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!

Generally speaking, I find that it's better not to try to apply logic to any of Yonemura's plots.

I actually remember some elements of this film. I generally didn't care much for it, but I always found the concept of the Hitler Youth Go-Kart Team to be hilariously stupid. Because if you're going to bend the world to the will of your fascist dictatorship, having a squad of talented go-kart racers is definitely a key part of that plan.

So, like, I have an answer for this!

If you're Shocker, and you've spent the better part of two years throwing every conceivable threat - including multiple seahorse monsters - at Ichigou and Nigou, to zero success, and then a guy in a car kills them both... you are ONE THOUSAND PERCENT going to assume that the car is the reason why Shocker is now unopposed by superhero cyborgs, and you are going to spend forty years trying to find the fastest car racers around.

The only surprise to me is that Shocker didn't go full Turbo Teen and start remodeling humans directly into cars.

D-VIDEO SPECIAL: KAMEN RIDER 4

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Takumi never really learned how to live.

If there’s a tragedy to his death, that’s it. He spent his first life certain of his death, so he fought like he’d never be around for the victory. But his second life he treated as too precious to risk; too tenuous to move forward. In an existence with two lives, there’s not much actual living in it. Too reckless or too cautious, with nothing in-between.

Because he knew what it meant to die. It’s not just the loss of a person, but the loss of what that person meant to others. He’d had to live with friends and enemies – sometimes the same person – dying, and had to find some way to keep going. The idea of more death, more sacrifice, more weight to carry… better to keep fighting for another outcome than give in to that finality.

But, it’s more nuanced than that. A death can be a gift, a way of treating a life as something to be shared with those whose stories keep going. Takumi’s second life was lived in paralysis, haunted by ghosts and guilted by survivors. His second death was a reclamation of his heroism, a chance to make his life more meaningful and valuable by his ability to hand it over for the future of others. In his death, he finally got to live his dream of a clear sky and a brighter future. It’s not a tragedy that he died; it’s a tragedy that it took him so long to truly live.

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I can’t imagine what I got out of this movie when I first watched it. (“Movie”; D-Video Special, technically.) It’s a story that slowly reveals itself to be a Faiz epilogue, and I hadn’t seen Faiz back then. It completely hadn’t stuck in my memory at all, beyond the time loop stuff and Yongou. Watching the back half of this, the last episode and a half, was a brand-new experience.

Like, I forgot Kaido was in this?! I don’t know that I’d’ve picked him to be the one trying to keep Takumi from sacrificing himself, but it works. It works great. Kaido’s strength as a character was always how the actor played the self-deprecating aspects as a thin mask over endless oceans of bitterness and grief, so it’s the perfect way to incrementally refocus the story on Takumi’s death(s). Kaido gets to defuse the tension just enough to make the conclusion the spotlight, while still weaving in the appropriate melancholy of his and Takumi’s reunion scenes. It’s so great to see them together again, but you can feel how fleeting it is.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/yongou3.png

This is a story that gets who Takumi is, more than I thought the Taisen movie did. They’re both talking about his inability to embrace his new life, but this movie comes at it in a more generalized way, tying it less to Kusaka’s (KUSAKA’S) death and more to a Takumi that doesn’t know how to process his mortality.

It’s there in the use of the hill, and the screen, and what they represented in the finale. The hill was his new start; the screen was what was holding him back. Having the screen on the hill is the movie saying that Takumi’s new start is maybe what’s holding him back now, his possible future keeping him from dealing with his past. Staging his acceptance there, in that way, was such a love-letter to Faiz fans. It’s not just reused iconography and unearned nostalgia; it’s recontextualized history, the language of landmarks. The whole sequence was a beautiful return to the way Kamen Rider 555 would pose tricky questions about how best to live in a world that might not have place for you, and I couldn't be more grateful that they got it right.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/legend/yongou4.png

Not a perfect series, though, this one. It’s too long, for sure. Could’ve been two episodes, or a single hour-long project. Once it’s clear we’re in a Faiz story, there’s not much use for anyone but Takumi and Kaido. (Yuuto, especially, is barely necessary for the emotional stakes of this story.) A lot of the beginning of the story is about Kiriko and Shinnosuke processing Go’s death, but they never really have to come to terms with it. There’s not really much interplay between Shinnosuke, Takumi, and Yuuto. (Like, how does that team work.) Having the Great Leader look like Takumi – making Takumi defeat his own desire to live – is a little on the nose. Not nearly enough Deneb.

