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Kamen Rider Die rewatches Legend Rider projects (and more!)
Hey, gang. Welcome to KAMEN RIDER DIE REWATCHES LEGEND RIDER PROJECTS (AND MORE!).
So, we've just finished up Kamen Rider Decade. I've watched W through Build. The next thing on my plate should be Kamen Rider Zi-O. It's just... watching Decade, seeing that little team-up with Double at the end, knowing there were going to be a whole bunch of Heisei Phase 2 returns in Zi-O... it got me wanting to rewatch some Phase 2 stuff. Not all of it! I do not have that kind of time! But, like, a little taste of each Phase 2 Rider, as well as any Phase 1 Legend Rider reappearances? That I'll actually understand now? That sounds like it could be a pretty fun couple months between finishing Decade and starting Zi-O. Which is what this thread is going to be! I'll be rewatching a selection of Heisei Phase 2 Kamen Rider material (movies, online specials, V-Cinemas, what have you) and talking about them in this thread. My list, for the next while, looks like the following: Kamen Rider W Forever: A to Z/The Gaia Memories of Fate Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider OOO & W feat. Skull: Movie War Core OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders Kamen Rider OOO Wonderful: The Shogun and the 21 Core Medals Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Fourze & OOO: Movie War Mega Max Kamen Rider Fourze: Rocket Drill States of Friendship Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen Kamen Rider Fourze the Movie: Everyone! Let's Feel The Universe! Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum Kamen Rider x Super Sentai x Space Sheriff: Super Hero Taisen Z Kamen Rider Wizard Episodes 52-53 Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Gaim & Wizard: The Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen feat. Super Sentai Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Drive & Gaim: Movie War Full Throttle Super Hero Taisen GP: Kamen Rider 3 D-Video Special: Kamen Rider 4 Kamen Rider Drive: Surprise Future Kamen Rider Chaser Drive Saga: Kamen Rider Brain Kamen Rider Drive Episode 48 Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie Wars Genesis Kamen Rider 1 *Kamen Rider Ghost: The 100 Eyecons and Ghost's Fateful Moment *Kamen Rider Ghost: Legendary! Riders' Souls! *Kamen Rider Ghost Episode 50 *Kamen Rider Heisei Generations: Dr. Pac-Man vs. Ex-Aid & Ghost with Legend Riders *Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Chou Super Hero Taisen Kamen Rider Brave: ~Let's Survive! Revival of the Beast Rider Squad!~ Kamen Sentai Gorider *Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FINAL: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders *Kamen Rider Build: Be The One I'm going to be covering those, in order, which should put us up to Zi-O's debut. (The titles that are preceded by an asterisk are ones I've already written up for TokuNation. I'll be reposting those write-ups in this thread for continuity's sake. I won't necessarily do a new write-up or anything, but I will be rewatching them, and I'll add any new thoughts if I have them.) I'm focusing on anything with a Legend Rider appearance or Early-Bird team-up, and at least one solid solo outing from each season's cast. I'm shying away from Net-Movies and comedic content; not because I don't like it, but because it would take an entire month to tackle, like, all of the Fourze online content. I would like to watch Zi-O sometime in 2022! As this is a rewatch thread, there are only two real guidelines I?d ask everyone to keep in mind. PLEASE AVOID TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING PAST KAMEN RIDER BUILD. I'm going to be getting to Zi-O and the Reiwa shows in 2022, and I'd prefer to stay as unspoiled on those shows as possible. We'll get there! Save your fun stories and memes about, like, Thouser for those threads! EVERYTHING FROM KUUGA TO BUILD IS FAIR GAME FOR DISCUSSION. If you'd like to stay spoiler-free on any of those shows, maybe skip this thread! Otherwise, it's totally fine to discuss any of the non-Zi-O Heisei shows. We'll be checking in with each show, so it's cool (and welcome!) to talk about elements from those shows you think the movies did or did not handle well. Or even just randomly mention how weird you thought the Akiko/Terui romantic subplot always was on Kamen Rider W. Y'know, whichever! That's about it for the setup on this thread. I've only done a rewatch thread once before, and they're (hopefully!) nice and chill. I'll be reminiscing a bit about my original journey through Phase 2, and potentially finding new details that I didn't have the context to enjoy last time. It'll be a relaxing and nostalgic couple months for everyone, I hope. These Phase 2 movies and such are all pretty long, relative to a half-hour TV installment I'd usually cover six times a week, so expect this coverage to be in the 2-3 times a week range. Maybe more if things line up, but my December is already looking