I can't tell you how many times I've wished there was a simple list that had the release order of media related to a tokusatsu show and an indication of whether it was canon or not. Trying to figure out when to watch movies is a harrowing ordeal every time.

Literally, just a list of episodes / media in release date order rather than having to go to a movie page, then click on the episodes before/after becase they use translations for the titles written a decade ago that don't match to any modern sub-group.

It's useful, but having it hosted on a google drive is much less useful than somewhere easily publicly accessible (But that's more a sign of the increasingly walled off nature of the internet these days, at least it's not a channel on a Discord)

In other news, the reason I was looking up airdates at all

SUPER HERO TAISEN

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...d0b467b294249&

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...20743ed91417e&

I definitely saw this, back when it first came out, back when I was a total baby to Rider. Did I remember any of it? Eh, somewhat. Tsukasa and Marvellous's cracked plan to beat the evil teams, who have magically revived because fuck you, and Kaitou lashing out because his boyfriend Tsukasa forgot to fill him on the details.

Honstly, a decade-plus on from seeing the spectacle of "Wow! Kamen Rider and Super Sentai in one movie", I'm not sure how well it holds up. There are films that make better use of their returning characters than this, films that have more to say about the legacy of the shows, films that don't have the most contrived reason under the sun for Sentai and Rider to fight. Not helping is how I've never been the hugest Gokaiger fan, and this is way more a Gokaiger + Decade film than Fourze or GoBusters. Which makes sense, they aren't filming a weekly show so they've got time to be the summer movie stars, but there's also that distance to the 2024 me that it's struggling to overcome. I'm a little more lenient to the Decade bit, I've watched it maybe a couple years back, but while Tsukasa is far more believable running a villainous team, that doesn't mean it's not still silly.

(I honestly don't understand why Marvellous was in 1976 as Akaranger to get picked up by the Den Liner if he was just going to unite to fight Decade-as-Ichigou anyway. Was he afraid the other Sentai wouldn't team up with him as Gokai Red because they'd know they were going to figh the Riders? Cause they did that anyway? I don't like to nitpick, but it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere thematically or characterwise either, it's just there for the big "Oh no! It's Marvellous!" It's a whole subplot that, not only do I not get it, I don't even get what they were aiming for.)

On the plus side, the Imagin are here. When are they not?

When I did my Fourze rewatch I skipped this. Just couldn't bring myself to watch it again.

I mean, not counting all the times I saw Yonemura recycle the script throughout the 2010s.

Yeah, I never even bothered watching that movie again during my time of watching Fourze myself especially considering that I am a major Gokaiger fan and just simply watch the Net Movies based on said film instead which are much more enjoyable. Didn’t even watch the other Super Taisen films, or rewatch in the case of the second one along with the first, while I was going through Wizard and Gaim at the time. I highly recommend Gaim’s one hour crossover special with the ToQgers though since it’s a much better crossover between a Kamen Rider series and a Super Sentai one.

As I once wrote: this film is very stupid. You can enjoy it, but only by completely turning off your brain and simply looking for the fan service. Fortunately, we now know that much better crossovers are possible.
P.S. It also makes me laugh that the Sentai technically won in the Rider-Sentai confrontation because Doc hid in the bushes. On the other hand, Hina was with him, and she became OOO, so at the moment they are still a draw.

Personally, I strongly disliked this special for two reasons:

1) It's a crossover between my least favorite Heisei Rider and my least favorite Sentai.

2) I'm against the 1 hour Spring Gattai specials on principle, since they deduct from the episode count.

I guess the appearance of V3 was nice though.

I straight up forgot it was released during Fourze's airing until I saw it in the wash of TV-Nihon bonus releases. I rewatch it only out of principle.

Yeah, my experience with the TV crossovers is that they're a lot more coherent, generally because they keep the focus on fun drama between the two main teams and not a sprawling cross-over mess that has to involve the biggest, baddest, newest interation of Dai-Super-Neo-Shocker-X and a dozen legend heroes to show up and say their catchphrases. Gaim/ToQger is worth it just for the Takatora mecha scene and Narutaki's weird Ticket puppet.

