[Kamen Rider Die]

SABER X ZENKAIGER: SUPER HERO SENKI



These types of Kamen Rider movies never seem to work for me as well as I’d like.

I respect the intentions. I’m a sucker for stories about how we process stories. The metatext becoming text, and interrogating the lessons these shows are trying to impart? That’s all very much my jam. I like this franchise taking itself somewhat seriously as both a behemoth that has guided Japanese children for decades, and a body of work that’s capable of withstanding adult analysis and critique. I am A-okay with Kamen Rider grappling with its status as a piece of legacy culture.

Where it starts to lose me is when it sort of just devolves into KAMEN RIDER IS GREAT AND WILL ALWAYS BE GREAT celebratory stuff. It’s these grandiose speeches about the beauty and invulnerability of Kamen Rider, coupled with an Everyone Fights At The Quarry battle scene, and all I can think is that I’m not surprised Toei feels strongly about the strength of a 50-year toy-selling juggernaut. Like, the story indulges in its superiority so uncritically all of a sudden that I feel like I’m supporting commerce more than I’m supporting art, so I can’t help but check out a little at the climax.

And, y’know, I’m not expecting the movie that’s all about honoring decades of tokusatsu to start to question how commerce and art might work at cross-purposes, or whether a major packaged-goods conglomerate is the best steward for a nation’s youth. But I just… I sort of can’t help thinking about that, as the movie pivots aways from existential dread and deep introspection, into fan service fight scenes and hastily-read catchphrases. It’s a Me problem, almost certainly, but it’s still a problem.

But everything up until my brain was like Brought To You By Toei And Bandai? That stuff was great.

Hard to go wrong when we get our first official Touma/Aruto team-up, right? The inclusion of the last few Riders made this movie feel like a bit of a make-up gift for the COVID-era restrictions, and then a little extra consideration for fans by tossing in the Den-O cast, as well. (I don’t really know the Sentai actors, but hopefully fans of that franchise enjoyed seeing them.) The minor appearances of so many different types of characters, as they’re being wedged into classic fables, helps sell the ending’s point that there’s enough uniqueness to each season’s cast and world to dodge charges that the Kamen Rider and Sentai franchises might derivatively regurgitate the same heroic morals every year. All of these goofs are so bizarre and memorable that they’ll naturally warp any boilerplate story concept into new and interesting shapes. Aruto’s going to take a story in a different direction than Touma, even if the destination is the same.

And the overall point about how we need to see our humanity in heroes in order to be more heroic ourselves, I like that a lot. Square-jawed heroes that exist above us can’t really teach us anything important; flawed heroes who battle against their own failings to become better than they started, though, that’s always going to be a compelling story. The power of the Kamen Rider franchise isn’t in its heroes’ power, or their costumes. It’s in how nobility can be found in even the darkest of places, and that we all have the ability to be a better version of ourselves. This is a movie that argues against avoiding conflict, because only through overcoming conflict do we improve as people. Perseverance through adversity leading to a better world for everyone, which is a pretty apropos sentiment for a franchise that’s been around since 1971.

I did enjoy this movie, even if the triumphant battle royale left me as cold as it always does. I can’t help thinking about the darker aspect of this sort of commercial entertainment, even as I’m dedicated to its messages and adore its characters. It’s complicated, and maybe contradictory. I hope Shotaro Ishinomori might appreciate that.

—

HEART OF A BROKEN STORY



Rintaro was reading something.

That wasn’t a surprise to Mei. Rintaro was basically always reading something. The few times she didn’t see him with his nose in a book when they were at the Northern Base, it was because he was on his way to get a new book.

This was different, though. He’d usually be seated at a table, or holding the book out in front of him as he stood. This time he was turned a bit into the corner, and hunched over whatever he was reading. Whatever it was, he was engrossed in it. He didn’t seem to hear her walking towards him.

So she snuck up behind him, craned her head over his shoulder to look at his book, and said “What’re you reading?”

“GAH!” he shouted unheroically. “Mei! I, uh… I didn’t hear you walk in.”

She shoved his shoulder playfully. “Yeah, obviously. What have you got there?” She could see the back of the book, pressed up against Rintaro’s chest in surprise. It was thin, and small. It looked like a zine; something hand-copied and brief.

His face immediately turned red, and he started that adorable stammer. “I, well, um, it’s, um, it’s nothing really, you wouldn’t be interested in it–”

She snatched it from his hands and looked at the cover. In blocky, hand-lettered characters it read THE STRONGEST SWORDSMAN ~ BY REN.

“Wh–” She couldn’t even fathom what this was. “What IS this?”

Rintaro snatched it back while she was stunned. “It’s… it’s probably my fault. After the battle against Asmodeous, Ren had questions. He wasn’t around for a lot of the adventure, and he didn’t seem to understand any of what Touma was talking about before the final battle. A good deal of the moral and emotional context… eluded him.”

Mei nodded. That definitely sounded like Ren.

Rintaro continued. “Well, I tried to explain it to him, but he really seemed to be fixated on the idea that we had a creator, and that we were heroes with a story, but that we could write our own stories within it. It– it was a metaphor for our own ability to determine a fate beyond what the world pushes us toward, but–”

“But it was a metaphor, and Ren doesn’t understand those,” Mei finished.

“Exactly,” Rintaro said sadly. “He kept asking me if Touma was so powerful because he wrote a story where he was powerful, and how Touma always said he’d write the end of a story before he defeated an enemy. I said that Touma’s strength did come from his creativity and–”

“And Ren wrote a story to make himself more powerful. Am I skipping to the end correctly?”

“Sadly, yes.” Rintaro looked at the cover of the short story, and shook his head. “I found it shoved under the door this morning. It is… not the best representation of Ren’s abilities and value as a swordsman. I had hoped to spare him the embarrassment of any other of his friends reading it, but…” Rintaro handed it to Mei. “I think you deserve to see it.”

She took the zine and began to page through it. It was brief, for fiction. Barely a dozen pages, and at least two of those were illustrations of Ren beheading a monster. Nearly every sentence ended in an exclamation mark. Kento was brought up repeatedly, mostly to fawn over Ren and insult Touma. Isaac… this was not a story Isaac would want to read. It was amateurish, and self-congratulatory, and barely coherent.

But it was also sort of sweet.

Ren was a lonely boy who didn’t understand the point of anything other than winning a fight. All of his self-worth was tied up in that outlook, and it had left him behind as everyone around him grew up into complicated men. He wanted to join them, but didn’t know how. So he wrote this horrible, horrible story to try and get back to where he might be loved again.

Mei sat down on the stairs of the meeting room, tears in her eyes. This stupid, simple boy wrote a story to be back in the family that he missed. It was clumsy, but it was genuine.

Rintaro sat down next to Mei, and put a consoling arm around her. “This is why I didn’t think it should be shared,” Rintaro said softly. “I’m sorry you had to see it. I don’t think his appraisal of you as a bumbling sidekick is accurate.”

Mei turned to Rintaro. “As a WHAT?!”