sort of slammed. I will do my best, but certain things take priority over rewatching Kamen Rider movies. (I can't believe I just said that, either! I'm so sorry! I don't really mean it!) Final thing that I need to say every time: I cherish your participation. While I'm keen to re-experience stuff that I watched over ten series ago, I'm excited to get to share that experience with all of you for the first time. You are smart, generous fans, and I can't think of a better holiday season than chatting about Kamen Rider movies and related media with all of you. Participation isn't mandatory (feel free to lurk!), but it is always treasured. You are the best fans in the world, and I'm lucky to get to talk about a franchise I love with all of you. That's the setup out of the way! Let's watch some Phase 2 Heisei goodness! And also some Taisen movies! https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...gendrider0.png |
KAMEN RIDER W FOREVER: A TO Z/THE GAIA MEMORIES OF FATE
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../wforever1.png Oh man, is this my favorite Kamen Rider movie? I honestly didn't think it was, before now. I remember it being solid. I remember thinking Foundation X was a weirdly inert overarching menace for several movies to come, and they got their dull start here. (Just, like, the boring pragmatism of funding a dozen different World Domination mad science schemes. I want a global terror initiative that commits!) I remember Eternal, of course, and his strangely theatrical group of zombie soldiers. But, like, that's it? Quality-wise, I didn't remember it being any better or worse than any other summer movie. And, okay, maybe it's the intensely lowered standards of the Phase 1 films and their nebulous continuity and their frequent poorly deployed themes and their air of exhaustion and their inability to find time for the entire cast of the series they're spinning off from and their etc., but I thought this film was just about perfect? I honestly don't know what I could find fault with. Thematically, it's doing some interesting stuff with the topic/keyword of Memory. Philip is the lead for the emotional part of the narrative, since his identity is wrapped up in his amnesia. His disconnection stems from his belief that his past holds the answers to his sense of self, so a story that forces him to set aside what his memories have to offer in favor of a present surrounded by people who care for him, that's going to be an excellent dilemma to base a W movie on. Like, this movie is about the value of Memories and memories, and how the lack thereof can't keep you from being a hero. Structurally, the movie sort of hands off from Philip in the first half to Shotaro in the second half, which I really enjoyed. This isn't really Shotaro's story, so his involvement gains intensity from Philip's absence. With Philip captured, the movie pivots slightly to a more straightforward Assault On The Villains' Base plot, and it's here that I really dug the film. It's... pacing these things is hard. Any number of these movies have bungled their story by coming out of the gate strong, padding out the middle, and then trying to land an emotional punch in the climax. It doesn't work great, since the audience (or maybe just me) has lost patience with the thinness of the narrative. Here, it's the Kamen Rider W team as a multi-act motion picture story. There's all of Philip's cerebral empathy – the puzzle-solving interest in human connection – and then Shotaro's two-fisted heart-on-his-sleeve problem-solving. Whenever you start to get tired of one, the other tags in. It makes for a viewing experience that never wears out its welcome. Even the parts I might've found a little too deus ex machiny, I find them charming now? Stuff like Skull providing the crucial Lost Driver to Shotaro, or the town of Fuuto lifting Double up with a gust of wind; it all reads as Magical Realism to me now, not some hacky writing or regrettable plot hole. Skull's appearance is the theme of Memory, the power we imbue it with, and ways it can help us better protect our present. In a story freighted with the importance of Memories/memories, why shouldn't the memory of Skull be a weapon for our heroes to call on? And the town of Fuuto – maybe literally the town of Fuuto – protecting its hero long enough for its hero to protect the town, man, that's just an A+ ending. I can't even slightly get mad at an ending that corny. That's a refutation of Eternal's villainous philosophy of Inhumanity As Freedom, the separation from community as a pathway to power. Here, it's Double's commitment to the townspeople that provides a route to victory. And Eternal as a villain! The trope of Evil Version Of The Hero, like, always works. Trope for a reason. The way Daidou needles at Philip's insecurity, and then laughs at Philip's connection to humanity, it gives the superhero side of this movie a lot to work with. Daidou's scheme is born out of the same outsider frustration Philip has, the same need to find a