[Fish Sandwich]

These episodes are fantastic.

It's worth noting that this was literally the first ever proper crossover between Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (though it's perhaps also worth noting there was one between Masked Rider and Power Rangers), and I honestly continue to appreciate more and more as the years go by how small kept this? As I just mentioned, it's technically a pretty momentous occasion, but it's very strictly a crossover between Decade and Shinkenger, trying to get the best out of both those shows without throwing anything extraneous into the mix. And it benefits from that a lot.

Kobayashi was doing utterly phenomenal work on Shinkenger that whole year, telling loads of great character-driven stories brought to life by an extremely talented cast who lent a ton of nuance to the already strong scripts, and Decade really lucks out getting to tap into that for even a fortnight.

I've mentioned a ton of times before in this thread, but I always think of each arc of Decade as its own contained "movie" above all else, and this one really acts nicely as this sort of broad look at Decade as the eternal outsider, giving the "I only watched this for Shinkenger" crowd a solid idea of what makes the show unique, while giving the usual viewers a pretty heartwarming summation of how the journey itself maybe IS where Decade belongs. The Den-O episodes by Kobayashi kinda briefly touched on Natsumi's Tsukasa-related angst without it amounting to anything, but here, I really love how they focus in on that, and build it to her deciding that if she can't give Tsukasa a world, she can at least try and give him a home.

The Shinkenger stuff is just awesome because it's Shinkenger, of course. There's that whole bit where Kaitou tricks them into thinking Tsukasa's camera is a bomb, and Kotoha is shoving Takeru to the ground to shield him from the blast, preventing him from explaining the obvious, all while Genta cowers behind a chair as though that will help and oh man do I ever love these guys. Naturally, I hadn't seen Shinkenger when I first watched Decade, but like Decade itself, it was a rather talked-about series among fans when I got into Rider and the bigger toku world, so I was vaguely familiar with the broad strokes going in. The whole style they bring to the table has always been and will always be amazing, and Takeru's whole "I don't think you're a destroyer" conversation with Tsukasa in the climax is one of my favorite bits of the whole show. You always see the guest stars teaming up with Decade, of course, but it's a lot rarer for them to so directly refute Narutaki's nonsense that way, and it fits this plot so well.

...Although I suppose it'd be easier to find things that don't fit well here, with how good these ones are. I find it sort of hilarious that Treasure Sniper plays in both episodes, despite Diend himself being taken out of the action for obvious reasons. (Oh, and that monster concept! Also one of the best of the whole series!) You can also tell Decade turning into Den-O is entirely for Kobayashi fanservice, as the only thing he does in that form is continue to swing the Ride Booker around like usual. (And he still hasn't used that Hibiki card since getting it back!) These aren't even nitpicks, though; I genuinely find all this quite amusing. Speaking of which: you what else was pretty amusing? That Genta fellow, and his comically over-the-top acting. Sure would be neat to see him in Kamen Rider again some day!