[Switchblade]

Finally had time to sit down and watch this. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

- I could tell within 90 seconds that Sakamoto directed this. The girl in hot pants doing slow motion kicks was a dead giveaway.

- Going back to early Ex-Aid was kinda weird, but not as bad as I'd feared. Not having Nico tagging along with Taiga was the part that felt the most bizarre. That and seeing all of those Level 3 forms again - they've been gone from the show for so long that I honestly forgot some of them existed (apparently Snipe had a jet game power up). Knowing where the show has gone did add a lot more meaning to the surgery flashbacks.

- The big focus on Ex-Aid at first let me temporarily forget that this was a Ghost crossover. Sudden Takeru caught me unpleasantly off-guard. That said, as TokuNation's premiere Ghost-hater, it was fun to see most of the characters get absolutely wrecked. Takeru, in particular, got the shit kicked out of him so many times in the space of 90 minutes. Loved it.

- Shinnosuke and Haruto were great. I liked seeing Shinnosuke's story get some update and it does make me want to go back and finally watch the Heart movie and maybe even the Drive/Ghost film (not now, though; I've had enough Ghost again for awhile). Haruto was just cool; pretending to work with the villains for about five minutes was a cute trick.

In general, I really liked having the last few Riders teaming up, even if Gaim was just a suit and old voice recordings. I always like it when older Riders come back to help, and the fact that some of these guys had previously met while others hadn't made it even more fun.

- I loved the victim kid's Pearbook.

- Of course the lady in the tiny shorts with all the Xianghua moves inserts her Gashat into her leg. Of fucking course she does.

- The fight scenes near the end really highlight how much better Excite works as an insert song than most of the other recent theme songs. Just Live More kinda worked, but Surprise Drive and Life is Show Time do not work as the background music for action scenes. I did find it really funny that someone in production decided that, even as badly as those songs fit, Ghost's theme was such a bad match that they didn't even include it.

- The form spamming in all of the older Riders' fight scenes was impressive, if a little silly at some points. Did I miss something, or was that ice tire that Drive used brand new?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie a lot. I'd say it's not the best Movie War (which will always be Mega Max, of course), but definitely up there on the list.