connection, but Daidou gleefully solves it with citywide terror and a giant laser. The premise of this one totally delivers, which is a very low bar that not every Kamen Rider film clears! Eternal just looks awesome, too. The sideways E on his forehead to play off of Double's W antenna. The cape, the holsters, the knife; all boss as hell. The whole movie looks great, honestly. I love how they suspend the Hardboilder in the air for a couple shots, to make Shotaro and Double's attacks look insanely epic. All of the weird lieutenant villains feel distinct and have memorable fights with multiple heroes. AND THE FIGHTS ARE ALL SO GOOD. This thing just looks phenomenal. Absolutely everything you love about the action of Kamen Rider W, but bigger and faster and cooler. Plus, like, everyone you love from the series (who's still alive at this point) gets at least a few minutes of screentime. Saeko! Saeko acts as a clearly-filmed-separately Greek Chorus! But there's also a half-dozen characters I smiled at remembering (that AKB48 gag!), a cool moment for Shotaro and Terui to acknowledge each other's commitment to justice in a manly way, and an entire subplot where Akiko is horny and Terui treats her like a little sister. (I have never loved their "romance", and that didn't change today.) Just, like, everyone's in this. Everyone. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../wforever2.png Even a brand-new Kamen Rider! Yep, first OOO appearance, and the continuation of the Early-Bird guest appearance Double inaugurated in the Dai Shocker film. Pretty much the same thing here, but we get Actual Eiji instead of just the suit and some ADR. It's cute! It's OOO showing off his Henshin, a form change, and a finisher, which I think is the high water mark for this sort of thing. I dig it, mostly because A NEW KAMEN RIDER DEBUTS is the icing on the cake, rather than the reward for putting up with nonsense. It's a bonus. The whole movie around it is so fun, so entertaining, that it almost felt greedy to me when Eiji showed up. I already loved this thing! You don't need to give me a gift when I'm neck-deep in gifts! And what a gift this movie was. I didn't remember much from it before, but now I'll never forget it. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/.../wforever3.png (I will 100% forget it. My brain's like a sieve for this franchise! I will have forgotten this movie by next week.) |
(Boy, I tried two new, different things -- pasting from Word, and pasting from Word into TextEdit into here -- and this site borked them both. Awesome. Feeling real good about this new project!)
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That stinks that you haven't gotten a workaround yet. I know I've seen it happening to a few other posts on this site. So I'm really curious what the issue is and if they'll fix it. Anyway this movie! I'll probably be more active here since I have seen like... the entirety of Phase 2 Kamen Rider and I can just get my thoughts out on things I enjoy. But regardless, the first actual Summer Movie I saw for Rider! And it still probably is my favorite of the Summer Movies off the top of my head? I feel like Surprise Future is close up there alongside Be The One. But A to Z really edges them out in just like everything for me honestly. But also I've never really ranked the Summer Movies even though maybe I should since I basically made it a mission to watch all the Phase 1 ones. But yeah I suppose W was the first time I ever actively read up on placement stuff, like hearing there was like some semi-continuity in where movies were placed was weird to me. And A to Z makes a real good strong impression. If Skull wasn't right there, Eternal might be my favorite suit in W, the fact that the eyes don't get cut off and form the shape of an infinity symbol/mobius strip is a real good touch. Suit aside, he just makes a good antagonist in general, him and his quirky miniboss squad. It also has like some of my favorite setpieces and lines in Rider as well. The whole W just rapid changing into all 9 Forms before going Xtreme is real good. Plus the whole "Count up your sins!" , "There's too many at this point to count up!" exchange was real good. Also Eiji! Probably still one of my favorite Rider Cameos that I've witnessed. "Rider's should help each other" indeed! Just him showing up and his brief fight to get rid of one of the movies mid-bosses is a perfect showcase on how a Rider Debut should be done. |
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Plus, it's nice to have something that keeps the spotlight on the show it's spinning out from, rather than the Winter Movie thing of serving as an epilogue for another series, or the Spring Movie thing where it's got to integrate Sentai casts. This one's just, like, A Kamen Rider Show You Like as a movie. That's very cool. |
awww shit I didn't know the W thread happened how did you watch it
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Eternal in this movie is good. Eternal in his own V-Cin is bad.
