pretty cool! From the way he arrives like a Terminator to the police aesthetic. It's ultimately a villain suit though, due to Eve going rogue like the Fal'Cie Adam, but I would still like to see Reiji become his own police Rider fighting for a more refined justice to show how he has grown from his experiences.

My anger was instead directed towards the absence of Gaoh.... Immediately followed by sadness when I remember why he's absent. Man, I can't look at Diend Complete without being reminded of that.

Hard to argue with Swift. :thumb:

But at least, even if our opinions on Red and Blue are polarized, we can both agree that Yellow is the second best/worst of the trilogy.

Oh, this movie may also be where I first began to like Arc? He's just a big dude! I like how much they play on him just being a Big Dude here in the summon visuals and it's great. He should be around in more stuff so we can have more fun groupshots like this one

This thread makes me want to watch Kamen Rider Den-O again. I actually watched this a long time ago when I'm not fluent in English so there are still a lot of things that I don't understand, so it will be interesting to watch this again and fully understand the story.

OH CRAP! I knew there was something I was forgetting to do!

Sure, and it's something the TV series also hit upon regularly. It's not that it's a weird plot for a Den-O story to try. It's just, the plot in Episode Blue doesn't have enough moves on it to make it seem fresh.

And Rinko From Wizard From The Future's, like, haunting of Rinko From Wizard is more about trying to set up the fakeout of some evil doppelganger/Imagin, and it just keeps going long after that's obviously not the case. It's a character acting in secrecy for dramatic reasons, not logical reasons.

It's a story that pads out its time by having characters not just say the main thing that their performance is SCREAMING at the audience, and I didn't have a ton of patience for it. I needed something from Rinko From Wizard From The Future that was more honest, and I needed something from Grandma that was more blunt. I don't know. It was a story where the entire second act didn't work for me, because there was no surprise or tension.

I mean, I see what you're saying about it being a necessary part of Kotaro's evolution into A Real Den-O, but my problem with that element is my same problem with the Rinko From Wizard stuff: I just don't feel like it was doing anything fresh or clever with those ingredients? It was trying to evoke similar feelings from the Den-O TV series, but that just reinforced for me how hollow and repetitive the movie's story was. It missed trying to warp or twist any of those beats in a clever way, instead leaning into the trope of People Being Jerks To Teach A Lesson, which always comes off as unimaginative and lazy to me.

Yeah, he really wanted to help this one guy not be such a grump. It's such an adorable goal.

Kamen Riders come in all Shapes and Sizes, which is a nice lesson that Kaitou -- the Rider who is the best with children -- can teach the young viewers of this movie.

That's very cool! I hope you enjoy it more the next time. This thread will be here if you want to use it as a group of friends from the past who are watching along with you. It's a form of time travel!

By the way, Pretty Den-O is very non-specific when it takes place. It could be happening any time from the end of the series onward and so can be safely watched whenever. You probably want to watch it roughly in release order, but I just wanted you to know there are no spoilers of anything else in it, so you don't need to.

I'm fairly in the habit of watching random Den-O post-show content between larger series, so I think we'll land Pretty Den-O after Zi-O and before Zero-One. Who knows, maybe by next summer there'll be some new bizarre continuation from the Toei Fan Club ("KAMEN RIDER ZERONOS X KAMEN RIDER IXA: ZERONOSFERATU") for me to watch before starting Saber!

That's the "show, don't tell" rule though. I don't think Koutarou or Miku saying "I took my loved one for granted" would add anything to the plot that wasn't already heavily implied.

That's a fair criticism and I'm not going to deny that the moral was totally unoriginal and borrowed from several other Den-O plots. Even if it was deliberate, I get that it's not the most compelling premise. So maybe you were looking for something more unique to Koutarou's own flavor of Den-O, to make him distinct from Ryoutarou as a hero, rather than seeing him go through basically the same story we've already seen?

Synopsis: Future Sakurai Wakes Up from the dead as a Neo Fangire and everybody starts forgetting about Yuto's existence again. Suddenly, a white Rider appears, demanding Sakurai's button!

Written by: Yonemura Shoji

Maybe you should consider skipping that one? :p

Sure, and I definitely prefer to have something dramatized rather than outright stated, but there wasn't enough mystery to the proceedings for me to get engaged with the story. At least stating it outright would force the story into some different options?

Pretty much!

Uh, no. I would watch that tomorrow.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving, everybody!

