Yeah, it... it's a real hand-wavey thing, them giving us Classic Izu for the climax of the film. (It doesn't help that Izu and Aruto only share a single scene before she shows up to save him from his berserker rage!) It's the biggest walk-back from the finale, and it isn't grounded in much more than happy feelings. But! This was a story that only really works if Aruto and Izu are on the same level of a partnership, and New Izu just can't fill that role. The only alternative would be to have New Izu hit her Singularity in the movie, and there's just too much else to do for that to feel like it's being treated seriously. The best version was probably just Satellite There merging the two versions and sending them off to save Aruto.

(Zero-Two suit is still real good! I think Kamen Rider Lucifer was my favorite suit from this film, though. Eden plus skeletons? Sign me up!)

Wait. Was this also the movie where Gai tortures a naked dude? That was one of the most absurdly random things I've ever seen on Kamen Rider.

It was! And part of the "torture" was bringing back three former Humagear guests (GUTBUSTING TARO!!!) to get him to confess. Impressively bonkers sub-plot.

A lot of Japanese people would certainly agree with you here, considering RealTime was voted one of the best KR media in an official poll.

However, my opinion couldn't be more different. I strongly disliked it. In fact, I easily rank this as the worst KR "summer" movie I've ever watched, a dishonor formerly held by Agito's.

You already summarized the most apparent reason from the start, the way the admittedly eyecatching action takes the foreground at the expense of maintaining a strong narrative. I want more than action from an action movie though, I want the action to be a framing device in service of something I can emotionally invest in and this isn't it. Like, after a show full of deep debates about the meaning of humanity and how HumaGears have a place in that, suddenly it's just nanobots and this dude called S who's way less vital to the overarching plot than the finale's post-credits made him out to be. He's not even as interesting as Kabuki.

Aruto's only appearance as Zero Two is at the start and he doesn't even win. If I disliked RealEyezing Hopper before, then it's even worse now that it's not exclusive to the finale, cause that makes it an excuse for Aruto to loan his literal Final Form to Izu anytime she happens to be around, instead of actually using it himself.

Speaking of Izu, yeah, I'm also annoyed about Zea pretty much overwriting New Izu's identity with her predecessor's and essentially fulfilling Aruto's unhealthy dream of creating a replacement for the dead by literally replacing her with the same person. It takes that controversial last scene from the show and mostly ignores any wrongdoing on Aruto's part, other than showing him being overprotective due to his past trauma. What even is Izu anymore?

Fortunately, despite what DS and En-chan would have you believe, this isn't the last content for Zero One, so please look forward to 01hers!

There's also the other shorter "summer" movie belonging to Saber that was double-billed with this in place of the usual Sentai movie, Phoenix Swordsman and the Book of Ruin, which was much more my thing.

Yeah, I'm so glad I happened to be home alone when I watched this.

Yeah, I’m a lot like Shi on this one. I didn’t like the movie when I saw it, or when I rewatched it. I didn’t feel that S was particularly sympathetic (since he’s essentially forcing people into a fantasy they don’t want to be part of) and the one thing that might’ve made this mvoie distinct (the whole “real-time” gimmick) turned out to be a pack of lies (the “hour” actually takes up 1 hour and 13 minutes of screen time. I counted). I felt the Thinknet guys were more sympathetic, since they’ve essentially been lied to by someone who intends to kill them. I dunno, I’d want to murder his wife after that.

I also wasn’t keen on the Is revival, since it cheapened her whole death. And I don’t see why they had to reshoot the movie to be post-series, given that Gaim and Drive both had post-show movies set during the series (and Kyoryuger had a whole episode made 4 years after it ended, also set between episodes). Especially since the sacrifice was the one thing you complained the movie was missing: screen time for Naki and Ikazuchi.

This reveal one thing where Naki's the one who arranged for Jin's arrival. The 2 primary villains of Zero-One here adds up more contrasting role that Gai views him as a tool, while Horobi insisted that Naki and Humagears aren't humanity's tools. The thing though, Gai also viewed humans like Yua as his tool, so it's not only about Humagears but merely about Gai's superiority complex to anyone, any species, but I guess Naki's still in learning phase to not know which is bad to follow anything both his superiors do. Though In the series iirc, Naki was later revealed to be the Humagear entity that resides within Fuwa, but here Naki already existed as a co-worker for both villainous sides.