But that’s all beside the point, really. It’s a story about Faiz. It’s hinted at in the title, a subtle reference to the 4th Heisei Rider. As a Drive project, it’s not the best. Too slow, which is antithetical to Drive’s storytelling. But as a Faiz project? It’s a bittersweet tribute to one of my favorite shows, and it's a worthy end to one of the best Heisei Riders.

Very glad I rewatched this today.

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Something tells me I might've appreciated this more had I watched Faiz.

That being said, the theme song, Time is another jam. Yongou might be my favorite of the Recreate Showa Era Designs I've seen thus far. It has a very distinct styling to it and I feel like that works in it's favor.

And Drive's final clash against Yongou is surprisingly clever with Type Formula and it's inability to perform a standard finisher without snapping Shinnosuke's neck. So they just pump the heck out of the Shift Car to make up for the power of a finisher. I don't put much merit in side projects getting certain quirks right so that's why I was genuinely surprised by this.

This is the only Super Hero Taisen I remember being actively excited for, probably in large part thanks to how generally excited I was about Drive. It just kinda seemed fun, and pretty shockingly, it actually lived up to that when I got to watch it? I'd honestly just call this a solid Rider movie without any further qualification. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but it certainly doesn't feel like a guilty pleasure, either.

I even found it still held up on a rewatch!

The point about the detached cynicism is definitely key here. I think (and this would also apply to Let's Go) that the movie actively treating the concept of a Kamen Rider as something with meaning and weight inherently makes it more successful as a big celebratory crossover.

This one, I'm admittedly not personally all that fond of, but I'll spare you the quote from that same post as above, because it's pretty snarky and that seems like sort of a mean thing to share in response to you writing so passionately about Faiz one more time.

Instead, I'll mention that the crew for this one, which is completely separate from Kamen Rider 3. Instead of Yonemura and Shibasaki, we've got Nobuhiro Mouri writing and Kyouhei Yamaguchi directing. Mouri seems to make working with other people's shows his specialty, so that's probably a huge reason this gets as close as it does to capturing more than just the surface level of Faiz. He's writing a belated epilogue to OOO now too, a show he actually DID write for originally, so thinking about it, this kind of makes me more hopeful that V-Cinema is going to turn out to be a worthy addendum in its own right. Yamaguchi was also an assistant director back when Faiz was airing, so that'd also help explain the attention to detail when it comes to stuff like doing that new take on the final shot of the entire show.

https://i.imgur.com/4gyz6O1l.png

I've never been 100% satisfied with how this works as a Faiz story, and the rest of it honestly drags a bit too much for me, but I'll absolutely acknowledge the effort and care you can clearly see went into it.

Probably, yeah!

I do like the suit a whole lot. I don't think the character is that memorable, especially compared to Sangou, but it's a very cool suit. It feels like a riff on Skyrider? I like the additional belts and straps, the overall bagginess of the design. It's very cool to look at!

No, for sure, it's a pretty good movie. (I don't know if I'd go with "solid", though, since the constantly shifting protagonists make things unsteady.) Sangou's got a legitimate arc for the film, and Drive really anchors his parts of the narrative. That's more than I can say for most Spring Movies!

And that's fair! It's not something that feels fully-crafted as a Faiz story (too much other stuff in the first half), but I liked how it resolved itself around Takumi's willingness to treat his life as valuable and deserved enough to be worth sacrificing for others. So much of Takumi's character arc is about his inability to see himself as valid, so an ending that relies on that validity -- that he can only create for himself, rather having society create it for him -- is going to hit me real hard.

It's not as good as Inoue may've done it, but a small story with Kaido and Takumi? Where Takumi has to leave behind his self-loathing and pessimism? To save a world that'll never acknowledge his sacrifice? PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

I only saw the first episode of this one. It wasn't subbed through my usual outlet and I wasn't as good at checking nyaa for stuff back then. I wasn't a huge fan of the Rider 3 movie and this was before my Faiz reevaluation, so tracking down the rest never became a priority.