This is... it's a little weird. I'm not super-thrilled with TokuNation's setup right now, if I'm being honest. Something happened in the backend infrastructure of the site, and nearly every episode post I ever did for this site is riddled with encoding errors. Like, look at the first post for this thread. Every single apostrophe, quotation mark, or ellipsis is now a string of bizarre characters. (Much like Kamen Rider Den-O, so I appreciate the errors at least being on-topic.) It's possibly something to do with writing my episode posts in another application, and then pasting them over as plain text, but it's not 100% clear. It's a recent error, but it's affected hundreds of my posts. That's a bummer, man. That's a couple years of work that's now... diminished, I guess. Something I'd rather people not see. That's been a little bit heartbreaking, if I'm honest.

It's been reported to the admins by both myself and Androzani84, and we'll see if it gets fixed. I'd hoped it'd be fixed before trying to start something new, but it's the holidays, and I get it.

It's just... I don't love the idea of starting something new at a time where everything else I've done is in a state of disrepair. I don't love the idea of trying to create something new that could look like garbage as soon as I click Submit Reply. It's frustrating, and dispiriting. Part of me was/is willing to walk away from these projects if things can't get fixed. I love you guys, and I love this community, but I'd rather walk away with fond memories than live with omnipresent frustration.

But, who knows? Who knows if it'll all look terrible, or if things will never get fixed? Why walk away under a cloud of uncertainty?

So, yeah, let's talk about Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider Movies and Specials.

Starting (tentatively) December 2nd, I'll be rewatching a whole bunch of Heisei Phase 2 movies and specials, to get me from Decade to Zi-O. It's all stuff I've watched before, but now I'll be doing it with the full knowledge of the Phase 1 characters that are returning. It'll also be a nice chance for me to reacquaint myself with all of the Phase 2 shows, so I'll recognize characters when/if they show back up in Zi-O. A good mix of I Get That Takumi Plot Now and Hey Fourze Is Cool.

Here's our roster (let's see how the site parses it):
Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z/The Gaia Memories of Fate
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider OOO & W feat. Skull: Movie War Core
OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders
Kamen Rider OOO Wonderful: The Shogun and the 21 Core Medals
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider Fourze & OOO: Movie War Mega Max
Kamen Rider Fourze: Rocket Drill States of Friendship
Kamen Rider ? Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen
Kamen Rider Fourze the Movie: Everyone! Let's Feel The Universe!
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum
Kamen Rider ? Super Sentai ? Space Sheriff: Super Hero Taisen Z
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider Gaim & Wizard: The Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle
Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen feat. Super Sentai
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider Drive & Gaim: Movie War Full Throttle
Super Hero Taisen GP: Kamen Rider 3
D-Video Special: Kamen Rider 4
Kamen Rider Drive: Surprise Future
Kamen Rider Chaser
Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Brain
Kamen Rider ? Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie Wars Genesis
Kamen Rider 1
*Kamen Rider Ghost: The 100 Eyecons and Ghost's Fateful Moment
*Kamen Rider Ghost: Legendary! Riders' Souls!
*Kamen Rider Heisei Generations: Dr. Pac-Man vs. Ex-Aid & Ghost with Legend Riders
*Kamen Rider ? Super Sentai: Chou Super Hero Taisen
Kamen Rider Brave: ~Let's Survive! Revival of the Beast Rider Squad!~
Kamen Sentai Gorider
*Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FINAL: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders
*Kamen Rider Build: Be The One

Anything with an asterisk was already written up in the Ghost, Ex-Aid movie, or Build threads. Those won't get new write-ups, but I'll probably repost them in the new thread for convenience. I will rewatch them, though, and I might toss in a few new comments if anything is a revelation.

If you think anything else should be in there, let me know. I'm skipping most of the comedy-oriented stuff because... god, it's all very long! It's nebulously canonical, so that's my cover story, but it's also hours of additional content I do not have time to rewatch. Like, the Fourze ones alone would consume an entire month. But if there's a couple episodes of something I've overlooked, I can try and slot it in.

That thread should go up on December 2nd, with new review/recap/discussion/whatever posts going up two or three times each week. These movies aren't short, and I might have other commitments that limit me from spending three or fours on Kamen Rider in a night. But, y'know, I do want to watch these movies and specials. It's never work.

Anyway, that's where we're at. I'm still pretty bummed that the site carved up a few hundred episodes worth of writing, but we'll try and work through it. No promises, but hopefully this won't permanently derail things. We'll all find out in December! See you then!

The summer movie ones are pretty surprising! I totally expected this to just be movies featuring returning Phase 1 riders since those are the ones that would actually be new to you. But, hey, I'm definitely gonna dissuade you from rewatching movies as good as OOO Wonderful and Be The One!

It was that little bit of Double and Decade teaming up that did it. It was OH RIGHT DOUBLE, like running into an old friend at a bar or something. I just wanted to grab Philip and Shotaro by the arms and drag them into a booth to reminisce about all of our old adventures together. I feel like that spark is integral to the Journey Past Decade, you know? That inescapable nostalgia.

