[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER 555 20TH: PARADISE REGAINED



–1–

There’s a difference between telling a 555 story and telling a Takumi story, and it comes down to one thing: Kiba.

Kiba was the other half of the 555 narrative. Where Takumi and his friends represented a future of coexistence by blending in and asking for less, Kiba and his friends represented a future of coexistence by embracing what made them different from the rest of society, and arguing for their place within it. That struggle – blending in or standing out – was the core tension of the entire series, and engulfed the rest of the cast in that unanswerable question. Individual characters might have their own moments of conflict or drama, but the engine of the show was the twin poles of Takumi’s shame and Kiba’s belief.

Obviously, that’s all off the table in a follow-up.

With Kiba’s actor’s passing, the story became more about Takumi, and less about the (accidentally?) progressive ideology of the original series. There’s still a lot to enjoy there – I really liked how the Drive-era side-story found a place to interrogate Takumi’s inability to take a win – but it’s inevitably smaller and more singular. Takumi’s issues are born out of the themes of the series, but they’re an isolated facet of a much more complicated structure. Setting his survivor’s guilt up against the ghost of Kusaka, typically furious that Takumi ambivalently abandons something Kusaka would kill for, is a fun story to tell about one character’s psychology, but it isn’t the societal examination and critique that always made 555 so special to me. We’ll get Takumi stories forever, probably with a side of Kusaka, but it felt like 555 stories were impossible going forward.

–2–

So imagine my surprise that we get this film, that largely puts Takumi’s issues on the backburner to tell a beautifully nuanced story about how progressive ideals frequently age into conservative fears, while the next generation’s struggles become theoretical and nostalgic to the older generation.

It’s a movie that nicely echoes what worked for me about the final act of the original series, where Takumi and Kiba are caught up in the dreams and machinations of an earlier generation’s struggles, doomed to act out the obsolete and irrelevant rivalries that they were raised on. Only now, the cast has aged into that older generation, looking back on progress – or the lack thereof – and seeing only failure and decay. Whatever they thought they were fighting for they didn’t get, and society’s regression (or calcification) into institutional distrust makes the idea of fighting for anything a fool’s errand.

I like how this movie allows for a weariness that feels earned, as middle-age introduces mortality and frustration into the mix of emotions that guide someone, so that ideals are more easily betrayed in the name of nihilism. Takumi comes into this movie trying to stave off his second death, but the ever-present fear of it makes him think that any hope for the Orphnochs is doomed. It’s an interesting way of portraying the creep of conservatism, how a disconnection with idealism accompanies a life that’s closer to its end than its beginning.

That darkness suffuses this movie, but it never feels like it’s Inoue wallowing in it. The point of this film, as evidenced by Takumi’s reclamation of the original Faiz suit for the climax, is how the idealism of our past – the ways we wanted to make things better instead of just protecting what we have – is never really gone from us. There’s no inevitably to turning your back on hope. We may lose sight of our optimism as we get older, but we can always fight to get it back. Society may not consistently improve, but we can always fight to make it better.

Faiz as a show – and Inoue as a writer – is sort of obsessed with the idea of not punishing people for backsliding, and recognizing that doing something right in the moment is worth more than making up for your past or ensuring a perfect future. Especially as you get older, it can be difficult to see what you’re doing as worthwhile, or that the future is what you’d originally hoped it would be. This is a movie that only asks people to do the right thing right now. (Jotaro even has it on a sweatshirt!) I think that’s a lovely message for a middle-aged Faiz movie.

–3–

And, boy, everyone’s old now! (I can say that as an old man myself.) Original cast is all mid-30s to 40s, but they all look great. It’s a very nice reunion, save a couple folks I’d’ve loved to get back. (Saeko, Houjou, the conspicuous-by-his-absence Keitaro.) What we get is a fairly complete Faiz dynamic, and everyone’s dramatically and hilariously on-point.

My favorite thing in the film, and the moment I knew I was in good hands, is when Takumi is leaving the cleaners -slash- going out to get smokes, and Mari asks him to get mayo, and Takumi says he will… if he remembers. PERFECT. No notes! Takumi will absolutely agree to do a friend a favor and then immediately qualify it by saying he also might forget to do it. And then. And then! He returns after years of absence, tries to kill several of his friends in front of Mari, and then shows up to give her the mayo he was supposed to pick up while also stating that he’s not here to talk or explain things… at which point he talks and explains things. He’s such a melodramatic baby around Mari, and that dynamic’s return was crucial to the success of this film for me.

The way this movie foregrounded Mari’s role in things, boy, so grateful for that. She was a lynchpin for me on the original show, and the use of her here was exceptional. Thematically, she’s here to talk about the difference between allyship and having skin in the game, which is a nice way to talk about how people can find themselves reexamining their motivations as they get older, and end up needing the very support they used to offer others from a distance. (I don’t just want to go Trans Metaphor, but, y’know, Trans Metaphor.) Dramatically, though, she’s also here because the movie needs someone to call Takumi out on his constant hypocritical bullshit. One of the best scenes (in a movie full of great scenes) is the one in the abandoned hospital, where Takumi shifts from Orphnochs Have No Future So I Should Kill Them to Mari How Dare You Try To Kill Yourself. Mari’s argument with him helps spotlight Takumi’s internal struggle, and how his fatalism will always lose out to his protectiveness, so long as he gives it time. That, and she’s here to finally get her long-awaited chance to give some pain back to Kusaka.