Anyway, W was the... fourth full season of Kamen Rider I watched, I believe? If the US shows aren't counted, anyway. But yeah I felt the show was a bit slow to start, once it got good it got really good. And even now, after having seen most of Phase 1 and that W isn't technically what started alot of Phase 2 trends, it still feels like a really unique entry in the franchise, and while it might not have started alot of Phase 2 trends(though it most certainly did start some), it sure as heck perfected a good chunk of them. Granted, I've only seen about half of Phase 2 as of this writing, but I still feel like out of all the "typical" elements of a Phase 2 Heisei season, W is the one to do most of them the best, only to be outdone by OOO. Really hoping I can find the time to rewatch the show before the anime comes out, but even I can't, you'd better believe I'll be watching the simulcast alongside the rest of the message board when it happens next year. First time I'll be able to do it, too! |
My workaround for the formatting right now is to just paste the text in again using the edit button right after I make a post, which for some reason seems to make things fine? Hopefully this inexplicably works for you too, Die!
But yeah, on a much happier note: one of the best Rider movies ever! I'm going to beat you to the punch with recycling old content here, because this happens to be something I already wrote up my opinions on: Quote:
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Eternal is the best movie rider ever. And A to Z was if I recall voted best rider movie ever in a survey once by fans.
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Of all the things W might've inaugurated, the whole Rescued Collectibles thing is the most franchise-defining. (Decade had this sort of, but it wasn't like there was a random Kuuga card that was wreaking havoc or anything.) Quote:
Also, thanks for posting those previous A to Z thoughts! Seems like we both had a good time with a well-crafted summer movie. Quote:
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Ah the W movie, it's been so long, despite being a couple years since I saw it.
As with everyone else, Eternal is one of the most impressive Rider designs out there, simple yet with a powerful presence that it stands out, even among the more visually interesting villain designs. Also a pretty solid character (at least for this movie, I've heard they don't do him justice in later appearances), and his team felt like a fitting addition, especially how they all have W's Gaia Memories as their powers, giving us a glimpse of how they'd look as monsters. I also really like seeing Joker in action, much like with the Begins Night portion of the crossover movie with Decade. As stated earlier, the Riders' designs for W are just so good, in how they're so simple yet still unique (unless you count W's forms minus Extreme, which are just color swaps, though I like them) that I can't dislike them. The movie itself (going off memory, which may or may not be pun in this case) is certainly reminiscent of a Hollywood Blockbuster in the sense of it being such an action-packed film from start to finish, or at least, that's how I saw it. Overall, it's a lot of fun, and even if it introduced what some consider the lazy Golden Extra Final Form Power-Ups, I still enjoyed it (yes, I also liked Wizard's Gold Dragon) and may consider this as one of my favorite Summer Rider Movies. As for this Thread, I might drop in for the pieces I have seen, but I've yet to watch a good chunk of Rider Movies and V-Cinemas which I'm planning to get around to (now that I finally found some), but I'm also planning to watch more Toku shows. Of course, I'll probably be going off memory for these, it's still fun to catch up with these movies. |
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I honestly feel like that W and Wizard were the best at keeping the full arsenal with just their midseason upgrades (FangJoker and All Dragon) getting shafted for various reasons
Granted I feel like OOO had the best integration of the collectible gimmicks into the plot with both sides after them and swapping who has what medals and thus limiting what forms Eiji has access to. |
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I remember liking this movie, but I generally liked everything W-related.
As is my wont, I have casting trivia. This time it?s centered on my favorite member of Eternal?s crew, the Heat Dopant (because I can be shallow and those shorts). She was played by actress Minase Yashiro, who was the lead actress in The Machine Girl, a minor cult classic about a schoolgirl who replaces her severed arm with a gatling gun to get revenge on her attackers. It?s one of those ridiculously silly and gory low budget films that were popular around the late ?00s. Some of my friends and I were briefly obsessed with the movie?s absurd trailer, so it was really surprising to me when Yashiro turned up in a Kamen Rider project (for the first, but not final time). |
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Oh, tried to got around this when my laptop is in need of fixing, which means it's unusable currently until it's fixed and made me think I should wait even longer to watch this (only finished W the series, the TV didn't air movies), but I got reminded that there are still my older laptop that I can salvage, outdated but usable enough for this. But good that I'm not left out here.