Yeah, the action in this movie is some of the better ones I've seen regarding Kamen Rider. Kamen Rider Eden utilizing his abilities in complete and varied way, and even better, Eden's stats are weaker than Zero-Two's, but it managed to keep up against a stronger Rider. I'm also glad that Zero-Two is used here unlike the last arc of Zero-One where it somehow got neglected for weaker Ark-One, though the irony is that, Aruto'd need a weaker form too against Eden in Metal Cluster Hopper that has similar abilities but better stats.

And like Metal Cluster Hopper being the solution, it seems that Bell/Lucifer is the Zero-Two version of the baddie here (accessed by mounting an Ark-based driver unit onto the Zero-One Driver), and like Zero-Two, it just did worse despite being the stronger one, as it seems to rely more on pure hand-to-hand combat, got outclassed by Aruto-Izu team up as Riders, not even getting a chance for a finisher. Other than Metal Cluster Hopper, there's the Hellrising Hopper part which is just scary and horrific, and though not that flashy, it captures the horror vibe well. There's even the creepy part of Aruto's arm dislocating though he puts it back.

Role has no correlation with morality/alignment. Ofc he's the antagonist, but just because he's not pure evil doesn't mean he's not villainous (he's a terrorist attacking various people and forcing the world to restart on his whims), he's still an anti-villain. I'd also say that another thing that is compelling about S/Eden is about how he's a smart and cunning type of villain that, he can carry out his plan due to hiding almost anything from others, thus his disciples are all swayed by him to help him carry out the plan to create a paradise by world destruction, only to turn out that the paradise was meant for the victims they attacked, who S digitized there, not the disciples, they're just used by S as tools, due to how S doesn't want depraved people to be in Akane's world, which is exactly his disciples who S plans to kill them off. He also provoked Aruto so he can take his Zero-Two key and create his world destroying weapon.

Unfortunately though, there's another smart villain in Bell, who noticed that there's something wrong in S starting the doomsday early, thus he began to act on his own to usurp S and proceed the promise that S lied to them, successfully doing so to become the final threat of the movie as Lucifer who almost wins. Albeit even Bell seems to be less malicious than the other members, as he wasn't sadistic like them and even has less self-serving goals unlike S (he only cares about Akane, just bringing other people to create proper world).

Compared to Yuya Takahashi's works, I guess S is Zero-One's version of Cronus, not in morality (Cronus' an irredeemable bastard), but in how they carry their evil plan, that they aim to create their own world by digitizing everyone else, or in S case, the ones not too rotten. Though sorry for this but dunno why I think S has some traits from Shiro Kanzaki in Ryuki, as they remade their consciousness as something else other than human (as ghost and nanomachines), want to create a world where their loved ones are there, and picked individuals they think are rotten enough to be used as their tools and killed off (other Rider War contestants as wish fuel and Paradise Guardia members), but finally gave up on their plans (not counting RT Ryuki) and die together with their loved one instead as their existence got deleted.

And yeah, I'd say that Aruto's experience against Humagears play important part here to convince S that he's doing something selfish. S thinks Aruto doesn't know everything, but as a Humagear endorse Aruto knows about AI nature that they aren't heartless, but are like humans, as copying their consciousness would mean their heart is copied too, and that'd extend to Akane, who Aruto has personally met, informing S how actually AI works (in this universe). I wish that Aruto can talk about his interactions with Akane though.

But yeah, I'd also think this is one of the better KR movies, but there are glaring flaws like, I don't like Izu being returned just by the old Izu memories happening to be in Zea. I know that Humagears can be rebuilt but, this is just cheap solution to get the audience familiar instead of exploring the different Izu. And regarding the suits, other than Naki and Ikazuchi, the scene of Gai and Yua fighting off some Abaddon Riders, like while they're cool it's more of them somehow missing each shot (like Stormtroopers) that it kind of undermines their feat more. It's more tolerable and convincing IMO for melee attack one like Kouta, Kaito, and Micchy fighting off Kurokage Troopers in Gaim as human. And though the 2 main baddies are overall smart, they still put... timer on their world-destroying plan, typical fiction pitfall for those plans.

Otherwise, many people before claim Gai was still smug and his behavior was similar after his 'redemption' and I was not convinced, but actually turns out it was true as shown in this movie, with Gai's speaking tone when dealing with Makio (the one stripped naked). Others seem to accept Gai better, though still quite dislike him as shown in the end, but ironically Gai displays more of his inherent creepy traits now, like torturing Makio. Seems that while he's not evil anymore, he's still not exactly a clean-cut good guy by his behavior to Makio.