I'm not even sure the fan-service is that great. The returning heroes are basically the Gokaigers, Eiji and Hina, and the Den-Liner gang. Everyone else under the sun is here to get killed by Marvellous and Tsukasa. I guess all the Bio Hunter Silva fans can be ecstatic he shows up in a main role.

I think Yonemura forgot that Doc is GokaiGreen.

I ended up finishing Kamen Rider Gaim two nights ago and it is indeed a great show with Kouta having the best character development I have ever come across among the main Riders of the franchise complete with a great story, fantastic drama, and even with some very hilarious comedy mixed in especially early on. So, yeah, I can definitely see why this show is often considered a major fan favorite among a lot of Kamen Rider fans. As of now, I am starting to watch the Gaim Gaiden movies centering around Armored Riders Duke, Zangetsu, Baron, and Knuckle respectively and even that miniseries that features Gridon and Bravo. Oh, and maybe Gaim's own Hyper Battle Video as well. After all of that is said and done, I will walk the path of heaven with Kamen Rider Kabuto and all I need is Kamen Rider Drive.

Congratulations. For me personally, the main problem with Gaim is that DJ Sagara constantly helped Kouta, which is why the battle for the Golden Fruit can hardly be called intriguing. And at the same time, in the end it turned out to be quite easy for him to refuse. Also Mai is the worst heroine in the franchise for me.

Checking out the Gotchard side content, and just as I was musing to myself that this new Abyssal Sisters TTFC chat show is just a stripped down Zi-O .5 episode, look what showed up.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...e4749849b3554&

I missed the Supplementary Episodes again, today. GOOD THING TANGENTIAL PLANS IS A CONTUINUING SERIES!

Kamen Rider Fourze Episodes 37 & 38: Selecting the Star Pupil & And The Winer Is...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...368afac026bab&

So Switchblade, bless her, has been warning me since I started about Yuki's slow slide into madness, and I think I finally hit the point of no return. We've had Hayabusa, we've had the Hayabusa song, and now we have her praying to the rocket gods. And I don't think it helps that I'm kinda struggling to see her role in the series at this point? When we started off, she was Gentarou's oldest friend, the positive ball of energy to Kengou's scientific know-how and the one he could relate to the most. But now, the show has moved over to Kengo and Ryusei as his closest allies (because 2012 boys show) and with the rest of the KRC are much more clear roles, I think the show's leaning on her most manic ditzyspace-obsessed traits because what else is there, besides maybe being "Gentarou but a girl we guess"? Even this episode only uses her as an annoying force, with the conflict being mainly betwee Elleen (Erin?) and Gentarou's POVs of Yuki. It's not great use of what is ostensibly our main heroine, and I do think a flaw of Fourze in general in how it uses the secondary cast.

I do like that the show makes use of its space theming a little more, and I was quoting bits of Deep Space Homer to myself occasionally during the training (Elleen has big Frank Grimes energy). Leo takes some pro-activeness in trying to kill Gentarou for being a goofball and hugging the big bad of the series, which is something for him to do, so I take it. The Elleen / Gentarou plot is nice enough, and it's cool to see a respectful final-duel between the two, but that might be in spite of Yuki rather than because of her.

Double post, but I'm in an inspired mood and watching the Fourze Summer Movie, and it took 90 seconds to have a leather clad woman kicking other women, Sakamoto is truly at his most powerful and unbridled.

It's clear from interviews that Fourze is one of Sakamoto's' favorite projects. Easy to see many reasons as to why.

I am currently 16 episodes into Kamen Rider Kabuto.

...

Eh, I'll allow it.

I'd have to go back and check my rewatch posts, but I'm pretty sure this is the point I flagged where Yuki goes completely off the deep end. It's a pity because I loved the character at the start of the show and really couldn't stand her by the end.

Well, as mentioned in the web series for the summer movie, the design for Aquarius's costume came to the designers with the note: "Even bigger breasts than Virgo."

