[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER - REIWA: THE FIRST GENERATION



ALL DADS ARE DEAD.

I remember it being a thing I first started saying during the Ghost thread. It’s an insane mortality rate, being a father in Kamen Rider. Aruto loses his biological father as a baby. (I think this movie is the first time that’s actually referenced?) He loses his Humagear father in a flashback in Episode 1 of the TV series. And now here we are in the Zi-O crossover movie, which means we are one thousand percent traveling back in time to have full-grown Aruto watch his Humagear dad die again.

It’s all the lowest-hanging daddy issues shit, and I can generally take or leave it. This franchise is lousy with dudes who lost one or both parents at a narratively convenient off-screen age – all the better to facilitate an endless number of kindly uncles or oblivious grandfathers or well-meaning belts. I don’t honestly know why Toei’s internal policy is that living parents are detrimental to the sales of toys to children, but I’ve never done any focus-testing in Japan. Maybe every child in Japan is actually being raised by a mysterious benefactor who found them suffering from amnesia in the rain, and is secretly training them to bring about the end of the world, and they want to see their lives reflected back at them. I don’t know! But I do know that All Dads Are Dead.

Having Aruto travel back to 2007 and interact with his deceased robot dad, it’s largely an irrelevant tangent. While it’s a formative trauma, and helped Aruto crystalize his own belief in the humanity of Humagears, there was no real mystery lingering in the narrative. Headphones Dad blew up in an already-explained explosion, directly in front of Aruto. Moreover, there’s really nothing in Aruto’s first dozen episodes that feels like it’d be improved by some one-on-one time with Headphones Dad. This isn’t Sento, who needs to understand some element of his own past, or Takeru, who is explicitly following in his father’s footsteps. Aruto doesn’t seem to require any closure from his dad?

So to see this movie not only go all in Aruto Requires Closure From His Dad, but then hinge the entire climax on the film with Aruto needing to physically defeat AND KILL his own father to prove that he’s capable of being his own man… I hate that? I hate almost every word of that, and it all feels antithetical to every single smart thing this show ever did. The scene of Headphones Dad tearfully telling Aruto how proud is he of Aruto, finally, because Aruto was able to murder him – for COMPLETELY FAKE REASONS – made me so angry I almost turned it off. Aruto fighting his dad is gross. Headphones Dad faking being evil to force Aruto into a fight is disgusting. The movie deciding that Aruto executing his father is both an unavoidable and deeply noble act, that should be celebrated, is horrifying.

Everything story-wise with Headphones Dad is infuriating. It’s insulting. And it’s all the more aggravating for how much else in this movie I liked.

I mean, sort of. There’s an idea in here that I think is worth exploring, even if the movie never really wants to discuss it in a meaningful way. It’s in the scene where Will is talking to Aruto’s grandfather about the recent promotional push for the Humagear launch. Hiden is positioning the Humagears as a way to bring smiles to humanity. Will askes, simply, how will humanity bring smiles to Humagears? It’s a fair question, and a smart question. Hiden can say that Humagears are partners to humanity, but everything about them is sold as slave labor. What is humanity doing to uplift Humagears? Aruto’s grandfather basically goes You’re So Clever and immediately leaves the room, so we never even get to hear even a bullshit platitude to placate Will, and I’m starting to understand his genocidal rage. This is a question core to both this movie, and the series as a whole, and almost no one wants to address it. What we’re given is just Don’t Do A Genocide, and I’m not sure that gets at the fundamental imbalance in the human/Humagear relationship?

I don’t… I don’t like how dumb this movie was about the things it’s usually smart about. The action was great, across the board, and the concept of Darkest Timeline With Robots is a great mid-point between Zero-One and Zi-O. The pieces were there to do something at least inoffensive, if not exceptional. But the focus on an unnecessarily shitty dad (who just wholesale participates in a genocide for a decade, I guess?) and an avoidance of difficult philosophical questions makes the whole thing seem like it doesn’t get anything about Zero-One.

Zi-O does not fare that much better! Team Zi-O’s incredibly charming in this, old pros showing how it’s done, and incredibly wasted in this. The movie never quite finds a way to integrate Sougo’s worldview into the narrative, leaving him and Geiz and Tsukuyomi and Woz to hover at the edges and deal with a bland I’m Here To Talk About Generations And Riders villain. (I don’t know why there are still more Timejackers???) They feel like they’re guest-starring on someone else’s show, rather than collaborating on an exciting new adventure. They’re a plot device to get Aruto moving back and forth in time, and that’s about it. You could take out the Another Ichigou stuff entirely and it wouldn’t affect either the plot or the themes.

I dislike thinking about this movie. I cannot believe they made a story that resurrected Headphones Dad, just so Aruto could heroically murder him. I can’t figure out why it was ever a story worth telling, and then telling it in this way. It made me like Kamen Rider Zero-One less as a concept, and possibly as a character.

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KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE SO-DO AI 06: KAMEN RIDER ZEROZERO-ONE



Here’s the twist: ZeroZero-One is maybe my favorite suit in the entire series.

It’s been my favorite since before I even knew what it was. (I thought it was, like, a proto-form?) It’s everything I love about Rising Hopper, but mixed with everything I love about the MetsubouJinrai suits. It beautifully mixes the speed and COLOR of Zero-One with the tactical bad-assery of his foes. It feels like a weapon dropped onto a battlefield, but one that’s here to provide a rescue. It’s the Shining Assault Hopper I wish we’d got.

The SO-DO is equally impressive. A ton of stickers, but used smartly. (Well, mostly. There are two stickers for the upper arms that are basically invisible.) The shins are three stickers each that look like one when they’re applied. It takes some time, but nothing’s aggravating or unclear. And the end result is, to my eyes, a premium-looking figure.

I love this suit as much as I hate this movie’s story, which is a little annoying to me. But! I love this suit.