[Kiwami]

"Kamen Rider The Winter Movie: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation"

I randomly remembered I hadn’t seen this movie yet, but kind of wanted to just for the Fubuki VA gig. And I do like Geats, so there's that, but...

Man, I really, really can't stand the Gotchard cast, even almost 2 years later. They are so irritatingly annoying. The ever present dumb antics, the constant screaming of "Gotcha-Boy" - dear lord. I feel like I lost more brain cells watching this than were used to write and direct these characters.

Anyways, the story is super basic, like these two sets of shows just exist in the same world no questions asked? Yup, here we are. There’s enemies, fight them! Here’s a quest for you to solve. Quest’s over, well done, goodbye!

I know they want to have pre-school kids in the cinema, I know that’s the target audience to begin with, but neither Geats’ nor, and I can’t believe I’m saying this; Gotchard’s main shows are so bluntly simple.

Action wasn’t anything to write home about either, especially given how awesome Geats was in that regard, in fact I noticed one scene, were a Rider was shooting their weapon into a general direction, but there was neither an enemy there nor did they bother to animate a shot coming out of the weapon, It looked quite weird.

The highlight was Valvarad acting like a slasher movie villain for a second, unexpected but surprisingly fitting.

The one saving grace of this movie, or two depending on how you want to look at it, are the Rider Chemies. They are so dumb, I love them. They use little puppet plushies for most of their scenes, except the Geats Chemy ("Hi Friends!") which has a 3D model sometimes, although I prefer the puppet. There are scenes were they just have these toys sitting around idle, they do nothing, just sit around chilling. That is so Toku, they trick your simple brain into believing these little critters can move so when they are just there doing nothing you don’t even question it anymore.

And yeah, the Geats Chemy rules. Not only because of the voice work, but also because, well – how the heck did I never get spoiled on its backstory? Ace had a cute dog in the past, Constantine, nicknamed "Con" (heh) who died in a car accident, but couldn’t leave Ace behind to move into afterlife so their soul followed him around, the freak situation which turned the other Geats Riders into Chemies also hit that soul so it became a VTuber, I mean a Chemy, of course.

Heck, the story starts with the scene of the dog dying, I forgot all about it because the movie was a drag to sit through so when this plot came back at the very end I was genuinely surprised. And well, I’m a big old softie when animals are involved so this got me good.

This winter movie also marks the first appearance of Kamen Rider Majade, who should’ve been the main Rider of the season anyhow, I will never let go of that thought. It was cool. Like, I’m not a fan of doing this kind of debut when the show has to essentially repeat it to not confuse viewers, but seeing her kick ass again was neat.

Overall the film was quite boring and not very well done, could’ve done without watching it to be honest, I did love seeing the weird Rider Chemies however. But now Houtaro is in my head once more and I can hear him scream "Gotcha!" again, please no, make it stop.