[FreshToku]

Zi-O ending made put me in a weirdly nostalgic mood so I felt compelled to start watching most of the big summer/fall movie from the last twenty years of Rider. I also felt like sharing some thoughts here as I did so but since a lot of these movies are fairly straightforward popcorn flicks, I don't see myself going too in-depth about any of them. I'd say posting here is more for the sake of myself trying to note down how I feel about them, as a minor writing exercise, and for fun. I won't even necessarily commit myself to watching or writing about all of them.

In fact, Project G4 feels like the quintessential example of what to expect from these movies. Introduce one new big threat at the beginning (that usually goes hand in hand with a new Rider), bring in some original side characters that are key to the conflict, then top it all off with a big action climax in the end.

Unsurprisingly, this movie was about G4 himself first and foremost, and by extension Hikawa and the rest of the G3 crew. The showdown between them kinda just happens because G4 decides to arbitrarily test his edgelord views again Hikawa's idealism, and the ensuing fight isn't even that great. I'd say Agito only got in on it due to Mana being abducted by the corrupt G4 crew but Shouchi's Unknown-sensing powers probably would have brought him into the action anyway.

Gills definitely felt the most tacked on. He was barely in it, it was only through coincidentally meeting the little psychic boy that he found his way to where the climax was happening, and he doesn't even exchange a single word with any of the other riders. I know he had to be in it since he's a main character, but they could have given him a little more to do outside of fighting.

Since I'm offering very summarised thoughts, I figure I might as well comment on Episode Final since Kurona also just saw it. I don't know how well this movie works as a standalone story about six riders fighting to the death, but it's entertaining enough? It's rather amusing Zolda was even in it at all considering he literally just chooses to stop being in the movie about halfway through.

Quite a bit of time is spent on Miho/Femme, which I get is kinda necessary since she's original to this movie, and she's alright as a character, but she's not that much more important in the long run than either Kitaoka or Asakura.

The story about Yui, mirror selves and the wish aren't too bad if you neither think too hard about it here or how it relates to the series, but I don't know if Yui taking her life in order to stop the battle would have more punch even if it wasn't wrapped up in this world's wonky rules. I bet if I had seen this around the time I first watched Ryuki, Yui taking her own life would have been the most shocking thing in the world to me.

Obviously what most people will remember is Ryuga. He's evil, really strong, and intimidating. That's probably all I ever have to say about nearly every single movie-exclusive Rider and/or villain. They don't even really play up anything about him being Shinji's mirror self or where he came from, but in a show about Riders fighting a mirror world, I guess it was an inevitable concept.

Ryuki and Ryuga's fistfight at the end of the movie is one of the most memorable climaxes to me though, and I'm willing to admit it's entirely due to nostalgia.