[Sh Ranger]

Kamen Rider Revice Birth of Chimera and Battle Familiar

In preparation for King-Ohger tomorrow, I'm watching the Summer Movies and associated spin-off today!

I already knew Jiraiya's actor was going to be portraying the main villain, Kamen Rider Daimon, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Sasuke's and Tsuruhime's actors and Takaiwa Seiji as well. As a Kakuranger fan, I loved this partial reunion!

Despite my apprehension, the movie was pretty decent. It cleans up all the loose ends for the show's Gif plot, or rather the plot, since those last 4 episodes didn't really go anywhere.

We learn that there was a second person who made a deal with Gif. Unlike Akaishi, Azuma seemed more sincere in his devotion to humanity's moral development, than sucking up to some space stone devoid of charisma. He's a solid movie villain, bringing back Jiraiya's use of English to add some flair to his performance and his cynical philosophy of prioritizing the many over the few is an apt contrast to Ikki's Ultimate Busybody behavior of wanting to help everybody.

For a Revice movie though, the latter half of that name sadly doesn't get much focus, unlike his brief development in Beyond Generations. The final battle is between Revi and Daimon, while Vice just sits it out. He doesn't even get a chance to resist the brainwashing, which is completely unaffected by his tight bond with Ikki. Their partnership is irrelevant in this movie, which seems weird considering other movies like Gaia Memories of Fate and Be The One, which strongly emphasize the power of those partnerships.

I enjoyed the Deadmans reunion. Even though Tamaki regrets a lot of his past, it was sweet that he still fondly recalls his time with them enough to have kept their old outfits for such an occasion. It's the closest we've seen him get to Olteca since their divide without trying to punch him, so maybe there's some hope for them to make up someday.

Although I'm not sure why Olteca even agreed to help clean up George's mess in the first place, as George said that even with the reduced sentence, it's still longer than his natural lifespan. Maybe that'll come up in the Juuga VS Olteca special we're getting soon. Nevertheless, it was nice to see Tamaki, Olteca and Aguilera working together again.

Pretty cool how the inner angel theory finally got confirmed here, with Yukimi awakening her power to return the brainwashed devils to her kids' side. It's thematically appropriate that she'd have the angel, being the heart and MVP of the family and the one who previously saved Genta's soul in the Vail series. Yukimi may not have power like the devils and devil-humans, but her love for her family and desire to protect them can also create a strong miracle like this.

Even though this movie isn't written by Takahashi, it still does the thing where someone comments on Geats' fox motif. Some things never change, huh?

I liked the song that played during Kamen Rider Igarashi's fight scene. It sounded like the usual background instrumental music for the show, but now with added lyrics.

Overall, not a bad movie, definitely better than I was dreading, definitely a lot better than RealTime, but didn't blow me away like Book of Ruin did with its more focused approach to that show's themes. As a Summer Movie, the first of its kind to actually be released in Summer since Over Quartzer, I think Battle Familiar accomplished the minimum of what I was looking for, which is fair praise for my otherwise low standards of Revice.