Ooh a Rider Movie Marathon starting next month. Now that sounds like fun leading up to Zi-O.

Here's hoping all works well!

I'm currently following your Blade thread and yeah, R.I.P. those poor apostrophes. If my experience is any help, I've noticed that when my post comes out wrong, I can just edit it and fix all the errors manually. It's annoying, but they don't seem to be permanently broken. It's probably unreasonable to expect you to go back and edit your thousands of insightful reviews, but if there's any special posts you especially want to maintain for posterity, then that's totally a thing you can do, if you want to do it.

I'm looking forward to it!

Yeah, the first time I noticed it, I tried to just fix the errors by hand. But, man, every quotation mark! Every ellipsis! Every apostrophe! Random other things, like the capital-Xs on that list of Legend Rider films! I can't. I cannot scrub several hundred episode posts by hand. Nope!

I've kept Google Docs of everything, so there's at least that. Worst case scenario, I can add the screencaps into those documents and just export them as PDF to share with anyone who still wants them. (Probably just host them somewhere else.) They're all sort of Rough Draft-y, since I usually find and correct a bunch of errors once I post them, but it's better than the current state of those threads.

I sincerely hope things'll get fixed on TokuNation's side, because a lot of other people are seeing work get ruined. It's still early days for this problem.

You don't need to! Automated search and a replace is a thing. You just set it, run it on all of your stuff and blam it's done.

Mind you, that's still a lot of posts to do one at a time, but with proper automations you just have to do every post, not every error.

Interesting!

I don't even know how to do a bulk Find And Replace within Chrome, though. (Find is easy! Replace is not!) And my usual trick of copying the text into a text editor program for corrections and then repasting it into the post would, hilariously, reintroduce the very errors I'm correcting.

Also, boy, still over 500 posts.

But thanks for the tip!

There are specialized text manipulation tools to do that sort of thing, many of them free, as it's absurdly simply to make something like that.

But if pasting plain text doesn't work (which makes no sense. It should) then I don't know how to get around that.

So have you fixed it yet?

I mean, it's not for me to fix! Way above my paygrade/access/skillset. And, no, still not fixed.

Crap:(

KAMEN RIDER DEN-O SPECIAL - “PRETTY DEN-O ON THE SCENE!”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...rettydeno1.png

It’s amazing to me how little you really need for a project to feel like a worthwhile addition to the Den-O canon.

It’s literally just Momo and a friend -slash- partner -slash- host body -slash- terrified young person. That’s it. It’s nice to have the other Imagin, and the Den-Liner, and Naomi, but that’s just icing on a pretty delicious cake. (God knows The Plot Of The TV Show “Kamen Rider Den-O” is fairly irrelevant to a thing feeling Den-O.) The chemistry between Momotaros and his story’s scene partner, the energy between them as they right wrongs and protect memories, that’s the crucial ingredient. Anything less is a miss, and anything more is optional.

It’s why this honestly felt more fun than half of the New Den-O/Kotaro things. The template was never really a kid and his imaginary monster buddy, no matter how much I wished it was to validate my claim that the Ryotaro-less version should’ve moved Yuuto into the lead role; the template was a kid and Momo. The smartest thing this franchise did in the later Heisei years (post-Decade) was outright state that Momo was now Kamen Rider Den-O. Momo is this show, for better or worse.

(It’s nothing I’m going to really make a case for in this post, but the “worse” would probably be a more permanent shift away from the melancholy and pathos that typified Ryotaro’s addition to the premise, in favor of Momo’s manic energy and raw emotions. You can’t really put Momo in the driver’s seat of a story and not have it skew early and often into hijinks. It’s fun, but it never becomes poignant or thought-provoking. That was what Ryotaro brought to the table. Well, that and some great physical comedy.)

Which is not to say that the non-Momo parts of this thing didn’t work, because I thought what was here was pretty sweet. It’s a 20-odd minute special, and none of it is particularly challenging, plot-wise. If you haven’t guessed the identity of Melon before she says her first line, I can’t imagine what you made of Den-O’s year-long mystery. (You might’ve even been more perplexed than me! I’m actually worried for you!) But it’s not the sort of story that relies on big twists or precise structure – I mean, the bad guys are Shocker. This is stage show-level storytelling.

But, man, I like some stage shows for precisely the reason I liked this special. The characters are charming and clearly defined; the heroes are goofy, even in success; the villains are dopes, mooks, and chumps; the new suit is cleverly designed and perfect for the circumstance; and the need to impart a lesson doesn’t really get in the way of a comedic adventure.

(The bookended Anna Learns To Keep A Promise thing is… it is not this special’s high point. It’s a bizarre fight Anna and her mom get into in the first scene that starts at a 9, and it’s not really a huge part of Melon and Anna’s relationship in the past. There’s never really a point where Anna has to choose to keep the promise or not keep the promise; it’s all self-preservation and heroism, not really a Saber episode.)

