Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider Ex-Aid movies
 

Hello!

I'm Kamen Rider Die. I've been spending the last few weeks writing about my first viewing of Kamen Rider Ghost. (Short version: better than you'd think, not as good as you'd like.) I'm planning on writing about the various Kamen Rider series I haven't seen yet, and I'd be thrilled if you wanted to talk with me (and each other!) about the stuff I'm watching.

A little recap about me as a fan: I'm fairly new to the Kamen Rider franchise, starting with Ex-Aid back in March 2018. After that, I went back to W, and watched forward to, most recently, Ghost. (I also did Amazons, which, anyone watch that new Terminator trailer? I was getting serious Jin Takayama vibes off of Sarah Connor. That's a good thing!) The next series I'm going to tackle is Build, but before that, I wanted to rewatch the Ex-Aid movies.

Mostly it's for two reasons. One, I don't want to spend a month rewatching all of Ex-Aid when I'm aching to get started on Build. I mean, I just watched Ex-Aid last year, it's still pretty fresh in my head. Not super fresh, so rewatching the movies should be enough to remind me of how the series went. The second reason I want to rewatch the Ex-Aid movies is that I've watched way more Kamen Rider now than I had then, so I'm curious how they'll play for me.

Since this is a rewatch, feel free to talk about any Ex-Aid thing you want, I'm not considering anything from that show a spoiler in this thread. Similarly, I'm okay with any mentions from W through Ghost. Please, though, no mentions for stuff from Build, Zi-O, Zero-One, or anything pre-W. Please don't even tease stuff! I'm hoping to go into those shows as fresh as possible, so if you could help me out on that, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, now it's onto the Ex-Aid movies! Let's clear this with perfect co-op and a ton of continues because this is going to be a thread discussing at least three movies and I'm not writing about them all at once! GAME START!

KAMEN RIDER EX-AID MOVIES: DR. PAC-MAN VS EX-AID & GHOST WITH LEGEND RIDERS

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This was the first Kamen Rider movie I ever saw. It was during the first Kamen Rider series I ever watched. I had no idea what to expect from a movie version of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. I'd only watched, what, less than a dozen episodes? I knew Emu, and Poppy, and Hiiro, and Taiga, and Kiriya. I knew Bugsters, and Parado, and Graphite. How much crazier could things get?

Friends, my eyes were opened. It could get so much crazier.

I really enjoyed Dr. Pac-Man the first time I saw it for how insane things got. Characters I'd never seen before would show up in a slow-motion walk, an entire section of the climax was dedicated to endless form changes that went by in an eye-blink, a cacophony of fight songs were played in a variety of musical styles, and NOTHING was explained. The first time I saw it, I was as surprised as Emu that the skinny dude guarding the villains' hideout was actually another Kamen Rider named Wizard. I didn't realize until he henshined that Tomari wasn't some supporting cast member from Ghost's show, since Ghost knew him already. There was so much information and so little context, I just let it all wash over me. I loved the density of what seemed like nonsense to me, the bright colors and frequent explosions and huge reveals about Emu's origin. I had a great time watching it, despite lacking context for virtually everything.

Here I am now, not quite 18 months later, and I'm up to my neck in context. I've watched Wizard and Gaim and Drive and Ghost and so much more. I was a little trepidatious, revisiting this movie, but also incredibly excited. On the one hand, I was scared that it maybe wasn't as good as I'd remembered it. Maybe I'd confused freshness for quality? Maybe now that I'd watched so many hours of Kamen Rider (so many), this seminal film wouldn't be as good as I'd remembered it. On the other hand, though, I was really excited to see it because I'd watched so many hours of other Kamen Rider shows. I'd seen a stack of winter films, caught up with scores of Legend Riders. I was hopeful that all this knowledge could make me see a different version of this movie than I'd seen before.

Seeing this movie now, I felt like it was wasted on me 18 months ago. Back then, seeing this movie after only seeing ten or so episodes Ex-Aid and nothing else, was like seeing Infinity War if you'd only ever seen Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, you can follow along with the story, and sure, there are some core characters you can care about, but so much of what occurs is over your head. Now, rewatching Dr. Pac-Man, it's like I've binged the entire MCU and everything in this movie is for me. Everything. And it's so much better than it was the first time.

The Legend Rider stuff is maybe the best implementation I've seen yet. Everyone's there for a reason, everyone contributes, everyone gets a little bit of quality screen time. (I mean, okay, Gaim, sure, but he's integral in getting Mr. Belt back!) This movie, unlike so many Legend Rider appearances, goes to pains to explain why the other old Riders are involved. Tomari's a cop who's called in on the case, and he's got history with Takeru, so it makes sense he'd want to help. Haruto saw something weird and was like, "Lemme go see what's going on over there", and bluffs his way in, which is 100% in character for him, as is no one involved knowing who he is. Gaim is an all-seeing, all-knowing god, so, duh. It's so much more than a guy in a suit just jumping in from out-of-frame. After some of the previous series' movies that seemed to fill plotholes with more Riders, this all felt so cohesive and considered. Every character felt important to the story.

And that story actually mattered to the show it was ostensibly tied to! I know that might sound like damning it with faint praise, but that is a big deal. So many of these stories, the movies, feel like they're influenced by a TV show without really being a part of it. This one matters. It's got villain types from the show, it's got information that's important to the characters' development, and it centers the themes on what works best from the show. Emu even uses his doctor skills, not his Rider skills, to save the perpetually-murdered Takeru from dying again. (Makes you wonder if any of Takeru's so-called friends had bothered to learn the bad CPR that Emu learned, maybe Takeru wouldn't have had to die so often.) It's a solid story, so it doesn't need to be saved by Legend Riders, it's just improved by them.

Oh my God, is it improved by them. That whole sequence at the end, scored to their individual theme songs, as they hit all of their form changes in a row, *chef's kiss*. An electric, rousing bouquet of fan-service. It's all joy during that sequence, and anything I didn't like about those Riders' shows was swept away in how awesome it was to see them kicking ass again. Even the new suits, Tenkatoitsu for Ghost and Mighty Brothers XX for Ex-Aid, are thrilling and gorgeous. It's all just so much fun, which isn't a feeling I get from a lot of these Rider movies.

Far from feeling like this wasn't as good as I remembered, seeing Dr. Pac-Man again actually made me enjoy it so much more. It's not nostalgia, it's respect for an astonishingly well-told story with just the right amounts of action, mystery, drama, and, of course, superheroes kicking someone so hard they explode. Gotta have that. Everyone involved in the making of this movie should be proud.

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I really envy the bombastic experience you must have had, watching with no pre-established context whatsoever, some cop turning into a race-car and this extra orange-themed samurai declaring himself as a god showing up who doesn't even show his actual face in the film. And that's all on top of all the other nonsense that happens.

Also it's not really a positive, but it's greatly hilarious to me that Grateful and even Mugen are so easily beaten in rapid-succession by the goofy puzzle block monster. I know it's standard procedure for these kinds of shows but that's a bit absurd!