Kusaka! I honest to god was hoping they’d just leave his resurrection as (heavy sigh) Somehow Kusaka Returned, but no, he’s back as a deep-cover android. I don’t know if this all the way works, or even a little bit works – Smart Brain knew that someday Mari would become an Orphnoch, so they placed a Kusakabot there as a failsafe… but that Kusakabot helped save multiple Orphnochs, and Smart Brain could’ve activated and/or killed Mari at any time. It 100% feels like the movie wanted fans to get plenty of Them Eyebrows, while also giving Mari and Takumi free rein to wallop the living shit out of a guy who leverages his oily hovering to maximum tension like it’s 2003 all over again.

I don’t really have any big thoughts on the return of Kitazaki, since it, y’know, isn’t ever actually Kitazaki. Nice to have some of that residual iconography dragged back into the present, but he’s mostly just here to be an implacable adversary with a famous face. If it had somehow really been Kitazaki, I’d say the use of him was a neat way of exploring how age subsumes even the most difficult outliers into the needs of the oppressor, but it ain’t him, so I don’t think it’s that. I will say that I appreciate the way the government uses the symbolism of past insurgency to solidify their interpretation of history; Kitazaki’s participation in the government crackdown means that even the loose cannon of the past agrees with this course of action.

Also, hey, Seiji Takaiwa gets ramen spilled on him! At Kaido’s ramen shop! Because Kaido is here! Not to really do anything besides be comic relief, but still! KAIDO!

–4–

But you can’t have a movie about the shifting battle for society by only focusing on the hollowed-out husks of those in their (gasp) 30s and 40s – you gotta have some young people, too!

They’re an interesting grab bag of characters, and while I can’t say they made a huge impression on me as individuals, I appreciated them in the aggregate. I liked how they existed to be the collateral damage of things like Mari’s advocacy, Takumi’s nihilism, and the overall inexorable pull of idolatry. These kids give a shit about Takumi et al. because they’ve Seen Shit, and they think that’ll help them better navigate their present. But, of course, it can’t. Takumi’s way of doing things worked for him (citation needed), but he’s got nothing really to offer anyone hoping for a better world. Mari’s work represents a kind of stasis, that’s only grinding down the spirits of the very people she’s hoping to help. Smart Brain is a cheerful face on societal intolerance, and it doesn’t care about how Orphnochs see themselves. Kids like Kouta, Kei, and Rena are better off finding their own way and leaving the battles of the past to their elders, just like the cast of Faiz learned 20 years ago.

(I will take a minute to say that I found Jotaro’s presence alternately worthwhile – how even terrible role models like Takumi have something to offer the next generation – and hilariously on-the-nose. Like, he’s just Keitaro Junior! This movie just goes We Need A Keitaro To Make This Work so they invented a younger one and dressed him up like the original! My headcanon is that he’s another android, Small Wonder-style.)

While it may sound like I thought the new cast was some sort of storytelling failure, since they’re barely worth talking about individually, I think they're probably just about right for an hour-long anniversary special. Why would I want a huge, nuanced cast of new characters? I don’t! I want Takumi being a frustrating, contradictory mess that both his friends and foes have to try to navigate! I want Mari stepping up and becoming a love interest AND someone who can beat the crap out of Kusaka! I want Kusaka to get the crap beat out of him by Mari! I want Kitazaki to do all of his own stunts, and do them well! I want the kids to be a seasoning, and not the main course, which this movie got exactly right.

–5–

It’s amazing to me how much this movie felt like the 555 I remembered. (I mean, it wasn’t 20 years for me – I only watched this show in 2020.) Far from the tricky introspection of the Drive-era specials, or the Greatest Hits weirdness of the Zi-O two-parter, this was the Big Themes storytelling of 555 that won me over originally. I love how this was able to leverage time and age to readdress the core conflict of the original series with more subtlety and melancholy. Like the screens deployed throughout this film and the TV show’s finale, there’s a separation between idealism and fatalism that’s brought about by time, but it can be bridged if you’re willing to make the effort. That hopefulness is frequently overlooked in Inoue’s stories, and I’m so glad to see how prominently it was used here.

And in such a beautiful film, too. Every few minutes there was another iconic shot: Takumi in a beam of light, caught between the shadows, symbolizing his thin life between two deaths; Muez, losing a fight in simulation to win it in reality; all those exquisite long takes, emphasizing the connections of the characters by letting their movement be the motion of the scene; just, like, the whole movie. Getting back Inoue was a treat; getting back Tasaki was a gift. I don’t know if I could’ve asked for more than what this movie gave me.

I was dreading watching this, a little. 555 is one of my favorite Kamen Rider series, and the thought that would come back wounded or diminished was… I don’t know what I would’ve done with that. To be greeted instead by a film that celebrated what was smart about 555 by continuing to challenge its assumptions, in an action-packed film that never relied on fan service? Amazing. What a special thing to do for Faiz fans.