[Suzu]

Finally watched this one and well... where do I even start.

I think out of all the SHT movies, this one is the worst (for me). SHT Z was surprisingly decent, KR Taisen was boring as hell, SHT 1 at least was some kind of guilty pleasure but this one... it did entertain me, but Yonemura messing with almost all of my favorite characters wasn't quite what I'd call enjoyable.

The pacing felt even worse than in the other movies. In the first half, so much stuff happened and it felt like that stuff was in no order at all. The second half, on the contrary, was pretty uneventful in comparison, but at least had some kind of structure.

As for Black's cameo... it was pretty underwhelming. He didn't have much screentime and most of that was in the messy part of the movie. He had a neat chemistry with the Drive cast, but that's about it.

Genpachi being that stupid Cheetahsnail Kaijin... ugh, this was all kinds of wrong. The monster itself was pretty dumb. Him and Otta being the same person was almost insulting though. It was the same actor, sure, but that's all that connects the reall Otta with this version. He was a flat and unlikeable character all of a sudden AND was the guy in charge for Gou's death. Does Yonemura hate Drive or something? Because that sure felt like it.

Sangou himself... was pretty unimpressive. The actor was okay, I guess, but he didn't really had to do much acting-wise. The character was not even interesting and had a pretty stupid motivation overall. Felt like a typical "evil just because" character.

The Blade Riders... where somewhere between disappointing and insulting. I mean, I laughed my ass off at Mutsuki being in charge of things and Garren and Blade acting as his underlings, but that's about it. I couldn't even be happy to hear their voices again because the barely even appeared and those few lines where bs anyway. Tachibana was a pretty boring guest character too. But at least it was cool to see all of them help out Yuuto.

Speaking of Yuuto: He was kinda okay most of them time, but something about him just felt off. Like Yonemura was trying hard to make him close to the show, but he missed some important detail. It was a shame that Deneb barely appeared too.

Takumi wasn't too spectacular either. He just appeared, was an idiot to everyone, then decided to help them out anyway... Felt pretty much like his show-counterpart though.

The Drive characters where pretty... underappreciated. Positive: Rinna and Kyu got some nice little scenes, Kiriko was kinda nice to see too. Negative: Talked about Otta/Genpachi earlier, Honganji died pretty early so almost no screentime, same with Chase who had one nonsensical line and then never appeared again. Shinnosuke was not too well-written either. He changed his mind way too quickly and the plan of racing Sangou was pretty dumb, tbh. His little speech was nice message-wise, but the impact was lost in the mess that was the movie it was in.
Gou felt like the star of his movie most of the time. He was pretty snarky, but overall fun to watch, especially when he was hanging out with the other Riders who came back. His death however was more than underwhelming. It was not only pointless, but it also made no use of Inaba's great acting skills- which is a pity. His death in Clone Baby was amazing.

The Ninninger cameo was the stereotypical boring SHT trope. A giant enemy appears, J is made useless for a stupid reason and then bam- the Sentai brings their mecha and that's about it. I also found it weird that Shinnosuke didn't recognize them (and the other way around) despite the Gattai special being a movie tie-in leading up to this particular scene.

Overall, the movie was as terrible as expected. I laughed a lot about how bad and cheesy it was, but that's pretty much the only thing that made it entertaining. I like the ending theme, though.

As for Kamen Rider Yongou: The first episode was actually kinda promising. The author does a way better job at presenting characters and plot. I really hope I can see the other episodes soon. From my first impression, I think it would've been better to make Yongou the main movie and Sangou the web series, tbh.