I think it's worth tracking down. Flawed, for sure, but I think it does a better Takumi story than Kamen Rider 3 did. Not a... not a real high bar to clear, but still!

I really liked this special from the first time I watched it, and I'm still really fond of it now! I really enjoyed what it did with Takumi, even though at the time I watched it, I didn't like 555 all that much. The time-loop structure, the slow reveal that Takumi is at the center of it all, the great musical score (there's no OST for it anywhere out there?!) and all the emotional beats in the third act all really land for me.

It's honestly maybe the piece of Drive and Faiz media I think back to most often? Which is so funny because it's whole existence is so absurdly niche, being an obscure special that is in of itself a spin-off from a movie. I had zero idea what I was getting into when I first watched it other than knowing Drive was in it, which maybe plays a large part in why I was so pleased with it. It blew away my literal zero expectatoins!

Yeah, for all that it has going for it, this is still a ridiculously inessential piece of Kamen Rider media. The only reason for it to exist as a Drive story is to undo a bizarre plot-point from the Spring Movie, which shouldn't've needed a 90-minute follow-up, and probably didn't need to be in the original movie anyway. (Like, why does Go need to die all alone before the climax of the story? What purpose does it serve in the narrative?) It places all of its dramatic chips on Takumi and Kaido's relationship, a thing that a) hadn't been explored in over a decade, and b) honestly wasn't exactly a huge part of Kamen Rider 555 to begin with. Yuuto and Deneb are basically just there. The entire supporting cast of Drive is nowhere to be found in this Drive special.

Insane that this Faiz Epilogue In A Drive Special thing exists.

At least half the reason Kaidou is here is because his actor is one of those guys that inexplicably comes back a lot? He had a large villain role in Shinkenger; if you go back to Ghost you’ll see him as Musashi in the summer movie and a couple episodes; and spoilers but you’ll be seeing him again in another Rider you haven’t seen yet! I’m sure there’s yet another role I’m forgetting too. He’s all over the place

For sure! He popped up as a random victim in that OOO Summer Movie (as a cursed guitarist, naturally), and he was one of the cameo actors in the Blade movie (a security guard, I think). Dude likes to work!

The other half, though, is that Kaido's actor is really great? He's one of those actors in toku that's always making Interesting Choices in his performance: the weird pauses, the little stutters, the anxious body language that communicates a lot about what Kaido's thinking. He's fascinating to watch. If you can't give a major character a ton of screentime, you'd better have an actor that can become a multiplier on that limited time through charisma and talent.

I'm opening my eyes for the epilogue of Faiz. You guys didn't think I'd miss it, right?

BTW, Die has now passed the halfway point on his rewatch list.

I watched this special only a few months after watching and falling in love with Faiz for the first time, so I was surprised to see this stealth epilogue to the show appear out of nowhere to remove the ambiguity of Takumi's state in the finale. It hit pretty hard actually, even though it was heavily implied that Takumi was living on borrowed time, that it was finally confirmed that he really did die at some point in the last decade of the original timeline. I was also younger then, so my philosophy of mortality was more like Kaido's here. Being too focused on the loss rather than the legacy that loss leaves behind for others. But sometime after, I did start to appreciate Takumi's final message, about the value of life being dependent on how that life is used. Something that Ghost would later make me appreciate even more. It's like Takumi's declaration to Kiba after the latter accelerated his decay, that becoming a full Orphenoch isn't the same as living. To live for the sake of it, is a waste. To live for dreams, for friendship, even at the cost of hastening the end, that's what it means to live honestly. So Takumi wanting to preserve his death and the smile he had at that time, yeah, I can understand that now. Cause that was his death and the symbol of how he chose to live in the end.

It makes a lot of sense for Kaido to be the viewer perspective, as the one desperately trying to "save" Takumi from his destiny. I feel like, when Takumi is talking to him here, he's talking to us as well, asserting his intention to return to being dead since he's already lived. Kaido seldom fought and therefore didn't have to suffer any of the decay, but the downside of that is that he had to watch all his friends die around him instead and now that Takumi is back, he doesn't want to lose him a second time. While Takumi learned too late to appreciate his own life, Kaido learned too late to appreciate the people in his life, so Takumi has to use his own experience to help him to move on and continue to live as a human, by following Takumi's and Kiba's example. That's why I think having this epilogue, over a decade after the show ended and focusing on the development of these two specific characters with similar problems was such a clever way to highlight the morals that the show left on, about protecting dreams and finding hope even in the darkest of despair. For Takumi, that hope was the smile as he died and he wants to give some of that hope to Kaido before leaving once more.