When all five Riders finally henshined, I remember it was like being shot out of a cannon. Even coming from a multi-Rider, billion-form-change show like Ex-Aid, this movie felt suitably Next Level. (No pun intended!) It was a really, really great tease of the wider Kamen Rider franchise. There was no way after this movie that Ex-Aid was going to be a one-and-done Kamen Rider experience for me. I was going to watch more shows.

And, yeah, that movie thing where Final Form Old Rider can't quite beat a monster that Middle Form New Rider can is, man, that's some power creep and it is rude. Rude. Have some respect for your elders!

Even though this is a bit of a diversion and you did touch on this, I must admit I'm curious: After watching those shows, how did you like them; and did they live up to your expectations here?

(with the exception of Ghost, of course -- I think you've written a little bit on that already :p )

These Riders specifically? Um, quick takes, working backwards:

EX-AID: My first rider show, so I'm always going to be a little sentimental and deferential towards it. The only thing I can think of right now that really bugged me was the making Masamune Dan the big bad. Cronus is a cool villain, and the performance is strong, it just felt a little left-field, plotwise.

GHOST: I'm not sure I remember watching it. I hear it's not bad, though! I'm gonna add it to my watch list.

DRIVE: Loved it to pieces. Blew through it. I didn't really have any knowledge of it ahead of time, so nothing colored my reaction. Loved the suit designs, Kiriko is one of my favorite female sidekicks, Heart is maybe my favorite villain ("villain"), Chase and Gou are my favorite couple, and that goddamn theme song is a winner.

GAIM: I knew that people liked it a lot, but I wasn't sure why. It's really great, though! Didn't love the suit designs, but the overall story is really special. Baron is, like, next level secondary Rider. For a franchise that doesn't seem to know how to best serve women's stories, BOY did they drop the ball with the women of Gaim. Marika's story is basically "I just want a strong man, any strong man, to succeed", while Mai becomes a literal prize for two men to fight over. It's a black mark on an otherwise really great season.

WIZARD: The show was overly repetitive, I never really enjoyed Haruto, I think the lack of a dayjob for the Rider really handicapped the ability to generate stories, and most of the supporting cast just plain sucked. However! Beast was what got me through the middle-third, the three villain spotlight two-parters are all five-stars, and I really, really liked the big bad's scheme once it was revealed. Also, the bonus materials have my absolute favorite, all-time #1 Kamen Rider thing:

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I could've posted a hundred screencaps from those three Net-Movies. They are solid gold. They are the pinnacle of Kamen Rider entertainment.

Well, Ex-Aid is laid out as a video game reference. It’s kind of a tradition to introduce a final boss out of left field once the apparent main villain has been killed.

Fair, but I still didn't love the way Masamune was introduced as "My evil child screwed me over and now I'm in jail", then a dozen episodes later he's back as "This was my secret plan all along!" It didn't feel like an organic story development so much as shock for shock's sake. I mean, if that's what they're going for, congratulations? And also maybe don't do that?

Isn't it more like 5 movies, since Another Ending is three different movies (but a single plot.) In spite of it's name, Another Ending was actually the final conclusion of the show. Curious to hear what you thought it it. Thought it was way better to True Ending.

It's so difficult to keep track of these Rider movies!

I guess I'm going to have to rewatch all those Ending movies, mostly because I honestly don't remember how I felt watching them, so, uh, yeah. Could probably do with another viewing.

Are you doing the GoRiders series? Because that has some big spoilers for past shows, and as much as I love it, it's pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme, even for the awful movie it's promoing.

I did watch the GoRiders series, yeah, but not until way after I watched Ex-Aid. It was when I was finishing up all of the Gaim stuff, and I needed more Baron, and I saw on the Wiki that he showed up in that GoRiders thing.

Yeah, hilariously, typically, it feels totally disconnected from the thing it nominally exists to promote. I really enjoyed it, though! I thought the resolution was incredibly clever (You built a win condition than alerted the one person who could defeat you by just showing up! Kuroto, you are not great at this!), and any chance to spend more time with Baron and Marika and Lazer, I'll take.

Hopefully I'll forget about the Blade and Agito stuff by the time I watch those shows. It helps that I have little-to-no context for those characters, so it's tough to know what it might even be spoiling. (Other than, uh, dying at some point, I guess.) Like, I saw Drive show up in that Dr. Pac-Man movie long before I watched his show, and there are definite spoilers for him in the movie, but without knowing about Kiriko or Mr. Belt or the Roidmudes, none of it even seemed spoilery.

Does that make sense? I'm trying to say that my ignorance is my spoiler protection for some of this.

KAMEN RIDER EX-AID MOVIES: COLORFUL MANS VERSUS COLORFUL TEENS - THE SPRING MOVIE

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Hey, so, can I tell you a secret? I don't want the TokuNation board to know about this, so we're in a total "this stays between you and me" situation. Cool? Okay.

I don't think I care about Sentai. Like, at all.

I'm not really sure how it works on these boards. Is everyone into everything, Rider and Sentai alike? Are there Rider-only fans and Sentai-only fans? I honestly have no idea. Going on a Toku board and saying "I don't think I care about Sentai" may be like saying "I don't like vowels". Like, nonsense. Insanity.

I mean, I never grew up with Power Rangers, so maybe that's part of it? I assume most North American Sentai fans got into the franchise as kids through Power Rangers, then transitioned to the pure, uncut, medical-grade Japanese Sentai programs. Is that right? 'Cause, yeah, for me, I never had that introductory stage. Power Rangers and Sentai, I just never got into.

And it feels like, after getting hooked on Kamen Rider, that I shouldn't have a huge problem getting into Super Sentai. They're so similar in so many fundamental ways. They're like dialects of the same language. But, for real, I'm just never that interested in them.

Some of it is, and I don't want to get reported to the mods for this, that it feels like the Sentai parts I've seen (crossover episodes, spring movies) are just really, really childish. Like, the casts seem like they got body-swapped with precocious theater kids. Everything is very Big and Broad and Shouted Out To The Back Rows. The problems and drama seem very goofy and wacky, geared around a child's conception of the world. And, I came in to Kamen Rider through Ex-Aid, the show about a bright pink motorcycle man who fights video game disease monsters. I'm not looking for verisimilitude here. But these various colorful teenagers seem like they are one commercial break away from telling me that drugs aren't cool, but studying is. Am I missing some key way to view Sentai? Am I just watching the worst introductions to the franchise possible? Help me out here. Someday, I'm going to run out of Heisei Rider shows to watch for the first time (I ain't doing Showa, too corny for me), and 40-whatever years of Sentai might fill that void in my life. I'm not saying that me and Sentai are enemies forever. There may come a day when I want to love Sentai. (Like, 2021. Not soon.) If every other Rider fan is a Sentai fan, I don't want to be, like, persona non tokusatsu. I want to figure this shit out.

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that a) I don't generally love the yearly-ish Rider/Sentai crossover movies, and b) I don't really love this one in particular.