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Otherwise, this movie explains that the defeated NEVER members turn into dust, which was why Kazu disintegrates in what I think a similar way as people in Ryuki's Mirror World. Metal Dopant's weapon also reminds me of Imperer's Gazellestab (Spin Vent), and he too was a mercenary Rider in said series. Shotaro's a flirt and casanova, but I hope he didn't show sympathy for the victimized Reika only because she's a (hot) girl, as there'd be more NEVER members turned into dust later, or if not W accepts that NEVER members would become that. I find it wrong though for the part that Hardboilder gets sandwiched... if W slams the Hardboilder to the right one... why also kick the left one with right leg... Quote:
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KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER OOO & W FEAT. SKULL: MOVIE WAR CORE
https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...iewarcore1.png Not my favorite movie. I didn’t really love it the first time around, and I don’t love it now. The thing is, my opinion on the two sections/portions of this film – OOO and W – have sort of completely flipped around? I really disliked the W portion on this viewing. Like, a lot. Setting aside the incredibly weird Daddy Issue stuff of having Akiko’s actress play Melissa, a woman who is in love with Skull (HER DAD), it’s a story that traffics in one of my least-favorite Kamen Rider tropes: Heroic Abandonment. Skull’s portrayed as a stoic, suffering hero. He’s betrayed by his closest friend, called a monster by a woman he gave up everything to save, and unable to ever touch his daughter again. It’s a story all about the lengths Kamen Riders have to go to in order to protect the people they love, even if it means they have to cut those people out of their lives. It’s horseshit. Even before he became Kamen Rider Skull, Sokichi wasn’t answering his daughter’s phone calls. (He totally forgot about her birthday!) He lives in a completely different city for reasons that aren’t established in this film, and I don’t recall from the series. He’s making a choice to ignore his responsibilities as a parent, way before he’s forced to abandon his daughter for her own safety. (Which, two things. The No-Touching Spider in his body will only kill Akiko if he touches her. He could still, like, see her. Or call her. Like everything else in their screwed-up family, it 100% feels like Sokichi is looking for any excuse to bail on his parental commitment. The other thing… like, killing Matsu doesn’t kill the spiders? It dissolves the webbing immediately, but it doesn’t defuse the time bombs infecting everyone in the city? What… what did Sokichi even accomplish by killing Matsu, then? Everyone who didn’t already blow up is forced into a life of misery? This is what we’re calling a victory now?) This should be a story about sacrifice and duty, but everything in it reads like a story about deadbeat dads with poor work/life balance. Which, honestly, fine. I don’t need my Kamen Riders to be completely logical and emotionally healthy. I like Faiz, you know? But there’s basically no judgment on Sokichi’s actions in this movie. Akiko is furious about the ways her life has been negatively impacted due to Kamen Riders failing her as friends, family, and lovers, but the moral at the end is just Her Suffering Is A Small Price To Pay For Justice. It’s an entire story where Akiko’s theatrical-but-honest emotional turmoil is brushed aside in the face A Man’s Silent Suffering. Whatever. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...iewarcore2.png The even more galling failure of the W portion is that the OOO portion is specifically refuting that worldview. The W portion is about how Kamen Riders are solely focused on helping people, even if they have to give up on happiness as a result. But the OOO portion is about how hollow and unfulfilling it is to solely dedicate yourself to anything! The OOO portion – which I originally thought was laughably bizarre and generally irrelevant – pretty much ended up being the only part of this story I liked. It's Inoue, which was nice. Inoue Forever and all of that. (There's a bit where Eiji says that Nobu is still Nobu, which feels like a secret message between me and Inoue.) It does the Eternal thing of crafting a villain that reflects/inverts our hero’s shortcomings, but turned up to Evil. Nobunaga, a man whose name autocompletes with ‘s Ambition, is someone who is consumed by his need to attain, to control. He’s everything Eiji isn’t. Nobunaga sees the world around him as both a birthright and a banquet, all of it waiting for him to claim it. But in seeing the world that way, he misses the point of it all. Nobunaga can’t understand how Eiji can find joy in a life without taking. What Eiji points out to him is that the world exists outside of the ambitions of men. The sky is blue. Art is created. It doesn’t need people to control it, because it doesn’t bow to that control. It’s a pretty basic Stop To Smell The Roses moral, and it could probably only work when applied to the story of Oda Nobunaga. (It’s a bit like only being able to land a simplistic message like