[Fish Sandwich]

Decade 14-15:

When Decade got around to its tribute to Den-O, Kobayshi herself wrote the episodes, and they're good. Not totally remarkable, or anything, and I think her second shot at writing Decade a bit later was a lot better, but this was one of the rare times Decade actually got to use real characters from the original shows, and while after pounding out 49 episodes and several movies featuring them, I'm having a hard time not taking it for granted right now, it is super cool to see Momotaros and the gang interact with the Decade crew. The humor here is all very on point, as you'd expect, and I appreciate that even Tsukasa's usual epic speech is made into a bit of a joke at the end. Taking a brief trip back to Decade also reminded me why I love Tsukasa so much. He's such a delightful piece of crap. I mean, Takkun was a "jerk" because he was deeply afraid of getting too close to people, and I think Tendou was just born weird, but the Destroyer of Worlds spends half his dialogue making fun of his only two friends in the multiverse seemingly for no other reason than it amusing him. He means well, though. I think. At the very least, he'll stick up for a down on his luck Imagin when nobody else will.

These episode also feature music cues from Den-O, which I don't remember being a normal thing in Decade. Some of the team-up movies have done this too, but I really do appreciate it when old Riders come back alongside their original background tracks. They're as iconic a part of their respective shows as anything else.

Chou Den-O & Decade:

Alright, now this one will be fun to talk about. You see, while my memories of what exact order I watched the Heisei Riders in get a little fuzzy in places, I know for a fact I can thank Movie War Core for exactly one thing, if nothing else. Hearing how terrible it was when it got subbed during OOO's run motivated me to watch Double a lot earlier than I might have, for fear watching it simply for OOO would spoil something, which I felt wasn't going to be worth it if the movie sucked. Watching Double, on top of being crazy fun in its own right, in turn got me to watch Decade before watching Movie War 2010 for much the same reasons, although I was already privy to that show's infamous conclusion anyway. So from there, as I recall, since Decade went through the trouble of setting it up, I decided to watch Chou Den-O & Decade in a very "why not?" fashion, with no real expectations going into it.

All this is to say, this movie is what got me into Den-O, and as such I have something of an attachment to it. I don't remember actively thinking it was some masterpiece or anything, but as I've established talking about OOO, 2012 me didn't put a lot of thought into these things anyway, so I think what matters here is that it got me interested enough to dive into Den-O proper shortly thereafter. This movie is also the reason I have an attachment to New Den-O. I didn't totally get what was going on, but I saw this sweet looking blue guy with his combination sword/butler, and immediately took a liking to him. Having greater context now, I think Koutarou is also a great middle ground in terms of personality between Ryoutarou and Yuuto, but not having that context also helped in its own way. I didn't know squat about his arrogant origins in Final Countdown at the time, so to me, New Den-O was just this cool, charismatic hero going around chopping up bad guys, and that's all I ever really need. He's still not totally the star, but this film I think leaves a better first impression of him than his actual debut might have.

The story here is also super newbie friendly, with a very tight focus on obvious audience surrogate character Yuu, a little kid who needs all this stuff explained to him the same way I did. He works wonders in that role, and the way he gradually slides into the plot reminds me of a lot of escapist fiction stories where a bunch of strange, fantastical characters whisk the young protagonist off to some epic adventure. The movie does a great job putting you in that sort of mindset, and even watching it years later as a proper Den-O fanatic, it stil feels almost like it could conceivably be the first appearance of any of these guys. In retrospect, I especially appreciate them getting a dramatic chase scene out of the way Den-Liner tickets only work when you open a door while the numbers on a clock all match, something that ended up being extremely unimportant throughout the actual show. It also leads to a cool bit where New Den-O saves Yuu's bacon by buying him a few seconds, followed by Koutarou patting him on the head as he walks by on the Den-Liner later, which further explains why I like New Den-O so much. Again, I basically was Yuu watching this originally, and since Yuu was me, I think that quick little big bro moment from him left a big impression.