I thought this was as strong a Den-O installment as you’re likely to get with a 25-minute DVD adventure for a show that wrapped up twelve years earlier. I’d watch the hell out of a mini-series continuation, at the very least. We still gotta find out what the deal was with that other Rider who shows up after the credits!!!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...rettydeno2.png

THE BAGGAGE CAR

-Really funny gag to have that year’s Rider, Black RX, swoop in late for the crossover. It’s a fun gag that’s above and beyond what anyone could reasonably expect from this project. I applaud the project commemorating the Heisei era’s first Rider, instead of tossing in some Showa jank.

-I know I did a whole thing up there about how Momo And Friend is really all you need for a Den-O story, but… man, so good to still see Naomi plugging away in the Den-Liner Cafe Car. As pivotal to my enjoyment of a Den-O tale as a good rendition of Climax Jump.

-Which this movie also had! It’s a cleaner version of the second TV show version, the all-Imagin one.

-Finally, hi, welcome back to Kamen Rider Die Watches Kamen Rider Den-O, albeit briefly. I’m still on an extended break from writing and posting, but I have not been in a Kin-style hibernation! I’ve been going back through the old threads and cleaning stuff up: fixing broken image links, cleaning up the occasional typo, and eliminating the errors that TokuNation’s forum software introduced a couple years back. Everything from Kuuga through Den-O should be good, as well as all of the Reiwa posts. My plan is to get Kiva, Decade, the Legend Riders projects, Ghost, Build, and Zi-O all done by the end of the year. I feel confident about that! Let's hope that that's not hubris talking!

-I’ve also been copying over all of those fixed posts to a new site, Kamen Rider Die Watches Kamen Rider. All of my old posts are going to be archived there, if you ever want to check them out. (It’s mostly so I don’t get worried that TokuNation will somehow eat the posts beyond my ability to reconstruct them.) New threads will always debut here – and all of the posts link back to the board discussion – but that site will be an accessible library, if you’re interested. It’s still under construction, but there’s a baker’s dozen shows currently archived, with more to come. I hope you don’t think it’s weird that I made it!

-Happy to discuss the special with y’all, if you’ve got thoughts. Otherwise, I’ll see you in January for Kamen Rider W!

This movie is one of my favorite low stakes villain plots ever: "we're going to steal a time machine, go back to 1989, and steal a child's lottery ticket for what is almost assuredly a very meager prize, all things considered." It's a stupid amount of effort that probably costs more than it would net, even without the inevitable Kamen Riding interference. This is right up there with the time Destron made a monster who specifically turned people into exploding flying squirrels.

I also absolutely loved the gag where one of the contemporary mooks from Black RX showed up and the Shocker mooks assume that he must be the leader of Crisis.

Only the mind of Yonemura could give us a treasure this outrageously pointless and primarily metaphorical. When your starting point is They Target A Little Girl For a Ticket She Doesn't Even Know She's Carrying, you can pretty much get away with whatever plot developments you want after that.

I just love dumb villains chasing little kids for dumb reasons!

This makes it so weird that you don't truck with Showa because this is about 70% of what the Showa era is.

I just love dumb villains chasing little kids for dumb reasons and also it's after February 1989!

Sorry for the earlier typo! I'm out of practice!

Yeah, to have Kamen Rider Den-O, you still need Den-O, which at this point the Imagins can become on their own now that they have permanent physical bodies. However, if Ryoutarou's not around to fill the protagonist role anymore, then that's the benefit of having these guest protagonists like Yu, Koutarou, Mitsuru and Anna instead. The story can be whatever, as long as it's thematically relevant, which is why something like Den-O is so versatile that it can keep going even in the Reiwa Era.

This is basically a simplified copy of the exact same plot twist that Yonemura previously used in Let's Go Kamen Riders. So anybody who's watched that should totally know what's happening here. The only difference with Melon is that she wears glasses, whereas Anna's mother doesn't, but that can be easily explained with contacts. I thought Anna was decent enough as a protagonist, showing some courage and kindness. Honestly, I only wish that she got to fight longer as the titular Pretty Den-O, before Momotaros went solo for his Hissatsu Waza Reiwa Version.

I'm glad you enjoyed that as well, since I recall you didn't appreciate the original Imagin Version.

My memory's not great, but I seem to recall the Imagin version not getting a lot of love in general? This one's more tolerable (if still not preferable to the original) thanks to the vocal performances being a little more restrained. The TV version was more, uh... let's be charitable and say *animated*. It was distracting and aggressive in a way that ruined the magic of that song. Here, it's not trying so hard. I thought it was cute!