[Kamen Rider Die]

Originally posted to "Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider Ex-Aid movies" on September 1st, 2019:

KAMEN RIDER EX-AID MOVIES: COLORFUL MANS VERSUS COLORFUL TEENS - THE SPRING MOVIE



Hey, so, can I tell you a secret? I don't want the TokuNation board to know about this, so we're in a total "this stays between you and me" situation. Cool? Okay.

I don't think I care about Sentai. Like, at all.

I'm not really sure how it works on these boards. Is everyone into everything, Rider and Sentai alike? Are there Rider-only fans and Sentai-only fans? I honestly have no idea. Going on a Toku board and saying "I don't think I care about Sentai" may be like saying "I don't like vowels". Like, nonsense. Insanity.

I mean, I never grew up with Power Rangers, so maybe that's part of it? I assume most North American Sentai fans got into the franchise as kids through Power Rangers, then transitioned to the pure, uncut, medical-grade Japanese Sentai programs. Is that right? 'Cause, yeah, for me, I never had that introductory stage. Power Rangers and Sentai, I just never got into.

And it feels like, after getting hooked on Kamen Rider, that I shouldn't have a huge problem getting into Super Sentai. They're so similar in so many fundamental ways. They're like dialects of the same language. But, for real, I'm just never that interested in them.

Some of it is, and I don't want to get reported to the mods for this, that it feels like the Sentai parts I've seen (crossover episodes, spring movies) are just really, really childish. Like, the casts seem like they got body-swapped with precocious theater kids. Everything is very Big and Broad and Shouted Out To The Back Rows. The problems and drama seem very goofy and wacky, geared around a child's conception of the world. And, I came in to Kamen Rider through Ex-Aid, the show about a bright pink motorcycle man who fights video game disease monsters. I'm not looking for verisimilitude here. But these various colorful teenagers seem like they are one commercial break away from telling me that drugs aren't cool, but studying is. Am I missing some key way to view Sentai? Am I just watching the worst introductions to the franchise possible? Help me out here. Someday, I'm going to run out of Heisei Rider shows to watch for the first time (I ain't doing Showa, too corny for me), and 40-whatever years of Sentai might fill that void in my life. I'm not saying that me and Sentai are enemies forever. There may come a day when I want to love Sentai. (Like, 2021. Not soon.) If every other Rider fan is a Sentai fan, I don't want to be, like, persona non tokusatsu. I want to figure this shit out.

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that a) I don't generally love the yearly-ish Rider/Sentai crossover movies, and b) I don't really love this one in particular.

First, Rider/Sentai movies are so weirdly constructed, at least the bunch I've seen. Rather than the Rider fall movies that feature two main Riders at least, and possibly two full casts, the crossover movies seem to be built around Who From The Last Few Years Is Available and Who Can We Spare From The Current Shows. Like, the Fourze/Go-Busters one? The main Rider characters are Hina from OOO and Diend from Decade! There's some fun to the randomness of the cast, but it's to the detriment of a cohesive story. I never get the feeling that a story was constructed, with a clear thematic goal, and then a cast was hired to support that goal. Instead, it's like 75% of the asks came back No, so they cobbled together something for the 25% who said Yes. It's not that you can't tell a story like that, but it's very difficult to tell a good story. The most you can do is distract people with a lot of costumes.

And there are so many costumes in this movie. Not the most, but what feels like the most often. Every few minutes (of a ninety-minute movie) there's another batch of colorful suits, kicking and punching and exploding. The action is, it's not great. There are some interesting uses of the expanded movie budget in the camerawork, specifically in the increased verticality of the fights and the longer chase shots. But the fights themselves mostly don't seem choreographed to tell a story, they're just there to fill time. It's like watching someone play Street Fighter for a while. That can be fun to watch, but it's not a story.

Maybe I'd care more about those costumes if I knew all the franchises? Maybe. It doesn't help that, not only do I not really know Sentai (although I recognized Amu from the Ghost/Animal Teens Super-Hero Dance Program crossover), but the Rider appearances were from shows I haven't watched yet, like Den-O and (I had to look this up) Ryuki. For the flashy, nostalgia guest appearances, there's nothing in there for me. I've only got the story to enjoy, and it felt real thin. It's mostly a pile of superhero fights until Shocker shows up, then a heartfelt speech, and it all wraps up at Kamen Rider Quarry. There aren't a lot of moves in it, and the Shocker stuff just feels like it's there to have a villain to punch. Making the story driver/endangered victim a child who sort-of didn't care if the world ended was, uh, a way to go? Hard to muster sympathy for a sick child who would rather just destroy the world because he's bored. I mean, it's a sick kid, and maybe he's on the spectrum, but he was also the character in the story I cared the least about. It definitely made parts of the story drag.