From there, we get the usual time traveling adventure, and it's solid stuff. Yuu's relationship with Deneb gives the film a lot of extra heart, I like Yuu's simple arc for what it is, and the twist at the end is nice. The Taros are themselves, which is all they ever need to be, with Momo, as ever, being the man. I'm also super fond of the monster forms of the main bad guys here. Reboot Rider 2 and V3's faces work great on those suits, and I appreciate having villains who are merely Rider-esque, instead of straight up Riders when there's no reason for them to be. There's actually not a lot of new merch being shilled here at all, come to think of it. That's mostly down to Chou Climax Form, and frankly, after seeing how the Decade cast and the Den-Liner crew take turns trying to pawn off Sieg to each other, I feel bad enough for the guy that I'm really happy for him. Everybody treats him like crap, but aside from being a textbook narcissist, I'm struggling to think of what he's actually done to deserve it. He honestly seems like a super nice guy when you get down to it. I can't even remember why I said I wasn't that much of a fan of him. All he's ever shown to do is help people out and repay his debts. I mean, I hate to say it, but are we sure he isn't better than you guys? Because I'm starting to struggle to see how having a not entirely unjustified high opinion of yourself is a worse personality defect than being an overly aggressive thug, a chronic lecher, or a hyperactive sociopath. In conclusion, Kintaros is obviously the best Imagin, because he combines all the good traits of the others with his only token vice being sleeping a lot, which I'm pretty sure he genuinely can't help.

What was I talking about again? Oh, right, the movie! Yeah, add this to the pile of things I've watched lately than I'm pleasantly surprised to find hold up better than I was expecting. I had it in my head that Chou Den-O and Decade was kind of boring for some reason, but thankfully it turned out to be a lot more fun than I remembered.

Agito 28:

"Wait, what the heck does some random episode of Agito have to do with anything?", you might be thinking. But this is an episode of Agito unlike any other. It's the only one in the entire series not written by Inoue, and you'll never guess who wrote it instead. I figured I'd toss this in here because, one, it's always a good time to watch Agito, and two, between this and Decade's Den-O arc, I think I'll have covered literally every bit of Kamen Rider Yasuko Kobayshi has ever written once I'm done, save for the other arc of Decade she wrote, which I talked about back when I watched Shinkenger, and Amazons, which pretty much exists off on its own planet, so I don't feel any obligation to go back through it as part of this.

So, of course, while this was Kobayashi's first episode of Rider ever, she was hardly new to the toku scene, even back then, having already helmed two different Sentai shows, among other credits, so it's not exactly a surprise that the episode is good. Seriously good. It's actually one of my favorite episodes of Agito, and my biases don't even play into that, because I didn't realize she wrote it until way later.

I think what makes it stand out so much for me is that in a very, very heavily serialized show, this episode tells a very standalone story, which makes sense given it was essentially a try-out episode for a new(ish) writer. It qualifies as filler by most people's definition, but if you ever wanted proof that isn't a bad thing, this is it. Even its position in the episode order, despite not connecting directly with what was happening before or after, actually lends the story a really cool context.

You see, in the episode prior to this, Kamen Rider Gills caught a nasty case of death, and this episode thus functions as a sort of requiem for Ryou, flashing back to a few weeks prior for an adventure that does a great job summing up the kind of character he is by pairing him up with a young boy who wants to run away from the troubles he's currently facing in life. Ryou himself has, as anyone who's seen Agito knows, been through an absolutely astonishing amount of crap since the start of the series, and the attitude he displays throughout the episode gets to the heart of what I think makes him such a fantastic character. Everything about him reeks of the usual angsty anti-hero, but he subverts a ton of the tropes associated with that archetype, growing into a hero who makes it a point not to let the tragedies he's faced break him. He's also great because everything about the way Gills is portrayed is so memorable. I mean, I could go on about Agito all day, but since that's not what I'm here for right now, I'll restrain myself to only mentioning how perfectly the show portrayed three very, very different Riders. In Gills' case, that meant stuff like the weird but neat effect when he transforms of Gills appearing alongside Ryou, or his brutal Rider Kick where he violently hooks monsters with the blades on his ankle, or the screamy Gills mask to emphasize his status as a completely organic Rider.



It's mostly about the screamy Gills mask though. That thing is straight up my favorite part of Agito and quite possibly my single favorite special effect in the franchise.