[DreamSword]

I finally found the spare time to sit down and watch Mechanical Violator Hakaider.

To preface this review, the quality of the plastic that the DVD case was made out of was so cheap, that it immediately cracked just by me opening it.

If you want a short version of what this film has to offer, well, let me just start off by telling that, if you're on these boards, there's a high chance you've already seen it, because this is almost the exact same movie as Kamen Rider Eternal.

The main difference being that, despite my distaste for the Eternal movie, I'd still rank it higher than this Hakaider one. Because say what you will about the former, it at the very least wasn't a absolutely boring slog like what the latter was. Hakaider is very much an example of "doing it for the paycheck" Inoue.

So what's the set-up? Well, Hakaider is an ancient machine who was locked away in a labyrinth of underground tunnels, until one day he is set free, and happens upon a world ruled by the vicious government of Jesus Town, who run a Big Brother style regime in the name of keeping peace and order. Hakaider soon finds himself joining the rebels after being labeled an enemy of the state.

That's about it to any essence of "plot" that this movie has, as pretty much the entire rest of the film is just Hakaider shooting enemy soldiers with a shotgun for about an hour. Oh, and he also gets a love interest after having known her for a grand total of three minutes. Meanwhile there's an enemy robot by the name of Michael who's all white and is secretly Kikaider. Because if Hakaider is meant to be a hero, then Kiakider clearly has to be the villain.

In other words, it's exactly the type of script that an edgy teenager who constantly spouts "down with the establishment maaann" would write.

The movie is 77 minutes long, and feels double that length. The entire thing is boring, repetitive, and completely shallow when it comes to the themes of free will, order vs chaos, and the like. None of the characters are at all likeable or have any redeeming traits. No one has an arc. The actions scenes up until the very end are basically the same thing over and over(does Inoue have a shotgun fetish?), and the film in general just doesn't make any sense when it comes to, well, anything.

It was definitely interesting watching the film with both the English Dub and Subtitles on though, because is showed that the dubbers tried really hard to save the script, but unfortunately it's not like the movie gave them much to work with, and thus both scripts are pretty bad regardless of what you choose. It's frankly kind of insulting given the great legacy that Kikaider has; ESPECIALLY the ending, where the final boss is a monsterfied Kikaider, because that's exactly what fans wanna see, I guess. This movie has zero understanding of what made Hakaider a popular character in the first place.

In the end, don't bother with this film. Other movies and TV shows do literally everything this film does(what little it does do) far better, and that's including other entries in the Kikaider franchise. If you do wanna check it out though(I guess if you just really love shotguns?), then I recommend getting the blu-ray, as it was pretty obvious that there was a screw up in the DVD transfer process, based on my copy.

I give Mechanical Violator Hakaider a 1/6. It's a waste of time.