[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER DECADE: ALL RIDERS VS DAI-SHOCKER



I really enjoyed this movie. I might've actually loved it. I also don't think I can defend any individual part of it?

It abandons its storytelling hook -- every Rider battles to see which one is the strongest -- almost immediately. It's an incredibly bleak story. It invents a villainous background for its main character that potentially negates a series worth of character growth and heroism. It raises the stakes on its story by breaking its characters apart, and then doesn't really do the work of fixing them. A lot of the story's emotional weight is conveyed through a brand-new relationship. Most of the thematic resolution comes across as contradictory and ill-explained. W's appearance is ham-fisted.

I don't... I mean, I don't want to say that stuff isn't true, or doesn't matter. It absolutely does. For all of the things I'm going to talk about next, the parts I loved, this is still a staggeringly sloppy movie. It isn't the worst Kamen Rider movie, but it makes a lot of mistakes that are endemic to Kamen Rider movies. I don't know why it's so hard to make a good movie out of a good TV show, but these movies frequently make it seem impossible.

I still think this movie was great, though.

A lot of it is in how it tries to really examine what it means to go on a journey. It's there in Sayo's feelings of abandonment, in Tsukikage's attempts to replace Tsukasa, in Dai-Shocker's ambivalence about Tsukasa's return to power. We've had a whole series about the optimism of a fresh start, or the endless possibilities of the next step along the path. We've watched Tsukasa become more heroic as he meets more heroes, and seen him bond with the people who are helping him along the way. But to go on a journey, you have to leave somewhere. Tsukasa had a home, had a family, had responsibilities, and he left them behind. In his story (if you exclude the part where he was, uh, exterminating Riders), this is a bold, courageous step closer to his destiny. It's adventure; it's self-determination; it's everything this series has been preaching since the first episode. But from Sayo's perspective, it's just more selfishness from a terminally selfish man. She's watched Tsukasa care more about his own needs than those of his family for... I mean, basically ever. Every flashback shows Tsukasa as someone who is wrapped up in himself as a Main Character, to the detriment of anyone else's experience.

What I liked about the resolution of this story is that, rather than placing all the blame on Tsukasa for abandoning his sister, it places equal blame between them. Tsukasa was sort of an asshole to neglect his sister after their parents died (because OF COURSE THEIR PARENTS DIED) and go on his grand Main Character adventure, but Sayo sort of let herself be relegated to a supporting role in Tsukasa's story, instead of starring in her own. It's an interesting take on the idea of abandonment, where needing people in your life should never stop you or them from pursuing their dreams. People leave, and that can be sad, but it's also part of life. You should hope for the best for them. You should also use that change to keep living your life, and keep traveling on your own journey. It's a refreshingly nuanced take on support and self-sufficiency, and it's a pretty natural story to tell near the end of Decade.

The actual resolution to Tsukasa's search for his past, though... the thematic parts, how it all looped into what this show has been saying about Kamen Rider as a franchise, I loved it! The actual plot was very very difficult to take seriously.

With the scope of the full Decade series, it's easy to see what the creators might've been going for. By interacting with a dozen Kamen Rider narratives, Tsukasa's overcome his darker impulses and harnessed them for justice. He's embodying the darkness-into-light aspects that are at the heart of Kamen Rider. He's a core theme of Kamen Rider, made flesh.

But this movie really doesn't seem to understand how much of a swing it is to make Tsukasa the once and future head of Dai-Shocker. The biggest mistake this movie makes dramatically is that it doesn't create much space between Amnesia Tsukasa and Dai-Shocker Tsukasa. There should be more of a sense that Tsukasa's journeys have fundamentally changed him, but I don't feel like we got that here. He flips on Natsumi and Onodera with a smirk, and then expects Natsumi to take him back when Dai-Shocker kicks him out. (It's nice that, in a movie that is working so hard to dot i's and cross t's, Shadow Moon gives us a total shrug of Kamen Riders Were Always A Red Herring when it comes time to explain what's going on with the imminent destruction of all of the worlds. Thanks for nothing!) There's a little bit of cover for this with the appearance of New Riderman (Gackt!), where Tsukasa is chided for giving up instead of working to fix his mistakes, but it all feels too minor for what we've learned. This isn't a situation where Tsukasa yelled at his friends, or where he trusted the wrong person; Tsukasa was the head of an interdimensional crime syndicate that nearly eradicated Kamen Riders on its path to total domination. I don't know that a Mea Culpa really settles things! Feels a little lacking!

All of that Narrative and Thematic stuff aside (because who really cares about that in a movie with so many superhero suits), this film was a treat. The score was dynamic and engaging. The fights were generally fun, with some clever twists. The special guest stars were very cool. (Shouichi! Momotaros, of course! KickHopper and Ouja, immediately rejecting Kaitou's request for aid and trying to kill the heroes!) A lot of the staging and direction in the first half was smart in how it enforced the isolation of Sayo and the uneasiness of Tsukasa. The movie just looked and sounded great, for the duration.

I can't claim that this was a great story, or that it was well-told. I fully expect a bunch of people in this thread to cite this film as a low-point for Rider movies. For me, it really connected. I liked how it used one last minute before the finale to show the unintended consequences for someone's decision to find themself, and to argue for the need to take that journey of self-discovery anyway. I dug it.