Don’t Bite People in a story with Dracula.) But I think it worked here due to its own bonkers commitment to the story of a cloned warlord who used his heretofore unrevealed healing powers to undo the damage he caused a woman he was stalking, as well as the proximity to a much less appealing story in Skull’s celebrated abandonment of his daughter. https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...iewarcore3.png But at least Kamen Rider Birth shows up! I like Birth okay, but its introduction here is like nearly every other Fan Service thing in this story: missing the point entirely. It’s just the Birth suit, not either of the Birth characters. Date isn’t in this movie at all, and Goto’s turn as Birth is both noncanonical (pretty sure the series doesn’t let him be Birth for a good long while) and robbed of its significance. There’s a really great arc in the series about Goto becoming Birth, but here it just happens off-camera. Same thing with Tajador; awesome suit, fun to see it kick ass, but it’s almost unforgivable that it’s introduced with Ankh just showing up with the medals. And, man, I said how great it was that A To Z managed to find time for its entire TV series cast, so here’s a movie that Ankh’s human form is in for about forty-five seconds, and the full cast of W is almost entirely sidelined for a prequel story. It’s a bummer. It’s a movie celebrating two TV shows, and it’s compromised versions of both. Plus, not super crazy about the concluding section. The villain at the end, Kamen Rider Core, doesn’t make much sense, or have a defensible viewpoint. It’s just a monster that hates Kamen Riders, and thinks they make everything worse, all so Akiko can feel bad about holding the men in her life responsible for abandoning her. He’s a giant flaming Ghost Kamen Rider, and defeating him isn’t clever or anything. It’s just new power-ups and Early-Bird suit debuts. I had honestly completely forgotten about him, and now I know why. Yeah, man, did not dig this one! The OOO stuff is good enough, but it sucks to not really have any Eiji/Ankh scenes. (I mean, they literally never share a frame, so I’m just going to assume that Ankh’s couple scenes were filmed separately from the rest of the cast.) The W stuff features my least-favorite W plot – Akiko and Terui’s totally unconvincing romance – and one of my all-time least-favorite Kamen Rider tropes. It’s okay to say that Sokichi was a good Kamen Rider but a shitty dad! That would’ve made the movie so much better! Instead, we get a middle section that exposes the lie the first part is telling, and then a third part that ignores the exposure. Not one I liked rewatching! https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...iewarcore4.png |
Probably like my second least favorite movie war? Need to check my rankings.
But Genesis is my worst so uh yeah. Real bottom of the barrel movie honestly with Core. The only parts I specifically enjoyed were the Skull bits and some other small parts of each of the segments. Listen, you give me more Skull? I will pay attention. Other than that not much to say on Core other than... "I don't completely hate it". |
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...and then there's the rest of his story in the movie. |
Maybe it's just because I watched JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean on Netflix recently, but Sokichi reminds me a lot of Jotaro in the "not a perfect parent" department. But hey, we got the Bat and Spider Dopant out of it.
The OOO portion felt to like it was from a writer not completely familiar with the setting and written when the show was early enough in development that it feels kind of half-baked as far as feeling like a part of OOO, while also feeling like a bite-sized portion of Inoue being Inoue. Core...I mean, Fumihiko Tachiki playing a Rider/villain is fun, at least. Heart Breaker was a fun theme. |
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(Bat Dopant's actress would go on to play Alain's sister in Ghost, which isn't super relevant to anything, but she looked so familiar in this movie that I had to pause it to go look up why.) Quote:
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Honestly, I never really loved the Movie War format? I think OOO/Fourze would go on to have the best swing at the concept, but it's too limiting to have much success. Needing to do two different stories that dovetail into a team-up resolution... it just, it's almost impossible to land that? It's always going to feel incongruent, whether from the disparity of themes (these two stories have opposing messages!) or the hamfistedness of the conclusion (it's just, like, Here's A Giant Monster To Fight). The later iteration of the Winter Movie, when it became a legit movie-length team-up, that's more the sweet spot for me. |
Like I said, anything W-related is generally good. That said, I think this Skull movie is probably the weakest bit of W for me, even more so than the oft-maligned Eternal and Accel movies. It never really felt memorable to me and, honestly, I get the sense that it was made more because fans wanted more Skull rather than because the writers had a specific story they wanted to tell.