Do let me know if I messed up the pronouns, I need to get them right for my next overly-personable remarks.

But yeah, for an episode ostensibly about Yuki, she's not shown in the best of lights? The entire denouement is Gentarou, Elleen and Kengou talking about her while she's lying in a ditch with a broken ankle. It's not great, and it does feel like she's gone from "typical loud anime girl with an interest in space" to "the Space Core from Portal" without anyone on the writing team realising that;s not someone you can write as a believable person. It's toned down in the movie, thankfully, but I get the feeling it's getting ramped back up in show.

The Aquarius costume does have incredibly large water jugs, yes, thank you Fourze designers.

(Am I supposed to be doing some kind of thematic analysis between the Zodiac signs and the Horoscopes users? Maybe another time)

As an Aquarius, should I be concerned about this? :lol

Says right there in your daily horoscope, huge bodonkahonkaderos. Also you have a healing factor if you down enough water.

I am now up to episode 23 of Kabuto and despite my initial reservations towards it, the show is honestly growing on me, much to my surprise. I even went into this very low expectations especially considering the last early Heisei Kamen Rider series I have watched beforehand which is none other than Kiva.

Now up through episode 33 of Gaim. It came with some ups and downs.

The downs are mostly minor stuff, but the biggest disappointment came in the form of the Showa vs Heisei movie.

It's basically a Superhero Taisen movie but with only Riders. The Showa Riders are written really out of character here, and the film even through out its own out of "We were only pretending to be assholes!" solely so more lackluster fights could happen.

But even worse than that, which is the aspect most people know by now, I just overall found the movie to be really boring, with the only fun bit being Baron bopping around Futo with Shotaro.

As for the ups, I had alot of fun with both the ToQger and Kikaider crossovers. Haven't seen ToQger, but the special was still filled with some high energy and my favorite comedic moment in the whole show. I have seen Kikaider Reboot, however, and despite knowing that there's no way in heck that this crossover can be considered canon, I still had alot of fun with it. That finisher Kikaider does with Kachidoki Arms is super smooth.

Something I've also began to wonder at this point in regards to fan reception: Do the people who complain about the Grongi speech in Kuuga also complain about the Overlord speech here in Gaim? Because they're basically the same spiel. The only real difference being that the Overlords don't spoil anything, whereas the Grongi do(whether one considers them minor spoilers or not).

Mai continues to be my favorite, by the way. Loved her slapping Mitchy ontop of her maturity in empathizing with Kota despite the awful situation surrounding Yuya. If we're talking Riders though, I gotta give it to Baron, in that the dude is so insanely dedicated to one single idea that it's actually kind of respectable ontop of being really funny at times. His own sense of honor has also been on display a couple times over the course of the show, which helps. Plus, ya know, Bananas ARE the best fruit.

And that's about all I got in terms of notes. The show continues to be fun, but I still don't see it as anything super stellar.

I watched "Geats. Final Stage". Well, it's a pretty solid final show. Beautiful fight choreography, clever use of screens and other special effects, simple but not boring plot. This performance also essentially explains why riders recognize Geats in the summer movie. And, in comparison, oddly enough for a theater, there is that scale here that I complained about the lack of in the summer film. In just a minute of sparks and bright lines on the screens with locations, you get the feeling that the heroes are saving, if not the world, then certainly Tokyo.
Jamato Gazer is a primitive but effective villain. Essentially, this is Archimedel, but with the manners of the general from Shocker. But what pleased me was his spectacular final fight. If in the show we got a beating from the main boss, then this villain fought back to the end. Literally, he punched Geats in the jaw right before the finisher. I don't know, maybe there's nothing special about it, but I liked it.
Overall, this is a nice little story that ties up a few plot issues. Of the obvious disadvantages: it seems that the writers are not aware that Nadge has become Jamato/has ceased to be a rider. Also, I think many would prefer Lopo instead of Gua-Go, although in the context of a father-daughter pair it works better.
P.S. Also, thanks to Gua-Go, I finally learned how Merry defeated Jamato with a shield. Brutal.
P.P.S. Also, since there was a lot of controversy during the show that Neon does not necessarily crave romantic love, in this performance she directly refutes this statement:
https://i.ibb.co/30fGX2d/Neon-Love.png

I just watched Black Geats and the 4 Aces in preparation for Boonboomger tomorrow.

