[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

Not much to say here. It’s one of those “and you were there” movies that’s a patiche of the Seven Samurai. What I can say is that there’s a theme to the new Oni in this film.

Touki (Freezing Demon) and his polar bear motif are a reference to the Hokkaido-Nippon Ham Fighters.

Habataki (Feathered Demon) takes his hawk motif from the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Nishiki (Western Demon) takes his motif from the Osaka baseball team Hanshin Tigers.

Kirameki (Glittering Demon) gets his look from the Nagoya Grampus’ image animal, the whale.

Amazing. Thanks for the info!

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

Also, can we talk about how they had rock guitars and trumpets back during those segments? At least the Disc Animals in the scene are classed as Karakuri (a robot made of wood, to put it in layman’s terms).

I think some of the modern-day inconsistencies (X Didn't Exist Back Then) can just be chalked up to Asumu's imagination. The story he's reading probably refers to a string-playing Oni, and he just slotted Todoroki and his guitar into that role. The reality was probably something more like a lute?

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Like, the very first thing in the movie is Hibiki riding a motorcycle into an action scene with Asumu in tow. It's basically declaring war on Hibiki as a concept from the first frame, and it never really lets up.

I can sort-of forgive this? We don't know what happened before the movie started, so it could've been a situation where Hibiki was taking Asumu somewhere, and then got the Hibiki! Makamou! call that starts every Hibiki story. (...Right?) At that point, he might've had no choice but to take Asumu with, in the same way we've seen Ibuki need to drag Kasumi somewhere.

It's possible, is all I'm saying! I am significantly less inclined to provide cover for Hibiki in the modern day calling Asumu by his name, though. That was my first big Uh No for this movie.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Hibiki's big summer movie focuses on a bunch of lookalikes while the actual characters from the show are moved to the background. That's a flawed premise! Even the movie itself seems to acknowledge how expendable these characters are by killing Akira at the start. If I'm not supposed to care about her, then why does the movie expect me to care about past Shounen or even past Mochida, when I only care a little about present Mochida?

Of all the problems this movie has, and how thematically it does nothing for the modern-day characters (this is not a small problem!), I never felt like the flashback stuff lacked compelling characters or emotional weight. It's a very Inoue scene, but when Hitomi In The Past asks Asumu In The Past to not watch her die? Big emotions! I cared about this girl who'd already been dead for centuries! It's why I feel like Inoue's the right guy to tell this story. He's able to, very quickly, lay out the (overheated, possibly insane) emotional stakes of a new group of characters.

I don't know. Worked for me!

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

How does a Todoroki even exist in the past? I thought that name was only recently created after declining to inherit Zanki's name. This isn't a serious problem but it does sound like a plot hole.

This requires the same amount of audience buy-in that the premise of There Was A Kid Named Asumu Centuries Ago requires. Could there have also been someone named Todoroki? Sure, maybe!

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Originally Posted by Kurona

Okay, actually, no! We're at the end of this stretch so I'm getting into this now, screw it!

someone got their laaaaaaaptop fiiiiiixed

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Originally Posted by Kurona

As backstory movies go, thematically this one is simply phenomenal. Helps that it's pretty fun, too!

Well, first of all, holy shit, thank you for that insight. Very, very smart take on something I honestly hadn't considered, that the point/theme is the world-building, not the character drama. You're absolutely right that there's some great stuff in the movie about how structures bring people together, how society is meant to disperse obligation to make things manageable. Yep, yep, yep. Great points, well made.

I guess my problem is that... I still don't think that makes it a Hibiki story? In the ways Hibiki tells stories? Hibiki as a show was never that interested in the mechanics of its world, it was interested in the people within it. It used this group (the branch of Takeshi) as a metaphor for society (parents need structures and support to raise children). The movie fills in the motivations, but it treats the structure itself as the good, rather than leveraging it to say something about growing up.

Like, the show was about the people who worked in a building, while the movie told us how the building got built. I'm not sure that's as compelling a story to tell? Or one that adds anything to the modern-day characters?