First, Rider/Sentai movies are so weirdly constructed, at least the bunch I've seen. Rather than the Rider fall movies that feature two main Riders at least, and possibly two full casts, the crossover movies seem to be built around Who From The Last Few Years Is Available and Who Can We Spare From The Current Shows. Like, the Fourze/Go-Busters one? The main Rider characters are Hina from OOO and Diend from Decade! There's some fun to the randomness of the cast, but it's to the detriment of a cohesive story. I never get the feeling that a story was constructed, with a clear thematic goal, and then a cast was hired to support that goal. Instead, it's like 75% of the asks came back No, so they cobbled together something for the 25% who said Yes. It's not that you can't tell a story like that, but it's very difficult to tell a good story. The most you can do is distract people with a lot of costumes.

And there are so many costumes in this movie. Not the most, but what feels like the most often. Every few minutes (of a ninety-minute movie) there's another batch of colorful suits, kicking and punching and exploding. The action is, it's not great. There are some interesting uses of the expanded movie budget in the camerawork, specifically in the increased verticality of the fights and the longer chase shots. But the fights themselves mostly don't seem choreographed to tell a story, they're just there to fill time. It's like watching someone play Street Fighter for a while. That can be fun to watch, but it's not a story.

Maybe I'd care more about those costumes if I knew all the franchises? Maybe. It doesn't help that, not only do I not really know Sentai (although I recognized Amu from the Ghost/Animal Teens Super-Hero Dance Program crossover), but the Rider appearances were from shows I haven't watched yet, like Den-O and (I had to look this up) Ryuki. For the flashy, nostalgia guest appearances, there's nothing in there for me. I've only got the story to enjoy, and it felt real thin. It's mostly a pile of superhero fights until Shocker shows up, then a heartfelt speech, and it all wraps up at Kamen Rider Quarry. There aren't a lot of moves in it, and the Shocker stuff just feels like it's there to have a villain to punch. Making the story driver/endangered victim a child who sort-of didn't care if the world ended was, uh, a way to go? Hard to muster sympathy for a sick child who would rather just destroy the world because he's bored. I mean, it's a sick kid, and maybe he's on the spectrum, but he was also the character in the story I cared the least about. It definitely made parts of the story drag.

There was some stuff I enjoyed, though. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was only okay. The core of the story was, surprisingly, about Brave. He's a tough character to focus on, because he is basically a dick. And that's his most interesting attribute! Hiiro doesn't hugely change or grow in this movie, but his dedication to being the best doctor evolves a bit with his grudging acceptance that Emu is only mostly a failure as a doctor, and maybe viewing his patients as more than a sack of organs he can show his dominance on is a valid choice on rare occasions. Progress! Also, I'm loving the movie trend (2 for 2) of Taiga being introduced walking into frame and just humiliating a group of enemies. It is canon that he spends a lot of time following around Emu, and while we're meant to think it's so he can collect Gashats, I'm choosing to believe it's so he can get sick burns in on foes. Like, he's behind a pillar, waiting for the best moment when he can walk in and drop some comeback on a Bugster or Sentai or whatever. He's up all night dreaming about it. That is my headcanon, and now you are welcome to it.

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You basically described all the taisen movies. They're especially thin on stories and especially abundant on over-the-top action cramming in as many suits and shoehorned-in cameos as they can. My favourite of them is the Grand Prix one with Drive and Sangou, but that's not a great achievement. (It lead to the Yongou special though, which I liked a lot.) The Ex-Aid and Kyuuranger one was the last of these and I'm not sad to see them go, the budget is probably better spent elsewhere.

Also don't worry, I don't think anybody is going to lynch you for not liking Sentai! Even though these movies are hardly a good introduction to the franchise, I don't think you're too far off from how those shows work. Sentai as a whole is much more formulaic and even the most plot-focused seasons are more episodic than the average modern Rider show (I don't consider this a flaw, but it personally makes binge-watching them less appealing to me). That said, plenty of them, even the goofiest ones, have their moments of seriousness and deeper pathos.

I'm sure you'll get thrown recommendations for Sentai eventually that will just be people asking you to watch their favourite shows (I was this close to just yelling 'hey watch the one that makes up my avatar') but it's fine either way, whether you eventually find something to stick with in the franchise or if you're a Rider fan first and foremost.

I don't have much to say about the movie other than gigantic Ex-Aid is funny, and I'm glad it at least led to the Go-Rider miniseries.

Yeah, I really don't think anyone around here is going to police you for not being into Super Sentai (there are plenty of people who fit into any combination of liking Sentai and/or Rider), and like FreshToku said, you aren't off in your assumption that they tend to be more "childish" all around, since that seems to be Toei's way of keeping the franchises feeling different nowadays.

However, I would ask you to remember one thing about the Super Hero Taisen movies before you totally write the entire franchise off:

I can't tell you if the goofy fun factor of a show like Kyuranger would ever click with you, but just like Rider, Sentai seasons actually vary quite a bit in terms of their style, tone, overall quality... you know, the works. So I guarantee you there's at least one out there you'd like.

Of course, you've got plenty of Rider still left to work through, so I'll get things back to the subject at hand by saying I'm sorry for any whiplash you endured having the misfortune of watching Chou Super Hero Taisen directly after Heisei Generations. :lol

To be honest, I feel like sometimes knowing everyone can actually make the films worse. In Chou Super Hero Taisen specifically, the character they brought back from Ryuki is practically my favorite Rider character overall. Love that guy. Love the guy they brought back from Go-Busters too. But the film does nothing with the characters. Compared to good, involved crossover stuff like GoRider, it's just an absolute waste of the opportunity, and that frustration really drags the whole thing down (even beyond the bad plot and everything else). That's not uncommon for the Super Hero Taisen stuff in general. The other empty suits playing out pointless fight scenes don't fare much better still.

As far as Sentai goes--one thing to keep in mind is that while there are definite tonal differences and just overall different structure to the shows, there's actually a fair bit of overlap between the staffs that make them. It's not huge overlap, but writers and directors don't necessarily stick to only one franchise. So if you're ever interested in checking out a Sentai, it may be worth looking into whether the people behind Riders you enjoyed have also worked on some Super Sentai seasons. For an example, I lurked the Ghost topic, and I noticed for instance that you really liked OOO--OOO's writer has also penned a number of Sentai seasons, and you'll find similar strengths in those shows even though the formula and overall dynamics of the series are much different.

So that's just a thought. Still, I'm also far more of a Rider fan and have waded only ankle-deep into the ocean that is the Super Sentai franchise myself. Especially with such a huge catalog of series in either franchise, I can totally understand the disinterest--I myself basically only started looking into Sentai seasons when my Rider watching hit a wall (lack of subs, mainly). But as Fish Sandwich said, as formulaic and child-oriented as it may appear, there's actually a lot of variety there. So just to echo some previous points--don't write it off just yet, but also certainly don't feel like you have to watch it.

