[Fish Sandwich]

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!



Time for me to tell you all about how hyped I was for Over Quartzer pretty much since it was announced. Something about this movie had me insanely excited from day one. I got a feeling it would be pretty special, somehow. Of course, I also spent most of Zi-O's run staying as far away from magazine scans, catalogues, and rumors as possible, so I also had pretty much no idea what it was about. Didn't even watch a trailer. All I knew for months was that I generally loved Zi-O, and there were three movie-exclusive Riders who all looked super cool. So, with all that personal hype, and no idea what it would be like, could it possibly live up to my expectations?

Well, yeah, it could, as a matter of fact.

Of course, I didn't know what to expect, so maybe that's part of it, but I found myself consistently grinning from ear to ear the entire runtime. I was totally into what this movie was doing in a way I haven't been with a Rider movie since True Ending. And just like that movie, I have a feeling I'm not going to get much backup when I say this film was excellent.

Over Quartzer is a weird, weird, weird movie. It has a plot that revels in how little sense it makes, and tells a story that's much more thematic than anything else. I can see this one rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, especially if somewhere in all that pre-release information, somebody started expecting it to be something it wasn't.

I'm not even sure to how dig into the plot here, because talking about it as a literal series of events does a huge disservice to the experimental, almost postmodern narrative. This isn't a movie about Zi-O fighting some guys called the Quartzer, it's a movie about Heisei Kamen Rider fighting its own nonsense, and coming to the conclusion there's no reason to bother. The story here is actually very tight in that sense, I feel. The seemingly disjointed and pointless adventure with Nobunaga sets up a throughline about how history, that is, the canon of reality, doesn't always meet your expectations, and also maybe isn't all it's cracked up to be. There's a central theme that lines up with Zi-O on TV well enough: a typical time-travel deal about how the present is what counts, but it goes in a wild direction by having it mingle with the idea of basically explaining why continuity between Heisei Rider shows is such a damn mess. It's because they weren't thinking about it! They just wanted to make some fun shows that would hopefully turn a profit, and it ended up going for 20 years. That doesn't mean they planned it out every step of the way.

It's just such a bold choice for the central conflict to be handled in such an overtly meta way, with the first scene of the movie outright acknowledging the Heisei Era was already over by the time it came out, and I really appreciated it, even though I can see where it would rub people the wrong way. Bemoaning Over Quartzer for not actually explaining what the Quartzers are, or how it stubbornly refuses to slot into the show's timeline anywhere, I'd argue is missing the entire point of the film. It's actively critical of that kind of strict logic, and makes it abundantly clear with scenes like Woz tearing his book to shreds, or him, Geiz, and Tsukuyomi all showing back up at the very end that any plot holes, at least on that front, are not a narrative oversight, but very pointed, deliberate choices. Whether or not they're still mistakes, I leave up to you.

For my money, though, I found the story shockingly thought-provoking in a way I don't see from Kamen Rider every day. There're a lot of ways to read into Over Quartzer, and I'm not even sure how much of my own take on it was totally intended. Like, I get it, okay? I sound pretentious talking this nonsense movie up like this, but it honestly feels to me like some kind of piece of abstract art. I don't necessarily think it's some objectively flawless work, but I can't help but applaud it for being so outside-the-box and creative.

It also manages to throw in crazy amounts of fanservice that reach way deeper into Rider lore than I think anyone would've expected. Again, unless all this stuff was announced beforehand and I just didn't know. But some of those cameos were amazing. I feel very rewarded for happening to have heard of Kamen Norider beforehand, because man will that scene get you if you actually know what's up. G, manga Kuuga, play Zangetsu, the GoRiders(!) they're all great too. Fans less up on their deep-cut lore are also still liable to be pleased at seeing the movie deliver what the show failed to, having an epic 20 Rider Kick with everyone in their final forms, which is, appropriate for the movie's themes, given the meta twist of having the bad guy be defeated by logos. Speaking of all that action, some of the direction is also pretty inspired, and probably some of Ryuuta Tasaki's best work. It feels like he wanted to live up to the movie's status as the final Heisei summer movie. Special props go to everyone transforming into their final forms, and the subsequent rapid-fire cutting between everyone's stock screaming noises as they go to do the big Kick. Just beautiful stuff.

I don't know. I'm not sure if I'd want to defend this movie if someone told me it sucked just yet, but I found myself loving every second of it. We'll see how my opinion settles over time, but it felt like a real statement to me. Basically a fully realized version of what Heisei Generations Forever was trying to do. A movie like Be The One is absolutely more traditionally solid, but Over Quartzer is a lot more interesting in my book. It's a love letter to the convoluted, beautiful mess that is Heisei Rider, and to the passion that kept it going as long as the era itself.