The plot with the 4 Aces reminds me of my favorite Kiramager episode with the 5 Senas. However, while that episode uses it to teach a moral about the importance of pessimism (in moderation), this movie uses it to teach a moral about the importance of heart.... You know, like, that thing where desire comes from. It's predictable, but it works for the story anyway. I still think it would've been a more interesting premise to have the characters meet some previous incarn-Ace-tions rather than 4 aspects of the same one.

Appropriately for the villain, Mela doesn't really have any desire, he just wants to bring ruin cause that's the only kind of empty happiness a post-apocalyptic future nihilistic god-hunter can have. But like, that's just a less interesting Beroba, right? His sidekick, Melo, apparently has her entire backstory given in side content and her last appearance is Tsumuri kicking her in to sand, which feels pretty anticlimactic. Other than that, she's portrayed by Lupin Yellow's actress and at least tries to do something, which makes her slightly better than Samas.

It's definitely a fun and humorous movie though. Like the irony of Buffa getting annoyed by Geats of Power fighting the same way as Buffa at the expense of his usual skill and spatial awareness. The action was cool as well, with X-Geats living up to the concept of a dark version of Geats without desire and showing no mercy to Tycoon Bujin Sword and Buffa Zombie. The last act in the ruined world with everybody's hopes all on Ace without his brawns, brains or luck felt ominous, even more than the Grand End in Geats IX's debut episode. There's also the return of Sae as Lopo, a cool character who I would've liked to see more in the show, as well as Win actually being Punkjack.

Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it easily surpassed the admittedly low bar of RealTime and Battle Familiar. I think Book of Ruin wins in action and spectacle, since that's like 95% of the experience, but with the standard summer movie runtime 4 Aces does tell a more complete story. It also gives a much more satisfying ending than the show, establishing that Ace's friends still remember him and more importantly, they remember that despite being a god he's still a goofy weirdo. It's satisfying to see Ace be confronted with that mocking image of him in a humorous way and this movie succeeds in putting him back in the position of a flawed and intriguing protagonist.

Putting aside the questionable canonicity of live stage shows, this would be set after the finale anyway, with Neon's family problem already resolved. So she's not really refuting anything.

Well, as I wrote this play explains why Ace is remembered in the summer movie, which means it is fairly canon. Although they basically stated that in order to remember him, you just need to touch the ID core, which means it is not so needed.

Kamen Rider Fourze The Movie - Everyone, it's Space Time!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...86d70fafbfcfc&

Rider Summer movies are pretty hit or miss for me, but I think this one was pretty solid overall. The start is a little slow, with a lot of fight scenes and car crashes for not much rhyme or reason, but the fight with the Horoscopes using all 40 switches, complete with Fourze and Meteor transforming together for the first time in ever (?) is very fun to watch unfold. Interesting choice showing off the 4 unseen Horoscopes ahead of their debut in-show.

I like how it manages to embrace the more large-scale, global stakes while keeping the solution firmly grounded to AGHS. Having the 40 switches be flicked by the KR Club, former MOTWs, and even Gamou is a very good highlight, and shows Gentarou's bonds aren't just for a 2-parter, they're for life. The inclusion of the Space Kyodain is a one I'm not super convinced by. Super Robots brought to life by Cosmic Energy is out there for a show that's mainly limited itself to Zodiarts for now, Fourze fighting a planet destroying laser is maybe escalating the stakes too much, and of course the Kyodain are going to be most recognised by the people probably most annoyed that they're now villains (I'm not that fussed, but understand why it would bug people) but I also understand why you would want a bigger scale villain for the big summer movie.

Also, Wizard is here! I honestly forgot till I saw the TVNihon icon at the start! Life is Showtime!