Oh, man, I don't think I even realized that Sangou was a Sentai crossover movie! I mean, they're in it for, like, a scene or two. Jeez. As much as I'm not a Sentai guy, I still feel bad if that's all their fans get out of these films.

Okay, thanks. I never felt like these were totally representative, but I thought they'd maybe get their hooks in me a little. They just, y'know, haven't.

There will probably be a point where I'm like "Just tell me where to start with Sentai," but it's definitely going to be after the twelve full series (Zero-One I'm not going to be able to start until it's just about done, probably) I've still got ahead of me.

I'll also bring up, since I didn't before, that the tournament structure had a ton of unrealized potential. The fights that were included were good, but it seemed like something you could've built the whole story around? I'm sure it's been done before (I think I saw that there's a Decade tourney film?), but, like, it works so well to build drama and maintain momentum. It's a good framework that they maybe half used.

I definitely don't want to paint every Sentai series with the same "do all these teenagers have concussions or what" brush. My experience with Sentai is limited (a few scenes per movie) on top of limited (a few series out of dozens). I haven't seen nearly enough to carve anything in stone. It's just been a weird experience of thinking each time, "Maybe this crossover is the one where I'll want to see more of them." And then, hopes dashed.

I mean, the only person I can be mad at is Kamen Rider Die. I did it to myself.

Oh, wow, good point. Even in Go-Rider (which I liked!) I was frequently thinking "Shut up, you other nerds, and let Baron talk!" If they'd brought, like, Birth back to be the green Go-Rider, and he didn't get much to do, I'd've probably thrown my TV out a window.

Yeah, that's all fair. My intention isn't to, like, name and shame Sentai. I'll try and give a serious effort to understand it as a franchise. In the distant future, when I finish a Zero-One write-up (Hope it's good! Like the suits! Really, really don't want them to screw up on Valkyrie!) I'll probably append it with an ask for Sentai reccos. It just feels a little different from getting into Kamen Rider, but I'll talk about my Kamen Rider origin story some other time. Not that it's great or involved, but, uh, I really should get ready for work. Sorry, and thanks everybody for the feedback!

I'm afraid that much like this movie, Decade: All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker also does not stay on the tournament aspect for very long.

In any case, given the criticisms you've brought up of Sentai - which, honestly, I mostly agree with - I can very, very highly recommend Go-Busters. It didn't quite hit me why I liked it so much more than others until a friend who watched it recently described it as feeling like Kamen Rider and it just all fit together.
Given the type of thing you like going by what you've written, if you ever want to try a Sentai; try Go-Busters. If you don't like even that I think you can safely say Sentai isn't for you.

I'm going to try to put the Rider/Sentai thing, about which I know next to nothing, into a specific comic book character context because that's how I make my living: It's like Kamen Rider shows are Batman and Sentai shows are Superman. They're both superheroes, and to people with no interest they'd probably seem identical. But to fans of each, there are huge tonal differences and idiosyncrasies. Some folks are big enough fans to like both, but others are looking for a specific kind of story that only one does. Occasionally, there's a change-up where the darker one gets lighter, and the lighter one gets darker, so people can find an exception that might make the one they don't like more appealing. Otherwise, they're just trying to do slightly different things.

I don't know, that's my mostly ill-informed way of boiling down the differences between two multi-decade franchises into a one paragraph comparison. You're welcome!

This is the only major piece of Ex-Aid media that I haven't seen. I love Ex-Aid dearly, but I cannot do these team-up movies. Even the good one (Showa vs. Heisei) still has major problems with characterization and the fact that Shoji Yonemura only knows how to write one plot.

I would be hard pressed to say you were cheating yourself by missing out on this one. If you're a huge Brave fan, maybe make time for it. Otherwise, it's pretty inessential.

Exactly how big a Brave fan are we talking here? Because I love Hiiro, and I think that just made it all the more depressing seeing how shallow and redundant his character arc in that movie was.

KAMEN RIDER EX-AID MOVIES: TRUE ENDING

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Hey, let's talk about endings.

One of the things I really like about the Kamen Rider franchise is that, unlike the endless second acts of American superheroes, their stories are allowed to end. Hell, they're designed to end. Each season spends a year telling one story, with one cast. When that year is up, the story's been told, and it's time for a new cast and a new story. I think that's fantastic. A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not every Rider season had a good story, but they all had beginnings, middles, and ends.

And then there's the modern media landscape.

Nowadays, any narrative project that has a fervent fanbase is ripe for exploitation. It doesn't matter how conclusively a story resolved itself, if there's money to be made, there's more story to tell. The Kamen Rider franchise is no exception.

In general, on the balance, I like the way Kamen Rider exploits fan interest in Legend Riders. Having a cast show up in the next Rider's winter movie is a fun little epilogue as well as a passing of the torch. The occasional V-Cinema or web-video is rarely more than a victory lap (Accel, Baron), or even just a goof (Brain, also Baron). With all of these extra Ex-Aid "Ending" projects, though, it feels like American superheroes, where there's an End, then another End, then another End. (I mean, three of these are literally called Another Ending!) It loses the commendable finality of the TV series ending for a Kamen Rider show, and replaces it with More Content.

And, up front, I get that Ex-Aid had a shorter season, and that the producers might've felt like they had more story to tell. I'm just not sure that's the case if this was the story they really wanted to end Ex-Aid with. It's a decent enough movie, but it just fundamentally doesn't work as an ending for Ex-Aid.

For a start, it's not even a story about anyone in the Ex-Aid cast. The whole story is about Kagenari and his daughter. He's the only character with an arc in this movie, who's challenged and changes as a result. He's a cool enough villain, and his arc is compelling, but boy o boy did the writers half-ass it on his motivation. Much like beloved second dad of Makoto, Daigo Fukami, Kagenari abandoned his wife and newborn child for... some reason? The movie never even tries to explain why. He just leaves, until one day he finds out his daughter has terminal cancer and he decides to put her in a video game because he cares about her happiness so much. He cares! About the child he abandoned! For absolutely no reason! These Rider shows have this amazing hypocrisy about the undeniable power of family (his abandoned wife just takes him back!) while also having dads just walk out on their families because, like, a bad song came up on a Spotify playlist. It is infuriating as a plot device.

So, if it's not even about Ex-Aid, how does it work as an Ex-Aid ending? Not great, Bob! We don't learn anything new about any of the main cast, and none of them change as a result of the story being told. There's small epilogue-y bits of business with the cast during the credits, but, and maybe it's been a while since I watched the actual final episode of Ex-Aid, didn't we basically do all of this already with them? The idea that Taiga has a clinic, that Emu's a doctor, that Hiiro didn't disappear... this is how the series ended, right? The exact same way?

And the villain, the real villain, ends up being Johnny Maxima, who's half a joke, and he turns into Gamedeus, the exact same villain from the end of the series, but minus the threat and all of the hard work the show did on Masamune Dan. This just has a monster for Ex-Aid to blow up, while the real emotional crux of the story is happening with the movie-only characters in a completely different scene. The Johnny Maxima stuff just doesn't matter to anyone in the story. He's there, and he's powerful, but all of the emotional engagement is with Kagenari and his daughter. If there's a part of the movie that works, emotionally, it's that reconciliation scene. And they keep cutting from that to a boring retread of the same boss battle the TV show had! It is baffling.