It's such cool imagery they brought back from the finale and it's symbolic of Takumi once more resolving to live the only way he can for his final hour. This special really shows how much he has matured, in contrast to his character development kind of getting ignored in KRW. It feels like this is a more Complete (haha, get it?) version of Takumi, who has been through all the tragedies and he's not running away anymore. He knows he's still a flawed person, but he's content with who he's become and he finally found the acceptance he always wanted. I'm proud of Takumi for that and in the end, he really was the protector of dreams.

I'm glad you got the reference to Faiz being Heisei Rider 4! The number 4 is relevant in other ways as well, like the date of the time loop being April 4th. Kamen Rider 4's army consisting of dead Riders and also Sasword who must be back from France. The cycle of death with Gou and Takumi. Since 4 can be pronounced as "shi" which also means death. Nothing to do with Riderman or Kuuga though, who are also numbered 4.

Based on the quality of the content he's written for OOO, Ghost and Zi-O, I'd even go as far as saying his specialty is upstaging the head writers! He really takes the time to get inside the characters' heads and understand the world of a story, like he has a respect for the work and wants to maintain the authenticity while adding his own flair. It's crazy that Toei have only given him the head writer role once!

oh my god

this was supposed to be the short fill-in project

and it's been six weeks

and i'm only half done

Yeah, it's a real Quality Over Quantity message, which is fitting for Takumi. He thought existing was the same as living, and it wasn't. He could keep the time loop going forever, but it'd mean denying who he is and what he needs to feel at peace.

Good point! Well said!

Well hey, most the stuff you've got left will be reposts! So it's not too bad after all

And you've got a few single episode watches too! So I'm sure those'll be short.

Oh, I was just being dramatic. (Mostly.) It's not the worst thing in the world to spend longer than estimated re-acclimating yourself with some of your favorite series.

But, boy, every time I've thought I'd have a short post, it just gets away from me. There is an incredibly high chance I write three or more pages on, like, Kamen Rider Brain. There's short watching, and then there's short writing. They do not necessarily correlate!

I'd happily take a 3 page essay on why Kamen Rider Brain is secretly a deep subtextual message on how needless throaway jokes are no longer allowed to live as such things in the modern age of content. :p

KAMEN RIDER DRIVE: SURPRISE FUTURE

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This one… it didn’t really work for me?

I mean, it’s fine on a technical level. The story’s direct. It’s a Shinnosuke-centered narrative. Chase and Go are in it a little bit, as is most of the supporting cast. Kiriko gets some big moments, which I’m generally a fan of. (I’m a fan of Kiriko, full-stop. MAKE. HER. DRIVE.) The action, especially in the finale, is really well done. I don’t love the Type Special suit, but Super Dead Heat is solid, and Type Next is a great futuristic-villain look. The production isn’t offensive in any way, or anything.

But there’s not really a ton for me to grab onto, at least that I want to grab onto.

Like, there’s some fun thematic stuff they hint at in the beginning that I’d’ve been more into. Shinnosuke brings up Krim’s creation of the Roidmudes, and I thought that could be a fun concept to explore alongside Shinnosuke’s future-son: the idea of parenting, of how to feel when something you created doesn’t turn out how you’d hoped. That’s an idea that I’d get a lot out of.

(There’s a bit of a parenting analogue, with Krim and Shinnosuke’s partnership. Shinnosuke regularly brings up how Krim’s views on justice have shaped his own. I don’t know that it’s an all-the-way-through-the-movie thing, in that it’s never really applied to Shinnosuke’s relationship with Eiji, but there’s at least something there on the present-day side.)

But what’s here isn’t so much to my taste. It’s a mix between a superhero plot I can’t buy into, and a supporting cast plot I find pretty tricky to parse.