There was some stuff I enjoyed, though. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was only okay. The core of the story was, surprisingly, about Brave. He's a tough character to focus on, because he is basically a dick. And that's his most interesting attribute! Hiiro doesn't hugely change or grow in this movie, but his dedication to being the best doctor evolves a bit with his grudging acceptance that Emu is only mostly a failure as a doctor, and maybe viewing his patients as more than a sack of organs he can show his dominance on is a valid choice on rare occasions. Progress! Also, I'm loving the movie trend (2 for 2) of Taiga being introduced walking into frame and just humiliating a group of enemies. It is canon that he spends a lot of time following around Emu, and while we're meant to think it's so he can collect Gashats, I'm choosing to believe it's so he can get sick burns in on foes. Like, he's behind a pillar, waiting for the best moment when he can walk in and drop some comeback on a Bugster or Sentai or whatever. He's up all night dreaming about it. That is my headcanon, and now you are welcome to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

There may come a day when I want to love Sentai. (Like, 2021. Not soon.)

~SPOILER: "DONBROTHERS" WOULD NOT DEBUT UNTIL MARCH OF 2022~

A few quick notes!

-That whole I'll Be Done With Watch Threads By 2021... god, the optimism of that! There was a point a couple months ago when I thought I'd be done with these threads before Revice ended, and I just don't see that happening. My project management skills are abysmal. I can only hope that Zero-One's CEO superhero can teach me how to get things done in a more expedient and reliable manner. I look forward to finding out in May Or June Or September of this year!

-Nice to see Zolda and the Den-O crew, now that I've watched those shows, but it doesn't drastically improve the film. They're in-jokes, and the movie doesn't sink or swim on the audience getting the joke. It certainly doesn't help that Kitaoka only gets a couple lines, and the Goriders as a team barely factor into the plot. In my mind, I guess I built it up as something that was clearly important - vital, maybe - to the overall success of the story, and If Only I Had The Context, you know? Unfortunately, it's really super minor, and (if anything) sort of a missed opportunity.

-Ex-Aid's storytelling, as a series, is about Mitigation Of Ego. It's a show where heroes and villains alike discover that they aren't flawless demigods; they aren't even the main characters of the story. Real life doesn't have Main Characters, and we could all stand to live with more humility. Realizing that we can't do everything ourselves, and we need to lean on others to be our best selves, that's sort of the perfect thematic substrate for a Sentai/Rider film? Ex-Aid's about letting other people in, and finding common ground with people you may not even like. This isn't a perfect film, but it has a much more natural flow to it than previous Taisen flicks.

-Ex-Aid's storytelling, as a series, is also about Needlessly Escalating Situations, as witnessed by Taiga showing up specifically to pick a fight with six Kyurangers (or, 12% of the full Kyuranger team) when Emu is frantically trying to calm everyone down. Much like the solid thematic work of Ex-Aid allows for some natural team-up energy, the solid character work of territorial dickheads like Taiga and Hiiro very easily give logical weight to the Superheroes Fight Superheroes part of the crossover film.

-Eito still doesn't 100% work for me (no backstory/family, sort of just comes off as Hiiro's Failure instead of a character), but I did appreciate how this movie tried to work inside Ex-Aid's themes. Hiiro having to own up to his earlier failure instead of literally hiding it away, Eito needing to allow other people to care for im, that's all solid Ex-Aid stuff. The problem for me this time was that there's so much other shit in the way. I liked a lot of the action and guest appearances, but the throughline on this film is Hiiro and Eito, but they're maybe a third of the movie's runtime. There's an entire digression with Emu fighting the Debuting Amazon Riders, and you could cut that whole fight without damaging the narrative. The writing wants to do this small story about Hiiro's tragic past, but then it also has to justify Every Rider And Ranger Suit, plus an explosive finale at Kamen Rider Quarry. I don't think those two goals fit well in one movie.

-I sort of love how Bandai Namco shoved in their classic video game brands to this movie and Heisei Generations. They're so half-assed (Xevious and Galaxian matter for maybe twenty-five minutes of this story, if that), and yet they're also the exact right energy to start an Ex-Aid movie off on. It's goofy as hell and perfectly in keeping with the rules of Ex-Aid's world.

-okay but why was agito's final form burning instead of shining