(Quick aside: yeah, I know the movie came out before the show ended, but a) it takes place afterwards, so I'm okay calling them on having a poorer version of the TV show ending, and b) repetition is repetition, if it's not this movie being derivative of the show, then it's the other way around, which is just as bad.)

If this was just, like, a bonus Ex-Aid movie, a summer distraction, then I wouldn't be so harsh on it. (Okay, maybe a little, the motivation for Kagenari is bone stupid.) The cast is still great. I appreciate the way everyone fights for justice but they all do it in their own way. Like, Kiriya is the least trustworthy Nice Guy archetype I've ever seen, and I love it. Everyone gets a chance to be cool in a fight, even Poppy. (Okay, not Nico. Boo!) It's very much the Best Version of the show cast. It all looks good and plays well. It's not a bad Ex-Aid summer movie.

But they called this thing True Ending. TRUE Ending! Superior and more definitive than the TV show ending! When it is saying nothing about the Ex-Aid cast. When they are side characters in their own movie. When they just fight the same boss monster, again. It is such an overpromise of a title. Weird. Weird choice, Toei.

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I guess I liked how the plot hinged on Hiiro's regret about not treating the kid, but the movie expressed it in a very Hiiro "how dare this kid not let me demonstrate my greatness" kind of way. Like, he does not go full Naga in anguish. There are no tears from Hiiro. He's fighting for a chance to save a life, not to make someone smile. He's not going to embarrass himself the way Emu does. I thought that specificity was actually a high point of the film, and one of my favorite things about the core Riders in Ex-Aid: they genuinely dislike each other. There's grudging respect, and forgiveness, but they are not friends! That's a nice throughline for the show, and the movie honored that, I thought.

Okay so I always figured this as being game related. You've got your standard ending that wraps everything up via the TV Series. But then you've got True Ending which is basically the Post-Game story mission for completing the game. At least that's how I saw it. In that it doesn't do much in terms of endings, it's just a thing at the end as a reward for getting through the game.

So, fun little fact about that: the writer intended for Ex-Aid to be shorter than 45 episodes. But, of course, Kamen Rider series have to fill out almost an entire year; so 45 episodes was the best compromise he can get. It's likely the cause of a lot of flaws in Ex-Aid's second half -- just how many flaws is debatable; but you can argue anywhere from last-minute resurrections to Cronus suddenly taking over as the main villain. Ex-Aid's still in my top 10, but it's hard to ignore that there's probably some issues this caused. So it doesn't surprise me that all the post-series media is more or less just retreading stuff.

One little positive I will give True Ending, though? I love that the villain for a Video Game-based series is an incredibly arrogant Video Game CEO who fetishises Japanese culture yet gets even the smallest things about it wrong and whose website proudly proclaims "I AM GOD". Doesn't immediately make it a good movie or anything, but that particular part always tickles me.



(Also, Ex-Aid VRX is his best-looking form aside from possibly Gekitotsu Robots, and I will fight on this. Cool as hell form too in what it's able to do; I'm not overly fond of when Movie forms go for the "this is the REAL final form" angle, but this is one of the few times I wish they did)

Yeah, I can see the name being influenced by video game culture. It definitely is "the same story, with like 3 minutes of new content". Maybe I'm being unfair, expecting it to do something they never intended. Good point!

Between rewatching this movie and what I remember of the Another Endings, I'm not rushing out to rewatch Ex-Aid. I don't want to find a ton of flaws, since it was my first ever show. Someday, but for now I'd rather keep thinking of it as great.

Oh, and, VRX is way, way better than Muteki. So much cooler in its style, and the ability to create game elements is a better "final form" than invincibility. I'll still give it up for Mighty Brothers XX as my favorite form, but VRX is pretty great.

VRX is very fun and quirky for sure, but I can't believe there are people who don't bask in Muteki's wonderful and radiant glow.

I'm half-kidding, but sitting here and thinking about it, I just remembered how much I do love all of Ex-Aid's forms both visually and for how weird they are. Every season, you see the usual standard upgrades such as 'different take on base form' and 'put all the powers together' etc. But I doubt we'll ever see another series featuring such novelties as 'turn into two people', 'big stubby mech suit' and 'literally invincible'.

Oh please do not mistake my love for VRX as bashing on Hyper Muteki -- I love Hyper Muteki and honestly my biggest problem with it is that it doesn't go ridiculous ENOUGH. I struggle to come up with a form in Ex-Aid I dislike as they never at any point slow down and go "okay let's try and make this a bit more sensible", no; they EMBRACE the insanity of this aesthetic and force you to do the same. I love all of these forms.

Muteki... I just didn't love the hair? Super subjective, but that design element didn't click with me. All of the garishness is really great, though.

The thing I like best about Mighty Brothers XX is that there is a legitimate in-universe reason why Emu can become two different people. The show doesn't just say "ha ha, video games, amirite?" There is a reason why Emu, and only Emu, can use Mighty Brothers XX. There's a lot of attention to detail to stuff like that in Ex-Aid, and I think it's a huge mark in its favor.

First of all, Maximum Gamer is one of my favorite Rider powerups ever. I love the gimmick of Ex-Aid having his own power armor. I love that they actually built a suit that bulky, and I love the gimmick of having him eject out of it to get more use out of the base form even way late in the show. Everything about it is just awesome and I could go like this for a while.

Second of all, I think I might be the only person on the planet who was totally satisfied with True Ending. I guess everybody just has the problem I had with the Den-O movie back when I first watched it, but I really think everyone's expectations don't match up with why it's actually called True Ending. It's literally just because it's set after the finale and they probably didn't know Another Ending would be a thing when they decided on the title.

It acts as a nice, simple coda to the show that encapsulates its themes really nicely while delivering some big action you can't get on TV. The fact that it didn't concern itself with tying up loose ends (which Ex-Aid didn't leave a lot of), or advancing character arcs that were already over is the biggest point in its favor to me. It's the exact opposite of what went wrong with the Ghost movie. My guy Yuuya Takahashi knows what he can comfortably fit in an hour and also knew better than to try and make the TV finale the "fake" ending. So don't get too hung up on the "True" part of the title. Comparisons to 100% completion bonus endings or post-game content in video games are very warranted, and I think viewing it through that lens, it becomes easier to see what they were going for. Just a little extra Ex-Aid for the road.

It's honestly my favorite summer movie (which I'll admit is weird in a world where W A to Z and Surprise Future both exist), so it bums me out how underwhelmed so many people seem to be with it, given how popular Ex-Aid as a whole is.

Y'know, I think I do, too. In fact all the forms in Ex-Aid, and their insane aesthetic, are the reason why I'm even a Kamen Rider fan at all.

Okay, so, here's my Kamen Rider origin story.

