[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER X KAMEN RIDER THE MOVIE: CHO-DEN-O TRILOGY
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EPISODE RED - "ZERO NO STAR TWINKLE”




So, let me say this from the start: Yuuto's pretty strong.

He's in an impossible position in this movie. He clearly cares for Airi, but he's unsure how much of that is his own feelings, and how much is the expectation to live Sakurai's life as a way of honoring Sakurai's sacrifice. Worse, Airi sees just enough of Sakurai in Yuuto to care for him, but not enough to finally let Sakurai go. It's a triangle so convoluted that it takes Kintaros about 80% of the runtime to finally process it all.

But it... I mean, it's elegant in the way it cuts through a lot of the usual Time Nonsense to get at some core ideas about love, about relationships, about how you need to feel worthy of love, and about how loving people means being okay with who they are right now.

Like, yeah, Yuuto is fighting against the memory of his future self who has been negated to save the life the woman Yuuto is fated to love, but Yuuto's also just trying to get Airi to see him as something other than a reminder of her dead fiance. This story simplifies the metaphor a lot by having multiple characters enforce the idea that Sakurai and Yuuto aren't two ends of one timeline anymore; they're fundamentally different people.

And the smart thing this movie does is state all that, and then turn it over to Airi.

It's not really a movie about Yuuto. It's about his resiliency, maybe, about his strength. But the whole story is about what Airi wants. It's about how love is a way to appreciate someone's shortcomings, to love them as they are.

Sakurai is an ideal, and it's never clear in all of Den-O how much of that is just the illusion of memory. He's faultless, and brilliant, and caring, and heroic. He's the one who taught Ryotaro to be the man that eventually became Den-O. He's better than Yuuto in every way. Yuuto is childish. He wrestles with Deneb, he mopes, he runs away, he puts a pound of sugar into his coffee. For all of Yuuto's positive qualities, he can't measure up to Sakurai. There's a feeling from Airi that, y'know, maybe someday. Maybe Yuuto will shed his gruff exterior, put on a stupid hat, and become the man she lost.

But that's not fair to Airi, because it means waiting indefinitely to get back what she lost while the world moves on around her. It's not fair to Sakurai, because he sacrificed himself to give Airi a future, while she endlessly glorifies his past. And it's not fair to Yuuto, because he's honestly not that bad.

If there's an arc for Yuuto in this movie, it's him realizing he deserves to be loved. It's a hard thing to do. It's a real strength, to love someone who doesn't love you back, but hold onto your sense of self-worth. Yuuto spends a lot of this movie watching Airi pine for Sakurai, and he wrestles with his inability to live up to that memory, but eventually he lets it go. He'll try and forge his own connection with Airi. Maybe she'll love him the way she loved Sakurai, but maybe she won't. Maybe the way she'll love him is its own thing, its own light in the darkness.

And that's for Airi to decide. It's nice to see her become less wrapped up in the perfect memory of Sakurai, in the ways Yuuto is Less Than, and see her open up to new possibilities. To see Yuuto's childishness as infectious. To rearrange her life the way she rearranged the cafe: parts of the old, but with space for something new.

The Airi/Yuuto stuff is obviously what I'm going to remember this movie for (it's easily the best of the post-show Den-O content so far), but the rest of it is zippy and fun. It's always a blast to spend time with the Den-Liner crew, and they're thoroughly ridiculous in this movie. Just that little scene where Momo accidentally lived on the streets for four months because his back was hurting! Or every scene where Naomi is acting like a psychopath in the background! It's a nicely light-hearted counterpoint to the heavy drama of the rest of the film.

The action's solid, too. I like the thematic link of the guy who made a contract with an Imagin to win over Airi. It's a fun twist on Airi's inability to see past her idealized memories of Sakurai, and on Yuuto torturing himself to become Sakurai. And the Imagin being a Three Little Pigs riff on Climax Form, very cute.

But, boy, it's all about the Yuuto/Airi story for me in this one. It's melodramatic in the best possible ways, with actors who nail the material. I could watch Yuuto and Airi sadly look at each other for an eternity.

This was a sad, messy movie, and I loved it. It treats love not as some switch to get flipped, or clothes to grow into, but as a series of decisions that will lead you to a destination that might not even exist. Little allowances, little gambles, and then... who knows? If you're lucky, there'll be stars to guide you.