Funny enough Chiaki/Shinken Green and Kotoha/Shinken Yellow are the only teenagers with attitude during the show. Chiaki was a senior at high school at the start of the show while they never explained if Kotoha even went to one(home schooling maybe?) cause the focus on Kotoha was more about her substituting for her sickly older sister and her family is involved in crafting with bamboo. The rest of the four were grown-ups with attitude. Takeru/Shinken Red's job was literally being the samurai lord of his clan, Ryunosuke/Shinken Blue was a kabuki actor, and Mako/Shinken Pink was a nursery school teacher. Last but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST Genta/Shinken Gold is a suchi chef who makes... mediocre sushi. :lolol
Of course, his genius shines more as a samurai and being a homebrew mystic who can digitize mojikara. Genta is the only member who is a new addition to the clan after 18 generations of Shinkengers, meaning he has no predecessor. Again, emphasis on homebrew. Just watch the show. Fans of Okamoto will love Genta cause the man behind Black, Ohja, Kintaros, and Ixa did the suit acting for Shinken Gold.

I remember really liking this one! I won't deny the flaws of it not selling Shinkenger well, but... heck, honestly I was just having fun! I liked Takeru and Tsuskasa's little stare-down, I liked the visual of Kuuga helping out a great Sentai team... when I eventually watched Shinkenger I ended up watching these two episodes alongside it where they would have gone and just had a great time. I guess I just fail to not enjoy myself with Decade!

That one was even worse because, if I remember correctly, it came right smack dab in the middle of a big plot development. I think it was right when Micchy seemingly killed his brother and stole his belt?

I really the love the development that Tsukasa/Natsumikan gets in this arc and just to see Natsumi get some focus in general. Even if everybody else is saying Tsukasa is a devil who only brings ruin, Natsumi cares about him and thinks he deserves to have a place where he can belong. She believes that he's a good person. That's enough. As long as they're travelling together, that place can be the Hikari Studio, since that's where everybody will always give him a warm welcome and cookies (Eijirou is an artist!) to show how much they appreciate him. It's sweet that she wants him to feel at home with them.

Huh, but being confused about that would mean the order that you started watching these shows would be Power Rangers -> Kamen Rider -> Super Sentai?

No, I'd give that honor to Another Agito.

For some reason, I thought Takeru and Mako were also teenagers, but I checked the wiki (assuming that's correct) and it turns out you're right.

Okamoto is a talented and buff suit actor for sure, in contrast to the very slender Sohma. However, I just don't like Genta as a character, since his behavior annoys me and he doesn't have much of a backstory. I do love Antonio though, who by association would also be portrayed by Okamoto in suit as Shinken Gold/Gold Samurai Ranger.

This is a world without Riders, so I guess I'll mention my 00s Sentai Ranking instead (conveniently the only decade I've completed). Shinkenger is 9/10. Keep in mind that a lot of my favorites are from the 00s so the competition is strong. I like it at least more than Magiranger though. The traditional Japanese elements only grew on me after I started watching Jidaigeki, as I wasn't very familiar with samurai culture at the time. Catwhowalks clearly knows a lot of intriguing stuff about this subject. I actually think the show could have done more with this like the rivalry between Takeru and Chiaki. What if Chiaki did what Masumi did in Boukenger and became a ronin? I think that would have been a cool subplot. My favorite character from this show is definitely Kaoru (who doesn't appear until much later) and I love when she appears in future crossovers.

Unpopular opinion here, but I think Jonathan Tzachor did a great job at faithfully adapting it as Power Rangers Samurai, while giving it a western twist and focusing more on the friendship between the Rangers and the amazing rivalry between Jayden and Deker. It's those little changes that make a big difference.

You quoted my explanation of how it works in this show, then ignored it completely. No one turns the monster in Shinkenger giant. It's an innate part of their biology. You kill them, they become big. Only exceptions are thing that have altered or taxed their biology in some way.

They could have handwaved it in this case, but they just ignore it instead.

These episodes are fantastic.

It's worth noting that this was literally the first ever proper crossover between Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (though it's perhaps also worth noting there was one between Masked Rider and Power Rangers), and I honestly continue to appreciate more and more as the years go by how small kept this? As I just mentioned, it's technically a pretty momentous occasion, but it's very strictly a crossover between Decade and Shinkenger, trying to get the best out of both those shows without throwing anything extraneous into the mix. And it benefits from that a lot.

Kobayashi was doing utterly phenomenal work on Shinkenger that whole year, telling loads of great character-driven stories brought to life by an extremely talented cast who lent a ton of nuance to the already strong scripts, and Decade really lucks out getting to tap into that for even a fortnight.

I've mentioned a ton of times before in this thread, but I always think of each arc of Decade as its own contained "movie" above all else, and this one really acts nicely as this sort of broad look at Decade as the eternal outsider, giving the "I only watched this for Shinkenger" crowd a solid idea of what makes the show unique, while giving the usual viewers a pretty heartwarming summation of how the journey itself maybe IS where Decade belongs. The Den-O episodes by Kobayashi kinda briefly touched on Natsumi's Tsukasa-related angst without it amounting to anything, but here, I really love how they focus in on that, and build it to her deciding that if she can't give Tsukasa a world, she can at least try and give him a home.