Let’s hit the superhero part first! I cannot take Eiji’s claims seriously, from the jump. The idea that Krim is some ticking time bomb… no? No, I will never ever believe that? It’s a huge swing for the movie to start off with, and if I’m honest, it never really recovers from it. The post-reveal part of the movie is better than the pre-reveal, but you are asking the audience to believe that Shinnosuke’s Belt Dad is going to subjugate the future and bring the world to ruin. That is a ludicrous ask when the series is already forty episodes deep. If you want to come in with a plot where Krim is reprogrammed, or there’s an evil copy made, fine. But to come in and say Krim Is A Secret Evil Mastermind Who Has Been Lying To You All Along… man, what the hell. There’s no real twist in learning that Drive’s been lied to, because it’s such an unbelievable claim. The only twist is who’s lying, and why.

Which, uh, some new Roidmude! Okay. He’s just a monster to fight, and that’s… I don’t know, whatever. There’s no real grudge, no reason why he’s using Eiji other than to enact his scheme. He doesn’t have some huge beef with Shinnosuke; he just wants to destroy Drive. It’s all fine, nothing memorable or special.

The biggest flaw with the superhero side of the plot - aside from its ridiculous opening gambit - is that Eiji, the real Eiji, never gets to take part in the story. The villain spends the entire movie using his son’s face, but Shinnosuke never gets to spend a scene with his actual son. Eiji only exists as a weapon from the future, so we’re robbed of any catharsis. We never get to see an actual familial connection (beyond a nod to a ghost hologram?), which feels like the least we’re owed by the end of this story.

But that’s the superhero stuff, which is, again, basically fine. Nothing I loved, but competently handled.

Then there’s the whole plot about the police rallying around an officer accused of excessive force, in which a high-ranking police official is heroically guilted into shielding said officer from investigation, which… WOW. Wow. That is… I mean, maybe it played less terribly in 2015? I don’t know! I don’t think it should, but I don’t know! But, boy, in 2022? I do not have a ton of interest in a story that browbeats a cop out of holding other cops responsible for their actions. Accountability is an okay thing for the police to adhere to! Kiriko’s great, but when she’s like HOW DARE YOU QUESTION SHINNOSUKE’S MOTIVES, YOU SHOULD HAVE HIS BACK, I was cringing in my chair. It’s… this whole plot is a real bad look, man. Probably some stuff in there about being more dedicated to ideals than the appearance of ideals, but, no. Absolutely not, to this entire part of the movie.

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Also, Kamen Rider Ghost is in this!

It’s been a minute since I watched Ghost, but I’m going to go ahead and say this is basically nothing like how Takeru fights in the show. He doesn’t (if memory serves) come out of portals, or creep around frames, or bob and weave like a skeleton. It looks great here, and I sort of wish it had carried over to the series, but it’s not representative of the show he’d star in. Character’s all weird, too. He sounds real Goth here, which is so hilariously Not Takeru.

Anyway, yeah, this movie mostly wasn’t for me. The whole thing starts off on the wrong foot, and then it never really jumps above Okay for me. One of those movies that’s a decent timewaster – it’s an hour-long tokusatsu story with a bunch of action – but not much more than that to me.

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This is kinda where the movie fails to meet me anywhere above "yeah that was pretty fun" for me as well. There's not even anything like... a trap Eiji places in the Dark Drive suit to hurt the Roidmude to give his dad an opening, or a plan he passes through the portal, or some kind of intention for Shinnosuke to carry on so he's at least there in spirit. For a lot of this movie I was wondering how much of Eiji we actually know about and how much was just the Roidmude playing up the act. Type: Special being a spiritual bond between Shinnosuke and his future son is really good on paper but I didn't really feel like it earned that payoff or that it ever hit for me?

Yeah, kinda just feel the same about this movie as you do! Definitely remember having fun, having a good time; far from the worst thing I've seen or the worst use of my time. But it fails at key moments to go beyond that, so it ends up settling on "yeah, alright movie"

It's especially weird because this is a movie that already has Krim Secretly Gives Shinnosuke A Way To Revive Him as a plot point, as well as a whole thing with Krim's pre-recorded message! Piggy-back on that! Have Eiji show up as a recording and go "Oh yeah, my dad taught me how to plan ahead," because that's also a reference to what Krim taught Shinnosuke!