This movie continues to be packed beyond belief that it surpasses my current memory in which I only remember things by people potentially saying them in their comments.

Somehow I had glanced over my favorite usage of Metal Cluster Hopper and didn't even mention it! I thought it was pretty smart for Aruto to go for (admittedly he had no choice) a weaker form via Metal Cluster and use its swarm ability to "infect" Eden and slowly wear him down by having the swarm just chew and mess with the nanomachines by mixing with them.

It's just such a clever usage of the form and I wish they had done more cool things like this with Metal Cluster when he had gotten the Hopper Blade to control it.

My favorite aspect of the movie can be summed up in one sentence:

gamers rise up

I guess this is a Your Mileage May Vary sort of sitchiation, where to me S came off as a sympathetic-villain version of most of Zero-One's larger themes: partnership, the role of technology in grief, how best to resolve guilt, etc. If it lacked greater integration into Zero-One's narrative, I think it still managed to feel thoroughly in line with what the show's always been talking about.

I like stories like these more as post-show content, honestly. The idea of Oh This Massive Villain Happened Between Episodes (and with enough weirdly contradictory elements to feel non-canonical) is usually a step down for me. It can be fun on a thematic or entertainment level, but spending mental energy trying to square the events of the movie with the events of the show... less fun!

I don't know if the series ever stated how Naki operated prior to being implanted in Fuwa, so there's really nothing here that outright contradicts the show. It's sort of ridiculous, but it's not a plot hole.

Yeah, this one... it's really hard to support the return of Classic Izu in any way other than saying It Felt Good. We were specifically told that Izu's sacrifice was irrevocable - that's what makes the last few episodes mean anything. To have that undone with no explanation whatsoever is kind of weak. It's not the best!

It's really great when these big movies can remember old forms, and use them tactically. The whole Punching Kong bit is the producers realizing that Fuwa can fight a jet if he's got super-strength, so here you go. Smart!

You can take the Takahashi out of Ex-Aid, but you can't take the Ex-Aid out of Takahashi.

I would definitely put RealxTime up there as one of my favorite Summer Movies. The pacing is breakneck, it's action-packed, but there's a strong emotional undercurrent and core to the story as it expands on our antagonist, his motivation, and the fallout of the Zero-One finale.

As far as Movie Villain Riders go, I think Eden was pretty great. His suit is amazing and suitably menacing, and a character who comes off like your generic doomsday Big Bad turns out to have far more layers than you would've expected, which made the climax all the more engaging.

I hope Horobi's audition for the Demon Slayer stage play went well.

"Forget it Horobi, that's not the original Izu! Because you basically killed her!" - What Fuwa basically meant.

That Fuwa/Jin scene was priceless though.

I love how we get a great bike scene and it's a female Rider who didn't even have her own personalized bike instead of the Main Rider. Although we did get a cool bike entrance with Zero-One.

Zero Two got it's first major loss right at the beginning of the movie, but it was nice to see Metal Cluster Hopper show up and actually help resolve the issue because so often with Riders it's the Final Form or bust. That said, I would've liked to have seen Zero-One's other forms because usually a Summer Movie is a good chance to bring them back or other forms that had been forgotten about.

Hellrising Hopper...I mean, just the sheer pain you can feel from Aruto in the transformation stands out so much, but as a movie exclusive form that isn't on-screen for very long it's surprisingly effective.

Wow, how handy would it have been to know the Riders could just bring out their weapons even untransformed.

Kamen Rider Lucifer is kind of just there to fufill the need for a Final Boss, but dang it if watching Aruto and Izu as Double Riders fighting to RealxEyes isn't super satisfying. Like, it feels so perfect and fitting, especially given the pair being such close partners and how Zero Two homages Nigo, and was nice to watch on-screen. Also a female Rider that basically matches the Main Rider at that point.

The Izu thing...honestly I think it's kept deliberately vague whether Izu is now 100% the original Izu or if it's New Izu with her memories and having to react to that, so in a way she's effectively the same but maybe not exactly if they want to play with it that way. At least that was my takeaway.

I love how Gai is at a point where he wants everyone to work with him and still at a point where no one even humors him.

Ending on Aruto and Izu fighting in a wedding chapel after they fought off a bunch of baddies together...catching some vibes there.

Also, speaking of RealxEyes, the ED was a straight banger.