I'm a Transformers fan, at least for the last eight years or so. (That's a completely separate, irrelevant origin story.) I lurked the TFW2005 boards for a long while. Sometimes, bored at work, I'd take a look at the other tabs up top. I've got a latent fascination with fan communities: how they're similar, how they're different, what they love, what they hate, the minutiae of the scene. I just think it's neat, in a sociological way. So occasionally, I'd click over to TokuNation.

As I said before, I never got into Power Rangers as a kid, but I knew a bit about the history and the Japanese roots. I'd see articles about new Japanese episodes, or American episodes, and thought it looked goofy, but I didn't care a lot. But I'd see these articles for Kamen Rider figures, and I was fascinated.

I'm not an action figure collector, but the Ex-Aid Figuart reviews were amazing to me. The designs were mind-blowing, the use of color was so far past the American-style muted, "realistic" colors of superheroes that I kept checking out the reviews when they'd go up: Action Gamer Level 2, Taddle Fantasy, Dragon Hunter, Bang Bang Simulations... I didn't know what show could possibly contain all of these designs. The little snippets of information that would precede a review, if anything, made me more perplexed: what the hell is a "gas hat"? They're all in a video game or something? Is this post-apocalyptic? After enough figure reviews, I was like, "I have to see what this crazy-ass show is like." And, Jesus, I never looked back.

I'd've never watched a Kamen Rider anything if it wasn't for how extra these suit designs were.

It is also a great design! Big, bulky suits are a rarity, and it's nice when a show figures out a way to do it well. (Did not love the Dark Knight Returns Ichigou design!) Along those lines, I appreciate that the base suits, the Level 1s, are the goofiest, least-imposing base suits I've seen in a show yet. That's a bold move, opening with a comedy suit, and I think it shows how much confidence the producers had in the world they were building.

You're probably exactly right. If I separate my gripes into two boxes, there's a mostly full one labeled "Why Did They Call It True Ending", and a mostly empty one labeled "Everything Else".

The main problem I have with the True Ending part is how it feels like it's making the Ex-Aid TV story sprawl out in a way I didn't like. If it'd just been "here's a down-the-road adventure with the Ex-Aid cast", and it wasn't tied up with the TV show ending, I wouldn't mind it as much. If this thing had been set a year or two later, like with RE:BIRTH, and they chopped off the Where They Went Next stuff from the end credits, it's a really enjoyable movie that I've only got a couple problems with. But, setting it more-or-less concurrent with the finale, regardless of the title, just bugged me. Mostly because, like I mentioned before, I love how Kamen Rider shows and stories end. They set out to tell a story, and then that story's over. They can show up in someone else's movie or series, but that's someone else's movie or series. Once they're like "Wait, there's a bigger villain and more for the whole cast to deal with", I feel like it's robbing the TV series of a bit of the finality that I think is one of its strongest narrative tools. And, y'know, maybe that's just my problem, and it's not fair to judge the movie for it. I don't know. I just feel like doing an Ending movie starring Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, for any value of Ending, made me like the story of the movie a little less.

And, yeah, the movie was overall a good one! Maybe that's why I'm so harsh on the True Ending part, because the story is mostly super solid. First, it looks phenomenal. The effects and camerawork are stellar. The new suits, especially VRX, are killer. The way the plot involves every character in ways that make sense for their character, that's so hard to do with a sprawling cast of various bickering, duplicitous assholes. (The evolved forms of Taiga and Hiiro are just god-complex jerks who don't want to murder each other! I love the Ex-Aid cast so much, you guys!) The fight scenes are coherent and dramatic. The emotional climax is so well-acted and heartfelt, it almost made me forget that Kamen Rider Deadbeat Dad has a story that makes zero sense.

If there's a non-title problem this movie has, it's this, and I just can't overlook it. (I am willing to let the Johnny Maxima/Gamedeus thing slide. It's not my favorite ending, but I don't think it comes close to tanking the film.) It is not that easy to see out how the motivations of one character can encompass both "I didn't care about my wife and daughter, so I abandoned them years ago" and "I am willing to destroy the world to keep my daughter safe and give her all of the happiness I never gave her before." That is, uh, that is a swing. There's maybe a way to explain it, and as a viewer I could probably concoct a headcanon motivation for why Kamen Rider Deadbeat Dad did both of those things, but I shouldn't have to. A baseline expectation for a villain whose emotional arc is the spine of the film is that his motivation and psychology should be expressed to the audience. Why Is He Doing This and Why Has He Changed are just, like, Intro To Screenwriting. This is not the sort of stuff that should be left to the audience. If they'd given us one scene where he explains why he abandoned his family, all of my concerns evaporate. I get why he's protecting his daughter, I just don't get why he didn't seem to care before. If it's just "I regretted being an asshole when I thought my daughter was going to die", y'know, understandable, but why? Why leave, and why come back to this insane extent? If the whole movie didn't orbit around Kamen Rider Deadbeat Dad and his decisions, it wouldn't be such a big deal to me. But it does, so it is.

All of the Kiriya stuff was golden, though. He's the best. A thousand Lazer V-Cinemas!

KAMEN RIDER EX-AID MOVIES: ANOTHER ENDING

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After rewatching these various Ex-Aid movies, and seeing the evolution of the cast across them, I realized what the "secret sauce" is that makes Ex-Aid work as a series: every one of the four main Riders thinks this is his show, and the other three Riders are his sidekicks. Brave is the hero, and if everyone would just stop being idiots and do what he says already, they'd be able to defeat the Bugsters and bring back those affected by the virus. Snipe is the hero, cast out after his failure, and his goal to redeem himself is constantly thwarted by the other Riders selfishly keeping the Gashats from the actual hero of the show, who'd be able to defeat the Bugsters and bring back those affected by the virus. Lazer is the hero, tracking down leads and getting killed when he gets too close to the truth, only to be resurrected in everyone's hour of need, instrumental in defeating the Bugsters and bringing back those affected by the virus. Ex-Aid is also a Rider.

(Look, I'm just poking fun. There's a whole TV series about how Kamen Rider Ex-Aid is easily in the Top 5 Kamen Riders for the show of the same name.)

It's because of this, the way every Rider views the events of the series as part of his personal, paramount journey, that these Another Ending spin-offs/epilogues work so well. It doesn't matter to Brave or Snipe or Lazer's stories that Ex-Aid isn't there, because he's just their sidekick. These stories are about them, like they've always been.

And it starts with a solid story, drawing from not only the events of the series that tie Brave and Snipe together (Saki, being assholes to everyone they care about and probably dying alone), but the theme of letting go of the past and being a better/truer version of yourself hits the main characters of this movie equally. Hiiro needs to once and for all say goodbye to Saki. Taiga needs to stop torturing himself over Saki's death. Nico needs to stop defining herself by her crush on Taiga and go live her life. It's, yeah, a solid thematic line that the movie follows, largely successfully.

