Uh, this was a movie I watched and I don't remember much other than.

"Yay, Yuuto!"

Mach and Faiz Axel's brief superspeed clash

Bits and pieces of the Grand Prix

Drive and Ninninger actually succeeding at making a cool Rider and Sentai Combination mecha.

Oh and the main theme Who's That Guy is a real bop!

Anyway the most I have to contribute is this trailer by the legendary SpeedRacerFlubber:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZIHRNIH2Iw

Like all things Sangou, I really came around on that song after rewatching this movie. It always struck me as a little too dance-y for Sangou's whole Spending Decades Digging Yourself Deeper Into A Pit Of Bitter Recriminations thing, but I do like it. It's pretty catchy, for a song about extinguishing your ego.

Oh speaking of Yuuto I believe actor retired due to health reasons. But came back to acting and this was either his first or his major announcment to being back into the entertainment industry

Aw, that's nice news.

Oh yeah, I forgot the Blade Riders were in this! Maybe, now I've seen Blade, I should rewatch it and remind myself just how odd Taisen films are. And then go watch the Yongou series to not understand that.

But yeah, Sangou is probably the best character to come out of the SHT series. Not that there's a huge selection, unless you really liked the egg from SHT-Z. Sure, it once again comes with "And now Shocker is back", because that's never been done before, and having a race to fix everything is a plot choice, but it feels like there's something more to it than "Let's just have a bunch of suits fight!" Also, his theme is a bop. I guess we never found out "Who that Guy" was.

One of my actual favorite parts of the movie is Shinnosuke challenging Shocker to a race, and then the very next scene is Yuuto pointing out that there's no way Shocker is going to honor the terms of the deal. But then Shinnosuke just goes No Duh, and pivots to trying to solve the legitimate mystery of why Sangou's abduction strategy was so needlessly convoluted.

It nicely hangs a lantern on Shocker's untrustworthiness and Sangou's tortured psychology - like the fact that he keeps befriending Riders he then betrays, endlessly, pathologically - moving the Grand Prix challenge from hail-mary resolution into something more about trying to break Sangou out of his self-loathing patterns.

I don't know, I like that part of the story.

I get ya, I just think it's odd to sell the whole premise of the movie around "the Big Rider race!" Like, are they going that hard on Drive having a car? (Part of me does think that Black is here just because he *also* has a car!) It's unique, is what I'm saying. Plus it makes me think of the Transformers episode where they fix the plot by having a race.

Although I guess it does make sense, if you're looking for a new climax after 3 years of "All the suits fight". Especally when Gokaiger did the 'All the Megazords fight' several years prior.

They are going that hard on Drive having a car, yes! It's the most obvious thing Yonemura could latch onto from the show, and we all know how much Yonemura loves obviousness. (Like, the teamwork part of Drive goes right the hell out the window super early on in the story, and the mystery part is kept to sussing out Sangou's motivation largely off-screen) The villain gets a car, the Showa guys have cars, there's a Death Race 2000 action sequence... Yonemura just saw CAR and stopped looking.

I definitely paid less attention to this movie when everyone got to the quarry.

There's a line V3 says, as 3's fading away, "you're the real Kamen Rider 3", or something like that. It's clearly a reference to how they're both numbered the same, but as Showa fans might notice, it's also a reference to V3 giving Riderman the blessing of "Kamen Rider 4" in the final arc of his show.

Regarding 3 though, denial as a coping mechanism for guilt is an intriguing thing for the story to focus on for sure. It's easy to become a prisoner of your own delusions when the reality is so difficult to accept and that's reflected in all the chains on his suit, showing how his role as a Kamen Rider isn't giving him purpose but keeping him from his purpose. Part of being a sportsman is accepting when you've lost and acknowledging your opponent's merits and it was clever and visually impressive for the movie to use the Rider Grand Prix as a way to frame that conflict, with Shinnosuke, as someone who wants to atone for his part in Hayase's injury, being the one to try and knock some sense in to him and get him to own that past, even though it's ugly, so he can restart his engine and start to become a better and stronger person.

For a work by Yonemura, this movie is a lot more clever than it seems on the surface and probably the first of its series where a good guy or anithero doesn't become a bad guy or antivillain for OOC reasons (Kaito, Retsu, the Showa Riders). You could say Otta was nothing like how he was depicted in the show as a comedic character, but I think maybe that was to show how Shocker's time manipulation has affected the world.

Who's That Guy? :p

Isn't appearing out of nowhere like the whole point of being a ninja? Well, usually. These are specifically "the ninjas that don't hide", so it's strange that they only appear at the end, almost as if they're just here so the movie can return to the more inclusive and marketable Super Hero War naming convention. Which is absurd, cause this is totally Kamen Rider War 2 featuring Ninninjer in essence.

Even Double brought their giant car Revol Garry, cause why settle for a bike when you can bring the whole arsenal!

Yeah, the Kamen Rider 4 special Justifaiz why Takumi is in this movie and it's much easier to understand his relevance to Shocker's plot after watching that. But that's a story for another Die review, which you can bet I'll have opinions about, so look forward to that!

Gou's death was a surprisingly dark way for the movie to end and provided a problem for Kamen Rider 4 to resolve. On the other hand, people watching the movie could just continue watching the show where Gou continues to not be dead, so it's mostly only heavy in the context of the movie and its sequel, but definitely has a lot of shock factor with great execution, as Gou realizes he's screwed and takes it like a real sportsman. Probably another reason why I call him my second favorite Secondary Rider after Cross-Z.

That's a really good point about using sportsmanship to get at Sangou's deeper emotions! I hadn't made that connection, and it's a smart one. Thanks!