One of the best summer movies and the perfect movie for Fourze.
As for Space Kyodain, at least they got their redemption in Taisen Z. The Akumizers didn't get that either. I'm just glad that this trend was stopped before Robot Detective fell under it (And yes, I am now deliberately ignoring the reference from Hideaki Anno).

Yeah, my post reads a little negative, but I still had a really good time with it, and Gentarou befriending a literal weapons platform in a way that would make Aruto Hiden proud is peak Fourze.

And I forgot to say that I actually kinda like Fusion States, in that its so weird it looks back round to being kinda fun!

Also also, Kamen Rider Fourze Net Movies It's Going to Class Time idk

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...adca1cb6c64a4&

Mostly fun little shorts! ! wasn't super-sold on the ones recappng the original Space Koydain series, but I get why it was necessary, and if nothing else it's nice to hear about the older more obscure Ishinomori shows. The other miss was the series about Sonada, which has all the energy of a direct-to-DVD miniseries like the Rogue or Thouser, but with none of the blood or gore. It's not unwelcome per se, it's just weird to have for a villain who left the show months ago and whose motivations were never that deep.

Highlghts of the rest

- Love the Fourze friendship series, doubly so for featuring my boy Shin (!), and pulling out another Garren joke. The one from the Taisen netmovies is funnier and mentions Akibaranger, but I take what I can get. Ichigou as Grandpa Simpson also deserves a shout out.

- The Tachibana interviews series was also pretty good, although the last one crosses the line into uncomfortable homophobia for me, which sucks. The one with the swimming student has big "Don't Stand So Close To Me" energy, which did have me cheering for Leo to show up and maul him every time. The escalation of injuries across the segments is a very obvious, but good gag.

- The Cancer Panel Show segments weren't laugh-out-loud funny, but cute enough.

- Ryusei/Eitoku stunt actors show was fun to nice, always nice to see the peformers get some time in the spotlight and to chat about their experiences and techniques.

Fourze probably has my favorite net movies if we're talking ones made specifically for seasons of Rider. I found most of them alot of fun, and the Sonada stuff were all things I wish had been in the show proper.

Just finished the Faiz reunion movie. It was... okay. Certainly a lot less overtly tragic than I expected, so that was good. I think it had some running time issues, though. At a cool 65 minutes there were elements that got rushed through in axel mode that I would have loved to see expanded on in more depth. Part of me wishes this had been something like a 6-episode miniseries, just to expand on all of the character stuff. It worked well enough as is, but there are some moments that I think really could have benefited from at least another 30 minutes.

Action bits were pretty decent. The new Faiz suit still looks a bit weird, but I like the way it works. Axel and Blaster being built-in abilities was a nice touch. Muez was pretty cool, too, and we got some good Kaixa stuff in here. Delta had a pretty poor showing, but do we honestly expect anything out of Delta at this point?

I did like the Wildcat Orphnoch design, even if it was way less fun than Mari jumping into action with a frying pan or an iron. I kinda feel like it was a shame not to let her pick up the Kaixa or Delta belt, but maybe we can do something for the 30th? Still, it was really nice to see her and Takumi fight alongside each toher. That new version of the class Faiz suit, though... something felt really off with the build quality on that thing. Reminded me more of the cheap suits they used in the Zi-O/Decade web series. Kind of brought down the fun of seeing the OG suit back in action.

I am currently up to episode 40 of Kabuto and I think I might be able to finish this series very soon.

Kamen Rider Fourze Episodes 39 & 40 - The New School Rules & Of Values And Passion

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...186c870ad22b3&

There's a good story about the sometimes arbitrary restrictive nature of the law here curtailing people's freedoms for some idealised perfect sociey in here, that falls apart a little at the end when Taurus's motives turn out to be simping. I like the gimmick of the episode, with Gentarou unable to help as Fourze while Meteor plays golf, although Meteor being brainwashed at the end is both thematically strong (the law is often selectively applied, and rarely to those who enforce it) and narratively very lame (they don't even have him and Gentarou fight!). Taurus rejecting his law-and-order persona upon seeng how it makes the one he loves sad is fine, but it feels cheap to resort to love as the mechanism and not more proper self-reflection. Glad to have finally seen the infamous golf episode after all these years, though.

