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Movie War Ultimatum

So here we are at last, the end of Kamen Rider Fourze. Yes, there's the Ex-Aid/Build movie, but that's more of a cameo and it's just Gentarou and JK; this is the last time we'll ever see most of these characters and the last time that Gentarou is the main focus of a story (poor guy doesn't even get his own Zi-O arc; he has to share it with Faiz). As far as grand finales go it's both good and a little disappointing.

I do like seeing where all of the characters end up; we even get to see some of the other supporting characters again like Nao Nagasawa, Sweaty Inga Brink, and Principal Alternative Zero. The big focus on the Inazuman stuff leaves a lot of the KRC feeling sidelined, though. Yuuki barely gets any screen time in the entire film and the others don't fare much better. It's a good epilogue, but for a show that was based so much on the hero and his friends, the latter really don't contribute much.

I skipped the Wizard part (this wasn't a Wizard rewatch, after all), but I did watch the team-up portion. I remember this movie being kind of a letdown when I first watched it and that opinion holds firm. There's some things that work well - I like the redesigned Akumaizers, even if it does suck that another group of classic Toei heroes were reused as villains. The story and action, though, didn't do much for me. It was seeing Wizard in action again; I'd forgotten just how stylish his fight scenes could be (and the regular Haruto parts I watched reminded me why he's still one of my favorite Riders). I wish I could say the same for W, OOO, Accel, and Birth, but I really can't. We did get a small Eiji cameo, but this was the first time that most of these characters showed up as just ghost suits instead of having the actors reprise their roles. I hate it when Toei does this and it really cheapened most of the final sequence. The truck chase was also pretty underwhelming in concept, and I say this as a huge fan of the Mad Max films that obviously inspired it. It was just a bunch of shots of guys punching a truck interspersed with more of Sakamoto's beloved slow motion motorcycle jumps in front of explosions.

Oh, and speaking of Sakamoto...

When I rewatched the Fourze summer movie I said that it was the definitive Koichi Sakamoto film. I stand by that, but this movie is a great example of what happens when he cuts loose and does whatever he wants. There. Are. So. Many. Slow. Motion. Close-ups. Of. Twirling. Skirts. Set. To. Harp. Music. It's incredibly distracting and that's with skipping the entire Poitrine section, which I know had even more of them. Between that and someone deciding that Mikie Hara should be hosed down before most of her scenes this film definitely crossed over into fetish territory. I'm not kink-shaming here, but sometimes you need to reign it in on what is ostensibly a fucking children's movie.

Anyway, it's still a pretty enjoyable film. A big step down from the OOO/Fourze movie, but reasonably enjoyable. From what little I remember, it's also a big step up from the Wizard/Gaim movie that followed it, too.

So that's it, then. Took a lot longer than I'd anticipated, but I made it all the way through Fourze. Does it hold up? Yeah, I'd definitely say it does. It's probably not the best Rider show ever made, but it is incredibly fun, has a great cast of characters, and I really did enjoy the vast majority of it.