[Switchblade]

When Kamen Rider Saber ended, one of the writers (I think; maybe the producer) went onto social media and talked about some of the early plans for the show that got scrapped or changed because of Covid-19. I would give anything to have some of Decade's staff do something similar. I know it isn't likely, given the culture of company loyalty and refusing to criticize management that's so pervasive in Japan. I would love a really deep oral history of everything that went down/wrong with Decade because I bet it's a really fascinating story. I'd also like to know what the original plans were and how/why everything ended up the way it did.

As far as the movie goes, I don't think I have a lot to say. It's an abject failure as a continuation of the show's cliffhanger that, hilariously, couldn't even manage to get hold of all the AU Riders for five-second cameos. I have no idea what the original version of this may have looked like, but it was hopefully more creative than going back to the "Decade goes bad and is defeating all the other Riders" well so soon after the previous Decade movie played that exact same card (pun intended).

On the whole, it's kind of hard not to see Decade overall as a failure. The plot falls completely apart and its most unique feature - seeing all the old Riders come back again - has been redone so much throughout the 2010s that Decade no longer feels special in that regard. As a tribute show, it was also almost immediately shown up by Super Sentai's Gokaiger playing all of its tricks better, more coherently, and with a bunch of original actors. All that being said, the show does still hold a special place in my heart, especially those first twenty episodes devoted to visiting the various Rider AUs. I am still always happy to see Tsukasa show up again, which is a good thing because he keeps doing it.