[Kamen Rider Die]

RIDER TIME: KAMEN RIDER ZI-O VS DECADE - “7 ZI-OS”



Man, thought this one was going to be right in my wheelhouse, but it sort of petered out for me?

It’s the run-time, probably. I don’t think this story needed to be twice as long as Decade Vs. It doesn’t really go anywhere major, and brevity is the soul of wit. Keeping this thing to a tight 30 would’ve added more snap to the humor, and kept the Decade Being A Violent Weirdo parts to a blessed minimum. (I just don’t love Tsukasa threatening teenagers, and then being like Oh No The Bad Guy Is A Child. Like, you’ve murdered several children, guy! Pick a lane!) There’s a lot of spark to the first episode, and then the second one kinda meanders, and then the third one has a few bright spots and a whole lot of stuff I’ve already forgotten. Sort of a straight downward slope, for me.

Fun slope, though, like a slide in a playground. I like how much this special works within a Teen Dramedy palette. As much as the end of the special strips a lot of that away (such a bummer to see Swartz and Ora back as Time Jackers), there’s so much commitment to insane teachers and teen crushes and making friends and violent bullies and afterschool clubs, so it’s not like Inoue up and abandoned the premise. He wrung a ton of juice out of it, and a bit of pulp, too.

For example, I appreciated Inoue trying to do a queer-positive plot with Heure, and I honestly think even the more negative elements can be explained. Like, this is a story that treats Heure’s crush on Sougo as a natural thing, and not something that deserves mockery… while still remembering that Sougo doesn’t do great with romantic attention, Geiz is very protective of Sougo around potential suitors for reasons that are certainly not worth examining, Ora loves torturing Heure in every timeline, and Heure sort of exists in the narrative to be the butt of the joke. Even within all that, we get a story where Heure isn’t treated any differently for being gay. That’s kind of nice?

(Okay, so, Heure does get exploded at the end of the story, which is some real Bury Your Gays 101 shit. But! A romantic interest getting exploded to solidify the hero’s resolve is, like or not, a pretty standard tokusatsu trope, and also Swartz outright says that Heure’s bound to reappear as a Time Jacker. It’s a little tacky, for sure, but I don’t think it’s incriminating or anything.)

I’m not sure the rest of the story really resonated with me. The other Sougos were fun caricatures, but nothing that felt like it was saying anything about Sougo himself. The entire story ends up being a riff on Sougo’s early-series realization that being a king doesn’t mean much if you’re all alone in the attempt, but faster and with less nuance. (INOUE!) It’s cute, but it’s not really stretching the metaphor or re-examining the themes. It’s just doing it all in high school, and that’s plenty cute.

Until Decade shows up, which hurts me to say as much as it makes some people happy to hear. I don’t know why Decade needed to be in this story? Where he’s murdering teenagers? And wearing the dumbest-looking upgrade suit I’ve ever seen? And then just sort of randomly dying, until Woz goes Nah at the end? He not only doesn’t add anything of substance to this story, he’s actually detracting from it. And worse, sort of hurting my feelings as a Decade fan/defender, which is not how I expect Inoue to treat me.

So, yeah, didn’t love this one! Started great, with Swartz badly explaining romance and various Sougos letting that actor play around, but then it sort of limped across the finish line, as uninspired as Tsukuyomi’s new haircut. Helluva note to end these posts on! Sorry! I still love Zi-O, though! And INOUE FOREVER!