[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshToku

It reminds me of how how all of 100 Eyecons' connections to the series only make both the show and the movie itself worse altogether. Be The One is maybe a little easier to see as it's own separate thing, but not by much. But if you do manage to do that, which it sounds like you mostly did, I think it's a decent fun time.

So, the more I think about it, the more I kind-of hate the non-SentoxBanjou story that's being told in Be The One. Not just the lore stuff, which is janky AF, but the actual story-story they're telling.

I think, amongst other things, the producers wanted this to be a story where Sento faces rejection by the average citizens he's sworn to protect, and has to deal with his role in the recent civil war. That, you know, that could be a good movie! It's just not the movie they ended up making.

So much of the engine of this story is that Build and the other Riders are despised by the citizens of Japan for their role in the civil war. Kamen Rider Blood (had to look it up!) specifically and repeatedly tells Sento that the people of Japan really do hate the Riders and think they're traitors, that Blood isn't making them behave this way. Except he is! He clearly is! I don't think Sawa and Misora actually want to destroy Sento, so I'm going to go ahead and say Blood is full of it. He's controlling the populace to turn them against the Riders, I know it, you know it, dogs know it. There's never, to my recollection, been a point in the Build series where Touto, Hokuto, or Seito citizens were shown to be even ambivalent about Riders. They're never feared, they're always adored. We're left to take the villain at his word, despite zero evidence supporting his claim. And Sento, like, entertains it? Maybe agrees with it? Let's it break him down emotionally? It's insane. And then, at the end of the movie, Blood is right?! The country does hate Riders everywhere for some reason that is never explicated? They give us this tiny story about the kid Sento saves, but zero look in to the majority that hates him. Why? Why not tell that story just a little bit?

I don't want to judge the movie they didn't make. That's a sucker's game, and it's easy to spitball good ideas for a story you'll never have to tell. It's just, if they wanted to tell a story about people being against Riders, a) I'd probably like that movie better, and b) there's so many stronger, more continuity-based ways to tell it. Like, what does the average Seito citizen think of enemy combatants like Build or Grease, now that the war is over? Or how does a Touto citizen view a legit traitor like Rogue? I mean, just the previous week a pink alien was punting Riders through buildings, blowing them to hell. I assume folks lived or worked in those buildings, and might have less-than-good feelings about their self-appointed protectors? There are so many smaller, personal stories you could tell about Riders and their wartime activities. I don't get why the movie chose "mind-controlling secret puppet masters who brainwash the country into being rage zombies" as its way in to that concept.

EDITED BECAUSE I THINK I'M LOSING IT: That probably didn't belong as a response to your comment! Sorry! I was just thinking about that aspect of the story for a minute, and it needed to get out of my brain, and it's late and I can't sleep. Sorry!

It's weird, because, yeah, you're right, if I ignore all of the shit they layered on top of the ode to the friendship of Banjou and Sento, it's not that bad! There's some real funny gags in the first 15 minutes, and the final fight is well done. It's just, man, do the producers get in their own way in this one.