[Switchblade]

I rewatched most of this earlier this year to wrap up my Fourze revisit. I skipped the Wizard section at the time, so I don't remember much of it outside of the reveal of Poitine's real identity at the end, which... yeah, it's problematic. I get that different cultures have different views on LGBT people and Japan is not on the most enlightened end of the scale. It's still pretty bad, though, and it's still kind of a problem. There are better representations of queer characters in some of the recent stuff, but there's still at least one project that sticks Metal Yoshida in a dress as if the basic concept is the funniest thing ever.

I did like the Fourze part. They really doubled down on the epilogue nature with the jump into the future and I liked a lot of what we saw of the KRC in the far flung distant future of 2017. I loved that Miu is still hardcore dodging Shun, I loved that Ryusei and Nozoma are together (when he's not being a secret agent with a perpetually damp Inga Brink), and I love that Yuki is barely in the film. The movie does go maybe a bit too hard on the Ishinomori remakes between Akumaizer 3 and Inazuman, but it mostly works. The gag with future Gentarou asking his past self for the Fourze Driver and past Genatoru's reaction is still one of my favorite single jokes in all of Kamen Rider.

The final team up did disappoint me, though. After Mega Max brought back Shotaro and Philip, this was the first time we had to deal with (lowercase G) ghost suits. Even Eiji having a quick walk-on doesn't make up for W, Accel, and Birth being obvious stand-ins. I don't mind too much when you have a lot of Riders doing general cameos in the full team-up movies, but when it's a smaller cast they really stick out like a sore thumb. Add that to the fact that the film's climax was just a lot of motorcycle jumps in front of a truck and I found the whole thing pretty lackluster. Also, Fusion States with skis is easily one of the dumbest Rider forms ever.

Finally, to quote myself again:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Oh, and speaking of Sakamoto...

When I rewatched the Fourze summer movie I said that it was the definitive Koichi Sakamoto film. I stand by that, but this movie is a great example of what happens when he cuts loose and does whatever he wants. There. Are. So. Many. Slow. Motion. Close-ups. Of. Twirling. Skirts. Set. To. Harp. Music. It's incredibly distracting and that's with skipping the entire Poitrine section, which I know had even more of them. Between that and someone deciding that Mikie Hara should be hosed down before most of her scenes this film definitely crossed over into fetish territory. I'm not kink-shaming here, but sometimes you need to reign it in on what is ostensibly a fucking children's movie.