[Fish Sandwich]

It's here~



That is to say, it's been out on video for a while now, but EXCITE! Subs just got done with it, and I'd imagine I'm not the only one who was waiting on them. To cut to the chase, it was well worth the wait. I'm going to go ahead and keep my thoughts here relatively spoiler-free, but needless to say, if you're reading this and haven't seen the movie, you're doing it wrong. And if you haven't even seen the TV series yet, just... what are you even doing with your life? All joking aside, I look forward to seeing everyone else's opinions of the movie.

--

So if you couldn't tell from my tone just now, I like Ex-Aid a fair bit, and when we all figured out the usual summer movie was going to be used as an epilogue to the show... well, for one, some of us couldn't even wrap our heads around that and were under the impression it was still some kind of alternate take on the story, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing is, the wait for people who couldn't just walk down to a theater in Japan was KILLER, and that kind of anticipation can easily set you up for disappointment. Which is why I found myself quite surprised that True Ending managed to live up to what I was prepared to find out were unreasonably high expectations.

Further proving he's secretly some kind of super genius, Yuuya Takahashi once again shows a mastery of structure, giving us a script that manages to, one, not prevent the show from having a satisfying conclusion in its own right, two, still serve as a satisfying addendum to the series, and three, work as a standalone narrative.

Well, it almost works as a standalone narrative. This is probably a point only I give a crap about anyway, but whenever I'm watching a Rider summer movie, I always like to think about how it would play to someone who ISN'T familiar with the series. Something which, between hapless parents getting dragged to the theater by their children, and some of those kids who only really care about the Sentai part of the double feature, is likely a common scenario. In the case of Ex-Aid, they'd probably be quite confused about what a Bugster is, and who is and isn't one, but the meat of the actual story works quite well on its own for something that you can tell just from the title is part of a serialized story. It has every excuse to be impenetrable to everyone but fans, so I consider this just another example of Ex-Aid going above and beyond.

But of course, you're on a forum dedicated to discussing shows like Ex-Aid, so you probably care more about the "satisfying addendum" angle. On that front, True Ending does a great job. All the characters from the show are here and amazingly none of them feel particularly underutilized. The movie's only an hour long, so don't expect deep, engrossing character arcs for every single Rider, but they all get their moments to shine. Considering the short runtime, I think they packed more than enough in for everyone. Ex-Aid himself is very much at the center, however, and Emu really shines here. All the kindness, determination, and occasional bit of philosophy you could ever want out of a hero.

"Philosophy?", you might be asking. Well, maybe that's a bit of a dramatic way to put it, but one other thing True Ending gets very, very right when it comes to being an epilogue to the show is continuing its themes. The plot makes further use of the contrast between the work doctors do and how cheap life is in a video game, and while I was often left rather confused by the show's constant mentions of changing fate, here I felt it all click into place more than I ever have. That theme song was no accident.

All in all, I'm more than happy with the movie I got, and even the generally obnoxious CG-fest climax was actually fairly well done this time, so... yeah, not much for me to complain about. I enjoyed seeing all these guys again, I enjoyed the new characters, I enjoyed the plot, I enjoyed seeing a cameo from a version of Build that isn't super stressed out by all the crap he's been dealing with since Ex-Aid ended, I just... really enjoyed this one. I'm tempted to say it's my favorite Rider summer movie (high praise, I know), but I've never been very good at picking favorites.

There is one, well, not exactly a complaint, really. More of an observation I have, but, ah, Emu barely got beat up in this one. I know should be happy about that, but at this point it's like a tradition, you know? I mean, look at him:



Those are barely scratches! Where's the scene where Kamen Rider Fuuma runs him through with a giant shuriken or something?!