There's also ongoing deep lore finally moving, as we learn Virgo's identity, and Tomoko gets a one-way trip to the Dark Nebula. Tomoko's been feeling underused lately, so it's cool to see her take the point on this, even if it ends terribly for her. It does feel like we've backloaded the Kengo's dad family drama in way, but maybe I'm misremembering when it's popped up through the series.

I watched Paradise Regained yesterday with Earthly Subs, so I'll share my thoughts.

Surprisingly, I haven't talked about the Next Faiz suit before, but I thought the heaviness and overdesign lost the practical feeling that I appreciate about the classic Smart Brain Rider suits. So I love how Takumi actually agrees with me at the end, that the old Faiz is way cooler and shows his development from not wanting to be Faiz to now seeing it as part of his identity, which is of course a major theme of the show. While predictive AI is useful, Takumi is always going to favor hard punches with strong feeling.

I recall Frontier mentioned before about the possibility of the Takumi/Mari ship. While I didn't see them like that in the show, I respect that 20 years is a long time, certainly enough for a platonic relationship to turn romantic offscreen. Like how Ryu/Kaori happened in the 3 years epilogue of Jetman. I think it's clever how Inoue uses time skips to justify such changes, while leaving the events of the interval to the viewer's imagination.

For me, the biggest surprise of this movie was Mari becoming an Orphenoch! This is actually the third time she's died, but Smart Brain's genetic technology has advanced far enough now that they can trigger the mutation manually. Probably the same technology that stopped Takumi's decay in the ending. Kusaka seemed conflicted about whether to accept Mari as an Orphenoch, but this is only a robot programmed to mimic Kusaka behavior, so we can't be sure how the real Kusaka would've reacted to this development. Protecting Mari and destroying Orphenochs were his 2 main goals after all.

I think the OOO characters had pretty regular appearances as well though, often focusing on Eiji's quest to revive Ankh. Ironic how Medal of Resurrection killed the Primary Rider, while Paradise Regained revived. In any case, I think both anniversary movies effectively captured the themes and morals of their respective shows. Honestly, I had come to terms with Takumi's death in Kamen Rider 4, after hearing how Takumi was happy with his fate, but I cannot deny my happiness that Inoue decided to keep him alive in the canon. Takumi suffered for so long, but finally he gets to live happily alongside the people he cares about. It's just like the ending message of the show, that in a world of despair, it's important to enjoy the small happiness in life.

I love how Muez throws an Edge to start the Azure Smash (Riderwiki doesn't even give a name so I'm just calling it that) before pulling the enemy towards her other Edge. And yeah, Delta performs exactly as we should expect at this point, especially now that he's not even the strongest Rider anymore. It's cool how Axel is part of the package for the Next System, making it available for other Riders and reminds me of the S.I.C. version of Faiz. I prefer OG Blaster though, due to the awesome sight of the Photon Blood overflowing from the Streams.

I meant Greeds, Goto, Satonaka and others. Eiji, Ankh, Hina and Date returned often. Still, "Paradise" could not even bring back Keitaro.

From what I heard, Keitarou's actor retired? Oh well, I guess it can't be helped. At least there's a lot of talk about continuing his legacy of Kikuchi Cleaning and Joutarou mentioning all the good things his uncle told him about Takkun. Shows that Keitarou is still in the world, even though he's not present.

Yeah, Keitaro's actor retired and Yuka and Mihara's were unavailable. It's a bummer, but it led to the moment where Jotaro runs up to Takumi with the Faiz Gear and Takumi is all "who the hell are you?" I thought that was cute.

Just finished watching Kabuto today and now Hibiki is now the only pre-Decade Early Heisei era Kamen Rider series that remains unaccounted for and yes, I am planning to watch that series pretty soon. It's just that I really wanted to watch Drive first which I have unintentionally held off on actually watching.

It's only 29 episodes, shouldn't take too long to get through.