I say "largely successfully", because you could argue that this whole story is a retread of the climactic Brave/Snipe story from Ex-Aid, where Hiiro sacrifices the ghost of Saki to save Taiga, and their feud/penance is put to rest. I think the movie gets away with it by pushing things a bit further, and making some key distinctions. Namely, there's a difference between "I don't wish you were dead for killing my girlfriend" and "I am ready to accept my girlfriend's death". There's enough sci-fi nonsense grey area to Saki's evaporation that I believe both characters would try to bring her back, no matter the odds. The movie hedges its bets by flat-out telling us in the first few minutes that it's totally possible to revive the infected dead. There's definitely some echoes to the series and how these characters stopped wanting to murder each other, but it never felt like a retread to me. I thought it all worked with Brave and Snipe's characters.

The Nico stuff, that took me a bit to feel good about, and I don't know if I'm all the way there. First, I hate that creepy Denim Harry Potter and his stalkery vibe. The idea of Nico "ending up with" that dink got my blood boiling. She can do better! Everyone can do better! Second, for a minute I was like, "In what world is giving up on a career in medicine and dedicating your life to playing games a smart move?" The show seemed to imply that Nico had grown up, and found her true calling as a student of medicine. That seemed really positive! Then the movie's like, "Nope, she's abandoning her fake dream of medicine to follow her real passion, being a child and playing games! Hooray! It all worked out, finally!" And, no, I didn't think it did. It seemed like a regression. But, if I squint hard, I can go along with it. Maybe she never wanted to work in a clinic and help people. Maybe she was only ever doing it to get close to Taiga. Maybe she was putting her life on hold, staying away from games. Maybe maybe maybe. I don't know that I like it better as an ending for her than the TV show one, but I can see where the movie's coming from.

Overall, Brave/Snipe was a really good start to the Another Ending trilogy. It managed to feel like a deeper exploration of both riders, without feeling like a retread or retcon of what the TV series did.

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Parado and Poppy are interesting characters to pair for a movie. Unlike the four main Riders, they are sidekicks. Parado exists to be Emu's Luigi, while Poppy is the maternal caregiver, keeping all these active boys from feeling too sad. Putting them together and making them the stars feels a bit like the movie lacks a spine, but it sort-of makes up for that by asking some interesting questions.

Chiefly, what does it mean it to exist as a sidekick without a hero, and do Bugsters even have a right to exist? They're good questions, I think, and certainly enough to base a movie around, but I don't know if Paradox/Poppy does enough with them.

To the first question, I was really hoping that the initial appearance of Parado, bored on a roof with no villains to fight, meant that we'd get to see what the next stage would be for him. Sadly, it wasn't. Beyond a renewed dedication to fighting Bugsters and bringing back virus victims, the movie doesn't really give a sense to what Parado's actually going to do with the life he's been granted. I didn't mind the show not really delving into it in the third act, since they had an apocalypse or two to avert. But all the movie gives us for Parado to define himself with is "I have a heart and I deserve to exist". That's noble, but it's also something that I feel like was settled back in the series. There's incremental growth to his character, but I'd hoped for more in the spotlight.

And, boy, is it ever Parado's spotlight. Poppy gets co-lead billing, but she's as much a sidekick in this as she ever was on the show. There's never a point where I feel like Poppy asserts herself, and while that's disappointing, it's not the end of the world. The movie mostly uses her to explore the second question of the movie, whether Bugsters like Parado and Poppy, viruses that harm or kill their host, even deserve to still exist.

I think it's a fair question. Sakurako Dan was killed so Poppy could exist. Poppy didn't ask for that, but there's no denying it happened. Shouldn't Poppy be eradicated so a human being can be reborn? It's intriguing, and like the first question, the movie seems to think posing the question is sufficient. It isn't! Poppy and Parado would both just rather not die, thank you. Now that the threat of the Bugsters is largely over (according to multiple characters across the first two Another Ending movies, also about to be proven completely incorrect), why should two uncured diseases be allowed to roam around? There's a perfect opportunity to delineate the terms of Bugster existence, and why specifically Parado and Poppy have a right to live, but the movie doesn't come close to getting into it.

That's really my problem as a whole with Paradox/Poppy. There's a bunch of potential that the movie just doesn't do much with. The majority of the questions it answers are about what villain is doing which thing for what reason. It's content to connect the plots of all three Another Ending movies, but it misses out on saying something of its own.

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Okay, I'm still not crazy about the idea of Kamen Rider TV series concluding/"concluding" in a series of movies. Ex-Aid as a series left a bunch of dangling plot threads, so the movies had legitimate stuff to deal with, but I still wish the story of Ex-Aid (the Dans, the Bugsters, Game Disease) had been finished on TV. I'm not sure I'm ever going to feel differently.

But.

I really, really liked how Another Ending ended. It packed an emotional wallop, and it did it with the best villain facing off against the best Rider. Yeah, I said it.

When I was first watching Ex-Aid, I didn't know much of the formula for Kamen Rider shows. I didn't know that a) Kiriya could get killed, or that b) Kiriya would obviously not stay dead. All of that was a shock to me. I completely bought the stakes of what I was seeing. Some of that was a lack of familiarity with formula, but some was just because Kiriya was so, so good.

Again, it's because all of the Riders act like the show's about them. Kiriya has the swagger of a star, the guilt of a star (his best friend was killed by Game Disease!), the skills of a star, the resurrection of a star. If you could end the series with any Rider other than Emu, it makes perfect sense to do it with Kiriya, especially as his main grudge was with the show's best villain.

Another Ending buys a lot of goodwill from me by centering the villainy not on Masamune Dan, not on a new villain, but where it belongs: Kuroto Dan. All hail Kamen Rider Genm. I get why the show would want to shift him into an antagonistic hero-y role, all bug eyes and humiliating punishments, but it was inevitable that he'd reach for a villainous plan again, and it's the best way to send off the franchise. It just means more as an ending for Kuroto Dan to end with it. It feels final.

The other Riders, Brave and Snipe and Poppy and Paradox, they didn't get much to do in this finale. I'm okay with that, they got their movies. I'm extra okay with them staying true to their non-team dynamic, everybody pursuing their own goals, barely communicating, never asking for or offering help. It's great. Emu's laid up, so he's got an excuse, but it is so utterly in character for Brave and Snipe to just be doing their own thing while Lazer investigates, researches, puts the clues together, and tricks his way to victory. It's a celebration of nearly everything Ex-Aid did well as a franchise, and I'm glad I rewatched it.

Especially after that goddamn True Ending movie. (Sorry.)

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I think that's it for Ex-Aid movie rewatches! Obviously, I'd love to keep chatting with people on their thoughts about these films, so feel free to chime in if you feel like it. For me, it's Build next, probably starting next weekend. Hope to see you there!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I never expected Kiriya or Kuroto to come back after their initial deaths in the show, so that was a fun surprise when they did. But yeah, glad you liked the Another Ending movies! I pretty much like them in increasing order. In fact, I'm pretty sure I flat-out wasn't impressed with the Brave and Snipe one (even as someone who is neutral on Nico, I got kinda angry at what they did with her!), but the time I got to the end of the third movie, I had a good time. I am persobally plenty satisfied with the ending of the TV show, but Lazer vs Genm is perfectly fine as an addition.