So weird that the end's just Maybe Eiji Still Exists. So weird.

Man Ghost might have the most different pre season cameo out of all of them. And I know all of them are going to be a little different from the actual show. But from everything from Ghost entrance, fighting style and even what little we can hear from his voice his inflection completely different Takeru from the show.

You're very right! In about a week, though, we'll land on the final episode of Drive, where we'll be getting a much more on-model appearance from Takeru. Maybe that was to make up for this one?

I remember liking the Ghost Cameo for how different it is

Then every time I see it somewhere I just see people going "If Ghost was like this then it would be good" and I've seen that take enough times to where I just actively dislike this cameo now.

Except for the Newton Damashii part. I thought that was a cool thing to end on honestly and I'm glad that Newton Damashii ends up getting some good love in its first ever appearance.

Oh right this was a Drive flick wasn't it? Uh, I thought it was fun. I'd maybe rank it decently high on my list but that's about it. Might need to watch it again though given the whole stigma on Police in the current year I can see certain things not aging well at all.

That being said, ReRay is a nice song and the entire last fight when Shinnosuke gets fully back into action was probably my favorite fight in the movie. Just Shinnosuke going full Type Speed with his police training, even borrowing Gou's weapon. And then Type Special shows up and I... I honestly like this suit just as much as Dark Drive.

RIP Dark Drive, I'll miss you. You shouldn't have been cannibalized to make another suit.

It's a good one. I like its big round mitts. I'd've maybe preferred if they'd used the coat with the electrical powers, though. The yellow one. I don't... which one was that? Did they ever give it a name?

If only one scene has Surprise Drive playing over it, then that scene is the best scene in the movie. It's just math!

You mean Tesla, right?

I feel like it started with a vowel. Alessandro? Alessandro Volta? Was that it?

It was Edison.

Can't be sure of that! He'll have to say his name another fifty times before it can count as scientific proof.

Like I also said before in the Kabuto thread, Surprise Future is my favorite Kamen Rider summer movie. That's why, I'm here to defend it!

Krim tried, but Kiriko's mind wasn't compatible with the Rider System. She got those cool shoes instead, which were sadly forgotten about after a few episodes.

The climax is so awesome. There's Shinnosuke dramatically shouting, "Start! Your! Engine!", before Krim triumphantly comes back to life and that sweet vortex in Type Special's finisher! Dark Drive is my second favorite Dark Rider suit after Dark Kiva and I agree with En-chan that Type Special is equally cool.

Not sure if you've forgotten the episodes that lead up to this movie? Krim's betrayal is actually explained, as Banno planted an evil chip in the Drive Driver's system while he was unconscious. Of course, nobody but Banno knew about that, so Paradox, disguised as Eiji, was able to use that to deceive Shinnosuke by hiding the fact that Eiji was originally Dark Drive before he stole the Driver. You're right to believe in Krim, since a recurring theme in this movie is believing in your friends and don't trust someone you just met, even if they claim to be your son from the future.

As a character, yeah, I'll agree with you here, Paradox isn't deep or anything like that. But I think he succeeds in being intimidating and once he revealed that he murdered Eiji, it gives a lot of personal motivation for Shinnosuke to defeat him.

Well it does give a little foreshadowing to Shinnosuke/Kiriko. And when Sanjo Riku is writing, you really need to take whatever foreshadowing you can get. What we do learn about the real Eiji may be minimal, but it's still important, like how he became a cop like his father and grandfather and looked up to Shinnosuke by keeping his tie for sentimental value. It's possible that someday Eiji might become Dark Drive once more, but in a better future.

But Shinnosuke was innocent! Going back to the theme of believing in your friends, the police should absolutely have faith in him, especially after he outed Brain and Freeze (Brainfreeze?) and Nira as double agents. They owe him big time for that, so it's honestly pretty bad that they continue to treat him like some suspicious criminal after all the good he's done. I totally agree with Kiriko scolding the executives for behaving like that.

I know right! Tenkuuji Takeru was all about building connections with people, the power of emotions and the infinite potential of humanity. I seriously don't think he would've been as effective at advocating those things if he was some monotonous edgy guy. I mean, this weird Ghost cameo is basically how the Ganmaizers act!