The OOO section I find to be objectively bad but also fascinating. OOO is a show that changed a lot from its original plans while this movie was clearly written by someone who had the show bible and no actual knowledge of the plot or characters. There's a whole bunch of stuff in here - homonculi, evil Cake Boss, Gotou as Birth before episode 40 - that is completely different from the show we were already getting by the time the movie came out. It's a really interesting window into a version of OOO that would never exist. |
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Of all the characterizations Inoue might not've gotten right, I do think he gave us a Kougami that's exactly how I remember him. |
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And there are many, MANY episodes of several toku series in which a kid is upset that his or her (but usually his) only parent that actually lives with him, (the other usually working in another city or country) never sees him because of work, and the moral of the story is always that the kid is absolutely wrong to be upset that his parents are abandoning him because that is the right thing to do and the kid should just suck it up and accept having no parents. Yeah, it's bizzare to me too, but this is what they teach as a moral to children in children's television in Japan. These episodes seem to be mostly in Sentai and Ultraman, which are aimed at younger views, I think, so maybe you haven't seen it as much. Older kids are, apparently, expected to have already learned that it's okay to be abandoned by your parents. |
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The thing that's always so weird to me is how much these shows can tell stories about absentee parents who Had Good Reasons for not being around, while simultaneously telling stories about found families that're there for each no matter what... and never seem to acknowledge the disconnect of those two stories. Anyway, yeah, tokusatsu shows love to teach children that it's part of growing up to get let down by your parents, and it's childish to hold it against them. I don't have to like it, though. |
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There's definitely a bit of a culture bias blinding them to the disconnect. And it's not entirely as contradictory as you think. If never see your own family, found family is all you have. What we see here is the writers inadvertantly telling us about how they grew up and what they see as normal. Found family is more reliable than real family, because one is with you no matter what, and the other is obligated by cultural norms to abandon you the second a job opportunity shows up. I should add, that I want to make it very clear, that I am not intending to say that Japanese culture is bad and my own is good. I am very much aware of some really negative point of US culture, and of other cultures as well. No culture or person or group is perfect and there are some hug negative in pretty much all of them. This just happens to be one in Japan. Doesn't make them better or worse than us. Just different. I mean, they never burned people alive for being to kind to cats at least. |
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God, what a nightmare. Everyone who works on toku needs therapy real bad! |
Whether that's unique to Japanese toku specifically I don't know but yeah, given that parental issues happen a lot bad parents should at least be shown as such and I can see how the Japanese culture of 'respecting elders' could sometimes not always have good results if they had, for example, outdated views. I do kind of think most industrialised countries do basically have similar problems though!
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On that topic, it’s so ubiquitous that a recent show featured a heroic Rider who was billed as the first ‘dad’ Rider — which might seem odd with all the Zero Specters and Cronuses running around, but it refers to a specific subculture currently springing up in Japan where a lot of younger fathers are a lot more actively involved in their kids’ lives (which this character reflects)! Other recent Rider shows have featured good relationships with parents (or guardians, because yknow, kamen rider, All Dads Are Dead) that don’t feature the whole like. Respect Their Absence thing.
I know that’s… *sort of* a spoiler, but it’s basic minor setting stuff and I figured it’d be interesting to illustrate that post-Build, this particular trope appears to be vanishing. Sentai and Ultra seem to be following this trend recently too come to think of it |
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When I was starting my journey with Kamen Rider, I'd done Ex-Aid, then the first season of Amazons, then W. When I hit Movie War Core, I'd experienced mostly solid family relationships (even in Amazons!), so the whole Skull Can't Wait To Go Into Hiding stuff was just a weird story beat to explain why Akiko was so mad in this movie, not the most recent in a long line of frustrating excuses for poor parenting. It's watching over a dozen additional Heisei shows with that trope that made me recognize it better, and I'm happy to hear that Ex-Aid -- pioneer that it was -- started a trend of minimizing one of my least-favorite story concepts. |
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GoGoV, for example, seems to follow this trope at first. All the rangers are siblings with a disappeared dad who was preparing the ranger tech in secret and a mom who also disappeared and was presumed dead. Dad comes back to make them all rangers and the now adult children do not at all accept it and it takes a good chunk of the series for their relationship to recover. It's quite the defying of the normal trope and lesson. In fact, all of the family sentais that I've seen do not follow this trope. There are always missing parents, but the parents either didn't leave voluntarily, or are dead. And the South Korean toku Legend Heroes has an episode that seems to be absolutely a response to this trope. The parents behave just like this trope, but are absolutely portrayed as harming their child and turning him into a monstern by neglect. |
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Hey, I see all those apostrophes correctly appearing in that post about Movie War Core! Glad to see something going a little more right this time, Die!
On a much less happy note: a Rider movie even I'm not in a rush to defend! Especially that OOO part, which I, uh... Quote:
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