[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER HIBIKI & THE SEVEN ONI



"I've been the object
Of your affection
And I've been the target
Of your cruel intention"

-Ex Hex, "How You Got That Girl"

INOUE FOREVER.

I'm not sure what the bigger giveaway is that this this movie is an Inoue joint: the fact that the major emotional conflict is a huge-to-slight misunderstanding (we'll get to it) that could've/should've been resolved in the an initial meeting; the fact that the plot of this movie makes almost no sense; or the fact that every new character is a complete weirdo.

All of the above, if I'm being honest. Inoue's fingerprints, like his work, are not subtle.

I mean, I loved it, though, obviously. As a movie, it's fantastic. The story is a delight, the sort of straightforward adventure that the TV series had next to no interest in. The new Oni are hysterical, a group of absolute lunatics who are a thousand miles from the grounded workmen of the series. (I mean, Todoroki comes off as the normal one for this group. Todoroki.) The action is intense, with a finale on one of the Big Bads that's jaw-dropping for how it plays with Hibiki's formula. The costumes for the Oni and monsters are all garish, bigger and crazier than anything else in the series. Everything is just... bigger. Louder. More fun. It's a really great movie.

It's a shit Hibiki story, though.

Like, thematically, it is nowhere. The story is a pretty basic Overcoming Anger thing, an Inoue hallmark if there ever was one. It's all about Yuuji from Faiz WHOOPS sorry, I meant Kabuki, an Oni who resents being resented by humans, so he wants to be a Makamou. Meanwhile, Asumu In The Past blames Hibiki In The Past for either killing his brother or getting his brother killed, I'm honestly not sure which.

(This was an especially murky part of the plot for me. The movie treats it at first like Asumu thinks Hibiki killed Takeshi. Then we see the flashback, where Takeshi dies in an accident. After that, the movie seems to treat it like Asumu knew that Takeshi died by accident, but he blames Hibiki since it was on Hibiki's watch. No one ever directly tells Asumu, so... did he always know? Or not? Either way, while I can sort-of see Hibiki feeling responsible enough for Takeshi's ridiculous death to not defend himself, it is so very Inoue for a character to just let himself be hated for almost no actual reason.)

Much of the story is about Asumu getting over his resentment of Hibiki, something that Kabuki could never manage for humanity. That's the parallel. Except, that's literally all in the past. The present-day Asumu, he doesn't really learn anything. There's a moment in the beginning where Hibiki But Right Now gets injured defending Asumu But Right Now. After that, there's this possible thread of Asumu feeling guilty about Hibiki's injuries, but a) it's not borne out in the flashback story, and b) Hibiki But Right Now never once makes Asumu feel responsible. They don't even share another scene until the end. There's a bit of an echo to Takeshi dying, but... man, not really? Asumu's almost killed by a Makamou. Takeshi's killed by a mudslide. These are not comparable situations.

The bigger problem is that the Inoue theme of Overcoming Anger, the need to take revenge and put it aside... I don't think that's a thing that kids usually deal with on the path to becoming adults? For a series that's been 100% about the lessons a child needs to learn to become a man, this one... it's a fun theme to explore in a heroic action movie, but it's not super applicable to a teenager in 2005.

So, yeah, as a Hibiki story, I'm not sure this one even counts. It's just zero percent trying to work in the same narrative field as the TV series.

But, holy hell was it fun. Every single one of the new Oni were a hoot. They're all completely insane, even the Stay-At-Home Dad Oni. (You can tell Inoue didn't give a shit about telling a Hibiki story by the way there's an actual father in the story and it's treated as less relevant than the thief's quest for buried treasure.) They've got outstanding chemistry, enough for a show of their own. They feel individual, you know? They've all got different outlooks and expectations. I had a blast whenever they were onscreen. They're at least four levels too broad to work as Hibiki characters, but they're super entertaining for a movie.

The costumes, as well, A+ material but so wrong for the show this movie is supporting. They're massive and complicated and garish, so much so that the TV Riders look underdressed. (Ibuki, Hibiki and Todoroki are basically the Gaim Undersuit to the rest of the Oni's Kachidoki Arms.) But the new guys, especially Kabuki, I love it. The colors, the pageantry, it's so over-the-top that I can't take my eyes off of it. It's theatrical, which is thematically appropriate in several ways.

The story is nonsense, and I don't quite mean that as a complaint. There are a hundred things that don't make any sense within the context of what we learned in the series (Midori specifically tells us that Disc Animals were created recently), but since you could say that Asumu's putting some of his imagination into reading this story, I'll allow it. (Kid saw his name and was like This Story Is Clearly About Me And My Friends.) But the Makamou just, like, disappearing for centuries for some reason, to just suddenly reappear one day? And the sword falling into the sea, only to be waiting back in the cave? And just the whole supernatural power-up aspect of the sword (is it supposed to look like a fishing rod?), it's fundamentally not how this show does that stuff. It'd be like if... I was going to say "if a ghost showed up on Ex-Aid", but then I'm like No They Did That In A Movie, so you'll have to come up with your own analogy. It just all feels utterly random and unsupported, something the TV show worked so so so hard not to do.

And that's the weird tension of this movie. By raw entertainment standards, it's a success. I laughed a bunch, I loved the action, and the story had a compelling villain with a solid arc. (Something the TV show never managed!) But by the standards of Did It Seem Like A Hibiki Story, it's a massive failure. It seems almost contemptuous of trying to tell a story the TV series would tell, up to and including just setting the whole thing in the past with an entirely new set of characters. Both literally and figuratively, it puts actors you know into roles that are sort-of similar, while constantly reminding you of how it's wrong. It's uncanny valley Hibiki.

But I still dug the hell out of it. Inoue forever.