[Kamen Rider Die]

SUPER HERO TAISEN GP: KAMEN RIDER 3




There’s a nice moral in here, about owning up to mistakes rather than doubling down on them. It’s something broadly related to the Catching Criminals Kamen Rider Show, where it’s investigating the psychology that keeps people from atoning for their transgressions. It’s a movie that’s trying to understand recidivism, you know? That’s very cool.

It’s also a Super Hero Taisen movie, so there’s a frustrating inability to create a cohesive storyline that uses all of its characters effectively. That’s not very cool!

I liked this one by the end, though. I liked the story they told about Sangou. It’s poignant, a guy who only felt like a winner by losing everything. His mentality - that winning/survival determines the morality of an action - is the same thing assholes from throughout history have leaned on to obviate their guilt. Spending a movie with him, going on that journey to reach a point where he’s able to admit culpability in something truly heinous, and then see him willingly accept the consequences to make it right? That’s a solid Hero’s Journey. I almost immediately wanted to buy a Sangou Figuart after watching this movie, for whatever that’s worth.

But it takes a while to get there, and in the meantime we get a rapidly shifting group of protagonists, with a corresponding lack of narrative momentum. It’s that typical Taisen thing where, like, Shinnosuke misses the entire 2nd act of the story. But it’s compounded by how many protagonists we have to cycle through before the big Grand Prix in the 3rd act: Kiriko, Black, Shinnosuke for a couple scenes, Gou, Yuuto, then finally Shinnosuke full-time through the climax. The thread of all that is Sangou’s story, but he’s purposefully an enigma for the first two-thirds of this movie. He’s difficult to invest in, and so our investment is being handed from one character to another for close to an hour. You’re ready for Shinnosuke to get revenge on Shocker for “killing” Kiriko, and then it’s a road trip with Gou and Yuuto for fifteen minutes. Just when you’re like Oh Yuuto’s Our Guy, he’s chained up and it’s Shinnosuke’s story again. The story keeps moving, but there’s no sense of stability to it.



And the selection of Legend Riders is pretty random! Black RX, sure: he’s got the Ridoron! Yuuto: I mean, this is a story where time’s been rewritten, so, yeah, sure! But why is Faiz here? I love Takumi, but he’s extra disinterested in this movie’s plot, even for him. And Black seems to be here to set up Black RX, and it’s like, Why not just have Black RX and that’s it? Garren gets to do the most abbreviated A to B version of his story ever (betrayal, and then friendship), and his inclusion is another Why Not moment in this movie.

(Also, holy shit, please do not get me started on the Ninninger kids' out-of-nowhere arrival at the movie’s climax, and how tonally inconsistent it was amongst Gou’s “death” and Sangou’s sacrifice.)

But… man, I still liked the movie. Sangou’s actor is fantastic, which carries a lot of the haphazard plotting and bonkers alternate reality non-explanations. (Shocker just created a machine that changes history? That’s… that’s it?) There’s a weariness to him that gets played as both Determination and Regret, which is perfect for the character. He’s tough to get a bead on, which is maybe not awesome if he’s the character you spend the most time with for the movie, but it makes the ending all the more heartbreaking. He gets to be a guy who made one terrible mistake, and then spent decades trying to redefine that mistake as a choice. The arc of that, just that arc, it’s incredibly smart.

And, yeah, it’s another lazy Taisen movie, with its lazy Legend Rider appearances… but YUUTO! Yuuto’s back! Basically proving why they should’ve just given him and Deneb the Den-O franchise a few years earlier! I don’t know that Yuuto’s mini-arc about Fighting For Your Friends really landed with me (that’s just not really a Yuuto story?), but I will never say No to a Yuuto subplot in one of these projects.

The other guys… eh. Takumi is a glorified cameo here, seemingly only around because he had a good time in the last Taisen film. (He’s also back to his longer Faiz hair, which I don’t like as much as his shorter hair.) Tachibana gets his little WHYHAVEYOUBETRAYEDUS thing, which is cute. I like both those actors, but they aren’t really part of this movie’s themes. (Tachibana maybe is, but the movie barely spends any time on him reconsidering his allegiance with Shocker. It’s mostly just that he wants to help his friends.)

Which is, like, the legacy of the Taisen films, I guess. A whole bunch of actors who don’t really add much to the film’s themes or morals, which makes it all the harder for those themes or morals to come across. I liked what this movie was trying to talk about - and I loved Sangou - but I wish it had been talking about it in a more coherent way.