[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER BLADE MOVIE: MISSING ACE

This time on Kamen Rider Blade: It's four years later! The old cast all became assholes! The new cast are all dicks! INOUE FOREVER!



Can you believe there was a time when I disliked Inoue?

Way back in the Kuuga days, he wrote some of my least-favorite episodes in a series that... I was not the correct audience for, let's say. I hated those episodes so much that, when I found out he'd be (more or less) solely responsible for Agito, 555, and Kiva, I was dreading it. I thought it was going to be so infuriating to watch that trying to express those feelings on these boards was going to get me banned. I'm pretty sure I referred to him as my nemesis?

Now, I love him. I love his Kamen Rider stories. I love his monumental assholes and the ways they protect humanity. I love that in stories of people being insufferable to their friends and family, there's a message of hope. I love that he uses stories of conflict and strife to warn against enjoying stories of conflict and strife. I love that he believes in the innate value of broken people.

And, holy shit, everyone in this is a goddamn disaster.

It's a movie that acts as a hypothetical sequel to Kamen Rider Blade, setting itself four years after Blade sealed Hajime, the last of the Undead, and saved the day. In the meantime, Kenzaki has found himself cleaning up garbage, a testament to his desire to help others and the fact that being a Kamen Rider doesn't actually convey any marketable job skills; Kotaro is a celebrated author, turning the tables on his former freeloaders by becoming rich off of their story; Hirose is more concerned with her impending wedding (to a groom WE NEVER SEE, I mean what in the hell, I would've bet money that it was Takumi from Faiz) than getting the old team back together; Amane is a shoplifting, petulant teenager; Tachibana is cosplaying as Shinji from Evangelion's dad with a newer, creepier BOARD; and Mutsuki is moping his way through life in a post-Leangle haze.

It's the last one, Mutsuki's story, that becomes a way into the themes of this movie for me. He's someone who feels absolutely lost in the aftermath of being a Rider. Being Leangle shattered him, but the shattering was at least a feeling. Everything afterwards has been him forcing himself back into a shape he'd grown out of, a world he'd thought he'd left behind. Becoming a Rider again... the danger, the risk, it's like a dream come true. It's the same for Kenzaki, where he seems almost desperate to become Blade again, no matter the fact that he can't Henshin, or that there are three perfectly capable heroes to defend the world against the Undead.

Speaking of, hey, our new heroes! Why did no one tell me this was a Sentai crossover? I'm not familiar with the normal story of Ace Sentai Shufflengers, but I loved what I saw of them in this movie. They're just a collection of surly assholes, and I'm A-ok with that. Shufflenger Red and Green have that great chemistry from the New Generation specials, but now it's amplified into some Take No Prisoners snark. Every interaction is a chance for them to put somebody in their place, and if there's no else around they'll just crack wise on each other. Shufflenger Gold is all backhanded compliments, deference as offense, and an attitude that might as well be a big flashing Do Not Trust This Dude sign hanging over him. Not much of a shock when he turns out to be the movie's villain!

It takes a long time to get there, though, with a bunch of plot twists and bizarre mechanics (Amane needs to be the sacrifice, but then it could also be Kenzaki or Hajime?), but that's not really what the movie's about. It's about crisis, and how that looks different whether you're inside of it or outside of it.

For the men and women who spent a year fighting the Undead, it's almost a relief to return to it. They understand that world. The pain and sacrifice are familiar, almost welcome. A world without fighting the Undead makes them cruel, makes them distant. The crisis is what defines them.

For Amane, it's the opposite. All the crisis did was take from her, in ways that redoubled her most primal wound: her father abandoned her again. Hajime was sealed by Kenzaki, presumably for the good of humanity, but that's only something someone inside the crisis would know. She's an outsider, and she only gets to suffer.

There's a thing we do, mentally, in times of crisis. It's something we're probably all doing right now. We adjust to it, no matter how hard it is, because the alternative is to be crushed. It's a defense mechanism, and it's healthy. We become flexible, doing what we need to do psychologically to get to the next day. The problem is, if we become too used to the crisis, we start to expect it. It's not about being flexible until normalcy returns, it's about reinventing yourself as someone who can thrive during the crisis. It's just, in general, the nature of a crisis is to be finite. They end, eventually. Now that you've remade yourself to thrive in a crisis, what do you do when it's over?

For Team Blade, you spend four years denying what you've come to crave, until you're confronted by the very human cost of that heroism. Amane is the face of everyone who's lost someone to the world-shaking battles the Riders overcome on a weekly basis. She's a girl who's suffered too much already, and it's time to let her be happy. The heart of this thing, no pun intended, is about Hajime and Amane's connection. What the rest of the cast goes through, it's cute and funny and sad and weird, but the throughline of this thing is a girl who keeps losing her fathers, and a world that won't stop killing her fathers.

Still, for all of the thematic work about the ways we can get addicted to conflict and the people ground up as a consequence, this thing is a blast to watch. The combat is fantastic, with a scale you only get in a movie. Dozens of monsters get dispatched by a half-dozen Riders, and Hajime gets beat up in some beautifully-shot sequences. (That Rider Kick in a rainstorm! In the second scene!) It all looks terrific, even the Final Fantasy-esque final form for Shufflenger Gold. Just a real fun movie to watch.

I really dug this film. The opening is excitable and weird, and the end is bittersweet and kind. It's a pseudo-sequel about how it's better to remember the past than dredge it up. There's a quick-change license plate that says MILKY BOY, and a teenage girl who misses her dad.

Inoue Forever.



Post-Credit Additional: I only caught three Faiz cameos, and I'll be checking the Wiki after I post this to see if there were any I missed. I got:



This salaryman scene, with Yuuji and Murakami;



And the cop that chases Amane, who I'm pretty sure was Kaido. Fun fact! I had to look up Kaido and Murakami's character names, because I'd already forgotten them! And I watched that whole series a month ago! What is wrong with my brain?!