The Shinkenger stuff is just awesome because it's Shinkenger, of course. There's that whole bit where Kaitou tricks them into thinking Tsukasa's camera is a bomb, and Kotoha is shoving Takeru to the ground to shield him from the blast, preventing him from explaining the obvious, all while Genta cowers behind a chair as though that will help and oh man do I ever love these guys. Naturally, I hadn't seen Shinkenger when I first watched Decade, but like Decade itself, it was a rather talked-about series among fans when I got into Rider and the bigger toku world, so I was vaguely familiar with the broad strokes going in. The whole style they bring to the table has always been and will always be amazing, and Takeru's whole "I don't think you're a destroyer" conversation with Tsukasa in the climax is one of my favorite bits of the whole show. You always see the guest stars teaming up with Decade, of course, but it's a lot rarer for them to so directly refute Narutaki's nonsense that way, and it fits this plot so well.

...Although I suppose it'd be easier to find things that don't fit well here, with how good these ones are. I find it sort of hilarious that Treasure Sniper plays in both episodes, despite Diend himself being taken out of the action for obvious reasons. (Oh, and that monster concept! Also one of the best of the whole series!) You can also tell Decade turning into Den-O is entirely for Kobayashi fanservice, as the only thing he does in that form is continue to swing the Ride Booker around like usual. (And he still hasn't used that Hibiki card since getting it back!) These aren't even nitpicks, though; I genuinely find all this quite amusing. Speaking of which: you what else was pretty amusing? That Genta fellow, and his comically over-the-top acting. Sure would be neat to see him in Kamen Rider again some day!

These particular episodes are my first exposure to Decade. I watched them mainly for seeing how Genta gets his squid origami back and for something different due to watching Shinkenger (which personally I find to be pretty decent but vastly overrated) at the time which in turn along with the first two Super Hero Taisen movies I watched sometime later got me to really get into the world(s) of Kamen Rider for the first time and had been slowly but surely getting into the franchise.

100% agree with this. For example, Antonio is way cooler than Genta and changing the sushi changer into a cell phone was a great move.

Technically it's Kamen Rider J --> Power Rangers -- > Kamen Rider --> Super Sentai --> Kamen Rider again

I watched J first, didn't know the title because I was a small-brained back then, thought it was power rangers, found Decade which led me to check out Shinkenger, few years pass, I go back in with Rider again.

I pretty much had the opposite experience? I was not really feeling Natsumi's plot in the first couple scenes, but her mounting frustration with YET ANOTHER GROUP OF HEROES angrily demanding Tsukasa stop doing the villainous standing around he's doing, that devil, and just leave already... that sounded about right to me? Narutaki's blame-gaming is even more untethered from facts than usual, and a bunch of judgemental samurai are now berating Tsukasa, and it's all happening in a world where Tsukasa is even more superfluous than usual. Like, the Natsumi thing really landed for me. I felt like it wasn't trying to do more than spotlight the sort of protective, sisterly vibe she had with Tsukasa in the early days of the show, and how that part didn't get obliterated by nightmares of a Rider War. Worked for me!

I don't know if I'd phrase it that way? I don't think it's egotism that's driving Tsukasa at this point in the show, it's that being Kamen Rider Decade is something that's permanent for him now. It's... it's like his home? It's something that gives him value, makes him feel validated by the universe. So facing the possibility that the universe itself doesn't need Riders is probably pretty terrifying for him! Some of his arc in these episodes is finding value in the other parts of his life, like his relationships.

but they did have attitude

I think even the folks who didn't love this episode managed to have fun with it. I'd be hard-pressed to find legitimate flaws, and the clever moments far outweighed any minor quibbles. Like, this one got me onboard with Narutaki. That is some hall-of-fame storytelling, right there!

Yeah, it's a good one for Natsumi. I like that her decision to be there for her friend is something she comes to on her own? It's a little thing, but I like that it's not Tsukasa who has to reach out and make Natsumi feel better. It's Natsumi who has to figure out how to give Tsukasa the necessary emotional support that he would never in a million years ask for. It levels the playing field a bit, makes Team Decade feel a little more equal.

These episodes manage to hit the drama, the action and the humor in roughly the same amounts, which is incredibly hard to do. There's this sweetly sad story about Tsukasa getting heckled and harrassed, eternally, while Natsumi is furious on his behalf; there's this rollicking adventure of Monster Diend taking on a full Sentai team, a Kuuga, and Decade; and there's this goofy joke of a thread about Kaitou being an unrepentant criminal, even if it makes everyone want to kill Tsukasa. Just, man, everything you'd want in a tokusatsu story!

Oh, neat! I can see how these'd help kickstart a Kamen Rider fandom.