I am curious if you've delved into the expensive world of owning any Rider merchandise of your own?

I'm a little skeptical nowadays when it comes to Rider or villain deaths outside the final three episodes. Like, I was more shocked that Saionji didn't come back in the main Ghost series than I was that everyone else resurrected.

I definitely think I liked Brave/Snipe better the second time, and maybe liked Paradox/Poppy a little less. Which is kind-of weird, since that is the opposite of how much I like those pairings of characters. (What the show does with Parado's arc is... what is the emoji tag for "chef's kiss"?) I just felt this time that Brave/Snipe is about something in a way that Paradox/Poppy felt a little hollow.

Yeah, I think viewing Genm vs Lazer as an "addition" to the show's ending is the right move. All of Emu's stuff gets thoroughly wrapped up in the show, the Another Ending movies are for everyone else's threads.

Sadly, yes! Like I mentioned, plastic robot toys are my main toy addiction, and I'm not huge on action figures. As a result, I've picked up some Figuarts, but after unpacking and posing them, they pretty much stand on a shelf. I'm a co-owner for a comics shop, so most of what I've picked up is stuff I can get wholesale from our suppliers. I haven't yet dropped serious coin on any import figs. That's kind-of my limit. Well, one limit. The other limits are "only main Riders or main forms" (base suit, no form changes or upgrades) and "I can only open and display a figure when I've watched the show". I've got some early-Heisei Rider figs, from the Rider Kicks re-releases, that are waiting for me to work through their shows. Mostly, the figs are just trophies for series I've watched.

HUGE respect for the folks who go all in on show merch, though. It's a dream to have enough space and/or money to own those CSM replica drivers.

I've gotta disagree here. At least, that was never the impression I got from the show, and I think the only reason it's easy to come to that conclusion is because most shows with a character like Nico would have the endpoint of their development be getting a "real" job.

Don't get me wrong, that obviously could've been a really strong arc if that was what Ex-Aid was going for. Obnoxious teenage girl learns that Life is Beautiful from hanging out with superhero doctors and decides to follow in their selfless footsteps? Man, that actually sounds awesome.

But unless I'm forgetting something here, that was never quite the focus of her character, which did, in large part, revolve around her crush Taiga, so I think it's more than fair for Another Ending to have getting over that to go back to her incredibly profitable e-sports career be the way she "grows up", just like she got over her obsession with Emu. There's no maybe about it as far as I'm concerned, at least when it comes to the question of how much it lines up with what happened on TV.

I think the whole direction Another Ending took was largely about going into more detail about things like that that weren't totally clear in the show (just like True Ending, actually advancing the story is a secondary concern, it even that), and while I think that leads to the feeling of retreading old ground they can have, I also think they're great for people who "need" the help. The first two felt largely redundant to me as someone who was already invested enough in those characters to draw all these conclusions, but on the other hand, as someone who got very, very sick of Kuroto after his resurrection, Genm vs. Lazer seriously impressed me with how it put things into context to show how, far from a walking set of repetitive gags, he's arguably the single most complex and deep character in the series.

The Nico stuff... yeah, I think it's fair to say a show about a Genius Gamer doctor who plays games all the time and uses those game-playing skills to defeat monsters and save lives probably would not want to suggest that video games are a childish endeavor one grows out of. That is a fair read! I guess my thought about it, from the end of the series, is that Nico'd end up going the Emu route: using her game skills as Ride Player Nico to assist Taiga in curing Game Disease victims. I never thought she'd be, like, Poppy, some assistant to a Great Man. So in that sense, her shifting to "just" being a gamer would've been like if Emu quit to be Genius Gamer M again. It's not that she isn't talented at being a gamer, and it's not that she doesn't like it, but she could be using that skill to do so much more.

The Spring crossover movies were all contracted after the fact and separately from the tv series, so cast availability, even for the current shows was wildly variable. On top of that, they all had the same writer and producer behind them so there's much less variation among them than among the series themselves. Also, all the ones that feature big Sentai crossovers also had the same director (Osamu Kaneda) who is just weak all around and a really bad fit for these movies specifically. The ones where Sentai only appears for one fighting scene had a different director (Kamen Rider Taisen and GP Rider 3), although still the same writer and producer.

Osamu Kaneda directed Decade's movie, All Riders vs Dai-Shocker which had the highest box office for a Rider movie, and due to that kept getting calling back for future mega crossovers involving Rider, but it's clear he just didn't care for the concept at all. All Riders vs Dai-Shocker itself was fairly inconsistent in terms of presentation with some attempts at using practical effects for some scenes before they just give up and go back to cg and green screening later on, with most Riders in the final battle just doing generic punches and kicks outside of a couple of specific shots, but rather than building up on it and improving, Kaneda actually seemed to get worse later on.

The big fighting scenes with many suits just became sloppier in his later movies and he often just tried to get rid of them to go back to less suits (like them all disappearing during the Den-O power up scene in Let's Go Kamen Riders). However, those movies had high box office and his attempts at branching out all ended up in box office failure - Kaneda directed the new Gavan movie, Gaim summer movie, Drive x Ghost and Rider 1, all movies which performed badly, and in fact got increasingly lower numbers if you don't count Gavan. So, he returned to the mega crossover movies with Chou Super Hero Taisen for seemingly a last attempt at this directing gig - They even hid name from the marketing, only listing him as the director when there was the first screening. That shows pretty clearly even Toei realized that his name was poison (He is the CEO of JAE too, from where Toei gets most of their suit actors, which is probably why he got so many chances). CSHT performed even worse than Rider 1 though, marking the end of the spring crossover movies and Osamu Kaneda's career as a director (well, he technically "directed" a compilation movie for Amazons s1 but that's just cutting and pasting existing footage).

Kaneda's Super Hero Taisen movies specifically have assistant directors who often handle some secondary battles, which helps improving them visually, but it all falls apart when the big climatic battles are handled in a sloppy way due to going back to Kaneda's main staff. In Chou Super Hero Taisen, specifically, you've got the fairly dynamic battles in the tournament... which are basically irrelevant story-wise and basically have no script (with only Momotaros getting a scene outside of battle), but then the big climatic Brave vs True Brave battle, which should be the big emotional climax of the story, is a sloppy brawl where they just slash each other until the finisher, with no abilities used beforehand or any real flow to the fight. And then you have the actual final battle where you just get both heroes and villains one shot by weak looking finishers too (wasting even the returning heroes with actors, like Zolda).

Wow, I never knew any of this. This definitely helps explain some of the problems I've had with the crossover movies. Thanks!

I agree with you on the True and Another Ending movies. True was mostly forgettable with nothing to do with the series really while Another actually wrapped up the dangling plot threads and developed the characters further. I consider it the real ending to the series, whatever it might be called.