[Enchilada645]

That was a fun movie, not the best Movie Wars, not the worst either. But it's nice to kinda just return to the older-new format given we only ever got 1 Single Story Movie War styled movie with Ghost and Drive. The rest have been more ensemble pieces and while that's fine, it's a nice change of pace that they dialed that back since we've had one of those for the past three movies.

Structurally I think the movie works pretty well even if there's a few kinks, it's primarily a Zero-One story that focuses on a "What-If" event thanks to Time Jacker interference. And that's the thing, Finis is mostly there just to provide how it happened and to act as one big last wall for the heroes to overcome to return history to normal. They don't overstay their welcome and while they are indeed the big boss monster, they aren't in it enough to be the main villain. Because that's what Will is.

So as a result the Zi-O Cast takes a more passive role in the events, with Sougo becoming a sorta mentor figure. Which is a bit of a shame but they are still enjoyable in it. Especially getting to see Tsukuyomi and Woz bust a lot of heads. Geiz isn't too impressive, but he has an entire movie after this so you know, him being downplayed here isn't that bad.

Also can we like trade the alternate versions of the VP Stooges for the ones in the show because man were those two more likeable here.

But anyway, action was fun, there was just a lot of cool moments and bits in it. Hopper digging it's way out due to the Ark being in space instead of Zea. Tsukuyomi's energy abilities being expanded on to where she can just manipulate other forms of energy before turning them into something else. Yua and Fuwa's excellent teamwork and the fact they got to do the finishing blow on Another Zero-One.

Not to mention all those little foreshadowing bits that were present, the idea of fighting against Hiden, Fuwa having a nightmare about being a Humagear, Aruto and his business cards. Most of which have only occurred in these past few episodes while this was released around episode 16, with most of this stuff not getting addressed until 13 to 14 episodes later. It's just really neat and interesting.

But MvP of this movie is probably gonna go to Soreo Hiden, dude was just really great as a Rider. And I like how it's implied that Finis literally only got involved right when the Ark was going to launch and that's how history got changed. So as a result in Zero-One lore, there is a Kamen Rider known as Ichi-Gata that was active during Daybreak's incident. The suit is just a nice homage to Rider 1 with 01 aesthetics and the fact that it releases an energy scarf trail during it's super speed/finisher moments is really, really cool.

But yeah overall pretty fun, it's not my absolute favorite Movie Wars styled movie, but it definitely ranks higher than quite a few of them.